We head “way out west” for a Rocky Mountain high
Friday, June 10 – Our usual early departure on I-74. We figured out a shortcut through Indianapolis that saved us some time and gave us a fairly direct route through. The approach to Peoria, Illinois was not as scenic as we remembered it from our previous visit. We followed I-74 to its end at I-80, ate lunch at a rest stop in Iowa, then stopped at the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. What we thought would be a half-hour stop turned into a two-hour tour of the buildings, grounds, museum and gravesite. We left with a deeper understanding and a new-found respect for the man who is undeservedly remembered only for the great depression.
We continued on I-80 for several hours before taking U.S. 6 to Atlantic, Iowa where we stayed at the Best Western Country Squire. Michelle didn’t like the lemonade at the Country Kitchen next door and started making choking noises which she swore were beyond her control. Her transparent attempts to convince us that she was seriously afflicted didn’t win us over and the choking noise became a running gag the rest of the trip. After dinner we drove to the park in the center of town so the kids could play but an incoming storm (with one very suspicious-looking funnel-like cloud) chased us back to the motel.
Saturday, June 11 – We thought we’d take U.S. 6 out of Atlantic and get a view of Iowa away from the expressway but constant detours convinced us to rejoin I-80 in Avoca. While driving on 6 we hit our first bird of this vacation. Some people collect bumper stickers; we run into birds. The weather went from sunny to stormy quickly and we saw a very pretty rainbow on our way to Council Bluffs. We crossed the Missouri River into Omaha and saw the stadium where the College World Series is played and found some orange barrels – a taste of home. The kids liked the Sapps Brothers truck stops because their signs were water towers that looked like giant coffee pots.
We drove past Lincoln and saw the capitol building towering over the prairie. We had an unscheduled stop in York because Scott, who had gotten to do all his own packing, had forgotten underwear (which he happily pointed out to everyone he possibly could). We now know where the Wal-Mart in York, Nebraska is. We continued along I-80 and came to the conclusion that Nebraska is even more boring to drive through than Texas or either of the Dakotas.
We left the interstate at Ogallala and followed U.S. 26 through the sand hills (and some scenery for a change) along the Platte and the Oregon Trail. We climbed Windlass Hill, listened to meadowlarks, and saw ruts left from the wagons which had passed through a century and a half before, then briefly stopped in at Ash Hollow State Park. Ash Hollow provided the first real trees we had seen for several hundred miles. We continued on 26 looking for a motel and finding slim pickings in the small towns until we got to Bridgeport and the Bell Motor Inn. Although the motel was next to a railroad, the room was quiet. The restaurant at the motel ran the gamut from hamburgers to lobster.
Sunday, June 12 – Took Nebraska 88 south from town to see the Courthouse and Jail rocks, landmarks for pioneers on the Oregon Trail. From Bridgeport we took Nebraska 92 to Chimney Rock (which has eroded considerably in the past 150 years and is nowhere near as impressive as the old paintings and photos). We continued to Scotts Bluff National Monument. We walked a stretch of the trail in Mitchell Pass where the ruts had cut several feet deep. The park service had a pair of wagons on display there. After seeing the museum at the visitor’s center we drove to the top of the bluff. The three tunnels were highlights for the kids. From the top of the bluff we could see for dozens of miles back across the low prairie.
Scott really liked the fossils at the visitor’s center, including a titanothere skull. His big regret from our visit to Badlands two years before was that he hadn’t seen the Titanothere skull there. The kids loaded up on coloring sheets about the flora and fauna of Scotts Bluff. We got directions from a ranger there to Rebecca Winters’ grave, then backtracked through the town of Scottsbluff to the grave. It was found by a Burlington Northern surveying crew and is next to the tracks leading into town. One of the few marked graves on the Trail, the headstone was a wagonwheel rim with her name and age etched into it. A Burlington coal train came by while we were walking back to the car and the kids both complained about the noise – what nerve!
