Kansas City, Ks

Except for a brief resupply visit home, we've been on the road since the 12th of July.  So last night we decided to forego the Gulf Coast for a more direct route home.  We had a long day today and plan another tomorrow, heading for Nashville.  We'll take a lay day there and catch a dinner show on Wednesday.  Then
 another long day to home on Thursday.  The temps are cooler now in New Bern and hopefully we can get in some fall sailing.  This will be our last blog entry for awhile.

Colorado Springs

We are now in Colorado Springs staying with Liz and Brian.  About a week ago we arrived at Mesa Verde National Park and enjoyed a very uncrowded campground and some great hiking around the Pueblo Ruins.  I especially enjoyed my tour of the Balcony House and our subsequent hike out onto the opposing mesa over Soda Canyon for a distant view of the reconstructed house.

We also enjoyed our first elaborate camping meal cooked over a wood fire.

Ever cook in knee pads?

You can view the Mesa Verde pictures here:

Mesa Verde

Then it was on to Durango and a great visit with Jim and Nancy Holland from the sailing vessel  Summer Breeze.  Carol and I met them in Marathon Fl where we were mooring ball neighbors.  We enjoyed staying with them in their home along the Animas River and a camping trip to a national forest overlooking Ouray Colorado.  After breaking camp, Jim took me on a four wheel drive adventure back to Silverton Co over the high peaks up to 1300 feet.  A truly amazing ride.

Carol, Nancy and Jim overlooking Ouray from the campground

You can see pictures from our visit with Jim and Nancy here:

Jim and Nancy

North Rim - Grand Canyon

After a wet afternoon, the sun came out briefly and we had our supper in the North Rim Lodge dining room. The atmosphere was great, the meal not so much.  It was nice sleeping at 9,000 feet again - cool temps.

This morning the sunrise was spectacular and I got a few pictures below:

View of the South Rim at Sunrise

North Rim Lodge at Sunrise

View from South Rim Lodge Deck at Sunrise

As geological features go, the big attraction for the Grand Canyon is its grand size.  Unfortunately these days that size is also a disadvantage.  The air pollution in the canyon makes those distant rim views pretty hazy.  So the smaller canyons of Zion and Bryce are far more spectacular in my mind just because there is less haze to peer through.

No room at the inn tonight so we move on to a needed motel for the night and then on toward the four corners area.  Probably no more updates until Tuesday or Wednesday.

North Rim of the Grand Canyon

We left Zion this morning after two great days there.  The elevation in the canyon was only 4k feet and it was really hot.  Near100 during the day, so our hiking was done in the early morning hours.  Fortunately the we had access to the Virgin River from our campsite.  What an oasis it was in the cool water.

Here is our campsite neighbor David Milner enjoying his 62'nd birthday and having finally gotten his National Parks Senior Pass.

Hikers on Angels Walk

Zion has some spectacular hikes.  The photo above is of some hikers on the Angels Walk Trail.  It is a sheer 1000 foot drop off on each side of a narrow trail.  The photo was shot through the skylight on our shuttle bus some 1500 feet below on the canyon floor.

Arriving at the North Rim our "campsite without reservations" and weather luck ran out!  Since we are tent camping we did get one night in a group site.  No sooner had we set up than it started really storming.  The forecast is for rain the whole week.  So tomorrow we will pack up hopefully a dry tent and head for Page AZ and a dry hotel room.

Here is the photo album for Zion:

Zion

Bryce Canyon

We arrived in Bryce Canyon yesterday and found a great campsite.  We are about 100 yards from the Rim and the views are terrific and different each time of the day.  Last night we had a spectacular Full Moon Rise.  Today I took the Queens Garden / Navajo Loop Combination trail.  Billed as the "best 3 mile hike in the world".  I have not been on all the other 3 mile hikes, but this is the best one for me!  Mid-way through the hike I met up with 3 young folks from California. Two PHD computer science engineers from Greece and Turkey and one doctoral candidate from the US.  I learned a lot about Twitter and how it is different from Facebook.

Check out the pictures from Brice Below:

Bryce Canyon

Coalville Ut

There is a lot of rain in the area today and forecast for tomorrow as well.  It's a good thing as there are a lot of fires around.  One of the more dramatic is the North Buffalo fire in Wyoming.  As of two days ago it had consumed over 12K acres fueled by pine park beetle stressed conifers. On Wednesday we drove up Signal Mountain for a look at this fire which was 5 days old.

North Buffalo Fire from Signal Mountain

Last night I did some internet searching and found this NOAA Satellite view of the fire

Our campsite was on Jackson Lake just to the west of Signal Mtn.  You can see the Teton Range running west of Jackson and Jenny Lakes.

