Movin' Right Along

Look Out, Cleveland

2011-09-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

Day 28-29, Sept. 23-24

This song title by The Band (which I even had on my iPod, to give us the proper soundtrack) is the appropriate one for the blog about how our almost-last day of our vacation ended.

Because of the rain the day before, and our late arrival into our Indianapolis-area campsite, we got a late start in the morning yesterday, which unfortunately made it impractical to meet our friends for lunch. They were working and we only had the window from noon-1pm to see them. We encountered traffic and more light rain in the morning, and we would not have made it to their house before 1. So we were disappointed, and decided that next year we’d better route ourselves in advance if we want to see friends on our trip.

As a result, I started thinking that maybe there was someplace else in Ohio we could stop, and suddenly thought of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland. Now, Cleveland was not exactly on the I-70 alterative route we were taking. But when I mentioned it as a theoretical possibility, Joe said, “Let’s do it!!!” So we ended up passing north through Columbus and continuing on into the city of Cleveland. Truly impractical from a number of points of view--we did not make it to our parking space (which we were most fortunate to find) until 4pm. The museum closed at 5:30. And we definitely added a few miles to our trip.

However, despite our late arrival, we both felt it was absolutely worth the stop. Since we only had a little more than an hour to visit a museum which we really would have liked to spend a whole day in, we decided to not even peek at the permanent exhibits about the history of Rock and Roll. Instead, we went to the top floors of the museum to see the current exhibit, Women Who Rock. It took up all the time we had, and we knew it would not be there a year from now, whereas the permanent exhibits will always be there.

Women Who Rock was fantastic! (BTW, the museum does not allow any photography, so no photos of the inside.) There were displays for rock and roll women from the earliest rock days (Ronnie Specter, the Shangri-Las, Leslie Gore, etc.) through all the biggest stars you could name: Janis, Grace Slick, Patti Smith, Cindi Lauper, Tina Turner, and I can’t even name all of them here--there were 30 or 40 of these displays. The most recent ones included Lady Gaga, Brittney Spears, and some that quite honestly, I’m not even familiar with and didn’t know their names! (I hope this doesn’t mean that rock and roll is passing me by!!)

Each display had a biography of the singer, her biggest achievements, and some memorabilia connected with her (record album covers, personal items, etc.). Every one of the displays also included a dress owned and worn by the singer--everything from Joan Jett’s leather and t-shirt, to a Bob Mackie original made and worn by Cher. The most amazing one was Gaga’s dress made out of meat, which she wore to, I think, the Grammy Award show. The sign explained how they preserved it after the show… really a “statement” (her remarks at the time she wore it were part of the display.) Over our heads, as we read through the exhibit, was a large screen playing videos of live performances of many of the women who were featured in the exhibit. Every once in a while a performance was so compelling that I would look up, and realize that all around the small room, visitors had stopped reading and were all engrossed in the performance they were seeing and hearing. It was a fabulous exhibit.

That was actually the second floor--the first floor had videos and background information on some of the women who were not quite considered rock-and-rollers per se, but who had been an influence in the industry, such as songwriters, folkier stars like Carole King, and people like Dolly Parton and some of the soul and gospel singers who had a lot of influence on rock music.

The entire exhibit was absolutely fantastic and by the time we finished, we had just about enough time to drift downstairs and see what else we were missing--the Hall of Fame interactive floor, where you can hear music by any of the inductees; The Wall, an installation of the stage set for Pink Floyd’s performance of the same name, and I don’t even know what else--by that time, they were shoving us out the door. Next year, our first stop will be a full day in Cleveland rocking and rolling.

We were totally pleased with ourselves for stopping, even though it had seemed crazy. Besides the museum, I realized we’d hardly been outside in several days. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is right on Lake Erie, and is next to a big science center, and the Cleveland Browns Stadium. As it turned out, we had to walk clear around the stadium from the parking lot, and it felt great to get a little exercise. I was hoping to just enjoy the ambience of the area a little more after the museum, but a HUGE black cloud was hovering over the area (making my title even more appropriate, since the complete lyric is, “Look out Cleveland, storm is coming through.”) I snapped a few quick photos with my pocket camera, including one of the wind generator adjacent to the museum, with the stadium behind it. Then we hiked quickly back to Mo. One note: there is no way the streets of any east coast city (New York, Philly, even Newark!) would be as empty in the downtown area as those streets were at 5:30 last night. Even driving right through the business district to get to the museum was easy and non-threatening. Where was the traffic? Where were all the people? The Midwest is simply a VERY different place.

From the stadium area, we managed to find our way through the spaghetti maze of interstate highways (71, 271, 480, 90, etc.) and get ourselves to I-80 (Ohio Turnpike) eastbound. And then we drove until about 9:30pm, when we stopped at a rest area in Pennsylvania. We had a very good night’s sleep, and slept late, until almost 9am. But we are now on the last leg of our trip. Joe just made us a fantastic lunch of chicken burritos topped with guacamole and salsa--super yum!! We have stopped at a Flying J to dump our tanks for the last time, and then we have no real excuses to stop until we get home. We are at mile 173 on I-80. Since it’s between home and Penn State, it hardly even counts as “away.” So, I guess I’ll be uploading this last blog at home. What a long, strange trip it’s been, as the Grateful Dead would say. Strange and wonderful, and we can’t wait to do it again.

Meet Me In St. Louis

2011-09-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

Day 26 and 27: Sept. 21-22, 2011

For lack of time and for the fact that yesterday, we drove all day without stopping, I am going to combine two days in one blog. Yesterday we woke up with a lovely lakeside view. Joey walked Roxy and saw a fish jump in the lake!

We decided we were not in the mood to sight-see, however, and would rather get back on the highway. This would give us more time today, and we decided we wanted to get as close to St. Louis as possible yesterday so we could go to the St. Louis Zoo today. Plus, I think we were both starting to get a little antsy as the end of our trip draws nearer.

So that’s what we did. We drove about 500 miles yesterday. I was rather upset when we entered Missouri, however. Kansas had a wonderful Welcome Center; Missouri had nothing. Nada. No welcome whatsoever. Since I didn’t have a map of the state, other than in my atlas, this was disappointing; and since we had no AAA book for the state, it was worse. We had no idea what attractions we might want to see--which was one reason we settled on the zoo. We are lucky that the AAA Tourbooks are loaded into our GPS, and that helped a lot in finding a campground in the St. Louis area. I think Missouri is making a big mistake not having tourist info readily available... is there nothing about Mark Twain here? What about Lewis and Clark? And any number of things we don't know about already? I know I'd like to come back through Kansas with some more time someday, but Missouri is kind of a big gap in my knowledge as of now.

We managed to find a state park just outside of the city of St. Louis, using the one map I did have, and the GPS. It was a nice park, but not on a par with many of the others we’ve stayed in. We did cross the Missouri River for the 2nd time just as we were approaching the park, near sunset.
This morning we woke up and it was drizzly. We went to thezoo; when we got there it was still drizzly. The zoo, btw, is free--but I should let you know, if you ever come in an RV, the cost to park an RV is $24. Hah! Anyway, we spent a few wet hours at the St. Louis Zoo today. A number of exhibits were closed; most disappointing I suppose was the elephants--as usual, our timing was bad. TOMORROW is the debut of the new baby elephant; today, the whole exhibit was closed off. So we didn’t get to meet the new baby girl. We did love some of the other exhibits, however. My favorite today was the giant anteaters. They are so exotic and I think their markings are beautiful.
And here are a few other animals we met today.

Around 1:30 or so we went back to Mo, put on dry clothes, and had soup and sandwiches for lunch. At that point I realized, I needed to lie down and take a nap. So Joe read a book and I took a nap for an hour. At 3pm, we finally packed ourselves up and started driving. Wouldn’t you know, at that point the rain had stopped? As we left St. Louis and Missouri, I managed to snap some quick photos of the St. Louis Arch and the Mississippi River. It was cloudy and dark-ish, and we caught up with the rain on the Illinois side of the river. So it was kind of a tiring drive today.
We drove until we were just past Indianapolis, and stopped at a KOA here. I wanted the wifi, and I want a hot shower tomorrow (I could have had one at the state park this morning but I overslept after not sleeping well during the night.) It is pouring rain, and I just would like it to be done by tomorrow, but the rain forecast is for more showers. Not that we can complain--we had NO rain at all except for an occasional nighttime sprinkle, until we got to Kansas.

Tomorrow we hope to meet some friends for lunch in the Columbus area, and then drive into Pennsylvania for the night. And we hope to be home on Saturday night. So this will most likely be my last blog from "on the road." It's been another amazing trip, and it almost seems like a dream already. That's why I write these blogs--so I can remind myself of everything we've done and seen. I know all too soon I'll be back in the usual "stuff", and dreaming of our next vacation.

This Looks Like Kansas, Toto!

2011-09-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Day 25: Sept. 20, 2011

There’s not much to say about today for this blog--a rarity in our travels! We left our beautiful state park campsite this morning just after 8:30. It was really one of the nicest state parks we’ve experienced, although we’ve seen a lot (and are at another one tonight.) The lake was lovely this morning, as was the air, cool and refreshing. I slept great and felt wonderful this morning when we pulled out.

We headed south on I-25 toward Denver, but got off the interstate after only about 20 miles to make a wide detour around the big city. I really did not want to run into rush hour traffic there. I was sorry to leave the Rocky Mountains in the distance, however--we are going to miss them until our next trip west.

After we picked up I-70, we concentrated on driving. I did most of eastern Colorado while Joe read his book; I must say, the landscape was the most boring we have seen *anywhere*, and I didn’t even regret that he won’t take pictures. There was nothing to photograph! Gently rolling hills occasionally, but mostly flat, and with just nothing to see. All the crops have been harvested, the hills had no vegetation or interesting features, and we didn’t even see many cows grazing. Just a lot of nothing. You would never know that Colorado is considered one of the most scenic states. Everything worth seeing, pretty much, is west of I-25.

Just before we got to the Kansas state line, we took the exit for Birmingham, which has an original and perfectly restored carousel. But alas, it was closed after Labor Day. We could look through the windows of the carousel building and see it--it really is beautiful. We love carousels. But it was disappointing not to be able to ride it or hear the “military music” it plays on its calliope.

So we got back on I-70, crossed into Kansas (a new sticker!) and stopped at the welcome center a few miles later. This was a very well done center, I thought, and the lady who helped me was very good. Kansas is very clever--they know that a lot of folks are just travelling through on the Interstate. So I was given, among other things, a brochure which is called “Kansas I-70: America’s Main Street.” It follows along the interstate and tells what attractions are at each of the major cities that the road goes through. Of course, “major cities” is a relative term. We did see things which seemed like fun (and I was sorely tempted to travel a parallel road in order to see America’s Biggest Ball of Twine!), but we realized as we sat at the welcome center that we were crossing a time zone, and suddenly it was 3pm, and we were only just eating lunch. So we felt a bit pressured for time.

I didn’t take many photos, but we do have one question: does anyone know what these reddish plants are in the fields? We passed a lot of them, and we can’t figure it out.

In the end, we drove about 200 miles of the 450 which Kansas has in store for us, and got off the highway to spend the night at Wilson State Park. We were surprised at how quickly the landscape changed as soon as we left the interstate--Kansas does have some very pretty places!
Joe caught a nice photo of the sunset sky just as we arrived at the park.
This park is on a lake (big fishing area, again) and our campsite is literally beside the lake. I can hear the water lapping against the shore, and the breeze is lovely. The only downside is, we are back in bug-land. I always forget that there are so many fewer bugs out west, and it’s always an unpleasant surprise to encounter these little gnatty things again.

We chose this park because it was close to an attraction we thought we’d go see tomorrow morning, but now we may change our plans. The attraction doesn’t open until 10, which will put us back on the Interstate at 12, most likely. So instead I think we’ll hit the road earlier and go see something further down the road tomorrow. Another problem I am finding, though, is that some things we would like to do have, like the carousel, shut down since Labor Day, or only run on weekends. So I am not at all sure what we will do tomorrow. We are currently about 1462 miles from home.

From Loveland With Love

2011-09-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

Day 24: Sept. 19, 2011

Today just goes to prove, we have no idea where we will end up by the end of the day, even though I spend hours planning our route and itinerary. We went with serendipity today and what a great day!

We started out as planned, driving into downtown Cheyenne to the Union Pacific Railroad Depot, which is now restored as a museum and visitor’s center. I was interested in the Union Pacific Railroad because the company helped build the first transcontinental railroad, which followed the route of the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, the California Trail, the Pony Express, and… after the railroad, the Lincoln Highway and now, Interstate 80. We learned about all this last year when we went to the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument in Kearney, Nebraska. And the second reason I was interested is because of the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Butch’s gang kept robbing the same train and Mr. Woodcock wouldn’t open the train doors because, “I work for Mr. E.H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad, and he ENTRUSTED me….”

When we got to the Depot, we had to decide exactly how and to what extent we were going to explore the city of Cheyenne itself. Cheyenne has no less than 3 museums which AAA gives a Gem rating to. But it was a beautiful sunny, not-too-hot day, and neither Joe nor I really felt like going to a museum (besides, how much cowboy, frontier and westerward expansion collections can two New Jersey kids be expected to take, anyway?) We decided to be relaxed and instead we got tickets to take a 90-minute trolley ride with a narration of the history of Cheyenne. The tickets included admission to the Cheyenne Depot Museum.
So after parking Mo and Roxy a couple of blocks away, we took a 90 minute trolley tour. Before it started, we had a little time to read some of the many historic markers in Depot Plaza, a park- like area with sculpture, seating, grass, and ambience. One thing that stood out was all the large painted cowboy boots--Cheyenne had a project like other cities, where they invited various artists to paint cowboy boots to tell a story. We always love that kind of thing--we’ve seen cows in Chicago, seagulls in Ocean City, MD, and some others of the same ilk. So I took photos of the cowboy boots whenever we saw them.

Our tour guide was really excellent--I think she was a frustrated actress, because she didn’t just narrate, she made a dramatic presentation of every story she told, even if it was just facts and figures. We saw all the historic buildings in downtown Cheyenne, and heard all kinds of fun stories. Cheyenne was a city which was founded and expanded in literally *months*, just before the railroad came to the town. It was wild and woolly and had the nickname “Hell on Wheels”, but so many wealthy folks from the east also came to the new town (to make even more money! Or because they were officers in the army, which guarded the town as a strategic position in the Wyoming Territory) that the city was quickly semi-civilized.

Many old buildings still remain and are being lovingly restored. And there is a lot of western influence everywhere--the city really trades on its image as home of the famous Frontier Days Rodeo. But the thing Joey and I noticed most was that although the city looked really nice downtown, there were so few people! So little traffic. NO congestion of any kind. It was really bizarre. I would have been comfortable driving Mo through the very center of town, right in front of the Capitol Building--there was just no significant traffic. This is what it’s like out here--so much room, and so few people compared to New Jersey, that everything looks “empty”.

After our tour, it was lunchtime, and then we went to the Depot Museum. I really enjoyed it--it was cool looking at all the old photographs of the city being built up, and the influence of the Union Pacific. This city literally was founded from scratch in 1867, so its growth is documented from the very beginning. I loved the quotes from the local newspaper, which started up almost immediately and chronicled everything of importance that occurred. The Depot itself is a historic landmark, and is really beautiful, in that old-wood, tiled and elegant way of public buildings from the beginning of the 20th century.

The trains are still very much present, although there are evidently no passenger trains anymore. But the tracks run right along next to I-80 (we saw a lot of trains while driving yesterday) and right through Cheyenne. We heard them all night from our campground, and probably almost a dozen went through while we were downtown. They say about 90 trains PER DAY (!!) go through Cheyenne.

By the time we finished with the museum, it was already 3pm, and we decided we needed to get going. So we found our way to I-25 South, and drove 7 miles until we crossed the state line into Colorado. We stopped at the visitor center in Fort Collins, because I wanted to see if there was anything fun we could do east of Denver--almost everything touristy in Colorado is based around the Rocky Mountains, which by the way showed up immediately in the distance and got closer and closer as we drove.

I have to say, when the people staffing the visitor center can’t think of ANYTHING to tell you to see in the eastern part of their state, it’s kind of discouraging. So I discussed how to bypass Denver and went back to Mo. Little did I know that serendipity had stepped in--Joe had picked up one brochure, for Loveland, Colorado. It seems that Loveland bills itself as a “work of art”--the entire city is full of public sculpture, including several parks and sculpture gardens. Loveland was only about 16 miles south of us, so we decided we would stop there and see some of the sculptures.
We used the brochure’s map and our GPS, and found Benson Sculpture Garden. It was in a residential neighborhood, a large grassy park with no vehicle entrance point. We simply parked by the curb, leashed Roxy, and started walking through the park. It was about 5pm, a lovely time for a stroll, and the sculptures were fantastic. The shadows made it hard to get good photos of many of them--which is probably lucky for this blog, since uploading photos is so hard!

When we found a plaque describing the place, we learned that the property had originally been a homestead which the Benson family had given to the city, to be kept as a wildlife and wetlands area. Indeed, the center of the park was a large pond, surrounded by cattails and other plants, and all of the grassy areas in the center were “natural”, not mowed or otherwise altered. Some of the statues made obvious use of the natural landscape.

But the entire perimeter was lush lawn, and many sculptures were set into the grass. As Joe said, we HAD to walk on the grass to look at them and read their titles and the artists’ names.
So we had the most delightful evening stroll for an hour or so, passing other families with children and dogs, and just relaxing and enjoying ourselves. There are over 100 scultpures in this park alone--there are other parks and places all over Loveland with sculptures. It seems to be a “lovely” place to live!

Now it was 6:30pm, and time to really think about dinner, and where to spend the night. And once again, Loveland was just perfect--there is a state park right at the edge of the city! No wifi, of course, but electric hookups, hot showers, and a lake next to our campsite. With a fantastic sunset just as we arrived. So that is where we are tonight, and when we woke up, we had no idea of spending ANY time here whatsoever. Just goes to show you. Joe’s angel of inspiration was directing us today.

Housekeeping in Wyoming

2011-09-18T21:33:00.000-07:00

Day 23: Sept. 18, 2011

It’s always a bit strange spending the night at an interstate rest area--on one hand, no one ever bothers us and the highway noises are never as loud as you might expect. But we always wake up early, and it’s a conducive way to get an early start. So we were actually back on the road by about 8:30 this morning.

We had several priorities and a general direction in mind. The former included finding water--we discovered before dinner last night that we had run out! I’m referring to Mo’s tank of water, which we use for washing dishes and flushing the toilet--for drinking and cooking, we use bottled water, which we still had plenty of. But it is disconcerting to turn the tap and get nothing! Usually we top it off whenever we get the chance, but we must have missed doing that, or else we used a lot. Also Joe wanted to change Mo’s oil, since we have travelled over 3,000 miles. The general direction was: east on I-80 to Laramie and Cheyenne, and then south to Denver and a connection to I-70 east.

50 miles down the road from our rest stop, we stopped in Rawlins at a Flying J for the water fill-up, gas, and tank dump. By then it was just after 10, so with the help of our Next Exit book, we found an auto parts store in Rawlins. Joe bought oil and some other stuff so he could change the oil and filter, and repair the boo-boo Mo got when we tangled with the rock the day before (the muffler to the generator had gotten knocked off.) It only took Joe an hour to change the oil and fix the muffler--he is amazing! I did some internal housekeeping meanwhile--washing the dishes from the night before, now that we had water, sweeping, and putting away stuff that was floating around.

At 11:30 we left Rawlins and drove another 100 miles to Laramie, arriving just at lunchtime. We went directly to the Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site, a “gem” attraction in the AAA book. We ate lunch, then went in to find out more about the only prison which had ever had Butch Cassidy behind its bars.
The place turned out to be very interesting. The prison building itself was built
in 1872 and was used until the very early 1900s. Then it was taken over by the University of Wyoming, which used the buildings and land as an experimental stock farm. It was restored and renovated in the 1990s using rigorous archaeological principles, and the panels explaining how the building was rebuilt were very well done. They did make use of their Butch Cassidy connection, however!
Most interesting were the stories of the prisoners, and the information about daily life in the prison, from the pov of not just the prisoners but the wardens, the guards, and people who came in to give the prisoners some access to culture, religion, and education. They had people of every type as prisoners at one time or another. This is a panel about Julius Greenwald, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. He was a cigar maker by trade. The plaque says that he shot his wife at a “house of prostitution”. One is left to assume that he found her working there. A nearby panel referencing the problems of domestic violence mentioned that women sometimes worked as prostitutes to bring more money into the family. Evidently if this is was Mrs. Greenwald was doing, her husband didn’t appreciate it. But it’s certainly not the usual story of a Polish immigrant to America! While he was incarcerated, he made cigars which were sold all over the country. This was not that unusual--a number of the prisoners were able to pursue their trades in prison and this made money for the lessee of the prisoner laborers.
Besides the prison, the historic site includes renovations of the wardens’ house, the broom factory, and several buildings left from when the site was used to raise stock. So it was later than I’d expected when we left, and we still had to stop at yet another Walmart. We needed some basic groceries and a few things for Mo. It’s amazing how we run out of *something* we need almost every day--I suppose it’s because we keep everything in small quantities. We did have an unexpected bonus as we left the store, though. The clouds in the sky were extra-dramatic, and there was a semi-circle of sunrays coming through the clouds. I pointed it out to Joe, and he said, "It's heaven!" If nothing else, this photo shows how big the sky is out here, but I think you can see the rays, too.
By this time, I had realized that no way would we make it any farther than Cheyenne tonight, and that is where we are, at a campground in Cheyenne. As usual, we had wonderful scenery on the road here. We are hoping to see a little bit of Wyoming’s capital tomorrow, before we get back on the road.

A Relaxed Shabbat in Flaming Gorge

2011-09-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

Day 22: Sept. 17, 2011

We spent a peaceful night in our exquisite campsite last night, except for the fact that at some point it started to rain. We have been very lucky with weather on this trip (as we usually are!), but it’s always preferable not to have to deal with rain, especially when you are in the mountains. These narrow windy roads can be scary enough sometimes, without the added worry of being wet. So when we woke up and it was raining quite hard, we simply went back to sleep! I didn’t have a lot planned for us today, and the first part--take a boat onto the Flaming Gorge reservoir--was obviously scratched due to the weather. Which meant a sleep-in!

We finally got out of bed around 9am, and really took our time getting breakfast, and by the time we finished, the rain had stopped and the sun was out. The sky was blue, and it was just a gorgeous, albeit cool, mid-morning. So we took a short walk on the trail to the Firefighter’s Memorial, which the campground was named for. This was a plaque overlooking “our” valley, dedicated to three firefighters who lost their lives while battling a forest fire in the national recreation area. It was a beautiful spot for a tribute like that, looking over the trees and valley.

Then Joey and I had a discussion--should we do anything else, or maybe we should just set up our lawn chairs, and read our books and gaze out over the view all day. It would have been a perfectly fine thing to do, actually! But then we decided we would at least go take a tour of the Flaming Gorge Dam. So off we went.

The dam tour was very interesting…the dam is just huge. It’s too bad we didn’t get to really tour the Bonneville Dam when we were there, but the shape seemed very different. We had views from both sides, and from the bottom.

Besides admiring the white concrete of the dam itself against the red rocks, we also admired the wingspans of the turkey vultures who were drifting on the air currents in front of us. Our guide pointed out how several of the birds were perched on the struts of the nearby tower, warming themselves in the sun. One of them had his wings completely open to catch the rays--it seemed like a very sane thing to be doing just then, because the weather had really warmed up. If you look at the photo close-up, though, you can really see how ugly these birds are.

After our tour, it was 1:30, so we ate some lunch and then thought maybe we would rent a boat on the lake after all. So we went to the nearby marina, but by the time we got there, a big black cloud was coming up and the wind had picked up again, and the warm day had disappeared. We figured we’d freeze on the lake, so then we had to decide: back to the campground, or continue north back towards I-80 and our eventual trip back home? We decided to head north.

As soon as we crossed the dam again, however, we had to take a brief detour so I could photograph the dam from the river side (the photo I posted above). The Green River at that point is fantastic for tubing (alas for the cold weather we’ve had here!) and fishing, especially for trout. In fact, we saw a lot of fish at the base of the dam during our tour.
We parked Mo in a parking lot which is set up for boaters and rafters. The lot is still about 400 feet or so above the river; the put-in point is down below and then they have to bring the car back up to park it. We found a foot path leading down to the riverside, and we started to walk down it It was steep, with a number of steps just a little too high for my comfort. I was dressed too warmly for this--the path was all rock, no shade, and the sun had come out again, and I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt--but I followed Joe and Roxy, taking photos all the way. They seemed to have no trouble with it.
We got to the bottom and it was REALLY nice--the river moves very quickly there and the sound was so lulling, and there were very few people around besides us. I enjoyed sitting on the rocks, and Roxy joined me, despite the fact that they were steep. She managed to get to the edge for a drink despite the angle. However, when it came time to climb back up, I realized that the steep hike was just too much for me. So Joe gallantly left me with Roxy at the bottom of the path, climbed back up, and drove Mo down to pick me up. I have simply GOT to get in better hiking shape for our next trip! On the other hand, if I had climbed up the path, we would have gotten caught in the rain--because as soon as Joe got to the bottom to pick me up, the sky clouded over, and it started raining on us as we drove back up.

A mile or so along the road, we had to stop for yet another viewpoint--the dam and reservoir area from the south. It was still raining lightly but not too much, and I was able to take some more photos. I’d say this place is well worth a visit, especially for people who like to fish! And if we come here again, we have got to come when it is warmer--I was so disappointed not to go kayaking or rafting or something on the lake or river. It really is a water-lover’s ideal destination. Not too crowded, and views to be gaga for. I took this panorama photo, I hope it comes out okay in the blog (click on it to make it show up on the entire page.)