We took U.S. 26 through town and into Wyoming. We ate lunch in the town of Fort Laramie (population 250 happy souls and 6 soreheads, according to the sign outside town), then drove to Fort Laramie National Historic Site. We toured the buildings at the fort. Scott and Michelle saw a bull snake in the jail. We saw a plaque marking the end of Portugee Phillip’s ride from Fort Phil Kearny. A band was playing popular songs from the fort’s heyday at Old Bedlam, the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters, and there were many volunteers in uniform providing tours of the buildings. Several National Guardsmen from Guernsey were visiting the fort and their modern uniforms contrasted sharply with the period gear of the guides. On the way back to town we stopped to see the Iron Bridge across the Platte. It was the first iron bridge built in this part of the west for the Cheyenne-Deadwood stage and handled highway traffic up until the 1960’s. We followed 26 from town towards I-25.
A scenic pull-off gave us a windy view of the best of Wyoming – unpopulated, wide-open spaces to the horizon. We saw snow-capped Laramie Peak in the distance. I-25 took us south to Chugwater, a town of perhaps two dozen buildings, but with two exits – one for the “business loop”. The westerners who convinced the government to build the business loop are probably still chuckling about it. We got gas at Chugwater, thereby hitting about half the town’s businesses, then continued south to Cheyenne. Along the way we saw a couple of pronghorn.
Once in Cheyenne we took a room at the Best Western Hitching Post Inn. Scott was determined to eat at Taco John’s (a.k.a. Toxic Juan’s) so we drove across the Union Pacific yards to one where the food turned out to be surprisingly good. While there we discovered that the chain’s headquarters were in Cheyenne, which may have accounted for the quality. We drove past the capitol building and Holliday Park to see Big Boy, a giant steam engine, before returning to the hotel so the kids could go swimming in the indoor pool.
Monday, June 13 – After breakfast at the hotel we continued south on I-25. The pronghorns were more numerous in the morning. Once in Colorado it was almost like someone had flipped a switch. The open rangeland of Wyoming seemed to instantly give way to the farms of Colorado and the feeling that there were more people around. We drove into Denver, past Mile-High Stadium, and circled the capitol building. We parked in a pay lot (in Cheyenne, we had parked in a grocery store lot a block from the capitol building; in Denver, we squeezed into a pay lot six blocks away) and walked over to the U.S. Mint. We would have had to wait an hour for the next tour and decided that would be too much of a delay. We saw Coors Field (future home of the Rockies) under construction.
U.S. 36 took us to Boulder where we ate lunch and continued into the Rockies to Estes Park. We drove around town to see the accommodations before booking a room at the Mountain Eight Motel on Big Thompson. The motel featured a pool, miniature golf, a playground, tetherball, shuffleboard, and a horseshoe pit. After the kids got to swim we drove into Rocky Mountain National Park up Bear Lake road. We hiked around Bear Lake, then up to Nymph Lake. We drew many compliments for our hiking staffs (hey, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can at least look like you know what you’re doing). There was some snow left around Bear Lake.
Michelle complained constantly all the way to Nymph Lake and back. Despite her efforts to ruin the walk we did enjoy the view of the peaks towering above the lakes. We ate a picnic dinner at Prospect Canyon beside a waterfall on our way back down from Bear Lake before returning to Estes Park. We were prepared to dislike Estes Park based on its reputation as a tourist town but found it refreshingly free of garish tourist traps.
This was Scott and Michelle’s first visit to Colorado.
Tuesday, June 14 – During the night the wind began to howl and blew so hard it popped the screen out of our motel window. It was still blowing fiercely in the morning and the rangers at the entrance to the park notified us that Trail Ridge Road was closed because of an accident but was expected to open later. We drove past Horseshoe Park up Fall River Road to see the alluvial fan from the 1982 flood, then started up Trail Ridge Road. We met a retired couple originally from Anderson Township at one of the overlooks and they struck up a conversation with us because of our license plate. We saw elk grazing in the valley far below.
At Rainbow Curve, just past the two-mile elevation sign, the rangers had the road blocked. The accident that had closed the road earlier turned out to be some vehicles blown off the side by the wind and they were opening the road to cars and full-size vans but not to minivans. The retired couple decided to try the road although the wife had reservations. The rangers said the wind tended to pick up as the day went on so we decided to find another way around. In the west, the concept of “alternate route” has a slightly different consequence than it does in Ohio.