Coalville UT

We are in a Best Western outside Salt Lake City.  Amazingly a rainy patch, a couple of long days of driving, and the dreaded Labor Day Weekend all came together for us at the same time!  So we will be in hotels two or three nights until we get to Zion NP when the crowds will be gone and the weather dry once again.  Nobody is complaining about a little rain.  This part of the country really needs it!!  We have experienced forest fire haze since Nebraska and had a good view of a big fire just east of the Grand Tetons.  This morning the south-west winds died and we woke up to a strong forest fire odor in the tent.

Grand Teton Range across Heron Pond

Anyhow we have just finished up 6 days in Yellowstone and 2 days in the Grand Tetons.  Three campsites in all and a really terrific experience!  We met some very interesting folks along the way including a group of thru-hikers on the Continental Divide Trail.

Anyhow reporting on 8 days of National Park experience would take more words than you would care to read.  So click on the following links to see a few pictures:

Yellowstone Pictures

Grand Teton Pictures

And I've added a few videos - I need some practice as a videographer.

Chico Hot Spring Resort

Well today was different.  We left Bozeman around 8:00 for the 50 minute ride to Chico's.  Took a tour through the Pine Creek campsite in the National Forest in Paradise Valley.  Looked like just the place you would want to be if you were into fly fishing.  But we had secured reservations at Chico's the day before and the campground host at Pine Creek said you really should go.

So it was a relaxing day of hot spring pool swimming, a game of croquet on the lawn, and sharing a glass of wine on the lawn with Angie and Uri from Minnesota.  Uri had just proposed to Angie in the middle of a long  back packing trip.  It's a good thing she said yes!

Had a great red meat diner in the dinning room here and may finish out with an after dark swim.

Tomorrow its off to Yellowstone and camping once again.  It will be good to be burning more calories than we take in for a change

Bozeman Mt

Today was all about the car. We have really been enjoying the VW TDI Sportwagen for this trip.  It seems the ideal car for a mountain road trip.  The diesel provides terrific torque for climbing and great fuel economy.  Before leaving we put high performance Bridgestone tires on and the car now takes the mountain curves like it's on railroad tracks. We registered 110 on the GPS while passing a house and log truck on a two lane road coming down to Bozeman.  I think the advertised speed of 130 is probably within reach.

Yesterday when we arrived in Bozeman, we were surprised to find a detailing station outside our hotel.  So while Carol did the laundry from a week at Glacier, I removed the mud from the road construction and put a shine to the glass and sheet metal.  The hotel even provided tire black!

After the clean up, I headed to a local Pizzeria and the car began acting up.  It nearly stalled out each time I started up from a stop light.  Last night was spent looking for a VW Dealer and researching fuel supply issues with this car.  I found some really scary stuff about defective high pressure fuel pumps on these cars.  Luckily one of the 5 VW dealers in Montana is in Bozeman.  So with limited sleep I headed off this morning. The car was already driving much better.  The dealer checked the fuel filters and measured the low pressure supply line at several points.  They also drove the car quite a bit.  Their opinion was that the car was OK but that I might have had some bad fuel that was slowly passing through.  I decided to hang around town for the day driving in stop and go traffic a lot. By the end of the day she was pretty much back to normal and tomorrow we head out to Chico Hot Springs Resort Spa for one day and then back to camping in Yellowstone.

So diesel cars have come a long way since the 80's, but the new clean diesels do need good clean fuel.  Wish us luck as we head into VW dealer free country for the next several weeks.

Glacier National Park

We enjoyed a terrific week in Glacier National Park.  Words can’t describe this place and even pictures fall short.  Some highlights:

We camped at Rising Sun Campground – simply a little bit of paradise complete with hot showers and a great restaurant with a gourmet coffee stand.

Unbelievable hiking featuring waterfalls, wildlife, and wildflowers.  Did I mention the spectacular vistas?

Naturalist programs every night including a session with an star guy with an amazing telescope

Scary prospects of meeting a grizzly bear or mountain lion on the trail

The Prince of Wales Hotel in Canada’s Watertown International Park for lunch

Captain Annie on the St Mary's Falls boat trip

Falls on the Cedars Trail

Naturalist Lee on the St Mary's Falls Hike

St Mary's Falls

Storm Coming over Lake St Mary - 45 MPH winds in our Campsite

On the trail to St Mary's Falls

On the Trail of the Cedars -  Closed  next day due to Mt Lions

Cedar Trees - Several small boats here

Wild Flowers on Highland Ridge Trail

Mountain Goat on the Highland Ridge Trail

Highland Ridge Trail note road below and cable to hold onto

Prince of Wales Hotel in Alberta - site of one amazing lunch

Happy Camper at Rising Sun Campground

Highland Hidden Lake

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Lewistown MT

Today started great but ended poorly.