The two-lane highway from Flaming Gorge to I-80 is marked as scenic on the map, and it really is amazing. I thought I’d seen a lot of panoramas and overlooks already, but this was really something else again. We left the lakeside and soon after crossed back into Wyoming again (the 6th time on this trip we’ve passed a “Welcome to Wyoming” sign!) I think maybe Utah and Wyoming could be in a competition for the most beautiful vistas. We stopped at one place where we just couldn’t stop drinking in the views--the shades of dark and sage greens, the red and white and gray striped rocks, all blended together. It was fantastic. I tried another panorama for this.
It was about 5pm when we finally got to the interstate near Rock Springs, WY. We stopped at a Flying J to fill the gas tank, and the stop was delayed slightly by a small entanglement between Mo and a rock next to the parking lot (why do people decorate with rocks, anyway? They are just hazards!) After that, we drove a short 1.5 miles to the Wild Horse Viewing Area. Southwestern Wyoming has a large population of wild horses. Because they have no natural predators, the herds increase very quickly, putting a strain on the rangeland and leading to starvation for the horses. So the Bureau of Land Management counts and culls the herds regularly, and they put the extra horses, burros and mules up for “adoption”. There is a wild horse corral facility in Rock Springs, and there is a place to view the horses. They were GORGEOUS.
Joe has been admiring horses all along our trip, and he wanted to adopt one of the little frisky colts we saw prancing and dancing in the corral. There were more horses than I expected, and they looked to be in excellent condition. If you are interested, it costs on average about $185 to adopt a horse, and the requirements include an enclosure of a mere 20’ x 20’. Of course, that seems a little small for a horse who grew up running free on the range. But the food is probably better in captivity. Anyway, that was a very fun stop.
By then it was 6pm and we got back on the highway for about 45 minutes. We stopped at a rest stop to make dinner, and then decided to just stay here for the night. So that’s where I’m writing this--the Mile 144 rest area on Interstate 80 in Wyoming. I have decided to set a new course home, however. Nothing really fabulous is jumping out at us to visit along I-80, and for a mere 150 miles more, we can route ourselves home via I-70 instead. We travelled I-80 west on this trip (as well as in 2010 and 2008) and east last year from mid-Nebraska onward. We’ve never taken I-70 east, and we took it west back in 2007, but only as far as Indianapolis. So we are going to swing south from Cheyenne, WY to Denver, and then pick up I-70. Besides being new scenery, this will also give us two of our missing Midwest state stickers--Kansas and Missouri, bringing our new state sticker total to 6 for this trip (and leaving us with a mere 6 states in the continental US to visit in Mo!)

Dinosaurland

2011-09-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

Day 21: Sept. 16, 2011

Our day was a little bit off-kilter somehow, but it was a nice day with a great ending. We left our campground and headed for Dinosaur National Monument, about 20 minutes south of Vernal. I confess to being a little apprehensive about this visit. For the past five years, the major attraction of the monument has been under rehabilitation. This is a wall of natural rock known as the Fossil Quarry, about 150 feet long and two stories high, which is studded with partially excavated, identified and labeled dinosaur bones. The Visitor Center was built around the wall of rock, but unfortunately it was declared to be unstable about five years ago. They had to close the center, and they have been rebuilding it.

The grand opening is October 5, and it was extremely frustrating to me to realize even before I left home that when I got here, I was not going to be able to see the part of the park which makes it interesting to me in the first place. I was hoping that perhaps they would have finished ahead of schedule, and that the new center would be open before the “grand opening” celebrations. The park, of course, does have its own pretty colored rocks also, although this is not what it's special for.
We got to the temporary visitor center, but I already knew from talking to others that they were NOT ahead of schedule. So we did the only thing that was available to us: we took a shuttle out to a short trail near the fossil quarry. The rocks we saw were from the same geological levels as those in the quarry, and so are also full of fossils. A ranger met us, and took us on the walk and pointed out bones which were embedded in the wall. This is a femur of a large brachiosaur (the plant eaters with the long necks.)
They of course are not labeled or identified for the most part, and in fact there are not that many of them (although if we had x-ray vision, I’m sure the rocks were full of them.) The reason the park is located in this spot is because of the profusion of dinosaur bones and other related fossils--much like Fossil Butte which we saw yesterday. It is unusual to find such a variety and number of bones in one place. They have uncovered many different species of dinosaur, from babies to old age (and in one case, a fossilized developing egg), in great numbers. This photo is of a dinosaur’s spinal vertebrae. Most of the other photos just show what look like little brown shmears against the gray rock. Not too impressive, especially after the ones we saw yesterday at Fossil Butte.

So on one hand, the visit was enjoyable--the scenery is gorgeous, and we DID see dinosaur bones and some other fossils in the rock we were climbing on. But it was a very short presentation and it was obviously put together as a stop gap for tourists, so that there would be *something* to see. The temporary visitor’s center had several casts of skeletons uncovered in the area, but that was it. Even had we wanted to do other things, there’s not that much to do. There is a very short road to drive along, with some petroglyphs and a log cabin at the end. There is also the Colorado part of the park--there is a separate entrance a few miles away, over the state line, and there is a 30-mile scenic drive inside the monument. But “Utah has all the bones”, as one of the visitor guides said to me, and we have seen so many scenic drives in the past few weeks, we simply were not ready to go on another one.

So we drove back to Vernal, where we searched out a shady side street to have lunch. After that, we stopped at the post office and the grocery store, and it was already almost 3pm. We left Vernal and drove north toward Flaming Gorge. On the way we passed another reservoir (unfortunately I can't remember the name, but it sure was pretty!)
We made a brief stop at a trailhead which led to a dinosaur trackway (a lot of fossilized footprints), but discovered once there that the trail was quite long, and we were too tired and it was so late in the day, we just didn’t feel like it. We did see some spectacular red rock scenery, however!

So we continued driving north and went to the Flaming Gorge Dam Visitor Center, to get some bearings for tomorrow. There was some rain while we drove, and just at the top of the pass, we encounterd something white-- probably hail, but perhaps snow. It didn’t last long, and then the precipitation stopped.

We arrived at the Dam Visitor Center at a little before 5, which was right before it closed, so I was very glad to get there. I asked about campgrounds (a lot are closed already), boat rentals, and tours of the dam. I picked up a few more maps and then they closed up the building. I did get a few shots of the reservoir, however, while Joe and I looked around a bit.
Then we went to find a campsite. We ended up at a campground called Firefighters Memorial Campground (for its proximity to the Firefighters Memorial--what else?). It is up at about 7,000 feet, in a lovely tree-filled area with paved level sites. The best thing though is the view--we are backed up not far from a cleft in the mountain, with a wide valley and then more red rocks on the other side. There are lots of rocks on our side, too--our picnic table and fire ring are perched on them, and even close up and broken under our feet, they are simply SO red that it is amazing--I just adore this color.
So anyway this campsite rates a 10 despite the lack of electric hookups--it is exquisite. We’ve been reading, and had dinner, and are going to bed soon. I didn’t sleep well last night so I’m hoping for better tonight, and tomorrow we have a nice day planned.

Scenic Adventures

2011-09-15T22:50:00.000-07:00

Day 20: Sept. 15, 2011

Today was a little different than I’d expected--I got my distances wrong in my original plans, to begin with. Then halfway along, I got confused which route we were taking, so we changed our road choices several times. But also, we found places to stop which I hadn’t anticipated, one of which we would not have seen without my confusion with the map. In the end, we were absolutely thrilled with our discoveries du jour.

We left Lava Hot Springs heading southeast toward Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. Our road took us through a valley of Idaho farms with mountains in the background on both sides… very pretty. We drove through Montpelier, ID, which sported cement planters and benches supported by black bears in honor of the Bear River which flows through the town. We stopped suddenly when I saw a historic marker reading “Bank Robbers” and the name Butch Cassidy jumped out at me. It turns out that Butch robbed the Bank of Montpelier in 1896. The original bank building (now a storefront) was across the street from the large marker, and another more detailed marker, with a delightful eyewitness story about the event, was at the curb. (If you click on this photo and enlarge it, you can read the story too!)
From there we soon crossed the state line into Utah. We enjoyed the scenery, read the roadside markers, and commented on the weathered barns and Latter Day Saints influence until we reached Bear Lake. On my map at home, Bear Lake showed up as a largish lake (for the area) which I needed to route us around. But in southern Idaho and northern Utah, Bear Lake is “the Caribbean of the Rockies” because of its turquoise color. I had read this in a flyer the other day, and was dubious, but the lake is, indeed, a gorgeous color of turquoise!
We turned southeast again when we reached the southern end of Bear Lake, and only a few miles later, to our surprise, found ourselves driving into craggy cut-out mountains.
The mountains then became rounder and softer, and then another change--we crossed the state line again, into Wyoming this time, and not longer after, saw a distinctive butte coming up, which was layered in reds, purples, grays and whites. We knew that as a result of my inadvertent route change at the south end of Bear Lake, we were approaching Fossil Butte National Monument. We suddenly realized that this butte must actually be Fossil Butte.
We didn’t know much about the place, since it was not in my original plans, but we figured that we had to stop and at least check out the visitor center and see what it was all about. It turned out to be utterly fascinating. We watched a 13 minute video to start with--it told us all about Fossil Butte, which is the remnant of three great lakes which covered the area of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado about 50 million years ago. The butte contains some of the most perfectly preserved remains of ancient plant and animal life ever found.
The fossils are there in such profusion and such perfect detail that scientists can use the fossil remnants today to understand not just the life of the past, but can actually compare the types of fish, fx, to their modern relatives. They have not just fish (which they have most of, since it was a gigantic shallow lake) but plants, insects, birds and animals also, so they can study an entire “community” of creatures which lived at the same period. The area which surrounds Fossil Butte is also rich in fossils. The ranger told us that they expect to find some kind of fossil remains in every CUBIC INCH of rock, a frequency which is just unheard of elsewhere. Private collectors and paleontologists have found millions of speciments since the mid-1800s.

There is not that much to do in the preserved area of the monument itself, although you can go fossil hunting with some commercial ventures in the area. But the visitor center has a nice little museum with lots of information and LOTS of fossils, and we found it very interesting. We spent about an hour there all together.

We left Fossil Butte feeling delighted that we’d taken the “wrong road” so we could visit there. By this time I realized my plan for getting to Flaming Gorge in the mid-afternoon was never going to happen, so I rearranged the next few days in my head, and set a new destination, for Vernal, Utah. This city is near Dinosaur National Monument, and I decided it made sense to go there first, and continue our prehistoric fossil experiences. We continued west in southwestern Wyoming, passing more colorful rocks… and to our surprise, suddenly found ourselves in what I’d call the Wyoming “Badlands”. Again, not the terrain we’d expected… it seemed that every time we took a new direction, we were pleasantly surprised by our surroundings.
We went through these kinds of craggy, “badlands”-ish mountains for a while, crossed the border back into Utah, and suddenly the mountains opened up into a beautiful valley just before Manila, Utah.
Of course we still had mountains everywhere, because Manila is just at the edge of the Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area. I envisioned that area a lot like a giant reservoir, because I knew the area was created by a dam further south along the Green River. We saw the river in the distance, but we took the road south to go around Flaming Gorge and head toward Vernal.

We couldn’t ignore Flaming Gorge for long, however, because we began one of those “oh my gosh, LOOK AT THOSE ROCKS” events which seem to happen to us so often. The rocks got redder, and craggier, and more and more colorful every mile we went.

Then we came around another curve and encountered Sheep Creek Bay.
We stood and gaped for awhile, then proceeded up the mountain until we arrived at a fabulous overlook of the bay.

By then the sun was getting very close to setting, and we still had about 30 miles to go to Vernal. We almost stopped at a Forest Service campground, but decided we’d do that tomorrow--with two blogs and all these photos today, I needed internet tonight. So, here we are in Vernal. Our plans tomorrow are to play with the dinosaurs in Vernal and in Dinosaur National Monument nearby. Then the next day we’ll be exploring those amazing red rocks and the Flaming Gorge--I am hoping we can rent a boat and get out into the river for a little while. This means we are playing for the next two days, and not driving too far. After today, that sounds like a good plan!

Hot Springs

2011-09-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

Day 20: Sept 15, 2011 (Part I)

Last night was completely delightful! As planned, we ate a yummy dinner (curried beef with peas and peanuts on rice) and then, after I uploaded the blog about Craters of the Moon, we gathered up our swimsuits and towels and walked to the Lava Hot Springs Pools. (Photos from this morning--so they are in daylight.)

The facility is very well done, as you can see from the photos. The dressing rooms are very accommodating, with large changing alcoves (including benches and hooks) and a shower room. There are six hot pools, and they are very large. The one on the end (closest in the photo) is the hottest--the water is 112 degrees, which is how it comes out of the ground. I couldn’t go in, and Joe decided not to try it either, but I did see some folks who could apparently tolerate it. I should add that the waters were completely clear and had absolutely no sulphuric smell (or any smell that we could discern.) Just crystal clear spring water, heated up by Mother Earth for our enjoyment.
The next pool is a sort of S shape; the end closest to the spring felt about 108 degrees, which is where we started. The pools are cement and tile, but what I loved in this pool was the bottom--it was covered with the same kind of tiny pebbles which we’d had underfoot all morning at Craters of the Moon. I just loved how they felt on and under my feet! We soaked at that end for a while, then slowly made our way to the other side of the S, where the water felt noticeably less warm (I don’t want to say “cool”--it was probably still around 106 degrees.)
There’s another large pool which is cooler--maybe 102-104 degrees; and two small pools which have whirlpool jets. We didn’t go into those because they were cooler too. We spent about an hour soaking in the S pool, before deciding we’d had enough. (Well, Joe decided; I could have spent all night there, I think!) Then we took our time showering and dressing, and walked slowly home to Mo. It was a beautiful night, and the walk was just the right length. In fact the evening was perfect.

This morning when I walked Roxy, I took some photos of the campground. It was not a fabulous campground but it’s surroundings were so nice. I discovered another creek ran into the river right at the campground. It's just the kind of thing that makes a so-so campground into something a little bit special.
I took a photo of the moon coming up over the volcanic hill across the road.
When we were ready to leave, we departed via the main street of the town. I took some photos of the Sunken Garden adjacent to the Hot Pools. They were really well done--lots of little display gardens cut into the volcanic rock.
The place also had little rocky walkways between the flower beds, and several overlooks of the gardens and the hot pools, where I took the photos. There were even some small caves in the walls. The entire place had a wonderful ambience--I thought it was wonderful.
And then after I took these photos, we set sail for our next adventure.

Fly Me To The Moon

2011-09-14T18:38:00.000-07:00

Day 19: Sept 14, 2011

Craters of the Moon National Monument is truly a place that is unique to this continent. We were in a state of constant amazement from the time we woke up this morning, surrounded by black rock. We started in the Visitor Center with a film about the area, which got us oriented. The “lava lands” were familiar to the Shoshone Indians but to few others until around 1900, when sheer curiosity brought in people interested in geology. (The Oregon Trail pioneers worked their way around--it would have been impossible to get a wagon across this terrain.) The park is largely unspoiled, the campgrounds are almost never full, and it is so QUIET in so many places. Last night, except for a very occasional sound of a car passing on the highway (which is fairly close to the campground), we heard absolutely nothing.

Here's a photo of the "black campground".

Another thing I have to say this morning--it isn’t TOTALLY black. There are plants growing which give a green color in some areas. Even some trees called Limber Pine have grown in the area. There are a number of other small plants. So the color isn’t as pitch black as it appeared last night. But it’s pretty black for all that!
We spent about 4 hours on the 7 mile park loop road. There are paths through several areas, giving a view of lava flows from the North Crater. The estimate is that this volcano erupted only about 2,000 years ago! B’rei’sheet continuing into times of recorded history. Really amazing!
In the area called the Devil’s Garden, I became fascinated with the few plants that grow in the black cinders.
Then we had a wonderful ½ mile hike up “Inferno Cone” to get a view of cinder cones lined up along the Great Rift, which is a 52 mile fissure where lava would come up and form these cones. This is a photo of the Inferno Cone from the parking lot--we hiked up the left side (you can't see the whole thing. That's Mo on the far left. And @ to Aimee, how about "Inferno Cone" for an SL handle?)
This is a view of the Great Rift line. The foreground of the photo is the black cinder cone we were standing on.
The top of the cone was the big surprise--I expected plain black crunchy gravel again, but it was lush with shrubs, little flowers, and even a couple of large trees. The climb was one of those amazing experiences where there was an unexpected bonus which makes you simply marvel at the world. You can see the cone is all cinders; from the side we approached, none of the vegetation was visible. It was so cool.
And finally we took the short pathways to look inside the Spatter Cones. These are miniature volcanoes which throw their insides out like “splatter”--and are responsible for a lot of the chunky blocks which are all over the park. We even learned different names for the different types of lava rocks… these splatter chunks are called “aa” (it’s a Hawaiian name, pronounced ah-ah). Here's Joe standing inside one.
There was snow in the bottom of one of the cones--this is on way plants get moisture, is from these little pockets of snow. But nothing seemed to be growing down there, it was probably too deep and dark.

This park was definitely a 10 on the WOW Scale. I highly recommend it to everyone. Now I just have to find a way to get to Hawaii and see volcanoes actually erupting. But until then, this was really an amazing experience. My pictures, as usual, will not do it justice.

We left Craters of the Moon around 1:30 pm heading towards Lava Hot Springs in south-east Idaho. We made a brief stop to take my photo in front of the World’s Largest Potato--we were right in that town and I couldn’t resist something so silly. There was also the Potato Museum, but we didn’t go in; Joey said the whole concept seemed “a little bit au gratin.” LOL!! All the way along the road, btw, we are seeing volcanoes in the distance--once you get educated, you can’t miss it. They are such young volcanoes here, so they still have a distinguished cone shape and a flat crater top.

We passed Pocatello, which is nestled in a valley among the mountains, and as I write this, at Mo’s kitchen table, we are coming into Lava Hot Springs…

OK! So this is The Plan, as a friend of mine always says. We are now parked and hooked up at the KOA in Lava Hot Springs, about 50 feet away from the river, which is cascading just here. Our bedroom window will be looking right toward it. About a 5 minute walk from here, on a little pathway along the highway, is Idaho’s Famous Lava Hot Pools. We walked over there to take a look, and it looks fabulous. Five hot spring fed pools with 5 different temperatures in a garden setting. The garden has been carved into the lava walls of the site--we are perched on the side of an old volcano. In fact, I can see the jagged crags of rock sticking out of the mountain just ahead of us, on the other side of the roadway.

It is now 7pm. Joe is making dinner while I upload the blog, and the plan is to walk on the path after dinner to the hot spring pools, and spend the evening there (they are open until 11pm). And then we will walk home on the little path, which will undoubtedly be an adventure in itself. Luckily we have a brand new halogen flashlight . We are SO excited about the lava pools, and I am sorry I didn’t have my camera on our walk earlier to photograph the gardens--maybe I’ll do it in the morning. But for now--it’s been a volcanic day all the way around, and so amazing and awesome.

Varied Landscapes

2011-09-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

Day 18: Sept. 13, 2011

We planned a long driving day for today, so we woke up early (i.e. when the alarms actually went off!) and were out of our campsite, lovely though it was, by about 8 a.m. Stopped for gas in the city of Bend, and then headed east out of the city. Almost as if we crossed an invisible line, we were in ranchland and sagebrush territory. If you look at the map, you will see that there is nothing between Bend and the town of Hines/Burns except about 130 miles. Well, there is NOTHING between them--as landscapes go, it was remarkable for its sameness. Not that we didn’t enjoy it--but it was simply amazing how much nothingness there can be along one road. And that includes traffic--there was almost none. We love that.

I joked with Joe that I could write the blog right then, as a little poem, and be finished already. It went like this:

We drove all day. Nothing else to say. We arrived okay. Now I’m hitting the hay.

The day wasn’t much different than that, actually, except for the details. Joe drove the first 2 hours and we stopped for gas in Hines. It’s a very small place. Burns was not much larger, although it had some fast food places and some kind of small strip shopping center. They are adjacent--really one town. Then it was my turn to drive. And the scenery changed: this time into wonderful mountains, curving roads, and lots of colors and volcanic outcroppings (we are experts at identifying these now). A river ran next to us for a while, cutting through the mountains. They weren’t huge mountains but they were remarkably pretty--lots of browns (we passed one which looked like it was made out of cocoa), some bright white (we aren’t sure what that was), and in one place, some bright reddish color. I would have taken lots of photos but unfortunately I was driving, and my co-pilot said he doesn’t do photos.
After the mountains, we encountered a lot of agricultural scenery, which culminated in Ontario, Oregon. The billboards on the sides of the barns announced that it was the Onion Capital of the World, and that they export 22,000 lbs of onions every year. The amazing part was, we could smell the onions as we drove past, even though we could see the tops still in the ground. I never went through a town which smelled like onions before.

We reached the end of the second 2 hours at the border of Oregon and Idaho. Someplace in Oregon we crossed into Mountain Time, so we lost an hour. I continued to drive for another couple of hours until somewhere past Boise, when we stopped for gas again and Joe took over. Southern Idaho also had a lot of absolute nothingness, but we were on the Interstate so we did have cars. We also saw a lot of farms, where intensive irrigation had allowed the nothingness to become fruitful. There was a line of mountains marching along to the north the entire way.
Finally we left the Interstate and headed northeast, and the mountains got closer. The landscape changed yet again, from the previous farms to range (we saw a lot of cattle out grazing, and at least one feedlot), but most noticeable was the lava flow poking up through the grasses. There was sage, and yellow flowers (we think that’s the sage blooming, but we aren’t sure), and yellow grasses in tufts, and black crunchy-looking rock everywhere.

We stopped for gas one last time (there is a theme here: you do NOT want to get caught short on gas when you are driving through so much nothingness!) and then we approached Craters of the Moon National Monument. All of a sudden, next to the road, the grasses totally disappeared and we were driving next to acres of black rock, which looked like giant cinders. It looked as if a huge fire had taken place, and all that was left was the solid black remnants. Not ash, just chunks everywhere. It was mindboggling. And then we saw the sign, that we had entered the park. As we drove, the landscape was simply like another world. On the right was all the black rock “cinders”, sometimes with lava piles sticking out of it. On the left was the same thing, but beyond that were the mountains, and between them were some green and yellow grasslands. That side was simply gorgeous.
We came to the park loop road entrance at about 7:45 and all around us was black. Not night yet--but the entire ground was black *everywhere*. The white RVs parked in the campground stood out as if they were spotlighted. We drove past the visitor center, which was closed, and went to choose a campsite. Opening the door, I could have sworn I smelled ash and burning, like a fireplace the next morning, but Joe says I am wrong and it doesn’t smell. He also insisted the stuff under our RV and all around us is too hard to smear soot in the RV. It is just a mind-game, I guess; because he’s right, the stuff is like very small black pebbles. It crunches when you walk on it--it is the only ingredient on the ground here! They paved some roads and walkways, but we are parked on this black stuff.
This park is simply like another world! Joe and I agreed, we don’t think it’s at all like what the moon surface is, so that’s kind of a misnomer. But it is absolutely black in this park and it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. There aren’t even any lights in the campground except from the windows of the campers--PITCH BLACK. We are very excited about exploring it tomorrow. [Note: The almost-full moon came out later when the clouds cleared up a little, so it was suddenly NOT pitch black. But it was an eerie landscape just the same.][Also note: we drove just over 500 miles today, so landscapes was pretty much all we saw! But we did thoroughly enjoy the drive.]

Crater Lake

2011-09-12T22:07:00.000-07:00

Day 17: Monday, September 12, 2011

We had a lovely day at Crater Lake today. We overslept, because Joe’s phone (with our alarm on it) ran out of battery during the night. So we were well rested when we finally got up and got going. We could see blue sky and Roxy and I had a nice walk before we pulled out of our campground. Stopped at the village store, and discovered they had showers! That is something that would have been of interest to me .

We spent most of the day going around the Rim Road of Crater Lake. Sure enough, this morning the lake was actually turning blue in the sunshine--it is really quite beautiful. We stopped at pretty much every single overlook, and the color changed depending on the moment and the sky and clouds. We ate our lunch at the Phantom Ship overlook. The Phantom Ship is actually a small island formed by a rock formation which is coming up out of the lake; it is the rim of an older volcano which was exposed when Mount Mazama imploded into the crater.
We took photos from every direction and sometimes I took photos just to avoid looking at the road itself! If you can imagine a road with exactly two lanes, no shoulder at all, and a drop-off at the edge of the lane straight down into a valley or over a cliff, you can imagine some of the spots on this Rim Road. Truly there were times I simply closed my eyes. Joe did a great job driving, though.

At about 3:30 we were ready to leave the park. I had decided earlier that the farthest we could get today was the city of Bend, OR, about 2 hours drive north of Crater Lake. The problem I had was, that from there, we were heading east, and there is NOTHING for 130 miles. And then, there’s precious little for another 130 miles or so, until the Idaho border. And THEN, I think there’s nothing TOO much until Boise. I really wanted a campground with hot showers and wifi. And I didn’t think I would find it any time soon after Bend. So that’s where we headed.

We didn’t have such an easy time finding those things in Bend, either! The first campground I called, which sounded VERY deluxe (fire pits on the patio of the clubhouse--huh?) actually told me we couldn’t come there, because Mo is too old! I’d heard of this before, but I think it’s the first time we’ve run into the problem. Then the GPS guided us to an address which our AAA book said was a state park, but turned out not to be a camping-type park, it was a city park. My Woodall’s app in my iPod was not being too helpful either. Tons of Forest Service campgrounds but not many private campgrounds. Finally the GPS gave us a park based on proximity to where we are--turns out it was listed under the town of Sisters, not Bend, which is why I hadn’t found it. So we are at a very very fancy KOA, with gardens, a lake, a manicured dog walk, patios for our picnic table and grass for the rest of our site, heated shower floors (!), and all kinds of pleasant things. Joe and I are sitting outside in our lawn chairs--he is reading, I am typing, and Roxy is enjoying lying in thelawn. It is delightful and I feel like I’m on a leisurely vacation. [PS: added at 10 pm: the shower/bathroom building is like a spa. Absolutely gorgeous and deluxe (designer sinks!?!) What a pleasure.]

Only one problem: the wifi STINKS here! I have been able to answer two letters, but I can’t get any pages on the blog to load. So I will not be updating the blog, certainly not with photos, until I don’t know when. This is completely unsatisfactory as far as I am concerned, and we will not be doing our trips this way again. It is just too frustrating. I can live without the email, but I love my blogging! [PS: At 10 pm the bandwidth opened up! I have uploaded 3 days of blogs, without photos thus far. But at least my days have been recorded for posterity!]

Tomorrow we will be heading due east via US 20, a road which runs from the Oregon coast to Boston. We will be taking it only as far (right now( as I-84 in Idaho, and from there to Craters of the Moon National Recreation Area. At least, that is the plan.