We drove back to Estes Park and took U.S. 34 through Bighorn Canyon to Loveland. U.S. 287 took us to Fort Collins and Colorado 14. We drove through the foothills of the Rockies and Michelle, for reasons still not understood, decided the best way to pass the time would be to pour her milkshake on Scott’s pillow. We had to pull off the road to clean up the mess and that allowed one of the worst slowpokes of all time to get ahead of us. We eventually were able to pass the slowpoke, then had to stop for quite a while because of road construction. The road paralleled the Cache la Poudre river and we saw many people rafting. The road drove up a scenic and narrow rocky canyon climbing up to Cameron Pass where the winds made driving a lot of fun.
We drove through the Colorado State Forest and dropped out of the mountains, then climbed back into them to catch U.S. 40 which took us through Steamboat Springs to Craig. We stopped there at the A-Bar-Z Motel and ate dinner at the Galaxy Restaurant. It was a Chinese restaurant and a sign there listed the locations of eateries run by this particular family – Honolulu, New York, Singapore, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Craig, Colorado. The motel had an outdoor hot tub located at the opposite end of the building from our room, and the night was chilly, but it was invigorating. The motel also had a laundry room so we were able to correct the damage Michelle’s milkshake did to Scott’s pillow. We always used to get rained on in the National Parks but Rocky Mountain marked our third in a row (following Everglades and Biscayne) where winds had shut down part of the park.
Wednesday, June 15 – We traveled west from Craig on U.S. 40 and the green Yampa River valley turned into sagebrush desert. We saw pronghorns and swerved all over the road trying to avoid hitting ground squirrels in Utah. We drove to Jensen, on the Green River, and took the shuttle bus to the quarry at Dinosaur National Monument to see the fossils exposed and the exhibits in their museum. Scott bought a guide to the boneyard and we walked along the upper gallery spotting different species in the rock face. Our budding paleontologists surprised us a little by shooting past the mounted skeletons to hit the gift shop. We watched staff members working on excavating a new species of Allosaurus discovered the previous year in the park, then headed back toward Jensen.
We stopped for shirts and goodies at a souvenir stand which featured a life-sized growling dinosaur in the parking lot. Michelle hid some stickers under her shirt and we caught her in the parking lot so she had to go back in the store, return the stickers and apologize. The experience was quite unpleasant for her and seemed to cure her desire to shoplift. We drove back up 40 into Colorado and started up the road to the canyons section of the park, eating a picnic lunch along the way. The Mormon Crickets (a type of locust) were so thick in some places they completely covered the road in a brown carpet. We got as far as the first overlook of the Yampa Canyon but decided we didn’t have time to make it to the heart of the park and headed back to the town of Dinosaur.
Colorado 64 took us to Rangely and Colorado 139 into ever drier and more desolate lands. We saw very little traffic on 139 and most of that was vehicles belonging to a pipeline company. The drive was monotonous with an occasional cattle guard the only break until we began to climb the mountains toward Douglas Pass. Unlike previous passes, the road here was made with minimal change to the existing terrain and curved in on itself like a plate of spaghetti. Once over the pass we experienced the thrill of a small rockslide in a “Falling Rock” zone, something we decided we could do without in the future. The road descended in a series of hairpins into the dry sagebrush which we followed for many miles to the green farms of Loma and I-70. The car’s behavior once it got on the expressway improved remarkably and we decided the Aerostar was not designed for mountain travel.
We stopped for information at the welcome center in Fruita and loaded up on pamphlets, then drove to Grand Junction and got a room at the Best Western Horizon Inn. We turned the kids loose on the “dinosaur” playground, ate dinner in an Italian restaurant in downtown Grand Junction, then went swimming in the indoor pool at the motel.
This was Scott and Michelle’s first visit to Utah.
Thursday, June 16 – We drove to Fruita and entered Colorado National Monument, winding through switchbacks and tunnels to the rim of the mesa overlooking the Colorado River. From the visitor’s center we took a short hike along the clifftops to the various overlooks, then followed the Rimrock Drive along the red sandstone canyons back to Grand Junction. The sky was a beautiful deep blue and the weather quite pleasant atop the mesa. From Grand Junction we took I-70 west past Rabbit Valley, a dinosaur quarry, to Utah. A sign just across the border warned us to be on the lookout for eagles in the roadway. We also soon discovered that Utah puts up signs to warn of road damage rather than repair the highways. We ate a picnic lunch in the heat of the San Rafael desert and headed west into the “color country” of Utah.
