(Warning: unfair, but hilarious, Colorado stereotypes ahead!)

Well, it finally happened. My eldest and most expensive daughter truly left the nest this time. We recently schlepped her from glorious Texas to a mysterious and unaffordable land known as Colorado, where she’ll start a life of her own dodging blizzards, patrons stumbling out of brewhouses, and billowing clouds of smoke from the devil’s lettuce.

But not only have we lost our first baby to semi-grown adult-ish-hood roughly a zillion miles away, getting her there was pure “H-E-double hockey sticks” covered in blood from knocking my teeth out.

The trouble began when we arrived at her former apartment to load up her belongings–and what appeared to be the belongings of twenty other recent college graduates with compulsive hoarding disorders. My wife and I foolishly thought that a small U-Haul trailer and a large SUV would provide plenty of moving storage for a destitute twenty-two-year-old. Instead, we packed the U-Haul so tightly that I worried about shrapnel if it exploded on the highway–littering the roads with vinyl records, fleece blankets, and designer cosmetics.

Our SUV resembled an overpacked Central American mountain bus. All we needed was a crate of chickens strapped to the luggage rack. My daughter’s car was so loaded down it should’ve been blasting “Low Rider” from the stereo on a constant loop.

We decided to take the scenic route, and once our suburban gypsy caravan was well on its way, my wife and I received a frantic phone call from our daughter telling us she had just been rear-ended at a stop sign. Of course, we were in a ruggedly beautiful Texas Panhandle area known as Tascosa–a Spanish word meaning, “the flipping middle of nowhere.”

Fortunately, no one was injured, the cars were drivable, and the owners of the offending vehicle–a Baptist preacher and his wife–were gracious folks who, like us, were East Texans headed to craft beer-drenched Colorado. Despite their religious credentials, though, I didn’t find the experience particularly spiritual–other than my sudden urge to speak in tongues.

Our next bit of fun occurred in remote New Mexico, amid stunning mesas and the Capulin Volcano National Monument, where we suddenly found ourselves on the side of the road in a hailstorm that would make Moses jealous. Once the hail let up, we slowly inched ahead until, you guessed it, we got another phone call from Little Miss Fiasco, whose highway hugger had slid off the road and was now stuck in the median.

This was one of those big “Dad moments” where I was supposed to know what to do, other than call someone more capable. So as I stood in the median, repeatedly splattered with slush from passing semis, I prayed that God would relieve me of my usual ineptitude, and, Hallelujah! I was able to push the car out with my vast expertise from watching it done once on Sesame Street.

We eventually arrived in the land of skunk smoke, suds, and John Denver. After getting our daughter settled and saying our goodbyes, I told my wife to lean back and rest because I was driving home–all the way home–without stopping. We pulled into our driveway just before noon the next day, having toured some of the finest gas station restrooms in Kansas and Oklahoma.

We miss our daughter terribly, but we know we’ll see her again soon–as long as it doesn’t involve a U-Haul or the scenic route.

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Copyright 2025 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].