From Sea Level to the Rim of a Volcano

2011-09-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

Day 16: Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011

Today was a day of many contrasts--the scenery and the weather. When we woke up in our campground a few 100 yards away from the seashore, it was cold and gray. Our trip to the Sea Lion Caves attraction, our first stop, was COLD! We bundled up in jeans, socks, and several layers of sweatshirts. Whatever happened to our warm sunny day from yesterday? It was buried in fog.

The Sea Lion Caves is a privately owned attraction a few miles north of Florence, OR, on the scenic ocean highway CA 101. It is the largest sea cave known, and is a shelter in the winter for Steller Sea Lions. In the spring, they have their babies there, and there’s a shelf along the ocean’s edge where the pups can be seen playing and growing. Unfortunately, our timing was not good for this one--it is obviously not cold enough for sea lions to want shelter, and it’s not the right time for them to have babies. I suspect that when it is really warm out, they can be found basking on the haul-out area at the ocean’s edge, just as they were all over the rocks and wharves yesterday in Newport. But today was really cold, and no sane creature would be resting out by the seashore.

The thing was, there were only four actually inside the cave, either. I have no idea where all the other sea lions could have been today--maybe still in Newport? The cave was actually pretty awesome and huge, but only those four sea lions were out on the rock in the middle of the watery part of the cave. The cave also had a short video telling about how it was found, its history since the 1930s as a tourist attraction, and all about the life cycle of Steller Sea Lions (named for the guy who did the research on them.) There is a view out one of the exits (there are three) toward Heceta Head Lighthouse, and I got a photo of it just as the light, the brightest on the Oregon coast, turned toward us. It makes the fogginess of the day quite plain.

So it was all interesting, but a little disappointing. I said to Joe as we were leaving, “Do you think maybe those were four animatron sea lions specially made just in case all the real ones were away?” And he said, he was wondering the exact same thing! We are both so cynical! I did take photos of them with my zoom, and I saw movement, but of course it *could* have been fake, LOL!

We continued down the coast a little farther, going first through Florence. There we got gas (the lowest price we’ve seen recently--$3.67) and a few groceries. Then we continued on, passing some of the Oregon Sand Dunes National Recreation Area. We knew we were there when suddenly I realized that just behind the row of single trees lining the road, was a sand dune about as high as a 2-story house! Then just ahead we saw one at the side of the road, just beginning to encroach, and it too was 2 stories high. We stopped a park day use area for lunch and walked up to an overlook. We could see that between us and the beach were a lot of large sand dunes (there was a young couple attempting to slide down the nearest dune using something like a snowboard.) We were at the sand dunes along Lake Michigan a few years ago, and this was very much the same thing. I don’t know of anyplace on the east coast that has dunes like this--ours are much smaller and more manageable!

We arrived at the town of Reedsport, and that is where we finally turned left and headed east again. I felt kind of sorry--as I said last night, it’s never as much fun going east as west. But we were driving along the scenic Umpqua River for miles, and it was gorgeous. In addition, the foggy cold overcast-ness went away as soon as we drove over the first hill--and there was the sun. We stopped at a pull-out and looked down at the river, to see several groups of people swimming. It looked like a lot of fun.
By this time, the weather had gotten quite warm, and the idea of swimming was definitely appealing. But instead we kept going. We followed the Umpqua in its valley, and then the Northern Umpqua. The latter was very reminiscent of the river along the Lolo Pass--very tumbling, with lots of rocks and cascades, and deep green pine trees lining the road which wound along the river. We stopped for gas and changed into shorts, as the folks at the station assured us that it was “very hot”, much hotter than usual.

As we got higher into the mountains, however, the air got cooler again, this time in that wonderful mountain-y way. At about 6:30ish, we arrived at the gates of Crater Lake National Park, waved our America The Beautiful pass at the ranger, and drove in. We had been smelling smoke for about 20 minutes before, and after we came into the park and had more scenic views, we could see that there was a fire off in the distance to the west. The sky was cloudy, but I don’t think it was truly overcast--without the fire in the distance, it would have been a beautiful late afternoon. But the smoke smell and a brownish smoky haze was very noticeable. Sure enough, when we got to the rim road of Crater Lake, and stopped at the first stop, we were somewhat surprised to see that the famous blue of the lake was not to be seen--the crater seemed to be filled with smoke, and the color was a sort of dull gray-blue. We could see how awesome the crater is, but the color was simply not there.
This being the case, I told Joey not to stop at the subsequent rim overlooks, and to continue on to Mazama Village, the only campground in the park. I’d been counting on getting a space here, because I don’t see any other obvious places to stay outside the park. Luck was with us, and we did find a nice space here in Loop C. Like the sites we had in Yellowstone and the one last night, there are no hookups, so we are dry camping again. No big deal, really, and we are fine here. We just had a delicious dinner of chicken wings on our new grill (which we’ve used every night since we got it), corn on the cob from the farm market we stopped at on our way to the beach, and salad. We are not suffering in the food department, for those of you who wondered! We’ve had steak, chicken with black bean sauce, hamburgers, thai curry chicken, spaghetti with meat sauce, and chicken burritos, to name a few of Joe’s dinner creations.

So anyway, I am hoping that the wind will blow in a different direction tomorrow, and we will see blue in the crater on our drive around the rim. And at some point we’ll probably peel off east again, toward Idaho.

Real Tourists in Newport, OR

2011-09-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

Day 15: Sept 10, 2011

Today we acted like real tourists, and it was a wonderful day! We woke up in our parking lot of an RV “park” at the Newport Marina. We couldn’t fault the location, only the ambience. But I did have a nice view of the Yaquina Bay Bridge from my bedroom window, and that got me up and out, because I wanted to take a photo with the fog still hiding part of the bridge. Luckily, it was all clearing off, and the day was bright, sunny, and warm but not too hot. The cold and foggy weather of yesterday afternoon had lifted, thank goodness!

When we left the Marina, we went over the bridge again, back to the center of Newport, to go to a kite store we’d passed the night before. Joe loves kites, and I love the bright whirligigs that look so nice in gardens. We spent about 20 or so minutes there, picking out a few things, and Joe bought a simple triangle-shaped box kite which came all ready to fly. Right away, we drove down to the historic Nye Beach section of Newport. There is a small city park there, and a Vietnam Memorial to peace, but what drew us was the wide, mostly deserted, beach. Almost the only things to see besides us was the Yaquina Lighthouse a little way up the beach, which was invisible in the fog last night, and some guys on the beach nearby, setting up what looked like a chuppah made from long natural branches. When we saw them make an aisle lined with rocks from the beach, and set up a few plastic chairs, we were sure it was going to be a wedding.

But we didn’t spend much time watching them, because Joe went right to work putting the kite together. Then we had a great time on the beach, flying the kite and just feeling that great beachy breeze. On our way out, passing the aisle of rocks, I said to one of the men there, “It looks like you are having wedding!” and he said I was right. So I added, “That looks like a chuppah”, and he said, “That’s exactly what it is.” Then he added that they were having “a combination of a lot of different cultures” represented in their wedding ceremony; so I don’t even know if anyone involved is actually Jewish--a wedding in the middle of the day on Saturday already means it wasn’t exactly kosher . But it looked like it would be lovely, given the location.

After the beach, we drove Mo to the other side of Newport, to the historic bayfront area. We were dismayed at first because it was very crowded and parked up, and there were absolutely no places to park an RV--in fact we didn’t even see any parking lots per se, just a lot of street parking. But Joe said, “Let’s go around again”, so we repeated our loop, and we got SOOOO lucky--there was an empty space, and the car behind it was just getting out of HIS space, leaving a double curbside space. I jumped out and guided Joe to parallel park Mo’s 27 feet into the space just perfectly. Most amazing of all: there was a line of cars waiting behind us, and NO ONE HONKED! I don’t think I’ve heard a car honk in the entire time we’ve been in Oregon, come to think of it. People are a LOT more mellow here. I don’t think we’re in New Jersey anymore, Toto!

It was about 12:30 pm when we parked, and we moseyed along the wharf looking at everything. We were at the farthest end, next to the real fishing boats. We saw a lot of stacks of fishing traps and stuff like that. But it also turned out that the area was being used for a special “Wild Seafood Weekend”, with a tasting competition and tents set up selling various kinds of seafood. We did not pay $25 to partake in the tasting, but it was interesting. From there we kept moving along and got to the more touristy parts. First the boardwalk connecting the commercial area to the shops, which was lined with vendors--we got some thai basil almonds, and some pickled garlic cloves, and admired various other food and craft items.

Joe was hungry, so we stopped in the first seafood restaurant we came to. I had chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, and Joe had a cup of chowder and an oyster po’ boy sandwich. The food was really yummy, and most entertaining was the view right outside our window--the wharf with all the sea lions basking in the sun, barking at each other, and otherwise putting on a good show for the tourists. We were so happy to see them, especially since last night, we were SURE we heard sea lions, and walked way to the edge of the marina trying to find the source of the sound. We didn’t realize the barking was coming from across the bay. It turns out that besides the wharf, there is a rock just off the shore which is simply COVERED with sea lions. Anyway, we thought they were adorable and really enjoyed them.
After lunch, we continued our stroll like “real tourists”. I had my camera and sunglasses slung around my neck, and I am sure I looked the part. We found some little things to buy (mostly gifts), and treated ourselves to something in the candy store before finally heading back to Mo. It was so relaxing and distracting for me, I didn’t spend one second worrying about our timetable, or where we’d be sleeping tonight. It was really just what I needed. Lots of interesting little shops, and lots of peoplewatching.

We finally got back to Mo and started driving south at around 4pm. Joe almost immediately got too tired to drive--it seems that browsing in shops tires him out faster than almost anything else! So I took the wheel for the 40 or so miles we drove along Highway 101. That included a number of pullouts to stop and admire the view and take photos--after all, that’s why we came here! It’s too bad that my photos are not great--that is because it was late afternoon, and the glare from the sun in the west made it hard to get any fantastic shots. At our last stop, Joe looked down and pointed out two seals (or sea lions, maybe) swimming along near the beach. We saw lighthouses and gorgeous rocks and it was all like I expected it to be. Beautiful, and not really like east coast beaches at all. On the other hand, you don’t have to be insane to actually swim in east coast water--the water here is freezing.
Since Joe was so exhausted, and since we had no camping reservations, we decided to start looking for a campground. It being Saturday night, we were probably taking a risk, but it turned out fine. The first state park we came to was full, but we had a list of several US Forest Service campgrounds before we would quite reach Florence, which was my goal for the night. So we are now camped in Alden Campground, run by the USFS. It is woodsy and the sites are set up very well, so no one is next to us. A huge difference from the campground last night, for sure! (And half the price, too.) There aren’t any services like the state parks, but we don’t need much--we have our own electricity and bathroom. It’s not even 9:30 as I finish this, and Joe’s already sound asleep. I guess a guy can only take so much shopping!

It’s hard to believe, but today was the midway point of our vacation. It seems like we’ve been gone a very long time, and we still have two whole weeks to go! On the other hand, it is never as much fun driving east as it is driving west. At some point tomorrow, we will have to take a left turn and head home. But we’ll go south a little farther first, and stretch it out as long as we can.

We Arrive At The Left Coast

2011-09-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

Day 14: Friday, Sept. 9, 2011

I’m writing this from the laundry room at the RV “park” where we are staying tonight in Newport, Oregon. Today we officially made it to the other side of the country, and I have photos of the Pacific Ocean to prove it. However, the wifi is almost nonexistent in the laundry room, and painfully slow from Mo’s parking spot, which is why this blog and the previous two do not have photos. At a rate of 5 minutes/photo (I am serious), it takes close to an hour to upload some of these blogs, and I am just sick of it. Lewis and Clark notwhithstanding, they could write in a diary and be done with it! Depending on electronics just stinks sometimes.

Leaving out the blogging woes, however, today was another good day. We spent last night in Champoeg State Park, a little bit southwest of Portland. We have been so impressed with the state parks out here--the sites are spacious and green, the parks are well maintained, the bathrooms are tiled and have hot showers, the sites come with electricity and water, and all in all, the only thing they don’t have which a private campground has is wifi. And as you’ve heard, the wifi is not all it is cracked up to be sometimes.

We left Champoeg pretty early, because we wanted to get to McMinneville, about 15 miles away, as close to 9am as possible. That was when the Evergreen Aviation Museum opened. The museum has three large buildings, all of which are built like glass-enclosed airplane hangars. The first one we went to had the history of the space programs of both the US and the USSR, with all kinds of artifacts, displays, etc. of the space “race”, beginning in 1957. It was a little bit like a trip down memory lane for Joe and me, because of course we remember so vividly what those first space shots were like, and how we watched them with our classes in school on small tv sets as the rockets took off. The building also has a lot of planes, including example of different spy planes and other aircraft used by the armed forces.

At 11 we left that building and went to see a 3-D IMAX movie on the conception and planning of Boeing’s 787. The movie was really cool. And then the final building, another huge hangar, with the centerpiece of the aviation section: Howard Hughes’s “flying boat”, known commonly as the Spruce Goose. There was a terrific video to watch before we went up to look inside the huge plane. It took up most of the hangar--it’s wingspan is more than 300 feet, bigger than a football field! The planes underneath its wings, including a B-3 jet, were just dwarfed by it. The entire building was devoted to civilian planes for the most part, including the earliest ones, examples of unique small planes, etc. There was also a section on “smokejumpers”, the BLM group which fights forest fires with small planes. There were a few other military planes too, including the only one I recognized--the Sopwith Camel, Snoopy’s ride vs. the Red Baron. By about 12:30, we had had enough airplanes, although we hadn’t seen most of the videos that accompanied many of the exhibits. If you like planes, this museum is fantastic. We really enjoyed it a lot.

We had some lunch in the parking lot, and then we headed toward the beach, stopping along the way at a farmstand for some fresh veggies. It was really hot yesterday and today, and I thought of calling ahead to see what the campground situation was like. The lady at the state park near Newport told me that they were full already. So I looked up my resources and found this place, at a marina in Newport. Having booked a site, we continued on with no worries. I was fantasizing about getting ice cream at the beach when we arrived.

The joke was on us, however…. As we got to the beach, we could feel the air coming into Mo was much cooler than it had been, and when the Pacific Ocean came into sight…. Well, it did NOT come into sight! It was covered with fog. We stopped at the first good place we came to, a state park (there are dozens of state-managed parks and lookout points along the Oregon coast), we changed into long pants and put on sweatshirts! Then the three of us walked down to the beach to prove we’d arrived. But we did not stay long--the wind was blowing and it was just plain COLD. I soon stopped thinking about ice cream and began fantasizing about stopping for a bowl of chowder to warm us up.

We continued slowly down the coast, and discovered that many of the viewpoints were socked in with fog. We got out at Depoe Bay, but although we could see the rocks and the ocean pounding them directly below us, there was nothing but white to see when we looked out from the road. It was the same story at Foulweather Point.

Then we stopped at the Devil’s Caldron, another spot with a view, and discovered that the fog had lifted here and we had a nice view for a little bit, down the beach. It all seemed to depend a lot on our altitude. The fog was rolling over the coastline in some places, and not really visible in other spots. This is what they call "some fog in coastal areas."

So at last we got to Newport, and went over an awesome bridge before we got to our campground. As I said, it can’t compare with the state parks where we’ve been staying. But it was in the right place. I have a few particular things to do along the coast tomorrow, and I’m sure we will both enjoy exploring. The parts of the coastline we have seen, have certainly been beautiful. But it sure is ironic to drive 3500+ miles to see a coastline which is largely invisible!

Driven to Extremes

2011-09-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

Day 13: Sept. 8, 2011

We started our day early, grabbing some showers at the very nice facilities at the Wallowa Lake State Park in Joseph, OR, and getting on the road by about 8:30 a.m. We drove almost two hours on the Hells Canyon Scenic Loop until we reached I-84. There we found yet another Walmart, and made a very quick stop to see if they had a small gas grill (we’d thrown our old broken one away a few days ago.) We did find what we were looking for, so the stop was worthwhile. And then we got onto the interstate for the first time in 3 since Monday.

The road was uncrowded and the scenery was surprising--it was quite hilly, but that lovely hay-colored yellow pretty much everywhere, with a lot of farms and rangeland. In fact, it was a lot like the scenery in Washington the day before. We sort of pictured Oregon a little greener. I told Joey it will be greener further south. It was also hotter than normal today--in the 90s rather than the 80s (which after Yellowstone feels too hot anyway…we’ve been cooler in Montana and Idaho until now.)

So, we drove. We drove for a long time, stopping only for lunch. It was several hours before the scenery changed--about the same time as when we got to the Columbia River. I felt quite like Lewis & Clark, appreciating the river so much. I only wish we could have ridden down it rather than having to continue driving. But then across the river, what we saw was totally barren hills, and after that, cliffs which looked as if they were formed by an ancient sea. It wasn’t what we expected, and we wished we had more time to stop and learn about the geology of the area.
My hope today was to stop someplace along the Columbia River, in the area of the scenic highway which stretches from just east of Portland to The Dalles, roughly 80 miles. We managed to arrive at the Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery just before 4:30, and they close at 5:00. It was really cool driving across a “road” on the front of the dam to reach the visitor’s center.
We rushed into the dam’s visitor’s center, and I asked the man at the counter, “What should we see? We only have 30 minutes until you close!” He directed us down the elevator to the first floor, so we could see the fish ladder.

The Bonneville Dam is blocking the river where millions of salmon used to spawn. In order to allow them to continue to reach their spawning grounds, they built a fish ladder into the dam so the fish can swim upstream past the dam. There are windows which allow the visitors to watch the fish go past. There’s also a small room adjacent to the windows were someone sits to count the fish. They keep track of all of them so they know how the dam is affecting the fish population.

We only had 30 minutes, but we watched the fish go up the rapids which are sent through the fish ladder from not only the inside of the building (under water, so to speak), but from the top outside.

We chose the best time to come to visit to see the salmon returning to spawn--they have been doing this since mid-August or so. The rest of the year, I guess there are not as many fish anywhere near the ladder. We were outside watching them leap up the steps, when they announced that the building was closing. So we had to rush out pretty fast. I did have time to take a photo of the spillway adjacent to the dam area. We figured we’d have to learn more about the dam itself, how it was built, etc. from the brochure we got when we arrived, since we didn’t have time to look at all the exhibits in the building.

Happily, the fish hatchery was open until 7, so we went there next. That was totally fascinating. Having already seen the salmon swimming upstream past the dam, we could even more appreciate the hatching process nearby. We saw a video of the entire process of raising salmon (in this case--that is the fish raised at Bonneville) and how they artificially inseminate the eggs (that part was pretty graphic!), nurture the eggs until they are fingerlings, and finally how they send them from the hatchery into the river and hence to the ocean. In 4-5 years, they will return to the hatchery to spawn. Unlike the salmon we saw at the dam, who were heading up the Columbia River, these salmon literally return to the fish hatchery itself.

We saw the returnees once we left the visitors center when the film was over. There are salmon runs outside with stairs again, which allow the salmon to come up into the hatchery. We watched them leap up over the stairs barring their way.
They swim upstream to a collection area; when there are enough of them, they are actually lifted up into the hatchery where they are caught and the insemination process begins. We watched them in the trough where they were collecting, and it was fascinating. There were spilloffs of water running into the trough, and the salmon were leaping out of the water trying to get “up stream”. Some of them leapt really high--they are so amazing!

One salmon actually managed to leap onto the cement between two containment areas, and we watced it flap around for about 5-10 seconds until he flopped back into the water. I was so upset for him (or her) that I forgot to take a photo!

We also saw the rooms where the fish eggs are incubated and the fingerlings fed and raised; those rooms were all empty, though. Then we went to see “Herman the Sturgeon”, who lives with several other sturgeon in a pool. The sturgeon are tremendous fish but quite unattractive--they look very like dinosaurs. This is not so surprising, since they evolved during the Jurassic period and haven’t changed since then.

We had a great time at the fish hatchery. After that, we decided to continue driving toward the beach. Joe did a great job taking Mo through downtown Portland, from I-84 to I-5 and finally back to a local road, and then to another Oregon state park, this one about a 30 minute drive from Portland along the Willamette River. It is so hard to compare the drive through the heart of the city with the stark empty hills where we started our day--that’s where my title comes from. We drove from the extreme semi-barrenness and lonesome roads of Wallowa County to the crowded mid-city traffic of Portland. I am quite sure Joe loves the barren loneliness the best!

Maps and Mileage

2011-09-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

Day 12, Sept. 7, 2011

After a really good (long!) night’s sleep, Roxy and I started our day with a walk in the park along the Snake River. We saw some deer, and had a wonderful view of the state of Washington across the river, with houses perched up high on yellow hills overlooking the river and the park (and I presume, the city of Lewiston.) It was a very nice place to start the day.

Once we packed up, we stopped off at the Visitor’s Center and looked at their exhibits about the Lewish & Clark Corps of Discovery expedition. We watched a 30-minute movie which taught us a lot about the excursion, especially focusing on the trip through the Idaho Rocky Mountains, over the Lolo Pass which we’d taken yesterday. It took them months to get over the mountains, and they would have never managed without their Indian guides, Sacajewea from the Shoshoni tribe, and others later from the Nez Perce nation. It’s impossible to imagine how they made it through the snow. One thing the exhibit mentioned was that no matter how difficult the day had been or how tired they were, they wrote an entry in their journals, which were kept in a waterproof tin box. So I have no excuse not to write in MY “journal”, even though it sometimes feels like homework. I just know how much I enjoy rereading about our trips long after they are over.

We left the park at about 10:45 and immediately crossed the Snake River, heading west--which meant we drove into Washington and could officially add a sticker for the state. We followed the road about five miles along the river to the town of Asotin, a tiny little place which would not be worth mentioning except for one thing: we took the photo that starts this blog! We bought gas, then pulled off the main highway through town and poked through the back streets for about a mile, until all those zeroes came up on the odometer. How could we resist taking a photo of that? I think when we bought Mo, the odometer read something like 44,000, and I know it read 47,113 on Sept 1, 2007. It is amazing to think we have put that much mileage on.

After that we hit the road again, following it away from the river, switchbacking up the same yellow hills Roxy and I had seen on our walk. We drove through beautiful farmland (and a very small town or two).
Then we started switchbacking down again toward the Oregon border. I wish we had a dollar for every switchback we’ve taken on this trip! What I have figured out is, when you are climbing moutains via switchbacks, if you drive, fx, 100 miles, you actually have moved westward only about 50 of those miles! The rest of the time you are backtracking--no wonder it takes so long to get anyplace out here! We crossed into Oregon somewhere in the mountains, thus collecting our final sticker for the northwest corner of the United States.
The views were beautiful (and scary) until we came down near Enterprise, OR, which is on the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway Loop. Ironically, this doesn’t take you terribly near Hells Canyon. In fact, after studying the maps and talking to people for the past few days, it becomes apparent that to get to Hells Canyon is quite a feat, and basically a full day no matter which approach you take (there are only a couple of ways to get to the canyon, or even within sight of it, other than with jet boat excursions. Sadly, there were no excursions from Lewiston today, thwarting our plan for a boat ride this morning. As soon as Labor Day is over, options become limited.) After considering our options, it became obvious that we simply would not make it to the scenic overlook or road to the dam. The roads to the former are unimproved (read: unpaved) Forest Service roads, and the road to the dam requires a major detour which takes you there, but that’s the only place it DOES take you, requiring considerable back-tracking on the Idaho side.
So instead, we enjoyed our afternoon on the scenic byway loop. By the time we got to Enterprise, it was well past lunchtime. We stopped near the city park for lunch, then drove through the town. I took a photo of the historic city hall, but we were two days too early for the annual Hells Canyon Mule Days, which is this weekend.

From there we drove to the town of Joseph. The town is named for Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, who is famous for leading his people in their final years before they were forced to live on a reservation. The modern town of Joseph is a lovely little art community, with flowers and bronze statues on the corners, and funky stores and restaurants.

We stopped first at Mad Mary’s Soda Shop for ice cream and free wifi, and I uploaded yesterday’s blog. Then we walked around the town a little bit, looking in some of the shops and just enjoying the flowers and art. We picked up a few staples at the grocery store and then drove a few miles outside of town to Wallowa Lake State Park, which is where we are spending the night.

We walked down to the lake after we checked in, finding another group of deer grazing. So our day was bracketed by deer in state parks--but in two different states.
Tomorrow, we plan to head west toward the Oregon Coast.

River River River

2011-09-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Day 11: Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011

A short blog today: we took a right turn onto US 12 in Missoula, MT, and didn’t stop until we took a right turn off of US 12 in Lewiston, Idaho. And absolutely the ENTIRE stretch of Route 12 was alongside a river. For miles and miles. It was simply beautiful.

We started out climbing up to the Lolo Pass in Montana. We were in a valley and for a little while we were next to the Bitterroot River, and then next to a mountain stream too small to have a name on the map. That was going up. We reached the top of the pass and stopped at the National Forest Service welcome center just over the Idaho border. I picked up a bunch of Idaho brochures I thought might help, including one with the Idaho state parks listed.

I only wish I’d seen the sign coming so I could have caught a photo just as we pulled back onto the road: it was a yellow sign with a curvy line which said “99” Miles. NO KIDDING! And for 99 miles, we coasted down the mountains, with a river next to us. All the way down from the state line to Lowell, Idaho, the Lochsa river ran alongside us, a fairly wide mountain river running over rocks, curving back and forth and back and forth. The only other thing to be seen was the thick dark green evergreen trees lining the road all the way.

We stopped for a lunch break at a grove of huge cedar trees which Lewis and Clark mentioned in their journals. The historical sites along this road are frequent--it is part of the Lewis & Clark Trail. It is also part of the Nez Perce Trail, but most of the historical sites for that sad story are at the “bottom” of the mountain, beginning at Koosia. At the cedar grove, after we ate, we walked through the short path in the trees before going back to our drive.

We also stopped at a river access point to walk down and, as Joey said, “meet the river.” It had been our companion for hours by that time (I think it took about 4 hours for us to drive that section down, including our breaks along the way.)
In Lowell, the Lochsa joined the Selway River to become the Clearwater River. We followed the Clearwater from Lowell through the towns of Kooskia and Kamiah at the edge of the Nez Perce Indian lands.