Cliffs to the north and south ranged in hues from tan to purple and ran the range of reds and oranges in between. A sign at the exit for Green River warned us that the next services were 100 miles down the road. The San Rafael swell looked like a small hill as we approached but the steep grade soon had our car laboring. The view from atop the swell was magnificent. We made our way through the Fishlake National Forest with its scrubby Juniper and Pinyon Pines beneath snow-capped mountains to I-15. The greenery along I-15 was a marked change from the deserts of eastern Utah. We stopped for the night at the Comfort Inn in Cedar City and wrote up our postcards while the kids went swimming.
Friday, June 17 – Utah 14 led us 21 miles, and several thousand feet up, to Cedar Breaks National Monument. There was snow on the rim at 10,000 feet. We saw some deer and marmots. The breaks were a very pretty shade of orange in the morning sunlight but the cold kept us from spending too much time at any of the overlooks as we drove around the top of the amphitheater. We spent about an hour there, then descended back to Cedar City and took I-15 south to Utah 17 and 9 to Zion National Park.
The towering rock formations of Zion looked better on the drive in than they did when we got there – from the base of the canyons, they’re too close. We drove up the road to the Temple of Sinawava and enjoyed the most pleasant picnic lunch of our trip beneath the cottonwoods along the Virgin River, then drove to the end of the road and hiked to the end of the trail at the Narrows. We were lucky to have gotten a parking spot. The park was jammed with people and is apparently even worse as the summer progresses. Scott and Michelle went wading in the river to cool off and Scott accidentally drowned his camera. The day had grown quite hot and we were all glad to get back to the car and turn on the air conditioner – just a few hours after freezing at Cedar Breaks.
We drove up the switchbacks of Utah 9 and had to wait at the mile-long tunnel while oversize traffic from the other direction came through. When it was our turn to follow the RV’s, Jim aggravated the kids by driving on the wrong side of the road in the tunnel. The much-vaunted windows in the tunnel provided very little view because they swept past so fast. We followed a slowpoke past Checkerboard Mesa and finally got around him past the park. At Mount Carmel Junction we turned north on U.S. 89 and headed to Panguitch where we got a very tiny but clean room in the Canyon Lodge Motel. Panguitch is a one-traffic light town but the food was good at the Flying J Restaurant and the kids enjoyed the joke books on the tables (and for sale at the gift shop, of course).
After dinner we drove back to Utah 12 through Red Canyon (a sort of Bryce sampler) and up to Bryce Canyon National Park. The southernmost overlooks were closed because of road construction but we were able to take in the pink hoodoos from a number of spots. Unfortunately we got to Sunset Point a couple of minutes past sundown and so missed the final play of light on the amphitheater but we had gotten an eyeful on our previous stops. We left the park and made our way back to Panguitch in the dark. Bryce was breathtaking; Cedar Breaks was impressive; Zion was a let-down.
Saturday, June 18 – From Panguitch we retraced our steps to Utah 12 but continued through Bryce to the town of Tropic where we ate breakfast at Doug’s restaurant/grocery store/motel/general store/etc. From Tropic we continued through an incredible landscape of rock and canyons which a few years later became Escalante National Monument. We were briefly delayed by cattle in the roadway in the open range and they picked a good spot – sheer drops on either side of the road with no shoulder. We followed them down the road a bit until they had room to move aside, then continued into the Dixie National Forest for more mountain climbing. We were lucky enough to find a stretch to pass a truck that was creeping along before we got to the pass and so made good time.
We stopped in Torrey for souvenirs and the local phone system had fits trying to validate our credit card. The locals apologized and said they were getting a new digital phone system shortly. Torrey is about as remote as a town can be but remote isn’t what it used to be. We picked up lunch in Torrey and took it to Capitol Reef National Park where we spent a little time scrambling over maroon-colored rocks before heading to a picnic area along the Fremont River. Our lunch stop on a grassy field amidst fruit orchards contrasted intensely with the arid, rocky landscape around us. We drove along the base of the reef for a few miles of sightseeing. The sky was cloudy and kept threatening rain so we decided not to walk into the Grand Wash or linger too long for fear the roads would become impassable. The reef itself was a nearly-unbroken cliff of intense reds, maroons, browns and whites that stretches almost a hundred miles.
