Wall Drug and Rushmore

We saw virtually no wildlife as we headed out the East exit of Yellowstone...just at couple of female elk and a bison. We didn't even bother to slow down for pictures of them. The night before on the other hand Mandy was VERY excited on our way back to the lodge after dinner last night because a small dog-like creature crossed the road in front of us...very clearly only about 10 feet in front of us. We're pretty sure it was a coyote. Unfortunately we weren't fast enough to get a picture.

We did get an early start today and it was a long day of driving. We thought that by leaving early we might get some different animals roaming about but as I mentioned, no luck. On the agenda today were 2 stops, Mount Rushmore and Wall, South Dakota.

The drive itself was uneventful except for a decent breakfast and some amusing signage. Mandy had some biscuits and sausage that were so rich that she couldn't eat more than one of the biscuits. And then there was this, which we found amusing:

Mount Rushmore was impressive...Art on an immense scale...It's not a very exciting park though. It was a drop in, take some pictures and head out. The idea behind Rushmore was much neater as a concept than the park ended up being...as it is it's just big patriotic art. The original idea though was to have the site be a museum and repository for all things American with the museum/repository being behind the faces of Rushmore. Mandy also thinks that the kitschy town around the monument detracts from its splendor.

Our 2nd stop and our stop for the night is an interesting experiment. Wall drug store offers free water and cheap coffee and has turned itself in to a tourist destination in the back of beyond in South Dakota. It really seems that there's nothing else around except this small town but this small town seems to have a fairly hopping tourist industry. We started seeing signs for Wall Drug, SD about 500 miles out from the town itself.

Tomorrow will be our next to the last leg to Wisconsin. We think it should take around 12 hours so we'll likely end up in WI in the evening. We tried to tell my aunt but cell phone reception for the entire day has been spotty at best. I think all she got when she answered the phone was the cryptic, "We come!" So it's another long day of driving tomorrow but we get a nice break before final leg home. We'll likely post again from WI telling you how awesome Uncle Scott and Auntie Annie have it.

Song of Wyoming

Man, it sure did take us forever to find an internet connection. We checked "several" Dairy Queens to no avail. We ended up making the supreme sacrifice tonight of eating in the Mural Room at the Jackson Lake Lodge. They had HONEY ROSEMARY ICE CREAM!!! It was awesome. Also, there was some wine involved with dinner, obviously. I'm typing this out as I'm staring out the huge picture windows onto the Tetons. Maryland Dad, I can't believe you climbed to the top of the tall one. It's still covered in snow. That must have been scarier than our Angel's Landing hike.

Anyway, Seattle was awesome. All I had to do was walk Rick through a few of the vendors at Pike's Place Market and he was ready to move. The shear volume of fresh fish and veggies and cherries and pasta and coffee, etc. was astounding. I also showed Rick the awesome Chocolate Box that I found when I was here on business and we stopped by the Beecher's store. Cheese for Everyone!!! We rounded out the Seattle experience by sampling some Washington wines at the Tasting Room and walking down the street where we just happened to run into a Pearl Jam cover band playing live for the 4th of July celebrations. We had dinner and drove literally all night to get to Glacier National Park.

It was extremely beautiful at glacier. I put a snowball on Rick's neck (I didn't have the heart to put it all the way down his back). We had a great drive up the Going-to-the-sun road and hiked a bit around Many Glaciers. Rick took a quick nap by one of the lakes after we saw a Momma and Baby moose at what I thought was fairly close range. Glacier is like the Rockies but more dramatic (if you can imagine that). Of course, there used to be over 100 glaciers and now there are only 23 or so, so if you want to actually see a glacier at Glacier National Park book your trip soon. This is definitely a place to return to. Plenty of hiking plus lots of stuff to do from your car.

From there, we finished listening to The Sun Also Rises (which Rick still hates) as we drove to Yellowstone. We have decided to use some phrases from the book. Getting Tight sounds better than Getting Drunk. We will also start trying to say think like "That's a lot of rot!" Beware. We will be pulling these phrases out at much as we can when we get back.