We made another stop in Kamiah to take a short walk at the Heart of the Monster, and to hear the legend of how Coyote killed the Monster from inside it. Then Coyote cut up the Monster and tossed all the pieces, and where they landed, each place a different (native American) People was created. The Heart of the Monster, in Kamiah, marks the site where the Nez Perce tribe was born.

We continued to follow US 12 and the river all the way to Lewiston. The Clearwater became wider and a little calmer, with cut out cliffs coming down to meet it as we drove through the valley. As the sun sank lower, the hills got redder and the river glowed.

In Lewiston, the Clearwater flowed right into the Snake River, and we followed US 12 down along the Snake River to Hells Gate State Park. And that is where we are now, parked in a beautiful grassy campsite with a view of the Snake River right outside our windows. As I look out now, the sun is gone and the sky is all pink, and the pink glow is reflecting off the water. This is one of the most lovely state campgrounds I’ve ever seen, with wonderful “amenities” and a beautiful view.

We didn’t get as far as we had hoped today, into the mountains near Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. We got a very late start, and we chose a route which was faster once we got to Kooskia, coming to the Snake River up at Lewiston rather than further south. As a result, tonight we are in the Pacific Time Zone and will cross to Washington and then Oregon tomorrow. I’d hoped to sleep at a state park in one of those states tonight, but it is lovely here, and it was time to stop.

Another disappointment is that we’d hoped to go on a boat trip on the Snake River tomorrow; several leave right from the Marina here at the park. But since it is now officially after Labor Day, none of the 3 outfits which run trips are doing anything tomorrow. So we will do some driving tomorrow, probably, to get down a little closer to see the two dams. These routes have been putting us on roads known as America’s Highways, roads noted for their beauty. Tomorrow is supposed to be yet another one. But I am hoping to balance the driving with a little more sightseeing (and no shopping!) As always, we shall see.

Big Sky and Big Box Stores

2011-09-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

Day 10 Sept. 5, 2011

Today was a very strange day for our usual vacation. We woke up in a gorgeous campsite on the side of a mountain in Yellowstone National Park, overlooking the road entering the park and the mountains beyond. Our campsite was on the outermost “ring” of the campground, which meant there was nothing between us and our view. We ate breakfast at our picnic table, looking out at the gorgeous vista.

At last at around 10am, we finally realized we’d better hit the road. We reluctantly tidied up and left Yellowstone. Just as we passed the ranger booth at exit, we saw this last group of pronghorns, gathered to wish us a farewell.

The road from Gardiner MT up to I-90 at the town of Livingston was beautiful--a lot of fishing goes on up there, because the river runs along State Highway 89 through the valley. We did stop for gas at a General Store in a small town, and it was a true general store--they had everything from fishing tackle to groceries to the latest People Magazine. The cover struck me as completely incongruous in that setting.

Once we got to the interstate, however, the most important “errand” of our day began. We headed for Bozeman, 30-some miles west, and the Walmart Supercenter there. I didn’t mention, but Joe lost his eyeglasses back up on top of the world in the rocky glacier field on the Beartooth Highway. He discovered this when we were stopped for lunch in Cooke City, and although I suggested tongue-in-cheek that we go back and look for them, we both decided against that. Luckily he has prescription sunglasses, which he has been wearing all day anyway. He takes his glasses off entirely to read something like a book, but he can’t drive at night, or see too well inside buildings, without the other glasses. We couldn’t do a thing about it for the time we were in Yellowstone, so we just let it go until we left the park.

We had several ideas as to how to deal with the glasses. Idea One did not pan out, because when Joe called the Pearl Vision Center at home to ask them for his prescription, they refused to give it to him--they said it had been more than a year since he’d had an exam and they couldn’t tell him the Rx. This meant we couldn’t simply take the Rx to someplace for new glasses, he needed an exam first. Plan Two: Go to the Vision Center in Walmart and get an exam. Then if they couldn’t make the glasses right then, have the glasses made at another center in another Walmart farther down the road, and we’d stop and pick them up when we got there. Plan Two didn’t work, because there was no one at the Walmart Vision Center who could do the exam. But the girl who worked there gave us Plan Three: try the local Lenscrafters.

By this time it was around 12:30, and the earliest appointment they could give Joe was 3:30. He told them he wasn’t sure we’d still be in Bozeman by that time. But as it turned out, we were. Our day was a veritable tour of Bozeman’s big box stores. We had a big shopping list of items. Walmart came first--groceries, and a few other odds and ends. It took us about an hour in the store, and it was lunch time when we finished up. Mo was parked out in the lot between two other “vintage” RVs. This was the funniest part of the day--everywhere in Bozeman that we went, we saw what we consider “old” RVs, i.e. as old or older than Mo. We were parked next to a Winnebago almost our exact color and size, and nearby was a small trailer which was even older. All day as we drove around, we saw 1970s-1980s vintage RVs of every kind.

Anyway, after lunch, we went to Home Depot. We needed a new latch for one of our cabinets, something to fix the seal on our refrigerator, and a couple of other things, including propane, which we forgot to buy at Walmart. While Joe shopped in Home Depot, I swept out Mo and then took Roxy for a walk. That led to a surprise: the shopping center (with Home Depot on one side, and an REI and some other stores on the other) was surrounded by a sidewalk with flowers, shrubs, grass, and even some benches to sit on! Understand this looked like a 6-lane “highway” when we drove down the road, but with these sidewalks. So Roxy had a VERY nice walk, rather than the expected parking-lot walk.

By the time Joe came out, it was 3:00, exactly time to start looking for Lenscrafters. This led us to the Gallatin Valley Mall, probably the last place Joe would ever choose to spend even 2 minutes during a vacation. But no choice--we wanted him to be able to see again! He had his eyes examined, and then they made the glasses then and there (the lenses were even on sale, half-price with a purchase of frames, which of course he also needed .) While Joe got his eyes checked, I did a little bit of gift shopping. Then we both had a drink while we waited for the new glasses to be finished. At last, around 5pm, Joe could see, and we left the mall.

However this was not the end of it. We’d remembered our plan from a few nights ago to get rid of our old grill--it is broken. I’m not sure why we remembered, we were discussing our plan to buy one at Walmart, which of course we’d forgotten while there. But as we were driving past the Home Depot again, Joe looked over and saw something called Sporting Warehouse, and decided we should look there for an inexpensive grill. This store was literally right next to the REI. Apparently everyone in Bozeman (and the rest of Montana) is so into outdoor sports, hunting, fishing, hiking, and everything else imaginable, that two enormous big-box type sporting good stores can literally be built side by side and both stay in business! As you can see from this sign, to paraphrase Dorothy, we are not in New Jersey anymore. The sign was posted inside the door of the Sporting Warehouse.

Alas, however, neither of these stores had an inexpensive grill--I didn’t want to pay almost $100, especially since we had spent a fortune already today. We certainly did our part for the Bozeman economy, which may be a good thing. We passed at least 3 pawn shops between the Home Depot and the mall!

At that point we jumped back on I-90, and I am actually typing this while we drive along. It is the most ironic thing that our day in Bozeman turned out to be shopping instead of some kind of outside sporty thing (not that we are such sporty people, of course--my original plan was to visit the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, on the Montana State University campus. But Joe would not have been able to see inside the building anyway until we got the glasses, and by then the day was over!) The interstate went through absolutely beautiful wheat fields and then rangeland, always with mountains in the background.

Bozeman, btw, is surrounded by mountains and that was amazing, driving down a road filled with stores like Home Depot and Walmart, but looking right at these huge mountains which seemed as if they were right at the end of the road (and in some cases, they are!)

So now we are about 30 minutes away from our campground in Missoula, MT. The only thing we forgot to do when we left Bozeman was stop at the Flying J and dump our waste tanks. This means we needed a place to dump them tonight/tomorrow, and our only good bet is a private campground. So too bad, because I’d hoped to stay at a Montana State Park tonight. OTOH, I’ll be able to upload this blog, and the one from yesterday.

Our plan tomorrow has us driving through Idaho on the Lolo Pass road, US 12, which is on a lot of “Most Beautiful Roads” list. We will most likely be in a National Forest Service campground someplace in eastern Oregon for the night, not too far from Hell’s Canyon National Recreation Area, which seems by the map to be pretty much inaccessible! So we are looking forward to a real adventure, and also to adding at least two more states to our map.

Wild Kingdom

2011-09-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

Day 9: Sept 4, 2011

Last night in the private campground, we made the most of the facilities. We charged every electronic device we have, as well as our giant auxiliary batteries. We enjoyed the very upscale shower facilities--the nicest I’ve seen in ANY campground EVER. And of course, I uploaded 3 blogs and a heck of a lot of photos. I didn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m. That was the downside, and I am incredibly tired tonight.

This morning we packed up, later than desired (as usual), and headed back into the park for one last day. My first priority was to find a campsite for tonight, otherwise I would have to call the private campground back and reserve our slot again. But I REALLY did not want to spend that much money, wifi or not! Luckily, however, as we came back into the park, we saw that all the campgrounds were open. We made a beeline for the Mammoth Campground in Mammoth Hot Springs, and snagged a fantastic site with an unbelievable view, for the ludicrously low price of $14 for the night. I said to Joe, I feel like I hit the jackpot this morning!

As soon as we had the campground issue settled, we headed into Mammoth Hot Springs to explore the Mammoth Terraces. These are geologic forms with springs much like the ones we’ve already seen, but they deposit a mineral called travertine in a unique terrace-like formation. We found them more interesting than we expected. We went on the lower walkway around the base of the huge structure first.

Then we drove up and around to the top, to see the upper level.

From Mammoth, we drove south toward the Norris Geyyser Basin. The road through this part of the park is pretty distinctive in many places. In 1988, there were huge fires in Yellowstone which destroyed many trees. The predominant tree in the park is the Lodgepole Pine. This tree has seed cones which stay sealed up for years in a waxy cover, until there is a forest fire. Then the heat causes the was to melt, cones to open and the seeds to drop into newly burnt area. The seeds have plenty of nutrients from the burnt trees, and of course all the sun in the world. So new Lodgepole Pines are born. All along the road, we saw tall white “poles” of the dead trees, with a thick new forest of green pines about 20 feet tall. They are all competing for sun and space, and eventually will be a mature forest. But right now, you would hardly be able to walk through them, they are so thick. It is so amazing how nature destroys one forest and reseeds another.
We stopped at a pullout for lunch before reaching Norris, with a view out our door of trees and a lake. I had the idea to take a walk down to the lake after we ate. But just as we finished, I realized that cars were pulling over maybe 50 feet further down the road ahead of us. It had all the hallmarks of an “animal jam”--cars stopped in both directions. So of course Joey and I got out of Mo and walked along the edge of the road to see what they were looking at. Suddenly I saw it--a bison was walking along the roadway, just inside the tree line, and was heading right toward us! We ran back to Mo and jumped in and latched the door, and only moments later this humungous animal walked right past our door, perhaps 10 feet away. He was totally oblivious to us, and kept going while I took a photo through our screen door.
We did take a walk down to the lake after that, but we were much more cautious, making sure we didn’t see anymore lone bison! The lake was beautiful and serene, and It would have been nice just to sit on a log and meditate for a while, but we felt like we should keep moving.
So we continued to the Norris Geyser Basin. Unfortunately, this was the one thing we saw or did at Yellowstone which turned out to be disappointing. I guess it’s partly because we’d seen all the other “hot spots”, and those geysers and pools were either more active or more beautiful. We went on a 1.5 mile walk around the “back basin”, and with the exception of Steamboat Geyser, none of the others did anything more than a slight bubbling here and there.

In addition, the wooden walkway was taken down so much of the trail was on uneven ground, and it was 90% in the hot sun. So we were sunburned, exhausted and disappointed when we finished--we could have used that hour to better use just chilling next to the lake, like I said!

From Norris, we cut across the center of the park’s figure-8 double loop, back to Canyon Junction. We decided to look at the Yellowstone Falls from the south rim views, which we skipped a couple of days ago. This was a great decision, because the one thing the Falls are NOT is “disappointing.” We first took the path down to the brink of the upper falls, and as soon as I caught a glimpse of the Yellowstone River roaring around the curves toward the drop, I started the “wow, wow, WOW!” thing all over again. It was simply spectacular--and that was the part BEFORE the water “fell” over the brink. You can stand right at the top there, and it is just mindboggling. So absolutely gorgeous.
Then we drove to Artist’s Point, and again the views were stunning. We were just sorry we’d skipped them two days earlier, because we’d have been there about mid-day. This time, in the late afternoon, the view was stunning but the camera simply couldn’t do it justice. The view of the canyon with the waterfall at the end is just completely amazing.
Cheered up by that, we decided to take a slight detour on the way back to Mammoth, and go back to the Lamar Valley to see if we could see any animals. It being 7pm by the time we got up to the turnoff to the valley, we were hopeful. What we had was another very intense encounter of the bison kind--we found people watching three separate herds (or maybe it was all one, all spread out). One group was right by the road, and just starting to cross, thus stopping traffic.
The second group was down in the valley crossing the river, and working its way up to the same point to cross the road.
And the third group was up on a hill nearby. As you can see from these few photos, they got VERY close to us.

We spent at least 30 minutes watching and listening to them. They were so cute--some rubbed their heads on the fenceposts nearby to scratch itches; I saw one mother nursing its baby after they crossed the road; the big bulls took turns standing in the road so no one could go past them. The best part is listening--they grunted and made these low mooing type noises that are very hard to describe, but are somehow so adorable. They are obviously talking to each other--all the single bison we’ve seen have never been talking or mooing. They are HUGE.
Then we drove back to Mammoth Campground. I drove the last part of the road when it got too dark for Joe to see well (see tomorrow’s blog) and it was dark by the time we got to the campsite. I was disappointed to have missed the sunset view from our site. But I did have one last treat: from our site, we could see the road leading up into the park, and the cars were all stopped. As I said, that means only one thing. It was virtually dark, but I could see large light animal shapes walking across the road in single file below us. I grabbed my binoculars and could see them clearly--they were elk, and were parading across the road and up into the brush nearby. They took their time, and there were a lot of them! I was amazed how clearly I could see them despite the darkness, but the car lights were shining on them so that’s probably why. It was a great end to the day’s wildlife encounters.

Water Water Everywhere

2011-09-03T23:41:00.000-07:00

Day 8: Sept. 3, 2011

Today was all about water. We got a later start this morning, leaving Madison Campground after dumping and filling our water tanks. We headed south, planning to stop at all the places between Madison and Old Faithful which we'd had to pass up the night before.

Our first stop was the Firehole Canyon Drive, a one-way road along the canyon formed by the Firehole River. We spent most of the day by this river, which is warmed by the many hot springs which empty into it along its length. But at the north end, it forms a canyon and cascaded through below us.

We left the canyon drive and the road opened up again into that beautiful combination of blue blue water and green grasslands. There we found a mother elk and her calf resting along the river.
We took a short side road which led to a hot spring right at the edge of the river. Joe tested the water and said it was a nice temperature for a swim--not too cold. This was just the first of dozens of springs we saw today, spilling into the Firehole River and warming it up.
We continued down the road, and as we approached the Lower Geyser Basin, we saw the incredible, unworldly sight of steamy plumes rising into the blue sky.
We couldn't stop and explore them, however, because the parking lot was jammed! It was our first experience so far with lots of tourists, but I suppose only to be expected on Labor Day Weekend. We left the basin for later, and continued on to the next stop: Midway Basin. Again we had problems parking but we managed. We were determined not to miss Grand Prismatic, the largest of Yellowstone's thermal springs.

The pool is really too large to appreciate from ground level--I understand the thing to do is hike to the top of a nearby "hill". But of course we did not have time for that. So we did our best to appreciate the blue of the pool and the orange and yellow runoffs.
Nearby is the Excelsior Geyser, which is huge. It sends 4,000 gallons of boiling water cascading down into the river every minute! The vision of this runoff was incredible and I took a short movie as well as still shots of the steaming water rushing into the deep blue river.
I especially liked the patterns the water made as it ran out of the geyser--little terraces with bands of colors.
The view from Midway Basin is also wonderful, if you can tear your eyes away from the springs and geysers. If you look up, you can see the meadows which surround the hot springs, and the mountains in the distance. So beautiful!
When we left Midway, we were hungry, so we stopped in a pull-out along the river for lunch. This was our view out our door--dozens of hot springs steaming and spilling into the river.
After lunch we visited Biscuit Basin. What can I say--more delightful springs, these much smaller but very active. We saw several small springs which bubbled up and over, subsided and sank down into their "holes", and then bubbled up again--all within a 5-10 minute time span.
Finally we came to the Upper Geyser Basin, home of Old Faithful. The parking lot was mobbed when we arrived around 3:30, but we found Mo a place in the back of the Visitors Center area and trekked on over there. We picked up a guide to the basin, found out that Old Faithful was not due to erupt for another 80 minutes, and so we went to see the other geysers. The vista is completely other-worldly.
We saw lots of geysers, including Aurea, which erupted for us while we were still close to it.
Then it was time for Old Faithful itself--and we had a wonderful show. I had to take my iconic photo just like everyone else.
After the eruption, as we were walking to the Old Faithful Inn, we saw in the distance that Lion Geyser, which we'd seen a little while earlier, was erupting. Thanks to my zoom lens, I was able to capture a good shot.
We looked into the Old Faithful Inn to admire the architecture (and get ice cream!)
Finally we started back north again--we were hoping to get to our campsite tonight in Gardiner before dark, and it was already 6 pm. But of course we stopped along the way for Gibbon Falls
and for Roaring Mountain (there was no traffic, so Joe turned off Mo's engine and I could hear the mountain roar!)
and for a herd of elk on the lawn in the middle of Mammoth Hot Springs.
After that, we went as fast as we could for the last 6 miles to Gardiner. Despite the dusk, we could see that once again, the scenery was fantastic. We also passed a pair of mountain goats who were grazing right at the edge of the road--but not only was it too dark, my camera's batteries had run out. So with no more photos, we made it to the campground around 8:30, just as the last light was fading.

Wow. Just wow.

2011-09-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

Day 7, Sept. 2, 2011

Our “wow” day started out with 9 hours sleep for each of us--much needed! Joe did all the driving yesterday (and driving over those mountains is stressful!) and I have been up late blogging every night. So we both were happy to have an early evening. Anticipating a cold night (the temperature was down in the 30s), Joe had set up one of our small propane heaters, which he turned on sometime in the middle of the night. We were all (including Roxy) toasty warm when we woke up at 7am. We dressed warmly, made hot cereal for breakfast, and were on our way by about 8:30.

We made a short stop at the Visitor’s Interpretive Center at Canyon, which has a terrific exhibit on the geo-thermal aspects of the park. I grabbed a few hiking guides for the various sections of the park, and after giving ourselves a fast overview, we decided to enjoy the fresh morning air. As we left the parking lot, we saw this guy grazing by the side of the road.

Our first destination was the North Rim Drive of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. The Upper Falls could be seen from the distance at our first stop along the drive, and it was beautiful.
We decided to follow a path, and suddenly found ourselves hiking 600 feet down to the brink of the Lower Falls. It was STEEP! We had almost as many switchbacks as we’d had in Mo the day before! But it was worth it when we stood right at the edge of the Lower Falls, listening to the roar and watching the waters rush past our feet and plunging 308 feet to the base of the canyon below.
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So our first hour was strenuous and we felt very virtuous, plus wowed by the views of the waterfalls and the Grand Canyon. From there we proceeded along the North Rim, stopping at each scenic overview for another “wow” moment. We were happy that it was so early, and not very crowded. One highlight: we were able to see an osprey nest at one stop, with the almost-grown chicks in the nest with their mom.

By the time we finished that and started south on the park’s main loop road, it was almost noon. We were driving along the Yellowstone River which widened out into the Hayden Valley. The blue of the river against the bright green of the grass was just amazing, and we were looking for wildlife--supposedly the valley is known for animals. We decided to stop and have lunch in a pullout facing the river, although no animals were in sight. We never did see any wildlife other than a herd of bison resting down below the road level, but the valley itself was gorgeous. As soon as we started driving again, however, Joey sniffed and said, “Is there a geyser around here?” Sure enough, we were driving past the Sulfur Cauldron. We stopped there, and the Mud Volcano area was just across the road. We spent some time with the mud volcanoes, which are not very pretty but are very interesting. They bubble and grunt and boom, and smell a lot too.
There was a film crew near one of the most interesting mud pots, and Joey exchanged a few words with them as we passed them on the boardwalk. They asked us if we’d mind being filmed and answer a few questions about the mud volcanoes for a show called Modern Marvels which they were filming for the Discovery Channel. Joey said, “Sure!” and they made me do it too. They asked us about things like what did we think of the smell! So Joe says, “I really don’t mind it--it’s kind of like a good fart!” The guy holding the microphone was cracking up and the guy with the camera was grinning too. Since I didn’t really think it smelled too great, they asked me to make the kind of face that would reflect the smell--I did my best to grimace painfully . We spent about 5 minutes with this silliness, and then they asked Joe to sign a waiver so they could use the film. I can’t imagine if they will, but it was very funny! Here is Joe signing away our rights…. I don’t *think* we said anything too embarrassing--he doesn’t consider his remark embarrassing, of course. LOL!
We were still giggling about that experience when we got down to Bridge Bay on Lake Yellowstone. The lake itself was simply breathtaking. We decided to take a boat ride onto the lake, which had been recommended in a blog that I read. So we went out onto the lake and got a different visual perspective on it all. We saw some of the oldest buildings in the park along the shore, saw a forest fire burning (the tour guide said it was a “small fire” and they are letting it burn, as they usually do), and learned all about the trout problem in Yellowstone Lake. The short story is: the only fish that was natural to the lake was the cutthroat trout. It lives at the surface of the lake and is a food source for dozens of species of animals and birds in the park. A few years ago, someone illegally introduced lake trout into the lake. These have proliferated in great numbers, and their prey is the much smaller cutthroat trout. The lake trout live in deeper water and therefore are less accessible to the animals and birds in the park (such as osprey) which depend on the fish to survive. The numbers of cutthroat trout have been noticeably diminished, and there has already been an impact on the other animal life in the park. The lake trout are being fished out with netting as much as possible, and fishermen are encouraged to come and catch as many as they can--there’s no limit. (Cutthroat trout have to be released after being caught.) It will be an ecological disaster if the cutthroat trout can’t be protected.

The boat ride lasted a very pleasant hour. It was 4pm when it ended, and we quickly set off down the lakeshore until we got to West Thumb Geyser Basin Trail. This part of Lake Yellowstone is an example of a small caldera, with mud pots, fumaroles, pools, springs, and geysers.
None of the latter are active, but there are examples of everything else. The pools and springs are simply gorgeous, and the mud pots and fumaroles decorate the area in random places happily bubbling or fuming away. We spent at least an hour there, and I was just in love with the views of the deep aqua pools backed by the darker blue lake and the bright white mineral deposits.
Adding to this was the multicolored algae at the edges of the pools and in the rivulets of water flowing out of the springs and down to the lake’s edge.
The lake bed includes geothermal activity also, and there are several cones and geysers surrounded by lake water or even underwater. The entire area is simply fascinating. I know we will see other examples of this kind of stuff tomorrow, but I fell in love with this small basin area at the side of the lake.

By then it was getting late, and we headed north toward Madison Campground, where we had a reservation for tonight. As we drove, however, Joey saw a sign that said "Kepler's Cascades”. He stopped there, and we discovered this fabulous place that I hadn’t even heard of before! It was probably one of my favorite sights of the day.
After that, we bypassed Old Faithful, the Midway Basin and all the tempting white clouds issuing from it, and all the other interesting looking stops along the way, in order to get to our campsite before dark. We never stopped looking for animals along the river as we drove, however, and just before reaching Madison, we finally saw an elk in the distance. She doesn’t have antlers, but at least I got a photo!
It was a VERY long day….. so full of amazing sights. The weather was perfect--it warmed up nicely and was sunny all day. This park is simply awesome. And tomorrow we have all the geysers to see. I am simply running out of superlatives! We could not have asked for anything better today.

On Top of the World

2011-09-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

Day 6: Sept. 1, 2011

I really don’t have a lot to write today--instead I should just upload the 200 or so photos I took, to tell the story. We left our campground at Red Lodge and almost immediately began to climb the mountains via the Beartooth Highway, a road called “the most scenic in America” by Charles Kurault. We were oohing and ahhhing constantly, going up and up, negotiating switchback after switchback.
At about 8,500 feet, we were at the level of the clouds which were drifting between the mountains.
We began to see small glacier remnants, and soon we were able to get out and walk around on them, to Roxy’s delight. She even took a taste of one (she thinks snow is doggie ice cream.) I just kept snapping photos constantly, and trying not to get too frightened as we drove along some very curvy, not really wide roads.

It was COLD up there, too-- we were already dressed in jeans and sweatshirts but I changed to my fleece-lined sweatshirt at some point. The wind blew, and our hands were cold, but we hardly noticed. The scenery was simply too spectacular.
The official height of the Beartooth Pass is given as 10,947 feet, but our gps calculated it over 11,000 feet, as you can see from the photo. Mo did GREAT! The drive took us about 3.5 hours (to cover about 65 miles), because we stopped so often. Plus of course, the switchbacks were 20mph.
We finally “came down” into Cooke City, where we stopped for some lunch. The altitude was getting to me a little bit and I was feeling very tired. I really wanted a nap, but Cooke City was not the place--it was a single road with businesses catering to tourists, perhaps all of one mile long. But only 6 or so miles down the road, we officially passed the entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

The road was beautiful, with Soda Butte Creek running along next to it. We found a level pull-out next to the creek, stopped, and made ourselves some hot tea. Then I pulled out the bed and took a nap for about 45 minutes, while Joe read his book. It was the perfect “rest stop”.

At about 3:30pm or thereabouts, we started driving again. Almost immediately we were into the Lamar Valley looking for the wildlife which is supposed to be visible. The very first animal we saw was this lone bison, walking up the road toward us!
Next we saw a small group of pronghorn antelope….
And then a large herd of bison at the very side of the road, causing a happy traffic jam of eager photographers.
Leaving the Lamar Valley, we crossed the Yellowstone River….
And then arrived at Tower Junction, and headed south on the main Park Loop. We enjoyed the incredible vistas of the valley as we climbed higher again, and then going around to the other side of the mountain, were treated to a landscape of forests. Between Tower Junction and Tower Fall was the canyon carved by the Yellowstone River. It is quite impressively deep, and the walls were very interesting.