We continued east on Utah 24 and the landscape turned into a collection of tans, then gave way to the lunar-like grays of Mancos Shale. 24 followed the Fremont River to Hanksville, then turned north towards I-70. From Hanksville on we had the curious site of boats being towed through the desert – all on their way to or from Lake Powell, but looking out of place in the arid sagebrush. The 44 miles of road between Hanksville and the expressway were unbroken by any towns, roads, or signs, except for the turnoff for Goblin Valley State Park. We had thought about going there but the kids were both asleep so we continued to the expressway and took it east to U.S. 191 which headed south past formations that looked a lot like Capitol Reef.
We stopped on our way into Moab to buy tickets for the Canyonlands by Night cruise, then started looking for a motel. The good ones were full or nearly so and we found a place that looked okay at first glance – the Sunset Motel. We soon found that the renovated cabins out front must have been for show. Our room was in a rundown building that probably was last touched by maintenance people when Roosevelt was president (and we weren’t sure which Roosevelt). We went for a swim, ate dinner, and headed off for our cruise. The kids liked a life-size statue of a Utahraptor in front of a downtown store.
We got to the cruise later than we should have and ended up in the last seat on the boat. Mom and Dad had told us how impressive the stars were from the canyon bottoms. The first part of the tour, in daylight, was okay. The guide pointed out formations on the walls towering above the Colorado River and gave us some of the area’s history. As night fell it began to rain a little. We did not find the light show along the walls at all inspiring and ended up quite disappointed with our night in Moab. Naturally this was the only rain that had fallen all month. Back at the motel both kids became extremely homesick, and our horrible room did nothing to inspire a better mood in anyone.
Sunday, June 19 – We were awakened early by the smoke detector going off in our room for no apparent reason. Jim was unable to rouse anyone in the office to report it and Lynne got it to shut up by smothering it with a pillow. Our room was damp and dank despite the relative humidity of 7% that morning. Jim walked over to the office to try and get someone’s attention and heard a detector go off in another room on his way back. We couldn’t wait to get out of that awful place. Michelle discovered some cats in the parking lot as we were packing the car and decided that it really was a nice motel after all.
We ate breakfast at the Best Western and got terrible service from our waitress. By this time we hated Moab and wanted desperately to escape. We stopped at a grocery store for some supplies. While Jim was shopping, Lynne spotted the van and the retired couple we had met in Rocky Mountain several days earlier but didn’t get a chance to talk to them.
We drove to Arches National Park and took the road to the trailhead for Delicate Arch. The 1 1/2 mile trail in places was nothing more than a row of rock markers along the slickrock. Lynne started having breathing problems and her throat swelled up alarmingly. Scott complained constantly. With great relief we finally arrived at Delicate Arch and Jim posed the kids for a picture with a copy of the local paper. The hike back from the arch was better because it ran mostly downhill but it was a weary and overheated crew that finally made it back to the car. We toured the rest of the park but didn’t get out to walk around the Fins, Devil’s Garden, or any of the other features. In the Windows section of the park we ate lunch in the car with the air conditioner running. The temperature was in the 90’s and gnats were everywhere.
We got a spattering of rain as we left the park and headed back up 191 to Utah 313 which climbed up to the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands National Park. We went to the Upheaval Dome but it started to rain and the trail to the crater turned to ooze. We drove south, stopping at the overlooks of the Green River, to the Grand Confluence overlook where the view made the drive worthwhile. Scott became sick as we were exiting the park so we spent some time at one of the other overlooks while his stomach settled. We drove back 313 to Dead Horse Point State Park with its overlook of a gooseneck on the Colorado River. It was closer to the canyon bottom than the Grand Confluence overlook and gave a better view of the river. Very pretty.