As we pulled into Yellowstone, it started to pour. This has been our first rain during our entire month long trip. It didn't even rain in Seattle, so we can't really complain. It did make us decide to stay in the Grants Pass Lodge over camping. As we drove around in the rain we took photos of bison, and female elk. We also stopped by some of the geologic fumeroles along the road to our lodge. This morning we drove around and did some plank boardwalk hiking. I don't really think walking on a boardwalk counts as hiking, but the ground is so unstable that I appreciated not having to walk on something that could start bubbling and boiling at any minute. We saw Old Faithful and had a nice lunch at the Teddy Roosevelt Lodge. The Roosevelt beans were awesome. Yellowstone was our first national park and it is really diverse. It has scary mudpots and things that really put the power of the earth into perspective. It also has prairie land, mountains, lakes and rivers. We took an awesome shot of a grizzly that we got from the safety of our car and a good photo of a bull elk. Jeannine, we also shot a photo of a ground squirrel just for you.

Tomorrow we will be getting up nice and early and will hopefully hit Mount Rushmore and the surrounding area.

California Revisited

Everytime I leave I forget how much I love California. Well, northern California anyway. San Francisco is such a great city and the redwoods were absolutely amazing. The Avenue of the Giants is on the same hugeness scale as the Grand Canyon was.

Rick really likes the desert, but I was so glad to be out of them. I like sleeping when there is a chill in the air. San Francisco not only has Alex, which is a huge plus in my book for any city, but you drive about an hour and you hit wine country. Go a little farther and you hit the redwoods. At the top of California we were driving along a non-winding cliff road with the Pacific to our left, redwoods to our right and the fog rolling in. It was absolutely perfect. And we had our first campfire last night.

This morning we traveled through the redwoods some more to Grants Pass where we met up with Uncle David and Aunt Paula for lunch. We were both so happy that they were able to rearrange their schedules to come meet up with us, even though it was a really short visit. Not only was it great to see them (I had actually never met Aunt Paula before), but it broke up our drive nicely. We just got into Washington and checked into a Best Western a few minutes ago. Rick is swimming at the pool while I write this. In the morning we will do some laundry and drive the 100 or so miles into Seattle.

We just started listening to The Sun Also Rises. Rick HATES it. I would like for him to stop complaining about it so that I can enjoy it. I really like the 1920's ex-pat scene in Paris. He isn't appreciating the work for the documentation of the vibe of the time that it is. He keeps looking for a deeper story. He wants more plot. I could use some backup on this. Please leave a comment if you agree with me and enjoy Hemmingway's writing as it stands. If you don't agree with me, don't bother commenting. I don't want to know if you are taking Rick's side :)

So anyway...Seattle tomorrow. I think we will have to listen to some Pearl Jam and Nirvana. We'll probably spend the whole day drinking coffee.

California Dreamin'

It's been a few days since we have updated because we've been pretty busy. Since last we wrote we've gone to Phoenix all the up to the redwoods in northern California.

In Phoenix we had an awesome restful day with our friends Brent and Kelly (i?). We drank beer (for the children) played a fun dice game called Right Left Center and lost badly. Kelly made some excellent pork BBQ and put out an excellent spread. We slept that night in their RV on an extremely comfortable bed that was supplemented with a memory foam pillow top. We're going to have to get a camping version of that!

From Phoenix we headed out to Joshua Tree national forest. It's a neat place but the Colorado and Mojave deserts are much more foreboding than the Chihuahan and the Sonoran deserts. There seems to be much less scrub in the latter two making it seem more desolate. It was also extremely hot in Joshua Tree. Temperatures peaked at 114 degrees that day. One of the neater features in Joshua Tree was an oasis. The National Park Service had the actual shady area and spring blocked off to the point where you couldn't enjoy the shade or even really see the spring but life's reaction to available water in the desert is a neat thing to see even if you can't enjoy it yourself.