Then we arrived at Tower Fall and pulled into the crowded parking lot. We joined a lot of people who stopped not just for the view, but to pick up sundries and snacks at one of the Yellowstone General Stores. It was 5pm--Cookie Time . We spent a short time at Tower Fall, which was really beautiful, before continuing on our way.

After passing another lone bison walking toward us on the other side of the road, and a traffic jam caused by some elk (I saw one of them--he was huge!-- but there was no place safe for us to pull off and stop), we finally arrived at Canyon Village. There are all kinds of things here, including an interpretive center, an amphitheater, a lodge, store, post office, gas station and car repair, etc. But most important to us was the campground, where I’d made reservations in advance. (These, btw, turned out not to be necessary--all but the three smallest campgrounds in the park had vacancies when we arrived.) We found our campsite and stopped for the day at about 6:00 or so, very early for us! We decided to stay here and not go back to see anything else, or to attend the ranger talk. We are hoping to go to sleep early--despite our midday rest, we are both tired and decided we had earned a break. There is time tomorrow for lots more adventures.

We Made It To Montana

2011-08-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

Aug. 31, 2011 (Day 5)

We have had another long, but full, day. Lots of travelling, but sightseeing also. We started out with a quick trip to Walmart in Spearfish, then drove 10 miles up to Belle Fourche. (That’s pronounced Bell Foosh--Joe asked!) About 20 miles north of Belle Fourche is the calculated exact center of the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii.) So as we passed through the town, we of course had to stop and take a photo of the monument to The Center of the United States. They also had a lovely little museum detailing pioneer life in the Black Hills, with lots of items donated by residents of the town who had “roots” there. It was a nice visit to start our day.

From there we drove about 200 miles, leaving South Dakota, cutting off a very small corner of Wyoming, and then entering Montana (I get to add a new state to our map!) We stopped midway for lunch in Broadus, before continuing on through the Cheyenne and Crow reservations. The terrain was first grazing and ranching land, but right after Broadus, it began to rise, and we entered the Custer National Forest. We went up and over some quite hilly land before coming down into the valley of the Little Bighorn River at around 3:30pm. As the afternoon grew later, our views became more and more dramatic, and for a couple of hours our history lesson was enhanced by the changing light against the grassy hills.

The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is really well done, in my opinion. There is a nice interpretive center which tells you a lot about the Indian culture, the personalities involved (such as Custer and Sitting Bull), the historical context of the Campaign of 1876, the details of the battle as far as they are known, and the role of archaeology in figuring out how the battle progressed. We saw a 17-minute film which gave a very good overview of some of the complexities of the battle. Then we left the building to drive along the 5-mile road which is marked with information panels, monuments, and, most poignantly, white and red markers indicating the places on the hillsides where soldiers and Indians had died.

The terrain, of course, is still the same as it was, which allowed us to stand in front of an information panel, look out in the directions indicated, and “see” in our minds the movements of the troops and the Indians who encountered each other. In the distance, or even at our feet, were the markers--sometimes singly, and sometimes in clusters, indicating where a skirmish involving a large group had taken place. The scenery was fabulous, but of course it is the battle which is the most riveting part of the experience in seeing the battlefield. It was really very interesting and history definitely comes alive when it is studied this way!

We didn’t leave the battlefield until about 5:30. We could see in the distance how a line of thunderstorms was moving, and the weather, which was quite hot earlier in the day, had cooled with the arrival of the cold front sweeping ahead of the storms. We had a panoramic view of the horizon and could see the rain coming down miles away. We also could see that we were driving right toward it. Fortunately it was only a brief encounter, however, and we made good time to Billings, where we stopped for gas and propane at a Flying J, and then on to Red Lodge, MT, which is a “gateway” to Yellowstone. Now we are ensconced in a campsite with a noisy little brook nearby. The wifi has proven to be okay for reading websites; I sure hope it will cooperate when I upload this blog.

I feel as if I left out a lot about today--it was really a lovely day and we enjoyed all of the roadside scenery; the herds of black cattle looking so beautiful against the green pastures up here near the campground; the small group of prong-horn antelope I saw at one point in, I think, Wyoming; and all the other little things we notice as we drive along. Tomorrow we are going over the Beartooth Highway into Yellowstone, and I won’t have any wifi until Saturday night. So I’ll try to upload as much as possible tonight--I did take some good photos. We are looking forward to Yellowstone!

Another long driving day

2011-08-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

Day 4: August 30, 2011

Yesterday continued uneventfully after my blog's ending point. We had a lovely drive through Wisconsin, on some windy hilly roads through gorgeous green farms and countryside. I am just in love with that state--so lush and relaxing. It speaks to me.

We crossed the Mississippi River at La Crosse, and followed the river on the Minnesota side up to I-90. And then we were back on the superslab, driving as fast as we could. We were hungry but didn't want to take the time to make dinner, so we had some fast food, not a very exciting anniversary dinner, but oh well. And then we drove until about 10:30pm when we voted to stop and spend the night at a rest stop. I have to say, I have stayed in many places noisier and more crowded. The highway itself seemed very untravelled and the rest stop had 3 cars when we pulled in. It was dark and even quiet.

We set the alarm for 6:30, hoping to get an early start today. We knew we had to make a stop in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for our new air conditioner cover, and Joe would have to replace it on the roof. So we were up and out early. It began to rain overnight (luckily Joe decided that would NOT make a difference to our naked AC) and it was lightly raining while we had breakfast. It was cool, too--we dressed in jeans and sweatshirts, and I was cool all morning. We turned on the radio during breakfast, and were entertained by the lead-in story of the news, that the harvest was now 60% in, and by the flat midwestern accents of the announcers. The local news was also interesting--evidently volleyball is a big deal in Minnesota, at least in the southernmost part of the state. Then we started driving and again the road was fairly empty--I don't know where everyone is this year--relatively few RVs and campers compared to the past, I think, and even fewer cars. Perhaps I-90 is just less travelled than I-80...it seemed so empty to us.

So we zoomed through Minnesota and arrived in Sioux Falls around 11 a.m. We spent about an hour at the RV dealer. They were very nice--they had the exact right AC cover, and Joe went up on the roof and had no trouble replacing it--he is just great at this stuff! I, meanwhile, purchased a few other items and made myself generally useless. We left Sioux Falls around noon and headed west again.

The rest of the day was basically about driving. At some point, it got really hot, and we changed from jeans to shorts--I think we went through a 35-degree temperature change today. South Dakota is also a beautiful state--rolling farms, mostly, and the road stretching out endlessly. We stopped for lunch--Joe made me an awesome salad!--and at a beautiful visitor's center in the center of the state near the city of Chamberlain overlooking the Missouri River. (it IS "wide" at that point!) There was also a Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center there.
Then back to the road until 4:30pm Mountain Time (we crossed another time zone--they put them out in the middle of nowhere, amid the corn) when we stopped at Wall Drug. We skipped this stop back in 2007 and I must say, we were smarter then . What a horrific collection of every kind of tchatchka in the entire world! I walked in and walked around but the entire place gave me a headache. Joe and Roxy waited outside on a shady bench and watched the people go by.

Less than an hour later, we were leaving Wall and continuing on. At this point, I started to fall apart--the heat was too much for me and I was stressing because I didn't know where we would stay tonight. I really did not want to spend a lot of money, and a lot of the campgrounds in the area of the Black Hills are ridiculously expensive. The KOA at Rapid City was listed as $25-$80. I mean, who PAYS that for a campground! But we did want internet and Joey pointed out that it would be good to have AC tonight to cool me down.

So I finally found this place called No Name City Campground. It is in Sturgis, which means we are now only about 30 miles "behind" my original day-to-day plan for this trip (obviously the mechanical problems yesterday set us behind; now we're virtually caught up.) It's small and seemed noisy to me, because it is very near the Interstate with no trees or anything as a buffer. But in that it's no different from most of the campgrounds we passed along the highway--they are all sitting out in bare fields without any charm whatsoever. I guess it's because we are on the edge of the Black Hills and not really IN them. The good news though is it only cost us $18.99, a downright steal, and we do have Internet. Today we drove 512 miles.

So now we've had our dinner, I've written this blog, and all I have to do now is wrestle with the photos from yesterday and today. Tomorrow we are on schedule to drive into Montana for the first time, stop at Little Big Horn, and then continue on to Red Lodge for the night. And then, into Yellowstone.

Our 40th Anniversary

2011-08-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

Day 3: Aug 29, 2011
Our day started out as planned--a lovely breakfast, and then we went to tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s home, Taliesin, and the Hillside Home School, which currently (still) contains the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. The lucky students live in the house, dine in the dining hall, and study in the huge drafting room designed by Wright for his own “apprentices” when he was the busiest architect in America. At that time, it was a working farm as well, and the students also baled hay and raised vegetables along with working on the pencil sketches for homes such as Fallingwater and the Robie House. (The year after he died, they voted to stop working the farm .)

The tour took us through the highlights--the school’s assembly room, drafting hall, and theater, and most of the house farther up the hill, including an enormous living room, bedrooms, and other living spaces. Every room is designed to enhance the view outside, which is wonderful on its own. But it is true that when you frame an amazing view with horizontal windows, it makes everything outside even more spectacular. All in all the buildings are fascinating and beautiful. Wright himself was of course a genius when it came to space and architecture, but he was also quite an unusual thinker in other ways. He could never have done what he did if he lived today--expecting apprentices to “learn by doing”, and the “doing” was building his own home, would undoubtedly not fly today!

Another interesting thing was that Wright seemed (to my way of thinking) to be remarkably un-invested emotionally in his work. What I mean by that is, The Hillside House especially was always a “work in progress”, and he constantly tore things out and rebuilt them in new configurations. Most people, I think, would look at what they did and not want to destroy it to build something new. His home, too, was rebuilt twice. The first version was destroyed by arson (causing the death of 7 people, including Wright’s long-time mistress and her 2 children), and the second house was destroyed by fire again when lightning hit the home. Wright rebuilt it including many stones which had gone through the fire turning pink in the exposure to the heat) and even art objects (statues, mostly) which show signs of having been burnt. In some places, the statues are literally embedded into the walls.

All in all it was a lovely tour and we enjoyed it. We got back to Mo at 12:15 and had sandwiches for lunch. While walking Roxy, however, Joe noted that we had a small problem--sometime in the last two days, the cover had blown off our rooftop air conditioner. We didn’t have internet in the Frank Lloyd Wright visitor center parking lot, so we drove back to the campground where we’d spent the night. We thought they might know a local RV supply place to get a new cover. (We could have backtracked an hour to the Camping World in Madison, but were hoping to avoid that and continue westward.)

After an hour of phone calls, we located what we needed in several places, but decided we’d wait until Sioux Falls, SD, which was right on our route and my original destination point for tonight. No rain is expected tonight, so we figured we could wait until tomorrow and not go backwards. So we got ready to go, and Joe turned Mo on--and Mo’s starter turned ON but would not turn OFF. Even when Joe removed the key, the starter kept cranking. Joe jumped out and disconnected a battery so the starter would stop….. but now we had a bigger issue. Joe’s guess was a “stuck solenoid”. Now we needed not a roof cover, but a “real mechanic”. Back into the RV Park office to ask for a recommendation. The guy we called couldn’t help, but he gave us the name of a good truck service center in Richland Center. The mechanic at the Richland Center shop talked to Joe on the phone, and actually guided him through the process to get the starter to turn off--by hitting the right part with a hammer!! (Joe says the hammer was his idea, to unstick the stuck solenoid, and the mechanic figured it couldn't hurt, LOL!) After the hammer trick worked, the mechanic recommended getting a new solenoid. Since his shop was literally 20 miles down the road on the route we’d planned to take anyway, we opted to come directly to the shop and get the solenoid replaced here.

So it is now 4:30pm--3.5 hours since I expected to leave the Spring Green area (well okay, we ARE 20 miles further along than we were, to be fair.) But the repair is now done, and Joe is paying them in the office, and I am going to stop typing, clean up, and get ready to drive toward Sioux Falls. We’ll stop someplace (as close to there as possible) and stop (I hope BRIEFLY) to purchase and put on a new air conditioner cover. And then continue on toward Montana.

Happy Anniversary, Joe and Deb. The journey of 40 years and thousands of miles may not always be smooth, but somehow, we do manage to come through it together. We are packing up again and heading west. The journey continues, I hope for another 40 years and thousands more SAFE miles. I love you, Joey Cohn!!

Charging Across the Country

2011-08-28T19:52:00.000-07:00

Day 2: Sunday Aug. 28

My title tonight is a pun. It refers to: 1) Our steady progress from eastern Ohio this morning to Spring Green, Wisconsin, about 30 miles northwest of Madison, tonight. It was a gorgeous day for a drive. If you can believe it, we saw our first herd of buffalo this morning--in Ohio! Just along the Ohio Turnpike, who would believe it? But most of Ohio and Indiana is much of a muchness--kind of a flat, pretty in a nondescript sort of way, landscape. The corner of Illinois we are forced to endure is mostly very expensive Chicago-area toll roads until we get most of the way to the Wisconsin border. Wisconsin, otoh, is simply gorgeous. I loved it last year and loved it again today. There is something that really speaks to me about this landscape--all the green farms, dairy cows, white farm buildings, and gently rolling terrain. So beautiful. We barreled along all day and made good time, logging a total of 573 miles. This is a lot, even for us--although on our second day in 2007, we drove for 648 miles by getting up at 6:30a.m and drivng until nearly midnight. Today we started at 9:10am and stopped at 7:50pm. It was more than enough, for me at least.

2) We wouldn’t get far without charging a lot (well, three) expensive fill-ups of our gas tank. It seemed that with every 50 miles, the price of gas went up another 10 cents/gallon. The Chicago area was the worst--it got all the way up to $3.99; luckily we still had half a tank at that point and did NOT top it off. Our last fill-up last night, in western PA, cost $3.59/gallon; this morning we paid $3.69 in Ohio, $3.79 in Indiana, skipped the $3.89 and $3.99 in Illinois, and came back “down” to $3.65 just at the Wisconsin border. That price was actually $3.63 for us, because it was a Flying J station and we have a loyalty card for RVers, which gives us 2-cents/gal off (it amounted to $.48, LOL!) But each full tank approaches $100, ouch!

3) And finally, charging refers to all the electronic cords which are surrounding me at the moment. My phone is charging, my computer is charging, and the iPod Touch is charging off the computer. I *love* my iPod Touch-- it earned its keep today. First, it did what it was supposed to do--played music. The Mo Report includes the refrigerator being more or less fine, although the pilot to the gas line blows out on the highway (not so unusually). But the CD player, which was temperamental last summer, refused to work at all this morning. So whenever we get tired of playing Radio Station Roulette, we relied on my iPod for music.

Even more important, however, was what it did this evening when we finally had to decide where to camp tonight. This afternoon, we made reservations for a tour of Taliesin tomorrow morning at 10:15 a.m. So where to spend the night? Last year we were here for 3 nights and stayed in 3 different places--two state parks, both beautiful, and one private campground, with lots of “facilities” but not so beautiful. The latter, however, is only 10-15 minutes from the Frank Lloyd Wright visitor center where our tour leaves from. And, it has wifi. We decided to choose the practical over the beautiful (especially after we missed a turn which took us toward the parks.)

At this point, we tried to program Magellan, our GPS, with our true final destination. But although I had the campground name (in our log book, which I keep daily for every long trip), the name was not in the AAA data bank, nor was it in the AAA camping book. Now what to do? I have an old copy of the Trailer Life Campground directory, and was just about to go dig it out, when I remembered: THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT! I looked at my iPod and there was the Woodall’s Directory, which is published in TWO paper volumes, each several inches thick, but which is stored on my cute little iPod with the Woodall’s App. There was the campground, with the address for the GPS and the phone number, so I could call and warn them we were arriving. And in truth, we would not have been able to find this place without that address.

So now we are parked in a nice grassy spot away from everyone else, with lots of electricity to charge up all our indispensable gadgets. Joe just made us a yummy dinner of cheesey-scrammies and kasha. There is a hot shower handy, and a lot of places for a dog to be walked in the morning. And the wifi has so far been excellent, at least for my little iPod. I hope this blog uploads as smoothly as my email downloaded on the latter. It is now almost 11 local time, which is midnight DebandJoe time. But we can sleep in for a while, and have a quiet anniversary morning before going to our tour and then heading west again. And I promise to get my camera out tomorrow--that will give me another gadget to charge, I suppose.

Note to blogwatchers: we will be Ontheroad for the next couple of days--so if you don’t get a daily blog, do NOT worry. We will probably be Walmarting or something of the sort, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find wifi on the way.

Weather Report

2011-08-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

Day 1: Sunday Aug. 28, 2011.

It’s Sunday morning in eastern Ohio, and the weather is bright, sunny, breezy, seasonably cool, and absolutely perfect. In short, an ideal day to travel. At home in HP, I understand that the power is out at my sister’s house (no report from my house yet, but probably the same story there), but still on at Mom’s and Joe’s office. Water in the basements, too, and no one is sure if the hurricane has gone through completely or if they are in the eye of the storm (it’s 9:10 am as I type this.)

We had an uneventful day yesterday, when we finally got out of town--that was not until 1pm. Joe had leftover paperwork to do, which turned out to be more than he expected. I meanwhile finished packing, loaded the food in to the RV refrigerator, took down stuff to hurricane-proof the yard, and all the other odds and ends. We stopped for gas before we left town, making it 1pm on the nose.

Otherwise, it was a typical first day, although none of our typical mechanical problems other than a discovery late in the day that our refrigerator wasn’t working. The culprit, as with last year’s first day, seemed to be the alignment between the on switch and the propane feed. Joe has tweaked it a few times, and we will keep an eye on it. Meanwhile, we stopped for a sandwich lunch in Tannersville PA at 3pm, and at Pizza Hut around exit 62 in PA at 8pm. Pennsylvania is a beautiful state, but there is just too MUCH of it!

After dinner we drove the rest of the PA segment and made it to Ohio. I would have liked to be further west tonight, but oh well. We stopped at the first Ohio Turnpike rest stop we came to, and it turned out to be one of the 3 with RV hook-up sites. So because we weren’t 100% sure about our refrigerator, we chose to pay for electricity rather than park for free next to the big trucks. And now we are back on the road. If we’re lucky, the next time we buy gas we will also be able to upload this--I seem to remember from last year that some of the OH TP rest stops have free wifi. The one we were at last night had wifi, but not free… I hope this is not a new trend!

Added at 1pm Sunday: We are now in Indiana, at a rest stop with free wifi. @Steve: Get me some cheap wifi-to-go and I am on it! This is really crazy how hard it is to find Internet service for free on the interstate.) Hope everyone on the east coast are not too wet and looking forward to some sun soon! We have stopped for lunch. Unfortunately there was a chocolate shop inside. But they had sugar-free chocolates so Joey is now rich in chocolate. I was just gifted with some garden-fresh mini-tomatoes and cucumbers from a mother-daughter pair having lunch at the table where I am borrowing laptop space. Roxy, meanwhile, stole half Joe's salami sandwich, so she is in disgrace. I am not too hungry, just want to keep driving. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have something more interesting to write about!

Riders on the Storm

2011-08-26T22:03:00.001-07:00

Aug. 27, 2011

It's 1 a.m. and the day has come--our long-awaited 40th Anniversary RV trip. This will be only the second time we've had the luxury of travelling for an entire month, and getting out of town is brutal. It is made even more surreal by the fact that everyone is talking about getting out of town, as Hurricane Irene makes her way up the east coast, blowing everything to smithereens in her path. Or so we have been told--Irene is touted as "the storm of our lifetime". Besides the usual winds and tremendous amounts of rain, heavy flooding is expected pretty much everywhere, and I'm sure the Raritan River will be running high through the park down the street.

Irene on the way
We, however, are buying bottled water not because of expected power outages, but because we are hitting the road. We are not your johnny-come-lately bottled water purchasers, not us! Mo is now about 90% loaded up--not a minute too soon, because it is actually raining already, although the heaviest of the storm is not expected for about 20 hours yet. It will probably be raining when we leave town in the morning, but I'm expecting to outrun it-- western Pennsylvania is looking dry on the weather map, and with luck, we will be into Ohio by tomorrow night.

The itinerary this time: the northwest corner of the United States. We are only missing 11 states (of the Lower 48) on our State Sticker Map--and with luck, we will be collecting Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon on this trip. Our first destination is Spring Green, WI-- the very same place we headed for last summer. We never did tour Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home, on that trip. So we're thinking to stop there and have a tour Monday morning, before continuing toward South Dakota via I-90. We have reservations at Yellowstone National Park next Thursday night. That's right, ya'll, we are CRAZY once we hit the road. But it's a big country.... and we are looking forward to enjoying every minute of the ride.

Our Last Night of Vacation

2010-08-28T19:20:00.001-07:00

Aug. 27 and 28, 2010

A double blog tonight--we spent last night sleeping at the Walmart Campground chain, which has no wifi. It's always fun staying at Walmart, however. First of all, the price is right. Second, once we pull our curtains, we have no idea where we are, and third, when we wake up in the morning, we never know who our neighbors will be. The photos below are both from this trip; the first was from a few days ago at the Walmart in Kearney, NE, and the second was this morning.
Of course, the Amish family at the K-Mart just arrived in the morning to shop; they didn't spend the night :)

For those who wonder, Walmart is only one of the standby places for people who need to sleep and don't care too much about the amenities. Cracker Barrel and Cabela's are among the chains which invite RVers to stop overnight. Interstate rest areas are of course always available; even when they say "no overnight stopping" or other such warnings, no one is going to bother you if you are there. Since we have everything we need--water, heat, electricity, etc--and sometimes all we want is to just stop driving and SLEEP, it seems crazy to spend $30-40 just to pull in, go to sleep, and leave in the morning. The advantages of campgrounds include showers and wifi; but not all campgrounds have those either (state parks may not have much in the way of showers, and of course not even all private campgrounds have wifi; none of the state or national parks do.) So we use all the available options and are quite happy pretty much anyplace.

Anyway, back to yesterday morning: we spent the morning and early afternoon in Amana, Iowa. The Amana Colonies were settled by a group of German immigrants who were known as the Communityof True Inspiration. They lived and worked communally, and built 7 villages in Iowa just west of Iowa City. They are known for the excellence of their handiwork--they began with all the rural skills of weaving, woodworking, etc. In 1932 they gave up their communal lifestyle and formed the Amana Society, a profit-sharing corporation, to manage the farms and other businesses which were formerly owned by the entire group.

It turned out that many of the Amana Heritage Sites were closed on Friday, but all the little shops in Amana were open, as was the Amana Museum. So we walked around the village, which was very quiet and peaceful. We went to the Museum, but spent more time in the shops. We especially liked the Amana Furniture and Clock Shop. They had exquisite furniture and wonderful clocks (although the clocks were mostly not made at this shop.) There was also a visitors gallery so we could see the actual workshop and watch the men working. Another place we stopped was a small place with a large, wonderful garden filled not just with flowers but with wire trellises and other garden decorations.

At about 2pm we quickly ate some lunch, realizing it was getting late and we had to move along. There was a lot more there to see; as usual, we will have to come back! Anyway, at that point we started driving and made it through the rest of Iowa, crossed the Mississippi into Illinois, and went halfway through Indiana before we finally had to stop.

Mississippi River

As I said, we got off the Indiana Toll Road (as I-90/I-80 are known there) and went to the town of Sturgis, as indicated by our Next Exit book, to find the Walmart. It was not until this morning, when we got back on the Interstate, that we discovered that Sturgis was actually in Michigan! I-80/90 runs right at the state line and although we only drove about a mile or so from our exit, it was enough to take us over the line. So it seems we inadvertently added a 12th state to this year's adventure.

We had no plans for today--our intention was to drive all day and arrive in Bellefonte, PA in the evening, and take our nephew Ben, who is at Penn State, out to dinner. We did have a brief stop on the way, however, to pick up a couple of replacement headlights. One of ours had been flickering last night, and this morning seemed dead. Joe checked it out today and bought replacements, but it seems it was the connector and not the headlight. It is all fixed again; he did the job in 30 minutes while I browsed in the Goodwill Store next door to the Advance Auto Parts. Then we returned to the highway.

We arrived at the Fort Bellefonte Campground tonight just at 7 pm. It is lovely, with gardens galore, animals (chickens, rabbits and goats), and wonderful grass. Roxy was ecstatic to run in the grass--I think she is heartily sick of this RV! Ben came up and met us (we are only about 15 minutes from State College), and we went out to a lovely dinner. And now it is about 11 pm and time for bed again. Tomorrow is our 39th anniversary, and we have to go home. But next year, for our 40th, I am hoping that we will be taking a one-month-long trip to celebrate. Meanwhile, I am planning to spend a few more weekends this month RV-ing. It is just too much enjoyment not to do it more often!

On the Great Road

2010-08-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

Aug. 26, 2010

We started out today in Kearney, NE, at the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument. This museum, which is literally built as an archway over I-80, is absolutely fantastic! It immediately reminded me of a ride at Epcot Center, except we walked through rather than riding on a moving seat. We were given a self-guiding audio tour via headphones, and the use of technology was really excellent. Each area had dioramas, video, and large panels with photos and historical information. At the same time, the audio portion came through the headphones, consisting of excerpts from diaries, radio broadcasts, and all kinds of other audio information.

The first floor of the museum consisted of the pioneer experience—be it on the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, or the California Trail of the gold rush prospectors. The Trails started in different cities, but they all converged in the area of Kearney for a hundred miles or so, along the river near the site of the museum. We made our way through the rooms, starting with the hopeful emigrants searching for a better future, dealing with difficult weather, disease, and death; passing abandoned household goods and gravesites. All the while we heard the descriptions through our headsets and read the wall panels. The experience of the Native Americans was also included, of course. Finally we came to the end, and read and heard the expressions of joy, exhaustion, and new hope from those who survived what must have been a trek incomprehensibly difficult for us to imagine.

The second part of the museum dealt with the continuation of the travel westward, beginning with information—the pony express, and the telegraph—and then with the stage coaches, which offered a much faster way to traverse the country. Then came the railroad. Almost overnight, with the completion of the railroad, the uncomfortable and uncertain stage coach travel ceased.