We headed south on 191 through the hated town of Moab. We debated stopping in Monticello and taking U.S. 666 the next morning but decided to push on to Blanding because the motel there sounded better. We got a room at the Comfort Inn in Blanding. After the Sunset Motel in Moab, the Comfort Inn in Blanding was like heaven. We had an excellent Mexican dinner at Kenny’s which also featured excellent service. Back at the motel we swam in the indoor pool and soaked our weary bodies in the hot tub.
Monday, June 20 – From Blanding we continued south on 191. The border with Arizona wasn’t marked and we had the kids thinking we were headed back into Colorado. They didn’t see the sign when we turned east on U.S. 160. After several miles of questions about our position, we told the kids what state we were in and that we were headed for Four Corners. They were happy campers for once. The town of Red Mesa, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, proudly proclaimed that their school was “The Home of the Redskins”. Once at Four Corners we took pictures of the kids standing on the marker and they spent a few minutes in New Mexico. Lynne found a couple of souvenirs at the stands the Indians ran and the kids got T-shirts.
We continued on 160 into the Ute Reservation in Colorado. We could see Shiprock in New Mexico in the distance. We drove through Cortez and it looked like a huge metropolis after the towns we’d been in. We drove into Mesa Verde National Park and had lunch at the dining room there. Jim took the kids to see the Spruce Tree ruins. We drove to the tip of the mesa, then stopped on our way back at the Cedar Tree ruins. Jim fell into a kiva while taking the kids’ picture and scraped his leg a little. We all got out to explore the Far View ruins. Once back on 160 we left the desert behind and began to climb into the San Juan mountains. We stopped in Durango and got a room at the Comfort Inn there. It was sunny and warm when we walked down the street for dinner but started clouding up before we got back and started raining and thundering before we could get to the pool. We found an indoor miniature golf course instead and played amidst drips from the leaky roof.
This was Scott and Michelle’s first visit to Arizona and New Mexico.
Tuesday, June 21 – We watched the Durango and Silverton train steam past our motel, then drove up 550 to Silverton through the San Juan Mountains. We drove around Silverton to see the town, then continued up the Million Dollar Highway. It was not as impressive to us as the Beartooth Highway had been. There was a bit of a thrill to driving without guardrails to Ouray. We visited the Bachelor-Syracuse Silver mine there, touring the mine buildings and boarding a train for a trip 3500 feet into Red Mountain. We saw the silver vein that the mine was based on and had an interesting lecture from a miner on the history of Colorado mines and mine safety. On the trip back to the surface, Lynne’s windbreaker fell overboard. There was a constant stream of muddy water running out the mine beside the track and her white jacket didn’t fare very well. We ate lunch at a grill at the mine, then headed back to 550 and north to Montrose.
There we caught U.S. 50 to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument and toured the south rim. A pair of motorcyclists with New York accents got separated and started calling to each other, “I’m ovah heah! I’m ovah heah!” The kids latched onto this phrase and repeated it endlessly for days. It started raining as we drove along the rim so our viewing was brief. We continued on 50 through the Curecanti National Recreation Area and back into desert lands. We decided it was too early to stop in Gunnison and pushed on over Monarch Pass (11,312 feet) and into Salida. We discovered that Salida is normally a sleepy town but in June, when the Arkansas River is full from spring runoff, it becomes the rafting capital of the world and there were no motel rooms anywhere.
We drove on through the rain to Canon City where the first motel we found advertised that it was only one block from the prison. The good-looking motels on the far end of town from the jail were full so we stayed at the Canon City Inn. The kids enjoyed having dinner at the Sonic drive-in next door.
Wednesday, June 22 – We had planned to see the Royal Gorge Bridge but discovered that it was part of an amusement park and admission to the park, at full price, was necessary to cross the bridge. Lynne’s car gave us a scare refusing to start after breakfast but did get going by itself after sitting for a few minutes. We took Colorado 115 from Penrose past Fort Carson and Cheyenne Mountain to Colorado Springs and U.S. 24 to Manitou Springs. We were apprehensive about driving up Pikes Peak so we gave the cog railway a try. Although they strongly recommended making reservations well in advance we had no problem getting tickets for a train leaving within the hour.