After visiting Joshua tree we spent some time with our friend Alex in the lovely city of San Francisco. We celebrated the completion of college and his project manager certification at a local resteraunt named catch on the first day and the second we took a drive through Napa doing what people do when they drive through Napa. Actually, we only stopped at 3 vineyards which all had delicious wine. Wine tasting on the west coast though is much more expensive than on the East Coast. A tasting per person there is 15 dollars. Back in NY or even around MD or PA it ranged from 2 - 5 dollars a person. Coincidentally, during the wine tasting we met a woman from Mandy's hometown of Pottstown, PA during the wine tour. It's a small world...

Leaving San Francisco we headed up the coast to Redwood National Forest. This has been some of our favorite scenery yet. We drove up both US 101 and Avenue of the Giants. I may have seen these enormous trees as a child but I certainly don't remember it. It's almost impossible to come up with words to properly describe the trees. The words spectacular and awesome don't quite cut it. We camped near the forest and managed to have, amazingly, our first campfire of the trip.

Today, we're scheduled to visit my uncle David and continue our trip up to Seattle. You'll hear again from us soon!

Hotel Arizona

(it's a song by Wilco...it works)

Partly because we went to sleep at 8pm and partly because we had a big day ahead of us, we got up at 4 and were gone from Zion by 4:30. Most of the time on this trip we're just a little unsure of what time it actually is. I didn't realize that although Arizona is on mountain time, they don't follow Daylight Savings Time. The route we took had us leave Utah, go back an hour when we hit Arizona, go forward an hour when we hit the Navajo Nation area which does observe Daylight Savings Time, and go back an hour again when we got to the Grand Canyon. I think we got there at 8.

Rick and I were both worried that it wouldn't be so Grand after all of the other things we have seen so far on the trip. We didn't need to worry. It was so impressive that it didn't look real. It is hard to wrap my mind around the massive scale of the canyon. My only criticism is that I wanted to get into it. You can't do that without reserving a spot on a 2 day hiking trip months in advance. It's great to drive to the different viewing platforms on the south rim, but every other park we went to allowed us to immerse ourselves in the place. I think we will have to schedule a return trip to really experience the place.

On the drive to the Petrified Forest we listened to Empire by Orson Scott Card. We had to turn it off as we got close because I wasn't paying attention to road signs. The story is really gripping and pretty intense. It gives a scenario for starting a modern civil war here in the US. We will see how the story ends later but it is a great road trip listen. It is a well written story and it gives us something to talk about when we stop listening.

I was a little worried about the Petrified Forest. It seemed very off the beaten path. We passed through the town of Holbrook on our way there. It is situated right on Route 66 and we noticed an interesting Wigwam motel that looks suspiciously like the Cozy Cone Motel in Radiator Springs. In writing this post I found that we were correct that the Wigwam was the inspiration for the Cozy Cone. That is pretty neat!
So after driving on Route 66 we entered the Petrified Forest. There was a nice movie and exhibits at the Rainbow Forest Museum. We took two short walking tours. The number of petrified logs is just amazing. The rest of the park drive through the Painted Desert was also very pretty. Again, we were so sore from yesterday that we weren't at all upset to be doing driving tours.

We stopped for the night at our first KOA in Flagstaff. Boy, these places are nice. We have electric at our site and the showers were awesome and clean. There are activities for kids, a store and wifi. Today we head to Phoenix to stay with friends for the night followed by a day in Joshua Tree and then off to San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean.