But what moved us most was the development of the first transcontinental roadway, the Lincoln Highway. First of all, we grew up on the Lincoln Highway—even today, in Edison, there are signs on Route 27 which say “Lincoln Highway.” The highway ran from New York to San Francisco. The descriptions of travelers who could use their own cars to hit the open road without being “at the mercy of the train schedules” certainly hit home with us—I loved the tableau of the family with the tent set up, the table adjacent to their auto; and the small tourist cabins in the background. The quotes and memories coming through our headphones simply added to the wonderful experience as we vicarious lived both in the past and in our own present.

I took a photo of one of my favorite quotes: On The Road: "Informality is the password, snobbery is taboo, every man is your neighbor, and all are bound together by an almost unbelievably powerful tie--the dust of the open road."--Frank E. Brimmer, writer.

The last room on this floor showed us a large map of the US, which lit up all of these consecutive cross-country trails, tracks, and roadways following such similar pathways through central Nebraska along the Platte River. And finally, there was a window which looked down on the latest incarnation of the Great Platte River Road: Interstate 80 below the archway, with counters keeping track of both the eastbound and westbound traffic. Both Joey and I had a profound sense of being part of history—joining the thousands and millions who throughout the past 150 years have travelled this very route across our huge and beautiful country.
We left the museum and returned to our modern day covered wagon, and joined the great migration across America, this time heading east again. And that was what we did all day—travel through the eastern half of Nebraska, and across the Missouri River into the remarkably beautiful rolling farmland of Iowa. (We had hoped to time it right for a steak dinner in Omaha, as suggested by Rabbi Fellman which I wrote to him this morning, but we passed by the city at 3:30; we’ll have to come back someday for that—maybe when we follow the Lincoln Highway from home, all across the country!) Our favorite sight of the day was when we passed Adair, Iowa, which is home to a major wind-power installation. We saw at least 100 wind turbines twirling, spaced throughout the thousands of acres of cornfields. They were a stunning and beautiful sight, and we couldn’t help but wonder why more of these generators aren’t already in use all over the prairie states. We passed several trucks carrying the blades for the “windmills”, and they are simply huge, probably 100 feet long. They are very impressive.

We arriving just at dark at the Amana Colonies, and are expecting to explore a little bit here tomorrow before returning to the interstate. As I keep saying, each day just shows us yet more new roads that we long to travel. But for now, our road is leading us back home.
[Note: I had a lot more photos to upload, but this connection is taking forever; so I will try to upload them tomorrow. Iowa has WIFI at most of the rest stops, and it worked very fast this afternoon.]

Western Nebraska

2010-08-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

Aug. 25, 2010

Western Nebraska—who knew? We have had a beautiful drive today, and added Nebraska (a quite large state, btw) to our states sticker map. We left Hot Springs around 9 a.m. and headed south, crossing into Nebraska at about 10 am or thereabouts. A roadside marker informed us that this portion of our trip was following the Fort Pierre-Fort Laramie Trail, originally used for fur trading. Our first stop was an hour later, in Alliance, to see “Carhenge”. Carhenge is a roadside sculpture, basically a combination of Cadillac Ranch and Foamhenge, two of our previous roadside sculptural stops (you can get the impression from this blog that we like this kind of funky, idiosyncratic roadside creation!) I think Carhenge might be a little bit smaller in diameter than the original Stonehenge which it was made to resemble, but it is definitely cute.
The field in which Carhenge stands is marked with a sign as an “Car Sculpture Preserve”, and there are a number of other automobiles in various stages of rearrangement. There is “The Fourd Seasons”, cars painted green, tan, white and pink (why did they start with summer, I wonder?) and there are several cars buried up to their noses with markers indicating that they are time capsules from various classes of Alliance High School (Alliance has about 9,000 people and there sure isn’t much around there other than fields, so I suppose the high school kids get creative in self defense!) There were also a few other oddball sculptures—a salmon and a dinosaur. Equally fun for us was the fact that the field was filled with thousands of grasshoppers, and with each step, they would fly up ahead of us. They had different colors and sizes and were pretty amazing. I didn’t appreciate it when they flew into my head, however—they don’t have great aim.
After Carhenge, we had a quick lunch and then hit the road in earnest. We headed south-east on US 26, which was marked on the map as a scenic route, and we were definitely surprised. We passed rock escarpments which were obviously carved out by a river, which looked much more like “out west” than the Midwest. I looked at the map, though, and realized we really were not that far from the state line between Nebraska and Wyoming; and later on, the line between Nebraska and Colorado. I think some of the remarkable rock formations of those states came over into western Nebraska.

Then we came to a detour which turned out to be to our advantage—instead of following US 26, we were directed onto NE 92, which ran just along the northern shoreline of Lake McConaughy, a very large lake which was a beautiful blue color and which was obviously a destination for recreation in south-central Nebraska. I forgot to mention, but pretty much all day we’d been on roads with very little traffic, and that sure is nice. Once we rounded the eastern end of the lake, however, we were only a few miles away from I-80, and we had to give up our week of empty roadways.

On I-80, I stopped at the first rest stop I came to, hoping for some tourist brochures. There was nothing like that, but it was a worthwhile stop anyway—the info on the walls told us that we were following (in reverse, of course) the same route which the pioneers travelled—the Oregon Trail, the Great Platte River Road, the Mormon Trail, the pony express, and the first interstate railroad line. All of these followed the Platte River, as does I-80. At the rest stop, they had set up wagon wheels to indicate ruts in the grass across the back of the rest area, which was the path taken by wagon trains which were coming around the bluff we were on. It was very cool and of course made me wish I could travel slowly on US-30, the Lincoln Highway, which also follows this route and has lots of interesting sites to see along the way.

At that point, though, we hit the gas, and travelled at about 70mph (the speed limit is 75) until we stopped for gas at the town of Gothenburg. Right at the gas station was a small museum with a recreation of a sod house. Unfortunately the museum was closed, but we were able to look in the sod house, which was interesting. Also in Gothenburg is an original pony express station building, and so we drove a few blocks into town to see it. That was still open (it was 6:45pm) and the lady inside gave us a little shpiel about it. It was really very interesting, and we enjoyed our stop.

One more hour on the interstate, and we are now in Kearney, NE for the night. In looking at the map of the US, it seems to me that Kearney may just be exactly in the center--east-west AND north-south! As the pioneers did at Fort Kearney, we too are stocking up on provisions for our journey—but our general store is a Walmart. Tomorrow morning we will be going to the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, a museum dedicated to the westward migrations and to the subsequent freedom of travel across America. The monument itself is built right across I-80. I have wanted to visit this for a long time and we will spend some time there tomorrow before heading east again. As with so many other places I’ve visited, my quick trip through Nebraska just make me want to come back again at a slow, leisurely pace and stop at all the museums, historical markers, and other points of interest along the Lincoln Highway without having to always pick and choose between them.

Visionaries

2010-08-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

Aug. 24, 2010

Today we spent another day in the Black Hills. We woke up to an absolutely scrumptious day—not a cloud in the sky, and crisp cool weather. I think the latter was helped by the fact that we were up on the side of a mountain, not down in the valley of Deadwood. I decided that after all, I really did want to see Mount Moriah Cemetery, even though I likely wouldn’t get to see the Jewish graves unless we walked up to the top of the hill (and bear in mind, this is not a “hill”, it is a MOUNTAIN.) So anyway we subjected ourselves to one of the 1-hour guided tours which tend to overemphasize the Wild Bill Hickock stories and are less heavy on the history. At least, our tour was like that. The lady at the tourist office said to “pick whichever tour fits your schedule better, they are all excellent”, but our tour guide seemed to specialize in horrendously corny and stupid jokes.

However, we did get the ride up into the cemetery, and it was abundantly clear that Joe and I could *never* have walked up it yesterday, and probably not ANY day. The road up was longer than we’d realized before we even reached the cemetery gates, and then we continued up even further inside. The bus stopped at the gravesites of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane (who is buried right next to him, allegedly as per her request), and Potato Johnny, another colorful Deadwood character. We also stopped for a view of Deadwood—the dead have the best view of the town. I was unexpectedly happy to discover the historical marker about the Jewish gravesites right at our stop, at the corner of David St. and Jerusalem St.—apparently not everyone wants to have to climb up to the VERY top of the hill to read a historical marker. The Jews are buried at the highest part of the cemetery, and if we’d left the tour at that point to go see their graves, we’d be climbing yet another very steep section of walkways. Also it was interesting—on the way out, I noticed that the designs in the iron gates included a Jewish star. Unfortunately the bus was at a bad angle for me and I couldn’t snap a photo in time.
After our bus tour, we did a little bit of shopping. Then we went back to Mo for some lunch, before heading south out of town. We followed Route 384 through beautiful Black Hills scenery, until we reached Crazy Horse, our destination. The sculpture of Crazy Horse seated on his horse, pointing out over the landscape, is going to be the biggest sculpture in the world, by far. So far the only part which is completed is Crazy Horse’s head. It is so monumental that the faces on Mount Rushmore, only 17 miles away, would fit into Crazy Horse’s head. Work on the sculpture has been in progress for 60 years so far.
The project is supported solely by private donations and by the proceeds from visitor fees and purchases at the Crazy Horse Monument—no government money at all. To attract tourists, the site includes not just the view of the mountain carving, but an orientation film, galleries of photos about the project, an Indian Museum, the Native American Cultural and Heritage Center, the studio and home of Korczak Ziolkowski (the sculptor of the work), a restaurant, and a large gift shop. We spent about 3 hours there.

The most interesting parts to us were the historical items and photos dealing directly with the work of beginning and continuing work on such a gargantuan project. From the first letter written by Chief Henry Standing Bear to Korczak asking him to participate in creating a heroic memorial on behalf of the Native American peoples, to the photos of the first blasts of dynamite and the careful photo record of the sculpture’s advance since then, it was fascinating to see how this dream became reality.

What is truly amazing is that none of the people who began the project could ever expect to see it completed; since Korczak’s death, his wife Ruth (now 84) has directed the work, with the help of 7 of her 10 children. At the time when the actual work was begun, the first blasts were attended by the last 5 living tribal elders who had been at the Battle of Little Big Horn! Tonight Joey and I were estimating that we would not be alive when the horse’s head was completed; and thinking about the rest of the sculpture, it will probably take another couple of hundred years. The scope of the project is just mind-boggling.

We finally left Crazy Horse and continued south to Hot Springs. The drive was beautiful; it was after 6, and that is when the wildlife is supposed to be more active. We drove through Wind Cave National Park (which we saw in 2007) and in addition to seeing deer, prairie dogs, and wild turkeys, we also encountered bison at a roadside overlook, and standing in the road nearby.

As for Hot Springs, we stayed in this town 3 years ago to visit the Mammoth Site and head north to Deadwood; today we reversed the trip. We are now in the same KOA we stayed in 3 years ago—it is shaded and nice, and the wifi seems good. Tomorrow we will head further southeast into Nebraska, and get our last new state sticker for this vacation.

Jews in Deadwood

2010-08-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

Aug. 23, 2010

After we completed the Enchanted Highway portion of our drive, and the beautiful agricultural landscapes of North Dakota, we crossed the state line and soon discovered that the land in this northwestern corner of South Dakota quickly became endless ranchland rather than unending farms. We passed a lot of cattle, plus quite a few sheep. The land began to change and soon there were outcroppings of rock and large stands of dark green trees. We could see the Black Hills in the distance and suddenly we were there.
We entered the Black Hills area via Sturgis, and quickly found our way to Deadwood. We had spent a day in the Black Hills, including dinner in Deadwood, on our 2007 trip, and really enjoyed it. The entire city of Deadwood is a National Historic Landmark, and there is a lot of tie-in between the current businesses and the historic sites. New buildings have to match the old ones they replace, and casinos (there is legal gambling in Deadwood) are encouraged to maximize the old west theme. There are markers and explanatory information in many places.
This time I was determined to do something I couldn’t find time for in 2007, and that was to trace some of the Jewish presence in Deadwood. Thanks to an article in the Jewish Forward newspaper, I had some information to start with. So after parking Mo and picking up some tourist info and maps, Joe and I walked a few blocks from the parking lot and found ourselves on the historic Main Street of Deadwood. We were heading for the Adams Museum, which among a lot of other fascinating displays about the history of the Black Hills area in general and Deadwood in particular, has a display dealing with the Jewish merchants who were among the founders of the town. At the museum, we read about Harris Franklin, Jacob Goldberg, and Sol Star, Deadwood’s mayor for 14 years. There were photographs and other archival materials which gave texture to the Jewish contributions in helping Deadwood to overcome its wild-west reputation and turning it into a respectable town.
As we walked up and down Main Street we took photos of stores which had been owned by these men, helped by a marker on one corner which detailed some of the information and identified buildings which had been built by Jews or were sites of Jewish-owned businesses.

It was a lot of fun, and nice to have a focus besides gambling (not our interest) and shopping (the Black Hills Gold which is to be found everywhere is one of my favorites, but I have so much of it already!) I am disappointed that we did not have time or energy to go up into Mount Moriah Cemetery, better known perhaps as “Boot Hill”. This is the cemetery where Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane are buried—but I had wanted to visit “Hebrew Hill”, the site of the graves of the Jewish founders of Deadwood. The path is extremely steep and we never even made it to the cemetery gates before realizing that at 5 pm after such a long day’s drive, it was just beyond our strength today.

We walked around town for about 3 hours, before heading back to Mo to find a campground for the night. We had absolutely no “bars” on our cell phone, so we couldn’t call anyplace; as a result, we decided to head for the same KOA campground where we stayed 3 years ago. And here we are, two sites away from our previous one, both exhausted (in fact Joe is already asleep). But it was really a wonderful day.

Enchanted Highways

2010-08-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

Aug. 23, 2010

Another wonderful day! This morning, we woke up at 7 am to find that the 90+ degree weather from yesterday had become downright cool! In fact I dressed in long pants and Joe wore a sweatshirt, and my feet were cold in sandals. We left our campground a little before 9 am for our drive to South Dakota. If we had gone the fastest possible way, it would be about a 4 hour drive, but we took a longer way in order to drive on the “Enchanted Highway”.
The Enchanted Highway begins with the Flying Geese sculpture we saw a few days ago on our way to Medora . The highway goes due south from there, with seven or eight other huge metal sculptures by the same artist along the way. So that’s the direction we took. We were charmed by the folk-art quality of the sculpture, which were not just huge but whimsical and with small special touches (fx, the Grasshopper was surrounded by smaller grasshoppers and large waving stalks ofwheat, and the parking lot border matched the wheat; the Fisherman’s Dream was surrounded by a border of waves, etc.) We stopped at each one to take photos, and at a few of them, we let Roxy out to run around at the same time.

The Highway was Enchanted in another way, too—we were the only ones on it! Well, not entirely; but I don’t suppose that we saw more than a few dozen cars on the entire length of highway. At one stop, I stood in the middle of the road and took photos in both directions, crossing back and forth repeatedly. Joe used the chance to clean off Mo’s windshield. During the entire time, not a single car or truck passed in either direction—it was at least a 10 minute stop. It would have been simple to see anyone coming—the road was as straight as an arrow, with only a gentle up-and-down over the hills. When we DID see a vehicle, it was always a pickup truck or a larger transport truck—we didn’t see any “regular” cars and not another RV or anyone else who appeared “touristy”. Once, Joe missed the driveway for the turnout at the sculpture; he simply stopped Mo and backed up on the roadway. There was no one coming in either direction.
We reached the end of the highway in Regent, ND, a small town with one street. There was a gift shop, a co-op grocery, a post office, a gas station, an American Legion hall, a small billboard announcing that Regent was the hometown of one of ND’s US Senators, and that was pretty much it. We drove right through but a half-mile later I said to Joe, “I think it was a mistake not to get gas there; I don’t know when we’ll see another gas station.” So we went back and got gas. We also went into the gift store, took photos of the last metal sculpture (which, unlike the others, was not quite so monumental and we’d missed it somehow), and mailed a postcard in the little post office. The cutest thing we saw was a metal evergreen tree (another sculpture, of course)--there were *real* birds nesting in it!

It turned out to be a very good thing we’d gotten gas, because it was many many miles later before we passed another town of any size. Some places which are on the map literally don’t exist, or all they have is one building (seriously; we ate lunch in Reva, South Dakota—there was one building called “The Store”, which had a post office drop, a small convenience store selection of groceries, and a couple of booths to sit and eat your purchased sandwich at. And that was it for the entire town.) That corner of the world—southwest ND and northwest SD—is very very sparsely populated, and again, we just didn’t see many cars for hours.
What we DID see was absolutely beautiful farmland in North Dakota—thousands of acres of wheat fields, interspersed with sunflower fields. The gently rolling countryside stretched literally to the horizon, and was gorgeous. The day was beautiful—sunny, with fluffy clouds—and our eyes just drank it all in for hours. This is why we love travelling this way; there is simply no way to comprehend how huge and how beautiful our country is without driving through these miles of “nothing”. It is really something.

Teddy Roosevelt's Park

2010-08-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

Aug 22, 2010

Today was our Medora Day. Medora is a little town which is the entryway to the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Medora was founded by the Marquis de Mores, a VERY handsome man (we saw his photo, and he looked like a movie star!) who came here from France. He built a meat-packing plant and convinced the railroad to open a depot in Medora (which he named for his wife, who was from New York.) His father-in-law bankrolled his many ventures here but ultimately they failed. The town, however, stayed, partly due to the interest taken in it by Theodore Roosevelt (who arrived here 2 years after the Marquis and was friendly with him.) The town trades very heavily in its connection to Teddy R, and it currently bills itself as “historic Medora”, with all the little touristy buildings (souvenirs, fudge, snack bars, etc) made to look 100 years old.

We spent all morning in the national park, skipping the visitor center at first in favor of the Scenic Loop Drive. The first stops included a prairie dog village and a wonderful scenic overlook. I can never understand why I think prairie dogs are so cute—I wonder if people from places without squirrels think our squirrels are cute!

But the big stars (and I mean BIG) of the morning were the bison! I first saw them down in the valley near the river (the Little Missouri River runs through the park, the town, and next to the Medora Campground where we stayed last night.) A whole herd of them, which seemed to be moving directly toward the Cottonwood Campground (which is the park’s campground).

As I zoomed in to take their photos, Joey said, “Look ahead!” and there was another herd parked right next to the road just ahead of us. So we stopped and gawked and took photos with all the other tourists.

I should add here, “all the other tourists” may give the impression that the park was crowded. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Almost every stop we made, we were the only ones there, or perhaps there would be one other family. A crowded stop had 3 cars at it, and for most of the scenic loop, we were the only car we saw. It was really nice not to have a lot of people around; when we turned off Mo’s engine, there was not a sound other than the wind and the crickets as we looked out over this unworldly vista below us.
One stop was a 360-degree view of the countryside around us. We could see oil wells on the horizon (past the boundaries of the park), I-94 below us (the interstate runs runs right along the border of the park, and at one point, there is a park bridge over the highway), and nothing else but badlands. The three of us (Roxy went on these little jaunts) loved it, and the hot sun was greatly mitigated by the breeze.
We spent several hours on the loop (we also saw some beautiful wild horses near the road as we drove) and were headed back to the Visitor Center area for some lunch when we passed the Cottonwood Campground area again. The herd of bison which had been down in the valley earlier had made their way through the campground and onto the meadows next to the highway. Several bison remained on the road to the picnic area/campground, and of course about 6 or 8 cars and campers were stopped with all of us taking photos. Roxy, who had been uninterested during our earlier bison encounter, suddenly looked out the window, saw these huge creatures only a few feet away, and went nuts barking at them. Apparently she was telling them to get off the road, because they did, and we headed down to look at the picnic area and check out the campground.
We had not stayed at this campground last night, because it has no electricity or showers, and we were coming off a two-day drive and expecting a hot night. The campsites were really pretty, however, much larger than the parking-lot style we’d had last night, and we were considering staying there tonight. Our interest was increased by encountering a few stragglers from the bison herd, who were trotting through the actual campsites to catch up with their friends. When we went around into the picnic area, we met them again, having their own picnic. Roxy was outraged and let them know it, but we went back out (having to make our way around yet more bison in the road) and had lunch in the parking lot next to the visitor’s center instead.

After lunch we went into the center. It has a small but very interesting and well done museum about the park and about Teddy R’s interest and connection to the area (he owned an interest in two ranches here.) We saw not only his own stuff--rifles, clothing, models of his ranch house,etc—-but the skeleton of a crocodile-like dinosaur which was found in the South Unit, and information about the bison herds. We spent about 30-45 minutes enjoying the exhibits and the air conditioning. (Luckily the breeze was blowing right through the camper so Roxy was okay, too.)

We then decided not to go up to the North Unit of the park. Although it supposedly is prettier, we felt happy with the beauty we’d seen, and the North Unit is an hour drive each way. I was feeling lazy, and wanted to have a little quality time in Medora, if such a thing were possible. So we went into town (literally two blocks from the national park visitor center) and stopped to ask a few questions. It turned out that one of the stores offered free wifi (and even computers) so we parked by it and found a connection, and I posted the blog I wrote last night (the campground wifi had gone down and I couldn’t get anything from it, which was why i hadn't posted it earlier.) Then we walked on the street and had some ice cream, and discussed our next move.

We voted to come back to the Medora Campground (with the heat at 94-degrees, we decided electricity was a good thing!) and to wake up early tomorrow to drive to South Dakota. We also decided to do something VERY touristy tonight—we are going to the Pitchfork Steak Fondue Dinner. This was apparently seen on “Best of” on the Food Network—a big selling point, LOL! The steaks (you get a choice of 12 oz rib steak or 9 oz NY Strip) are speared onto pitchforks and fondued “western style” in boiling oil (!) This is served with a “fixins bar” of baked potato, beans, veggies, etc. We will also be “serenaded with western melodies performed live by the cast of the Medora Musical.” It should definitely be an experience, LOL!

So now we’re at the Medora Campground with the AC on while I write this, and Joe finishes his book. Despite the AC it is way too hot, and I have a fan going as well. I washed up a little bit when we got here, and wow, our hot water is HOT—all from solar heat during the day (I’m not sure where the tank actually is but it was hotter than my shower this morning.) The good news is, the weather is supposed to break tonight and tomorrow is supposed to be 20 degrees cooler.

After dinner addendum: well, THAT *was* an “experience”, LOL! What a bizarre scene! There must have been about 250 people there (including 3 tour buses). We were very glad that the lady who greeted us as we came in suggested sotto voce, “get in line QUICK!” We did indeed, which meant that 30 minutes after the dinner gong rang, when there was STILL a long line of people waiting, we were finishing up our meal. It came as no surprise that a steak which has been “fondued” is NOT the best steak you ever ate—too well done by far. We were handed a color-coded plate and we made our way down the line of veggies, potato, cole slaw, garlic bread, baked beans, etc. And then we walked up to the cowboys with the steaks in front of them, and they speared us a steak to go with our meal. The steaks themselves were cooked in big vats of oil and I took photos of the pitchforks full of meat and the cooking process.

We ate at long LONG tables with everyone else, and watched the other people and watched the sun going down on the badlands landscape around us. That was the nicest part of it all—the restaurant/theater was on top of a high butte and between the parking lot and where we ate, as we walked, we had a 360 degree view of the landscape. A very beautiful “restaurant” with a bizarre “concept” and (unsurprisingly) mediocre food. I did it so you don’t have to-—no need to thank me!

Crossing the Prairie

2010-08-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

August 21, 2010

After obsessing for way too long about where to go from Wisconsin Dells, Joe told me we should just go with our original plan and “go west”. So despite online weather projections of 100 degree heat in North Dakota, we decided to head in that direction anyway. As Joe said, “we’ve been hot before”, and our other options seemed either unexciting or too mosquito-y.

We got our usual fairly late start from the Dells, jumping right onto I-94, which was pretty much our route for two days. We did stop after a few hours at a Walmart to refill our cupboards and find a few other odds and ends. We are happily surprised that we managed to go for 6 days without a stop at a Walmart or a similar place for a long list of forgotten, overlooked, or emergency items. Maybe our packing is improving. In any case, we found everything we needed, including a mailbox with daily pickup, so I mailed some postcards while I was at it.

(Above: These Amish farmers were selling baked goods and rugs. Their carriages were right under the Pilot sign; their harnessed horses were tied in the shrubbery across the street.)

Otherwise, it was a very long day of driving. We crossed the St. Croix River into Minnesota (beep beep—another new state sticker!) at about 3:30 pm and stopped at the first rest stop so I could pick up maps and other tourist info, in case we wanted to change our direction at that point (still possible). When I came out of the building, I found Joe lying in a shady spot in the grass with Roxy. From there we made our way through construction and Friday afternoon traffic around Minneapolis-St. Paul. Then we went over the Mississippi (it’s much narrower up here than it is further south! And it goes right through Mpls-SP—am I the only one who didn’t realize this before?) and headed northwest. We stopped sometime around dusk for dinner, and then continued on our way.

At about this point, Joe made a discovery—he could not find his cell phone. After much searching and thought, he realized that it must have fallen out of his pocket when he was lying in the grass earlier in the day. So we added to our agenda for the next day to find an AT&T store in Bismarck, and try to replace it. Meanwhile he turned off the service by using my phone.

At about 10pm we crossed the Red River into Fargo, North Dakota (beep beep!) So this is the truth: it is VERY VERY DARK at night in North Dakota, even on an interstate highway (with a speed limit of 75, btw). There were almost NO cars. There wasn’t even the almost obligatory rest area/tourist info stop within a mile or two of the state line. Two out of three exits say “no services”, and it was extremely eerie in the nighttime. By the light of the moon we could see fog rising in the fields next to us, and from time to time we drove through bands of fog over the highway. I started to freak out a little bit (without the tourist rest stop I didn’t even have a good map) but we had our trusty Next Exit book which told us that in about 50 miles there was a highway rest area. We got there at about 11 pm and that was enough driving, we were both quite tired—we’d travelled 510 miles since morning. And luckily,this rest area also had enough tourist info (and maps) to make me happy.
We hit the road again in the morning and stopped an hour later in Jamestown, the first place of any size we came to. We wanted to find some wifi so we could possibly check online on where we might find an AT&T store. We also figured it was a great opportunity to see the World’s Largest Buffalo. So we went to Frontier Village. While there I asked someone if she had any idea where we might find an AT&T store, and she told me that “probably the nearest one is in Minnesota”, LOL! It seems AT&T doesn’t operate in ND. She was, however, able to point us in the direction of someplace with wifi. Unfortunately that didn’t help, because the AT&T store locator page was completely worthless. So it seems Joe won’t have a replacement phone any time before Nebraska, since I’m guessing SD doesn’t have AT&T either. Meanwhile I updated my Facebook status from Jamestown.
From Jamestown we drove another 100 miles to Bismarck, the capital of ND. The guide book mentioned something about the state capitol being unusual, so we decided we’d get off the highway to see it, and to have some lunch. We didn’t go inside (we were there during the time it was closed, but I doubt we’d have gone in anyway. I think the fact that it is 19 stories, the only such “tower” we’ve seen in the whole state, is what makes it unique around here, although it’s supposed to be beautiful inside. Our visit did coincide with the “Pink Heals Tour” event on the grounds of the Capitol. Their pink fire trucks were so cool and their mission even cooler--check it out! So I took some photos and we had some lunch, and left—crossing the Missouri River before I realized it! So no photo (I’ll try to get it on our way back east.)