First the great part.  Our first destination was the Little Big Horn battlefield.  We got there before 9:00 am when it was still cool and nice.  As with other National Parks and Monuments, it is the ranger programs that make it a special learning experience. We started with a lecture about the battle which started with problems within the U.S. Grant administration.  This talk detailed the events leading up to the battle in 1876 and then a colorful description of the battle and personalities involved on both sides.  Then we toured some of the monuments to the fallen with an 18 year old intern who had an amazing passion for the story.  The Indians were fighting to preserve their hunter / gather way of life, and the army was following Grant's orders to get those Indians back on the reservation.

In the end Custer's small Calvary unit shot their horses to use as a barricade against the Indian fire.  All and all it was a good lesson in the futility of war.

Indian Memorial

Monument to the Calvary Horses

Before leaving the monument we consulted our GPS and determined we could make Great Falls Mt by 4:00 PM and then have an easy ride into our campground at Glacier the next day.  One of the several weaknesses of an Auto GPS is that it doesn't know about road construction. In Montana, when they repave a road, they seem to just rip it all right up and let traffic drive over the raw gravel road bed.  We had three sections of about 15 miles each on three separate roads.  All single file and I probably upset the pick up crowd by refusing to go much above 20 MPH.  Anyhow we added 40 miles to our trip by heading in the opposite direction to the nearest hotel at about 3:30.  From now on, we will consult Google Maps and the state DOT websites to try to dodge construction in this part of the country.

Rocky Mountain National Park - Day 3

Map of Colorado River

One of Several CD Crossings on the Trail Ridge Road

Tundra Hike

View from the Deck of the Alpine Visitors Center

Our Campground

Today we were supposed to take the Trail Ridge Road over to the east side of the park and set up  camp in the Timber Creek campground.  The weather was stormy last night and we figured that the east side of the mountains would be the wet side, so we elected to drive the highway across the mountains, see the east side and return to Moraine Campground for one more night.  Few decisions turn out so well.  We had a terrific early morning drive over the spectacular Trail Ridge Road featuring 11 miles above the tree line across the arctic tundra. This road features at summit over 12K feet, some steep assents, tight curves, drop away shoulders, and no guard rails.  A few seconds of inattention and you end up in a wad of sheet metal. Temps at the summit were in the high 40's and winds were gusting to 40.  Burr!  We passed on the 1 hour nature walk at the summit.  

Once we got over to the other side, the Timber Creek Campground was anything but inviting. The Pine Borer Beetle has decimated the forest on the other side and the campsites were out in the sun with no trees around.  We visited the site of a 1920’s fishing “resort” at the headwaters of the Colorado River.

We are back in our campground enjoying a glass of North Carolina wine while we wait for our sun shower to heat up.  The Moraine Campground offers roofless stalls for use of your sun shower.  We had terrific hot showers in a National Park!

No complaints about the TDI Sportwagon for this trip!   We are delighted with the RMP.  But since it is just a short drive from Denver, It is a little crowded on the weekend.

Rocky Mtn National Park

We arrived here yesterday morning and found a great campsite.  Took advantage of the ranger programs yesterday and did some fun hiking today.  Three miles at 9K ft elevation is about our limit. Great alpine lakes and falls.

Passing through Iowa and Nebraska

Today was just one of those long highway days that you have to do if driving to Colorado.  We started out in  Eastern Iowa. I remembered my last time on this route in 1959 as a 16 year old traveling with my family. Can you imagine four children and two parents tucked into a 1957 Buick Century convertible towing a home made trailer stuffed with camping gear?  We made it as far as San Francisco and L.A and back to Ohio in 6 short weeks.  My memory of Iowa is pretty clear after 53 years.  There was no interstate and the pavement was pretty much put down on the land contour as nature provided.  Iowa doesn't have mountains, but it does have dramatic rolling hills.  In the 50's, that meant a two lane road that did about three 200 foot cycles every 5 miles.  No Passing!  Today interstate 80 smooths that out a lot and of course adds at least 2 more lanes.  So it's just not the same - thank heavens!  

The corn in Iowa looked stressed but at least the plants seemed to be alive.  All that changed in Nebraska.  A few fields were being irrigated, but most were completely dead and quite a few were already chopped down.  As we got to the western end of the state driving along the Platte River things greened up as the big wide multi-channeled river still contained a little water.  But just a few miles north and south of the Platte were completely desert like.  We have seen a number of fairly new ethanol plants and already the price for unleaded is increasing here.  We are happy that in this area diesel is actually cheaper than regular unleaded.  The locals say that the price of beef and pork will head lower as ranchers slaughter their herds that they can't afford to feed.  Then watch for big price increases.  Time to do you wallet and body a favor by switching from animal to plant protein.  Beans and rice anyone?  

Tomorrow we start our 2 month road trip through some of the National Parks and ending with a tour of Gulf Coast towns and the Atlantic ICW revisiting this area by car

Here is my Brother Tony in Toledo on Sunday grilling ribs and chicken

Click on the link below for our route

http://goo.gl/maps/qqwkf