I 70 looks a lot brighter today.  That’s because the Antlers Staff cleaned it up for the 22nd year in a row.  It’s gotten to where we feel that our 2 mile stretch of highway atop Vail Pass is an extension of the Antlers property, or maybe even like a very lazy employee that can’t clean up after himself.  Either way, we know when this extra piece needs to get polished.

There were 18 of us this year and we even had a few guests help out (thank you Katie, Bob, Linda and Tim for joining us).  These are some smart people.  They saw the ad for the Highway Special and took advantage of the “Stay one Night and Get one Night Free with a catered Lunch afterwords and you get to keep any Valuables you may find if you help Us clean up on Highway Special Day”.

Together, we managed to leave 40+ orange bags of trash along our 2 mile stretch of highway.  That may seem like a lot (and it is), but those of us that have been doing this for awhile observed that it wasn’t as much as last year.  This means one of two things;  1. Either there is less traffic on I70…or… 2. People are actually conscience of the fact that throwing garbage out your windows at 65mph is really not a cool thing to do anymore.  I don’t think it’s number one, so I choose number two.  (Just an aside to throwing things away in the wrong place; Darwin, one of our houseman extraordinaires, who joined us on our “walk”, didn’t mind at all that someone; 1. consciously or 2. unconsciously, threw away a $100 bill.  I don’t think it was number one, so I’m going with number two).

Lots of sunshine, a great lunch, a bunch of laughs, and a good feeling about getting all that junk out of the gutter.  It was a great day and thanks to everyone that helped out including our buddies from CDOT that follow up and the other buddies we work with that stayed behind to run the “ranch”.

I Guess a Little Green,

I need to pick up this milk carton and I can’t get this stupid bag to open.

Greg