Right past Bismarck, we finally got ourselves off the “superslab” by picking up a “scenic byway” which basically paralleled I-94. This was nicer scenery (although actually the views from I-94 are quite lovely), and we really enjoyed the next 100 miles. We passed thousands of acres of sunflowers and “amber waves of grain.” Toward the end of the route, we stopped at the “Flying Geese” sculpture, the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world. It is situated on a hill overlooking the highway and the countryside, and the view was simply gorgeous. As we looked down on the fields, we could see the grasses blowing in the wind, looking absolutely like flowing water (the illusion was increased by the most “flowy” field being the color of spring green). Plus the varying shades of greens, and golds, and the shadows in the distance, and the hills, were simply fabulous. Such a beautiful state with such broad vistas and wide horizons…. We just love it. And then we jumped back on “the slab” for the last 30 or so miles to Medora, ND, the entryway to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
So we are now nestled in a campsite in Medora at the foot of the Badlands-we are right by the river under the cottonwood trees, looking at striated rock perhaps 100 yards away from us. It is hot, as advertised, but it seems that North Dakota has a VERY strong “breeze” blowing today, and it has helped hugely. We seem also to have entered Mountain Time, which means we gained an hour to relax this evening. In fact, Joe and I are sitting outside in our lounge chairs with the breeze blowing. He’s reading, and I of course am typing. Roxy is lying nearby, and not embarrassing us too much by barking at the very-close neighbors and their little white dog. Tomorrow, we explore the Badlands!

Photos from Yesterday

2010-08-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

I must be losing my mind, or else was just too tired last night to know which end was up. Tonight I discovered that once again I seem to be missing a whole group of photos from today. BUT, I found the missing photos from *yesterday's* blog. So for those of you who like pictures, here are some lovely shots, first of the greenhouse at the cheese factor which I wrote about, and then of the Wisconsin countryside.

A Dell-lightful Day

2010-08-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

Aug. 19, 2010

Well, we finally REALLY filled up a day with great activities, despite not getting quite as early a start as I'd hoped. But nothing was too far away, so that helped. The first thing I did, though, was book another night here at Fox Hill RV Park. It was nice to know where we'd be tonight, and made it easier to plan.

Our first stop was to track down a place where I wanted to pick up "The Original Wisconsin Dells Coupon Book." I'd seen something about it before we left home, but I had no time to do much planning for this trip and never thought twice about it. Too bad, because I would have had a Buy One, Get One Free (BOGO) offer on our Circus World tickets, and half off the 2nd night here at Fox Run. However, I spent a lot of time last night researching activities and discounts in the Dells. It seems you DO need an MA to actually make sense of all the various discounts, combinations, books, discount cards, etc. which they put out around here. EVERYTHING costs a LOT of money and the discounts really help a lot.

So I hadn't gotten this book in advance, but last night I found out that 1) if we wanted to go on a zipline attraction, i could get a BOGO coupon from the book (thank you, Trip Advisor.com!) Since the zipline was quite pricey, saving one entire entrance fee was worth $80. The coupon book costs $19.95, but then I found a coupon in a magazine which gave me $3 off if I picked it up at their office, so that was what we did first thing. So the book cost $16.95.

We then drove another mile or so into the downtown area of the Dells, and parked Mo for free (no coupon needed for that, and that's the ONLY thing that didn't cost money!) It was the absolutely perfect place to park, because we were right around the corner from the H.H.Bennett Studio (BOGO in the coupon book). H.H.Bennett is the Ansel Adams of the Wisconsin Dells. He was a pioneer in the art of photography, taking gorgeous photos of the Dells at the end of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, and inventing new photographic techniques for both taking and developing photos. One difference between him and Adams, however, was that he took photos in order to market the Dells and attract people to come visit (and buy his photos!)

His studio was preserved by his family for decades, and recently became a Wisconsin Historical Site. The store includes a small museum which tells about Bennett, the Dells history, and has a wonderful overview of some of Bennett's photographic techniques, including that of making stereoscopic photographs, which was one of his specialties. The museum was really well done and we enjoyed it a lot.

After learning about the early history of the Dells, we stopped back at the RV and had a quick lunch, and then took the Dells Boat Tour of the Upper Dells (the coupon book deal was good for a free kid, which didn't help us--so I used a different flyer offering 20% off. This is what I mean about needing a degree to get through the coupon offers!) This was about a 2.5 hour trip up the river, where we saw the beautiful sandstone cliffs of the Dells. Twice the boat stopped so we could walk through particularly unusual and pretty areas. The first stop was the Witches Gulch, a place where the path between the two cliff walls was only a few feet wide. A stream cut through beneath the wooden walkway. It was very cool, although somewhat spoiled by the large concession stand at the end of the winding path.

The second stop was a place called Stand Rock. This is a large outcropping of rock about 5.5 feet away from the main cliff. Bennett made this site famous. He had wanted to demonstrate his new invention, a camera which allowed him to take stop-action shots. He had his teenage son repeatedly leap from the cliff to the outcrop of rock until he caught the jump in mid-air. This made both Bennett and the Dells famous, and is a very well-known image. These days, the tour company has replicated this feet with leaping German Shepherd dogs, who showed us just how it was done. (We'd had our own chance to try the leap at Bennett's studio in the morning, with the image of the rocks drawn on the floor.)

The tour was lovely, albeit a little bit low-key. So we ended our day with the distinct opposite--two hours at the Bigfoot Zipline Tours. Joe and I were suited up into our harnesses with 6 other people, then drove a short way to our first jump. There were 6 jumps altogether, adding up to 5,000 feet of zipline, four of the jumps being over water. The hard parts were: 1) walking up a total of almost 500 steps to get to the top of these towers, and 2) learning how to STOP at the bottom! The latter was hard for me, because my arms are too short, and i kept losing my grip and hence any control. Joey, on the other hand, was too good at it, and kept slowing down his speed in the middle of the "zip". It was TOTALLY fun, and we were totally hot and sweaty and tired, but exhilarated, at the end. I hadn't felt comfortable bringing a camera with me (no-duh!) but they took photos of us on the third line, and mine came out great (although it makes me look like a small elephant, due to being trussed up in the harness and sitting up all in a ball.) Joe's was good but he was using proper form, which meant that unfortunately his arm blocked his face (i'd once again had trouble reaching the line and had lost my grip for the 3rd time--but by the last two jumps I had gotten it right!) The final jump was from a really high tower which gave us a fantastic view of the Dells area, and which carried us almost 1400 feet from top to the landing point.

Since we'd taken the 5pm "tour", it was 7pm before we got finished, and like i said we were DONE for the day. So we stopped for a quick burger at Culver's (another coupon in the book ) and came back to our RV park.

As a result of such a full day, however, we've decided to move on tomorrow. We may stop at the International Crane Sanctuary before we leave (another BOGO coupon in my book, LOL!) but we will skip the Duck Boat tour--we don't have a burning need to see the Lower Dells and we've ridden Ducks before. And for the most part, the rest of the attractions are expensive and unappealing to grownups without children. So, we shall see where we end up tomorrow! Joey thinks we should head for ND and see how far we can get before we have to turn around .

Life is a Circus

2010-08-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

August 18, 2010

Well, I continue to be plagued with photographic problems. Twice I have lost data from my sim cards in my Olympus, and this morning, it refused to even turn on! Luckily I had my small Casio with me, and I used that for today's photos. But tonight when I looked, the photos I took first thing today weren't there! Neither Joe nor I can figure out what possibly could have happened, unless I simply never pressed the shutter hard enough for a single shot! That seems totally unlikely but it's the only explanation for missing my photos of the cheese factory. I am also missing photos which I took of the scenery on the road, and I *know* I had those, because I looked at some of them as I went along. So I can't imagine why my photos are jinxed, and if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Said Cheese Factory was located in Plain, Wisconsin (again a population under 1,000), which was right on our way to Baraboo. When we woke up, I had decided to skip Frank Lloyd Wright this time around and hit the road again--I had a case of "hitch itch", as we call it when we want to hit the road. We had picked up a brochure about the Cedar Grove Cheese Factory and Living Machine, and wanted to see it. The latter is a working ecosystem which takes the water byproduct of the cheese production and "mimics the water cleaning power of wetlands, only faster, using natural microbes and hydrophilic plants. Clean water is then returned to Honey Creek."

After buying some of their cheese in their retail store, we walked through the greenhouse. The vats are all labelled with explanations of how the system works. It was very interesting.

From there we headed to Baraboo, being routed by our GPS through beautiful country roads. At one point we were slowed down by a threshing machine driving at 5mph ahead of us, and I took photos of that, and of the countryside, and I have NO IDEA what happened to those photos either. In thinking back of how I'd wanted to upload those to illustrate how lovely it is here, I am really upset about it.
So anyway (sigh!) we came to Circus World in Baraboo. This institution has several facets. On one level it's a small circus--there are shows all day in the summer, including a "Big Top" show of animal acts, jugglers, aerial artists, clowns, etc. as well as a tiger show, a magic/illusionist show, and several special things for kids. These things were of the least interest to me, although we went to all of them (except the kid things). And tigers are NEVER uninteresting. I don't know how anyone trains them, it is simply amazing to me. The circus also has a carousel, a sideshow tent with sculptures of all the "human oddities", and a few other small things, including pony and elephant rides.

The place is also a museum, and it is built on the grounds of the original winter headquarters for the Ringling Brothers Circus. The Ringling Family came from Wisconsin and started the circus with the help of the Baraboo National Bank. Seven of the original buildings on the banks of the Baraboo River, which were used by the circus, are still standing and are part of the Circus World complex. These house displays on topics like the art of clowning, specific circus personalities such as Gunther Gebel-Williams, a wooden carved miniature circus with thousands of pieces, info on circus musicians, etc. It is a complete education on the world of the circus.
The visitor center is a history of the Ringling Brothers Circus, with displays on all the brothers there were originally five, then the youngest one joined them. As the business grew larger, they divided their talents and each one had one area of expertise: one managed the day to day set-up and take-down of the travelling show; one planned out all the routes and stops; one managed the money; one searched out the talent and the acts; and one handled all the advertising. It is a real testament to a family working together! The visitor center also has a large collection of circus posters and artifacts from the "spectaculars" which became centerpieces of theRingling Shows for many years.

Finally there is a huge building which houses the museum's collection of circus wagons, as well as the restoration workshop for them. The wagons are masterpieces of folk art, being hand carved and painted, and ENORMOUS--the average height was between 11 and 12 feet. They were built to transport animals, performers, and all the other circus workers, as well as to be advertisingfor the circus when they paraded down the main street of small cities when the circus came to town. They were just wonderful.
I really loved the collection of wagons, and found the information in the visitor's center fascinating. There was also a movie on the idea of circuses in general, which we saw just before leaving. I first learned about Circus World when I read "Water for Elephants", a truly wonderful book, and I am envious of the author, who spent hours doing research at the archives and research facility which is the final piece of this complex. Although the flyers we've seen try to market this as a wonderful circus experience for kids, from my pov I felt that the youngest kids would get tired of it fairly quickly. But for big kids like us, who like learning about the background and history of things, it was a fantastic stop.

We left Circus World at about 5 pm, and quickly came to tonight's campground about 8 miles away. We still haven't actually gotten as far as Wisconsin Dells, which is a couple of miles north of us, and there is so much to do here, it would be easy to spend a week (assuming one could afford it--a lot of these attractions are QUITE pricey!) Having said that however, I think we'll be splurging on several of them. I'm just not 100% sure which ones, yet!

Day 4: House on the Rock continued

2010-08-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, Aug 17, 2010

By Tuesday evening I was getting pretty frustrated with the Blog/wifi situation--I didn't even write about the day. But I did manage to write a very fast synopsis, which is the 2nd (I think) entry for this trip. But we had another good day in Spring Green. We spent a quiet night at Governor Dodge State Park in a very beautiful woodsy campsite, and started our morning with a walk to the park's waterfall. All three of us enjoyed the walk, and Roxy also enjoyed getting her feet wet and tasting the stream at the base of the falls. If we'd had more time and inclination, this park actually boasts a "dog beach", where we could have taken her swimming in the lake! But we had other things on our agenda rather than living with a wet dog for the day.

We also used the park dumpsite, which gave us the chance to wash off the remnants of the liquid manure we'd driven through the day before. The stuff had dried but the smell lingered, and we were glad to wash it off our mudflaps and be rid it!

We drove from the park to Dodgeville and spent an hour at the Culver's, trying to make use of their wifi. But I was still unable to transfer my written blogs into Blogger. BTW, isn't my husband da bomb??? Not only did he come up with a solution to that problem today, but I forgot to mention, he did fix our fussy refrigerator too. Once again, I have to say that I'd be afraid to take a trip like this without him along :)

We left Culver's in frustration, and drove back to the House on the Rock. The day before we'd bought a book which told about Alex Jordan and how he built the house, and it had given us the background info we'd wanted. So we had a little more insight into some of the things we were seeing that second day. Tour 2 was the longest tour, and it took us about 4 hours from beginning to end. By far our favorite part was the "music room", which contained all kinds of calliopes, music boxes, and automated instruments (like player pianos) and more elaborate orchestras. When you pay for these tours, they give you 4 tokens, and all along the way there are places where you can put your tokens in and the musical displays will play. They are so delightful, we bought extra tokens and listened to most of them.

When I say "music box", btw, it is not what most people would picture. A great example is a full size old-fashioned horse-drawn hearse, with a huge (several feet long) music-box cylinder built into it. We listened to it play some slow funereal introduction, followed by "When the Saints Go Marching In". It was a self-contained New Orleans jazz funeral! Here is a photo:

There were other kinds of music machines. The most fabulous is called The Mikado. It is installed in a room which is completely done in red and gold, as is the machine itself, which takes up the entire wall of the room. We listened to it play 4 times (almost everyone who comes in puts their tokens in) and it was amazing. The drummer in the center plays several percussion instruments, but he is surrounded by other "attendants" playing triangles, other drums, etc. as well as ladies fluttering their fans as the music plays. It is an incredible room, one of Alex Jordan's most elaborate creations.

As I try to remember what else we saw, I would not be able to recall everything without the help of my photos. We saw collections of everything from carved ivory to masks to butterflies to miniature toy cars to old fashioned brass cash registers to teddy bears to Burma Shave signs! Most of it was delightful. Our least favorite thing was the "Wonders of the Sea" room; it contained display cases of all kinds of ship models and memorabilia, but was dominated by an absolutely immense sculpture (3 stories tall) of a whale battling with a giant squid. Below are a couple of more photos:

We finally left the House on the Rock in the late afternoon, and drove a few miles up the road to a scenic overlook. This gave us an opportunity to see the Infinity Room from the outside:

We went from there to the Visitor Center of the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin tours to see about those for the next day. However we walked in at 5:28, and they closed at 5:30. I was getting very cranky by that time, and we took a brochure and decided to think about what to do next. Then we looked for a campground nearby which would have wifi, and we found one right in Spring Green. So back we went into the center of town, and then down to the river. And as my earlier post makes clear, I was able to do some quick blogging and even upload photos from the previous couple of days. And then I went to bed, to "sleep on" the decision of where to go next.

Day Three: House on the Rock

2010-08-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

Aug. 16, 2010

We have had a wonderful day, full but not rushed, and it seems to me that we could spend an entire week in this little corner of southwestern Wisconsin. It is an absolutely lovely area, full of rolling green hills and valleys, many farms, and not many people. In fact, everywhere we go we are struck with how uncrowded it seems, beginning with our first “adventure” this morning.

We started the day slowly, taking care of some housekeeping chores, and taking advantage of the nice showers in the campground. We were feeling remarkably well rested, which at first I attributed to the fact that when the alarm went off at 7 a.m., we slept until 8. But a little while after we woke up, we realized that somewhere along the way, we’d entered the Central Time zone, and although it was only 8am by our cell phones, it was 9 a.m. by our wrist watches, indicating that we’d actually had 9 hours of sleep! No wonder we were so perky!!

We left our campsite in the woods and before leaving Blue Mounds State Park entirely, we drove up on top of the “mountain” (this is the highest point in southern Wisconsin.) There was absolutely no one up there when we got to the parking lot for the scenic overlook. We climbed up the wooden observation tower—even Roxy made it up despite her reluctance to go up open staircases—to find a stunning view of the surrounding valleys. Green everywhere—it was a great vista. We were up there for 10 minutes or so when a family of 4 came up the 8 flights of stairs and joined us. We decided not to stress Roxy any further and decided to climb down.

We left the park heading for the Welcome Center in the town of Spring Green, figuring we could pick up more brochures and maybe even coupons before going to either Taliesin or the House on the Rock. The GPS routed us via county roads, which here are all labeled not with numbers but with letters. We took Road F to Road ID to Road Y, and followed Y for quite a long while, much to Joey’s delight. It was narrow and twisty and went through the countryside and there were NO other vehicles to be seen. That is, until a tractorish truck pulling an oddly-shaped tank trailer pulled out of a side road and passed us going the other way. We suddenly realized what was in his tank—a wide trail pungent brown liquidy stuff was laid on the road, and there was no doubt it was liquid manure. Moments after realizing that “Oy, his truck has a leak!”, we realized that WE had no choice but to cross his path—and at that point, it was Mo with the pungent smell of horse manure clinging to the wheels. The smell stayed with us for a while before fading, but late in the afternoon when we left the RV, I could smell it again. Next time we are anywhere near water, we need to spray our mud flaps! Phew! Lucky for us, we have a good sense of humor about this kind of thing.

We arrived at the Visitor Center in Spring Green and discovered a totally delightful small town (population 1444, twice the size of the village of Blue Mounds.) The architecture of the town is very influenced by the proximity of Taliesin, with many buildings designed by students of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Visitor Center itself, and the bank next door, both show a lot of prairie style influence, and the town’s medical building is modeled after Taliesin. The town itself seemed so utterly quiet—there was little traffic or noise or people—but we could tell it was a thriving place. We parked Mo next to the library, which had beautiful specimen gardens planted around it; the bank, as I said, was a fascinating building, there were parks and little shops everywhere. We walked into some of them, picked up some batteries for my camera and a few small fun items, chatted with shop owners, and generally felt that the town was totally adorable. I don’t think it has a single traffic light. An utterly livable place. Below is a photo of the center of Spring Green at noon!
We had some lunch in Mo, and then headed south again to visit the House on the Rock. This is a major attraction in the area, and we decided it was really a cross between the Winchester Mystery House in (I think) San Jose, and the Shelburne (VT) Museum which we fell in love with last summer. This house was the lifetime project of one Alex Jordan, who was born and grew up in this area. Like the Winchester House, the house has room after room, and like the Shelburne Museum, it houses huge collections of everything from dollhouses (over 200) to circus memorabilia (miniature model circuses, posters, painted circus wagon wheels), pipe organs, weapons, carved ivory, pipe organs, dolls, automatons, Asian artifacts, carousel horses, stained glass, and “stuff” of every conceivable description. The most stunning item of all is the carousel—it has 276 handcrafted animals (not a single horse, but everything else you can imagine!), 20,000 lights, and is 80 feet in diameter. Our jaws literally dropped when we walked in and saw it! It was simply stunning. It is housed in a room with more carved wooden horses stacked up on the walls and the ceiling was covered with angel carvings—or so I thought (more about that later.)

The house itself is original attraction—it is built right into the side of the mountain, and the walls of many of the rooms are the natural stone. One room has a waterfall of natural runoff trickling through it, and many of the rooms have windows which bank out over the edge of the cliff. The ceilings are quite low and some of the passageways are narrowly cut through the stone. The high point of this section is the “Infinity Room”. Opened in 1985, it is a 218-foot room which is cantilevered out over the valley below, suspended in space. As you walk toward the end it physically narrows to a point, making it seem as if it goes on forever. At the end of the room, there is a glass floor with a view straight down into the trees below.

Above: A room with natural rock walls, a waterfall, and trees inside.

The place is so large and houses so many things that it is divided into 3 self-guiding tours with 3 separate tickets. We of course bought the entire package, but because we didn’t get there until 3 pm, we decided we’d never be able to see the entire place. So we went into Tour 1 (the house itself) and Tour 3 (including the Carousel Room, the dolls, the circus collection and all the other things I listed above. We are planning to go back tomorrow for Tour 2 (they let you use any unpunched tour tickets within a year of purchase.) We had mixed feelings about the entire place—on one hand, we loved many of the items we saw, including the carousel, a fabulous calliope playing songs from the Mikado, the automatons, which played along with the music everywhere, the pipe organ room (which was like some kind of science fiction dream), and the collection of Barranger Motion Machines. These were produced during the 1920s-1950s to display diamonds and jewelry in store windows, and are very charming.

Right: Drum Tree in the Organ Room

What we didn’t like so much was that there was literally NO explanation of anything in the place. [Subsequent comment: we read in the book we bought that Alex said, "Don't education them, entertain them"-- but we WANTED to be educated!] They don’t even give you a basic map which shows where the rest rooms are, or what is in the next room. (Speaking of rest rooms, I had a “first” today—I took photos inside the Ladies Room, and even inside the stall!) But anyway, we felt that maybe Alex Jordan actually didn’t WANT people to know too much about it, in order to preserve the sense of overwhelming amazement.

FX there is a room full of armor, displayed in dioramas. I didn’t find out until tonight when I was reading a tour guide that it was all made specifically for his museum. There was a HUMUNGOUS cannon, which we wondered about, and turns out he had it made right there on the premises. The most bizarre thing we saw was as we left at the very end. The tour pathway (which was circuitous and went up and down all the time) ended RIGHT up under the ceiling in the room with the carousel. That was when we could see that many of the angels suspended from the ceiling were not carved, as we’d thought, but they were store-type mannequins with wings attached! They were extremely bizarre and somewhat creepy . Joey felt that the end result was a feeling that Alex Jordan was not quite sane [g],and that for him, enough was never enough. For instance, there was NO need of the room filled with somewhat tacky-looking replicas of all the British Crown Jewels… there was plenty to see without that! Tomorrow when we go back, we will spend time in the Alex Jordan room, which is an introduction to the museum, and see what we can learn about him.

(Above: "Angels" on the ceiling and dozens of carousel horses on the walls)

We finished our tour just at 6 pm, at which point we had a snack in the RV and then, after searching for a gas station, decided to spend another night in a Wisconsin state park, this time the Governor Dodge State Park. This place is much larger than last night’s park, with a very large campground, 2 lakes, beaches, etc. Tomorrow we will go see the waterfall before we leave, and then go south just a little further to find wifi. The park ranger told me where the only place is “around here” with wifi, and we have been out of luck on that subject since we left home. I am not at all sure where we will end up by the end of the day tomorrow…. I am beginning to think that we’d better start planning to spend our entire vacation just in Wisconsin and Minnesota. There is so much to see here, and I am already one day “behind” on my schedule. But it doesn’t really matter…. It is so pleasant here, and relaxing, and we are thoroughly enjoying discovering places which we didn’t plan on but which turn out to be lovely. It was a wonderful day.

[Postscript: Camera malfunctioned--I took more photos, but when I tried to transfer them from my 3rd disk of photos, there were absolutely none. So I have no photos of the circus collections, or anything else from that part of the tour. Too bad, the circus wagon wheels were so beautiful!]

Day Two: We Arrive in Wisconsin

2010-08-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

Aug 15, 2010
Well, my plan to upload at the next Ohio rest stop didn’t come to fruition—turns out that only the RV-slot travel plazas have Wifi. Oh well, now I’ll have two to upload when I get a chance!

Our day was lovely, and not quite as long and grueling as yesterday. We drove through western Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois turning right at Chicago and safely avoiding the worst of the Chicago-area traffic. But it all DID take a while; for some reason we seemed to stop at way more travel plazas than usual! We didn’t cross the Wisconsin state line until about 6 pm. However, we got here safely. The landscape has been beautiful—lots of green, and some very wide, empty Midwestern horizons. This is SO restful to the eye and to the soul. We both love driving through this kind of area.

We are camping tonight in Blue Mounds State Park, a lovely place just a bit south-west of Madison. We made it just at dusk, which meant we were able to find a nice fairly level spot before it became completely dark (being at the most western end of the Eastern Time Zone helped a lot! At least, that's where I *think* we are!) We parked, leveled the RV, hooked up the electricity, and we were settled for the night. Joe made a fabulous curried chicken for dinner.

Our plan for tomorrow is, I think, to head first for the House on the Rock. This sounds like a very eclectic place and is a AAA “Gem” attraction. It is about 30 minutes away from this park. And after that, we are not sure. We are now thinking of going to a waterpark after all…. The parks here sound fabulous, with waterrides which reach up to 40 mph! I’m thinking that could give you the worst wedgie ever; but there are other rides which look really fun and a bit tamer. We are also considering a zip-line attraction (there are TWO here), which was not on my original itinerary. Can you say “change of plans”? So as they say, our plans are set in jello. Which, in this kind of situation, is NOT a problem!

Our First Day Of Vacation--Catching Up With The Blog

2010-08-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone--

Joe figured out how I could upload my earlier blogs! So let's pretend I just left home, and here is how our trip has gone!

Aug. 15, 2010
Driving down I-80 in western Ohio, and everything seems just fine this morning, with a small exception. Our refrigerator doesn’t seem to be working. (Why do almost all my trip blogs start out with a malfunction report??) We are still in diagnosis mode; Meanwhile our perishables are in our collapsible cooler (always packed for just such an emergency) and needless to say, although it’s less convenient, we cut our teeth on camping with coolers and no refrigerator. So, no biggie, we will manage this.