To Zion

When last you read about our heros, they were leaving the Four Corners and had stopped for coffee near Lake Powell. Yes Marylandmom, we agree that it would be fun to rent a house boat for a week...as long as I have some meclizine. I tried to nap while Rick sang to Billy Joel for at least an hour and a half straight. We got to Zion and set up camp in time to take the 90 minute shuttle bus tour. We were lucky enough to enter from the east entrance which has some of the most dramatic views of the park according to our guide book. Before we even hit the park we stopped and took some photos of bison at a little roadside store.
If you ever get to Zion, I strongly recommend taking the shuttle trip first. The drivers talk about all of the different hikes and their level of difficulty. Of course, we had already decided to hike Angel's Landing. We also decided to do the Emerald Pools loop and take a look at the Weeping Rock if we had a chance. So we went to sleep and were woken up by a young guy from the next campsite when he walked over and said "Hey, Stop Snoring," to Rick. I was SLEEPING right next to Rick. I know he snores, but COME ON. We both slept like crap after that.
So we woke up, packed lunches and took the shuttle to The Grotto which is the stop for the West Rim and Angel's Landing trails. You have to do West Rim before you can start Angel's Landing. Apparently, there is a debate about whether or not "regular people" should be allowed to make this climb/hike. I'm proud to say that this was the second time I made the hike and Rick was able to do the whole thing. We both went up and came back down, although the going was slow and there were plenty of water breaks. My legs were shaking several times from fear more than strain I think. I didn't remember how scary it was. We were good and started in the morning, but by the time we were coming down it was afternoon and the sun just baked us the whole way back to the shuttle. We ended up sitting at the shuttle stop drinking water for about 15 minutes. Then we went to the cafe and drank water and ate ice cream for about an hour. We dragged ourselves into town to take showers and eat an early dinner. We were in bed by 8 I think. We didn't have energy for anything else. I might have been able to keep going if I wasn't the one carrying the approx. 20 pound backpack filled with water bottles. Either way, that was one hell of a hike. Rick says this is the hardest hike he has ever done. We were super happy that today was a day full of mainly driving.
Although this post says that it was done by Rick. This was actually Mandy...just in case you couldn't tell by the writing style.

4000 miles down

We spent 2 days camping in Durango, CO at the RV site of Erin and Mike Hill as well as their wonderful children Brian and Kerry. The first day we drove through the Rockys to the towns of Silverton and Ouray. The drive itself was the main purpose of the trip. We had absolutely spectacular views. It was also the first time we had to use the Prius' engine braking feature for any significant amount of time and it proved itself adequate. While we were in Silverton we hit up a local brewery which had some quite tasty craft brews including a very good barley wine. They also served very tasty green chile soup. As Mandy mentioned Ouray had an awesome little park maintained by the city called Box Canyon Falls. A waterfall channeled down the mountain in a pretty awesome show of force. We did dinner at the camp site that evening with the Hills. We cooked up a campfire pizza (our first) with mediocre results. We’ll do better next time. Mike made burgers with roasted green chile. Very tasty.

As planned I got the Prius’ first oil change the next morning and Mandy and I took off to Mesa Verde. It was packed for a Tuesday. We got there around 11 AM. The first tour was available @ 4 PM. So, we didn’t tour the cliff ruins, but I did get some pictures. We did tour some of the ruins on top of the mesa that are open with out having a ranger present and guiding. We also took a 3 mile hike on the petroglyph trail. Petroglyphs are images carved in to rock. The hike was awesome but taxing. It ranged from 7000 to 8000 feet and I’m definitely not acclimated nor in shape. The scenery was awesome and the petroglyphs were neat if a little anti-climactic. The hike ended in a climb up to the top of the mesa, and the views from the top were incredible…they would have left me breathless if I hadn’t already been. Mandy was especially proud of us on this hike because we were only 2 of many hiking groups to complete this hike. We passed many groups of hikers who just gave up and headed back the way they came despite the trail being a loop. We ended the day with dinner in Durango with the Hills at a Mexican joint. All of our meals were excellent as was the company.

I’m writing now from a coffee shop in Page, AZ. We’re about 2-3 hours outside of Zion and will arrive in good time to set up camp comfortably and hopefully have a nice fire. On the way here we hit 4 corners and took pictures…about all you really can do at 4 corners. We’ll write and post again as soon as we get another opportunity!