Another day down and another state down on the CBS 58 Big Road Trip. We have now put over 1,500 miles on Clifford the Big Red Truck (official nickname now). We have checked off Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas with Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California to go!

Friday we took a break from the football stories and focused more on sightseeing. We started off in Hays, Kansas and traveled about two hours to Oakley, Kansas where we went off-roading in Clifford to Monument Rocks. The rocks are actually made of chalk and stand 80 feet tall. They are estimated to be 80-million-years-old. I (Justin) have actually been there twice before while storm chasing as a college student.

From Monument Rocks we traveled 90 minutes to Goodland, Kansas about 20 miles from the Colorado border where a huge Van Gogh replica painting sits. “The Big Easel” as it is known is 80 feet tall and is a reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Three Sunflowers in a Vase”. Personally, I thought it wouldn’t be that impressive, but I was definitely taken aback by the massive size of the easel and painting. Not to mention the winds were gusting to 50 mph which made the experience of filming the site interesting to say the least.

From Kansas we continued our westward travels into our fifth state of Colorado towards Denver. After the flatness of Kansas it was nice to finally see some mountains! We are staying the night in downtown Denver and spent some time talking to Broncos fans about the chance for Denver in the Super Bowl and if they think this will be Peyton Manning’s last year as a football player.

Saturday is our biggest driving day of the trip. We will travel through the Rockies, into Utah with a destination of Sin City, Las Vegas. The trip is expected to take eleven hours, but may be just a bit more thanks to active weather in the Rockies. The mountains are expecting a few feet of snow over the next 36 hours with winter storm warnings posted for the Rockies and even avalanche watches in portions of Utah. Other than catching some good snow video, there aren’t any organized stories, but we hope to give you some good content on the road and show you some fun stuff in Las Vegas this weekend

The CBS 58 Big Road Trip rolls on!