Otherwise, our trip has gotten off to the usual kind of “ups and downs” beginning. Besides the refrigerator (which we didn’t determine was off until this morning—it WAS on when we left home!), we had traffic in NJ (a 30 minute delay!); and our CD player wouldn’t work; and a stinky black tank (mysteriously filled up during the winter?!) needed dumping. But otherwise it was a lovely day for a drive! Pennsylvania is still an unreasonably wide state (albeit very beautiful; someday we should take some photos of PA for this blog!) It requires too much time to get past; we didn’t get to Ohio until after dinner. This was partly due to our long stop at the first Flying J we came to, to dump the waste tanks, walk the dog, and fill the fresh water tank; and a 1-1/2 hour nap at a rest area. We’d probably have overslept (Joe was totally OUT) except Beth called my phone to tell me SHE GOT THE JOB! This is great news, and you can find out more about that directly from her.

Otherwise, our day was long but uneventful. We ate both lunch and dinner “out” (dinner at Applebee’s—I had scrip!) and were just determined to make it to central Ohio for the night. I wanted to make 500 miles (half the distance to Wisconsin); unfortunately I was just too tired to drive anymore by about 11:45 pm, and we stopped at about 475 miles instead. If we’d made it one rest stop farther on the Ohio Turnpike, we’d have had an electric hookup for only $15 for the night! But we really didn’t need that, and we slept for free among the trucks and next door to a big 5th wheel trailer with all 3 of its slides out. The weather has been really nice, other than a rainstorm for about 30 minutes last night in western PA. It was very cool overnight and we wouldn’t have needed the electric hookup for the AC in any case.

We left the rest stop at 8:15 this morning; Joey rebooted the CD player and it is now happy again, so we are no longer dependent on local radio stations for our travelling music. Ohio rest stops have wifi, so we will stop at one more (last stop on the Ohio Turnpike until the state line!) to upload this blog,and then be on our way again. We want to make it to Spring Green, WI, by tonight and begin REALLY having fun! But Joe would say, we ARE really having fun already; and that is the truth. Yay! WE’RE ON VACATION!!

Photos from Wisconsin

2010-08-17T17:53:00.001-07:00

Aug. 17, 2010

Here are some photos. They are in no particular order (really they are backwards!) But it's worth a try to get them up.

the Ladies Room at the House on the Rock (really!)

The Infinity Room at the House on the Rock. It is 218 feet long and suspended 158 feet above the valley below. And, as you see, all windows!

The world's largest carousel. 250-something fantastic creatures and 20,000 lightbulbs!

The local bank on the main street of Spring Green. Notice the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright in the architecture.

Joe on a wooden tower overlooking the countryside from Blue Mounds State Park, Blue Mounds, WI. We stayed there on Sunday night.

Deb looking out the windows in the House on the Rock. The house is at the edge of the rock.

Fast Update from Spring Green, WI

2010-08-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

Aug. 17, 2010

We are having a wonderful time, but have not had ANY wifi until today. Unfortunately it seems that Blogger won't let me copy/paste my lengthy blog from MS Word into the blog. Sooooo.... no long blogs today! I will have to catch up somehow later.

We spent last night at Governor Dodge State Park in Dodgeville, WI, the home of Land's End. Went in the morning to Culver's, a cute fast food restaurant, to use the free wifi there. The wifi was fine but as i said, the blog didn't upload. We spent over an hour there, yuck! Then we headed north back toward Spring Green, where we also spent yesterday. We took two days to tour the House on the Rock, a totally amazing attraction. I can't really do it justice here--it took us probably 8 hours total to go through the whole thing. It reminded us of the Shelbourne Museum which we saw last year--rooms and rooms of eclectic collections of everything from dollhouses to carousel horses to old musical instruments to boats to firearms to cash registers to circus miniatures to almost anything you could possibly imagine! The house itself is built into the original rock, with an "infinity room" which is cantilevered out 210 feet long over the valley 150+ feet below. It was truly astonishing.

Now we are trying to decide about tomorrow, but meanwhile we're camped right on the Wisconsin River in Spring Green, an adorable little town which is heavily influenced by the work ofFrank Lloyd Wright. His home here, Taliesin, is a major attraction, which we haven't seen yet. The problem is that the tours are not too early in the morning and we are already "behind schedule" due to the huge size of the House on the Rock. I am thinking we will not make it as far as North Dakota after all... there is just too much to do in Wisconsin!

Mo has behaved quite well, although the refrigerator is being fussy. Joe has been fixing it; but we have also used our collapsible cooler when necessary. At least we grew up camping with a cooler and no fridge--it is not a deal breaker! Other small housekeeping chores have been quite easy to handle.

So that's about it--we are having a very lovely time and feel as if we've been away for a long time already. I do hope this blog uploads; and if not, check me on Facebook for brief updates!

Almost Gone

2010-08-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

So we are finally leaving tomorrow, right? I mean, that IS The Plan. But we are both so exhausted that maybe we'll only be driving two hours, and then stopping to sleep for a couple of days. It's probably the most sensible thing to do.

However, that is NOT The Plan. The Plan is that we are going to Wisconsin. "Wiss-GONE-sin"??? someone asked me. It is amazing how many of our northeastern friends are wondering how we came up with THAT. Well, it's simple. We need the sticker for our states map . And the Wisconsin Dells is one of the major family vacation destinations in the country.... funny how none of our friends seem to have been there, and some of them haven't even heard of the Dells at all.

OK, so I'm rambling... I'm really tired and still have stuff to do to be ready in the morning. But this is The Plan: leave tomorrow morning and drive for the next two days. Head Mo toward the west, and turn right at Chicago. (Although the one thing absolutely everyone agrees is that no one should EVER drive an RV anywhere NEAR Chicago... so we will do our best to swing wide around it.) Anyway, make a right at Chicago, and drive north a little bit longer, and there we'll be.... at the Wisconsin Dells, the Waterpark Capital of the World.

However we don't plan to go to any waterparks (although we could change our minds, I suppose.) Instead our plans include a tamer boatride through the Dells, Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Preservation, the eclectic House on the Rock, Circus World Museum, the International Crane Foundation, and a few other things. I do have to say, however, that judging by the vacation guide we received from the Wisconsin Dells Visitor Bureau, we could easily spend a LOT more time in the area than the three days on my itinerary. And of course, if the weather heats up again, one of those waterparks might be just the thing!

From there we will be heading west again through Minnesota and on to North Dakota, with our ultimate destination the ND Badlands. We stopped there for a very brief time in 1980 when we camped across the country for about 6 weeks, and I remember it struck me as truly wonderful. So we will try to get there on this trip, and then head south to the SD Badlands (which we saw in 2007, and we wanted to come back again) and then home through Nebraska and Iowa. If we really pull it off (this is a LOT of driving for 2 weeks!), we'll "collect" four more stickers for our map, and have a wonderful trip.

Alternate option: if the weather is too stinky hot in the midwest, head up into northern Minnesota and Wisconsin and come home through Michigan's Upper Peninsula (see the 2008 blogs.) Another alternate option: Find a nice state park someplace and sleep for a week.

Mo Comes Home

2009-09-05T17:04:00.000-07:00

September 4, 2009

We spent an anxious week waiting for the verdict from Colony Ford in Warwick, RI. Was Mo fixable? The mechanics there weren't so sure about working on a carburetor, but luckily, it seems it was an electrical problem after all. In fact, according to Wayne, the mechanic, it was probably never a vapor lock issue!

The battery was dead when I left Mo, but they charged it up and tried to start it. It didn't work. So, they checked and discovered there was no sparking going on. (Disclaimer: some of my technical terms may not be so accurate--I'm a bible scholar, not a mechanic .) Wayne wiggled some wires and voila, the engine started up! So they were able to actually drive Mo into the repair bay. Then they wiggled the wires some more and the engine stopped again. So they found some iffy wires, and replaced them, and the engine STILL wouldn't start! That is when they decided to check out the ignition module. They took it out, and put in a new one, and voila again--the engine started right up.

After some more electrical troubleshooting, and two road trips, they were pretty satisfied that it was our ignition module all along. When I spoke to Wayne on Thursday morning, he was very nice about explaining to me what the module did, and how it worked. I asked him about our previous symptoms from the past year (the engine stopping, and the backfiring noise), and he explained why and how those symptoms were equally consistent with a dying ignition module. So, it seemed that I could now make definite plans to go retrieve Mo.

At 5:30 a.m. on Friday (Sept 4), my sister Aimee and I left home and drove up I-95 to Colony Ford in the small, uncomfortable rental car. Our trip up was uneventful; we stopped for gas (my first time filling a gas tank in a VERY long time, since NJ doesn't allow drivers to fill their own tanks, and Joe always takes care of Mo when we are on the road.) We swung by Colony Ford, and they tallied up my bill while we took the rental back to Enterprise. Then we were given a lift back to Colony Ford.

30 minutes or so later, we were on our way home. We first plotted out a route which would totally avoid I-95; I was worrying and literally losing sleep all week imagining the Labor Day weekend traffic we could run into both on that road and then crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge. But we found some very good back roads, and a lot of expressways, and Aimee expertly guided me while I drove. Mo collected a Connecticut sticker for our state map. We were quite happy and made great progress. We even stopped for gas, and I filled Mo for the first time.

About 4 pm we were headed down I-684 near Mt. Kisco, NY, when I got the idea that our 1/3 full gas tank might not be enough to get us home. I envisioned sitting in traffic approaching the bridge as the holiday weekend really got started. So, we left the interstate and went into Mt. Kisco, where we located a small gas station cum convenience store which had enough room for Mo to fit by the pumps. I got out, noted the (expensive) price of regular gas on the pump near the cab, then walked to the back of Mo and used the pump next to the one I'd just looked at. For some reason, the dispenser didn't seem to want to work; and after it turned itself off 3 times and I had about 6.5 gallons of gas, I figured that would be more than sufficient for the rest of the trip. I hung up the nozzle and then suddenly realized to my shock and horror, the pump was a diesel pump; Mo takes regular gasoline.

I started shaking and rushed to Aimee and said, "Oh no! I did something really terrible. OH NO!!!!!" She was already reaching for her cell phone when I said, "Call Joe! CALL JOE!!!", and then followed an insane series of simultaneous phone calls between me, Joe, the Good Sam Service line, and Aimee, punctuated by conversations with the service station across the street, and the Pakistani guys who worked in the convenience store, who pushed Mo away from the gas tanks to the edge of the lot. Thank God, I had not so much as put the key in the ignition--Joe's first words were, "Don't start the engine!!!!!!!!! It can ruin the engine!!!!!!!!" Thank heavens my sister was there to keep me from literally passing out, I was so beside myself with panic.

To make a very long and upsetting story short, we finally got the name of a mechanic and tow service in Brewster, 18 miles away. A wonderful guy named Craig came an hour later to pump out the gas tank for us. As is always the case, it was much more problematic than it should have been, and luckily Craig was the kind of guy who really knew what he was doing. So when the first 3 things he tried didn't work, he rigged up an alternative hose to an alternative pump he had in his trunk, and after 3 hours, Mo's tank was completely emptied of the bad gas. Craig then pulled Mo backward, back to the pumps, and we filled the tank with 30 gallons (more than I'd ever seen us put in before, so I know it was REALLY empty!) of the correct gasoline.

All's well that ends well, I guess, but I never could have gotten through without Aimee's help. She kept a cool head through it all, and constantly comforted me and ran back and forth into the convenience store to get me cold water and anything else she thought would help. The Pakistani man who was working until about 6 was so concerned about me that he actually sent her out with some warm pita and some kind of really good Turkish-type salad (I couldn't eat much, but had enough to realize it was good!) Throughout our other breakdowns, I have always been calm and philosophical, but this time I really lost it--I suppose it was because it was my fault for being stupid, and my lack of reserves after a stressful week of worrying about getting Mo home safely. I'm just glad I had her there--the best sister in the world!!!!!!!!

After that, things went smoothly. I felt so much better by the time Craig departed that I was able to make Aimee and me sandwiches (we hadn't had much to eat since 5:30 a.m., other than a very light lunch) before we hit the road home at about 9:00 pm. The late hour, of course, solved the worry about the traffic;, there wasn't much anywhere, and we were home two hours later, exhausted and drained, but with a repaired RV full of clean gas in a clean engine. Mo is now safely parked in front of the house.... and our summer of 2009 trip is finally, officially over. And if I never leave New Jersey again, I will never have to pump gas again, either.

Leaving Mo Behind

2009-08-31T19:57:00.001-07:00

August 31, 2009

Today was very sad for me--I had to leave Mo in Rhode Island and come home in a rented car with Roxy. It felt like leaving a member of the family behind.

Good Sam fixed us up with a tow truck at maybe 8:30 this morning; the truck arrived a few hours later. The delay was actually good, though, because I used the time to carefully pack up pretty much everything that I needed to take home, in case I had to rent a car and leave Mo. And that's exactly what happened.

Mo is now at a Ford Truck Center in Warwick, RI. I don't know that they will help, though--they were taken aback by the fact that the engine has a carburetor--they said they don't work on such old trucks much anymore! However they will check the electrical system, then try to find someone who does understand old engines. We are hopeful but not holding our breath. If we are VERY VERY lucky, maybe they will figure out this darn problem once and for all! (It bears noting that no mechanic has ever had the opportunity to figure it out, because it always fixes itself, so when the mechanic sees it, nothing is wrong anymore. Maybe this is our chance.)

Meanwhile, Enterprise sent a car to pick me up, they gave me a "discount" (still too expensive) for a very small, very uncomfortable car. I drove it back to Mo, and loaded all the packed up stuff, and the refrigerated stuff (lucky we carry a collapsible cooler with us!), and Roxy, into the very small, very uncomfortable car, and at 3:10 I sadly left my much-loved motorhome to hopefully be repaired. After a VERY tiring 5 hour drive (did I mention the car is uncomfortable? And the traffic on I-95 is awful... if we DO get to bring Mo home, we need to find another route!), Roxy and I are home.

It all seems very surreal. I want my RV back!!!

Not Good

2009-08-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

August 30, 2009

Well, looks like the trip isn't over yet. The blog isn't over yet. I'm not home yet. Mo broke down again.

Symptoms, exactly like last Sunday. This time on I-95 at exit 2 in Rhode Island. Did you know you can sit at the side of the interstate in Rhode Island for almost FOUR HOURS and not ONE highway patrol car will come by???

Our Good Sam Highway Service found a tow truck an hour away, which came and towed us to a campground a mere 10 minutes away from where we broke down. And now we have to wait until tomorrow.

However, "we" now means just me and Roxy. Joe has gotten a lift to the train station in Westerly, RI, where an Amtrak train is supposed to arrive at 6:46 pm, and which will take him to Penn Station. From there, he'll take NJ Transit home. Meanwhile, Roxy and I are all alone here, and tomorrow morning (unless Mo suddenly decides to start up again like last monday) will deal with Good Sam, truck repair, and, possibly, depending on the prognosis, find a rental car and drive home. I just don't know.

This is NOT a good ending to our trip, I am NOT a happy person, and all in all, this sucks.

A Rainy Anniversary

2009-08-30T05:46:00.000-07:00

August 29, 2009

Happy Anniversary to us! Today was our 38^th wedding anniversary—doesn’t that sound like a lot of years? I have to admit I don’t always remember what we did to celebrate our anniversaries, but thanks to this blog, we’ll always be able to see what we did on our 38^th.

For one thing, we had a very rainy anniversary. It was raining for most of the night, and as a result I didn’t sleep very well. I guess I kept worrying about the roof leaking. As it turned out, there was absolutely no leaking that I know of, and we woke up all snug and dry. It was, however, very cool (and still raining HARD) when it was finally time to get out of bed. Joey and Roxy had a very fast walk in the rain, and after a relatively quick breakfast, we packed up to leave. We stopped first at the campground office, however, to make use of their wifi connection—the main reason we bothered to pay for a campground last night, really. All we actually needed was a place to spend the night, because we were not planning to use the facilities (too cold to swim, too late in the evening to enjoy the views) and wanted to leave early and get back on the road.

Our first stop was an impulse—Joe said “Look!” as we passed a large office building with the DeLorme sign outside. The windows on the side were three stories high, and behind them I could see an ENORMOUS globe! Joe said that it was “famous” and that he’d known it was there. I made him take the next U-Turn so we could go back and I could photograph it through the windows, but to my pleasure I saw that they actually had a Map Store in the building which was open to the public, and of course, the lobby was filled with the globe.

It turns out that its name is Eartha, and it is, in fact, the largest globe in the world (the certification from the Guinness Book of Records was on the wall. As a “map person” (i.e. someone who just loves maps), I found both the store and the globe fascinating.

The office building had balconies on the 2^nd and 3^rd floors so guests could go upstairs to view the northern hemisphere of the globe. The entire thing was rotating on its axis as well as revolving, so it was possible to see the entire thing from any angle if you were patient and let it turn toward you at the 3 different heights. After taking several photos, I realized that it was really necessary to include some people on the ground floor next to it to give a sense of its size—it’s not really enough to say it was 3 stories tall!
I thought it was great.

The store was lots of fun too. It was not just a showcase (and retail outlet) for all of the DeLorme mapping products. It also had maps of pretty much everywhere in the world, as well as tour guides, language phrase books, atlases, globes, posters, and all kinds of toys and travel items. It was very heavy in the Maine department, with books etc. about the state, but there were books of all kinds relating to travel and finding your way around, plus novelty books. We had a good time browsing through, but didn’t buy anything. Just being there, though, reminded me that I had planned for us to try geochaching during this vacation—but not having an internet connection (and thus not being able to find where any local caches might be hidden) made that impossible. I guess next time I should plan ahead better and print out the directions or something…. But that would require knowing where we were going in advance!

We got back on the road (still U.S.1) and our next stop was at a chocolate store named Len Libby’s. The specific reason to stop was to see Lenny, the world’s only life-size Chocolate Moose. Sure enough, Lenny is made with 1,700 pounds of chocolate, and he now has some brown (chocolate) bears, a mama (another 300 pounds) plus two cubs to keep him company. The bears don’t look life-size to me, though. We weren’t there too long, only enough to meet Lenny and purchase a few small samples of the extensive chocolate inventory (we skipped the chocolate covered blueberries, but I did buy the chocolate nachos, which were pieces of sugar-cone-like stuff with chocolate drizzled on them. I haven’t tried them yet .)

By then it was around noon, and we decided to make some more definite plans, since we needed to make some greater progress today. We decided to get onto I-95 and head down to Salem, Massachusetts, and stop there. Our basic problem was that we wanted to do something else touristy today, but it was still pouring rain, which let out anything to do with boat rides, walking in cute villages, botanical gardens, picturesque wharfs, or anything outside. Neither of us was interested in touring a Victorian mansion, either. So since I’d never been to Salem, I thought we could stop there.

We stopped just over the border in Massachusetts (it was teeming sheets of rain) and I ran into the visitor’s center to ask about routes through/around Boston. It’s been ages since we’ve been up there, and never with the RV. The guy told me that today was Ted Kennedy’s funeral (which, being out of touch, I hadn’t known) and that it wouldn’t be a great day to drive through the city, but then when he realized we were talking well after 5 pm, decided that perhaps it would work. Meanwhile he gave me the Salem tourist book.

So we drove to Salem first, and after looking at all the available museums, decided to go to the Witch History Museum, which sounded the least hokey of the available museums (the one “real” museum, the Peabody Museum, was just too much to deal with by 3:30 in the afternoon.) As it turned out, the Witch History Museum was plenty hokey, but oh well, it was something to do in the afternoon.

After we left there, we went to the Boston Hot Dog Company for a snack. This was a small shop with a huge variety of every kind of hot dog. We got their signature ¼ Lb Black Angus Beef hot dog, and chatted with the owner, a native of Malden, while we ate. He said it was too bad we were leaving so soon, we could go to Boston and eat pizza at Regina’s. Joe said we used to swear by the pizza at the European, at which point he brightened up and said, “Even better!” But the European is gone, and we couldn’t stay anyway. We chatted some more before heading out into the rain (which was slightly easing up by this time—almost 6 pm!) Btw, one of the coolest things about being in the RV was that even though it was so rainy, we were unfazed—we had two plastic slickers tucked away in our drawers and we just threw them on and walked through the deluge. We always have whatever we need!

After we left Salem, we got back onto the interstates and took I-93 straight down through Boston, via the Big Dig underground route. The traffic was light and it couldn’t have been faster or simpler. It seemed kind of odd, though, to be zooming past a city like Boston without even a pause to drive down our old street (which would have been nuts to try in Mo, of course.) One local note was that all the electronic message boards, which are designed to give traffic updates, were all instead programmed to read “Thank You, Ted, From the People of Massachusetts.” We stayed on I-93 until it rejoined I-95, and took it into Rhode Island so we could collect yet another state for our sticker map (Massachusetts was a new one today, too.) By this time it was after 7 pm and was pretty dark, although the rain was finally reduced to mostly an active sort of mist. We decided to skip the campground routine for tonight (there are really very few to choose from around here, it seems!) and just overnight at one of our RV-friendly roadside options, a Cracker Barrel. This one is only about 20 miles from the Connecticut border, so we are spending the night in the smallest state out of 50, and will get our final New England state sticker for our map tomorrow. The plan is to wake up early and take I-95 the rest of the way home. With luck, we will find a wifi at one of these local businesses before we leave, so I can upload this blog.

"Cruising" Down the Coast of Maine

2009-08-29T06:15:00.000-07:00

August 28, 2009

We left Bar Harbor this morning and, after a stop to buy some Maine blueberries from a roadside stand, we followed U.S. 1 down the coast of Maine. It’s so odd to think that if we followed it all the way, it will take us home! (I suggested we go right through New Jersey and follow it to Key West, but I guess we don’t have time this weekend.)

All in all, it was a pretty quiet day. We did get excited by the new suspension bridge over the Penobscot River near Bucksport. We saw the tops of the suspension towers over the trees as we approached, but when it comes into sight, it is right next to Fort Knox, a pre-Revolutionary War fort which guarded the river going up to Bangor, Maine. We crossed the new bridge, which is right beside the old rusted steel bridge, and stopped to take a few photos. I read the historical marker which explained that this was the site of a defeat of the Americans by the British who manned Fort Knox in 1779. The Americans, despite outnumbering the British, were unable to take the fort and lost a lot of boats as they retreated back up the river to Bangor. By the way, you can see there is an observatory at the top of one of the towers--they use it to observe the moon, we saw on a sign as we passed.

We continued down the road, with lots of glimpses of Penobscot Bay through the trees, until we got hungry. We stopped at a small park on Rockport Bay in the town of Rockport, maneuvering ourselves down a steepish road into the only parking space we could fit in (we were lucky to find room!) It was an absolutely charming little park with a boat ramp and many sailboats tied up in the harbor.
We ate sandwiches, then walked Roxy for a little while and noted the small locomotive (which looked exactly like the locomotives on the Railroad properties in a Monopoly game) and the odd brick structures (we couldn’t figure out what they are) in the park before backing out of our space and returning to our journey.

Our next destination was Freeport. I wasn’t sure we really needed to stop at L.L.Bean’s original flagship store (open 24 hours/day, 7 days/week), but Joe said, “There’s always SOMETHING you need at L.L.Bean.” However, the town of Freeport really seems to be more like a large outlet center than anything else. The streets are lined with familiar national brand outlets, including an LL Bean outlet. The main LL Bean “campus” is also right in the midst of all this retail activity, with several different stores concentrating on various sports, plus the main store with all the clothes, luggage, camping, etc. They are in the process of building a new “home store” also for all the furniture, rugs, etc. that they sell.

We were not favorably disposed to any of it, because of the difficulty we had finding a place to park our RV. For a town which grew up around a company which specialized in outdoor sports and camping, it was astonishing to us that the LL Bean lot had “No RV Parking” signs, and the other large lots in the area were equally inhospitable. We finally found what seemed to be the only RV lot, and it was horrible—it was set up in a way which would accommodate at most 10 vehicles, and the arrangement was such that if the lot were full, several of the RVs would literally not be able to get out of the lot because they would be blocked in by other vehicles. In addition, the exit was onto a very narrow one-way street, making two more spots very iffy in terms of egress. We were fortunate in that there were only a few other RVs there when we arrived, and we chose a space which would have allowed us to back out if necessary. But we were extremely annoyed by the situation, and we filled out a “comments card” inside the LL Bean store to let them know that this was completely unacceptable. If we were driving a larger vehicle or had a tow vehicle, we would have given up and passed right through the town.

We wandered through LL Bean for a bit, but the truth is that after living a relatively simple lifestyle for two weeks in Mo, all those extra clothes and what-not seem so unnecessary. In the end, we spent $4.95—we bought an eyeglass repair kit (I’d been looking for one for about a month) and a new eyeglass strap for Joe’s sunglasses. The only other store we patronized was the Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop, where I treated myself to some chocolate therapy.

We went back to Mo, and had a conversation with another RVer who was just parking his truck and trailer next to us. He pointed out a new group of stores which seemed to be not quite finished, and commented, “Ever since they built that, they seem to have lost their minds.” I asked about the connection, and he said that the new stores were built where the old RV lot was, and that it had been both large and very well planned out and accessible. He agreed that the only thing we could do was complain to LL Bean, which he and his wife have also done. In the meantime, one of the RVs ahead of us pulled out while we were talking, allowing us to weave between two other campers and get out without too much problem.

By this time, it was about 5:45, and we figured that on a Friday night in the summer, we had better call a campground and make sure we could find a spot tonight. It turned out that a nice-sounding campground right in Freeport, on the water, had some room. So we went to the grocery store (we were out of some basics like milk, and eggs—all our eggs froze! It figures that most people have issues where their refrigerators aren’t cold enough, whereas ours is too cold!) And then we set our GPS and followed it to the campground here in Freeport. Unfortunately, although it has a LOT of shorefront sites, none of them have electric hookups. So we opted to be in the “woods”, although our particular area is not very woodsy, either. In fact, this is the most expensive and least attractive campground we’ve had in 2 weeks. It is, however, fine for the night, which is all we need, and we did walk down a path through the woods behind us for a glimpse of Casco Bay through the trees. We are hoping to hit the road earlier tomorrow. I would like to spend the night about 3 hours from home, so we can finish up on Sunday morning and have a little more vacation before we have to unload and get back to reality.