The ride up the mountain was great fun. At one point the head of the train was three stories higher than the end. Our conductor was humorous and the scenery was fascinating. We watched marmots scampering over the rocks and saw some bighorn sheep high up on the mountain. The summit, however, was cloudy and there was no view. It was very cool and the altitude (14,110 feet) was a bit taxing. We walked around the summit house and looked at what we could before making the descent to Manitou Springs. The temperature difference between the summit and base was striking. Back in town we booked a cabin at the Timber Lodge – the best looking rooms we had this trip – and went to Garden of the Gods Park. The kids played “Hardy Boys” as they climbed the red sandstone formations. A game of miniature golf at Birdie Golf capped our day.
Thursday, June 23 – We had a nice lazy breakfast in our cabin, then left Colorado Springs on I-25. Denver brought us orange barrels and forced us to detour around the east side of the city. We took Colorado 66 to U.S. 34 back to Estes Park and got a room for two nights at the Four Winds Motor Lodge. Trail Ridge Road was open this day and we drove up to the tundra. We had a snowball fight at 12,000 feet and took in the sweeping views of the peaks and valleys. We drove to Farview curve, then retraced our path back across the Continental Divide. We stopped at a trail along the tundra and Jim and Lynne stopped to see the alpine wildflowers while the kids sulked in the car. We spotted some elk grazing just above the tree line. On the way back we got a little spritz of rain descending from the sunny heights on the ridge.
We took the kids to Ride-a-Kart, a small amusement place on the outskirts of Estes Park. Scott got to drive a go-cart. Michelle didn’t meet the height requirements so Jim had to drive while she rode. Scott didn’t have the hang of hitting the brakes and rear-ended Jim and Michelle going full tilt in the pit stop. The kids drove bumper boats and bumper cars while Jim complained about his sore back. We had dinner in the Old Rock Inn Steakhouse. The walls were decorated with animal heads and stuffed animals and we picked our steaks out of the meat case and cooked them ourselves over a common grill. A different dining experience.
Friday, June 24 – We drove down to a stable to check their prices and decided it was too steep so we took the kids back to Ride-a-Kart for bumper cars and miniature golf. We ate lunch in the car at Horseshoe Park hoping the bighorns would make their customary appearance but found out from the ranger that they hadn’t come down from the mountains to the salt licks for a few days. We walked on a short trail that climbed a little ways up the alluvial fan and the kids got to climb on lots of rocks. After swimming in the afternoon we walked around Estes Park browsing the shops and looking for a place to eat. We drove out to Dunraven’s which turned out to have good Italian food in an Old-English looking building.
Saturday, June 25 – We left Estes Park early on 34 and the kids got carsick before we got out of the mountains. Colorado 66 took us back to I-25 and Denver where we caught I-70 eastbound. We ate breakfast in Byers and continued over the plains of eastern Colorado. Pikes Peak was visible in the distance for many miles as we headed towards Kansas. When we stopped for lunch in WaKeeney, Kansas, the temperature was 102 degrees and getting out of the car was like stepping into a blast furnace. In Abilene we visited the Eisenhower Center. We saw the graves of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower and the house where Ike grew up but did not have time to visit the museum or library. We continued on I-70 past Fort Riley and through Topeka to Lawrence where we stayed at the Best Western Hallmark Inn just down the road from a Hallmark plant.
This was Scott and Michelle’s first visit to Kansas.
Sunday, June 26 – Continuing on I-70, we saw Royals Stadium in Kansas City and ate breakfast in Independence, Missouri. In Saint Louis we got off the expressway for a view of the Gateway Arch, then crossed the Mississippi River and ate lunch in Pleasant Mound, Illinois. It started raining before we got to Indianapolis and was pouring in buckets as we took I-465 to I-74. The rain followed us to Greensburg where we stopped for dinner and on to Cincinnati where we arrived long after dark and 5,662 miles after we’d started.
Milestones on this trip: New states for Michelle and Scott (Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas), the farthest west we had been (I-15 in Utah), and the highest we had been (Pikes Peak, 14,100 feet).
States and provinces we visited: Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Missouri.
Capital cities we saw: Indianapolis, Des Moines, Lincoln, Cheyenne, Denver, Topeka.
