Month: September 2012

Mile 11,755 – Fremont, Indiana (in the extreme northeast corner of the state). There are good things about returning home.  The weather, especially late today after we passed Chicago, was exceptionally clear.  The trees and countryside in Indiana looked lush after the parched grasslands of South Dakota and the dusty farmland of Iowa.

It appears in Iowa they don’t seal their gravel roads with something that inhibits dust.  The countryside was filled with dust clouds, sometimes kicked up by a single car.  When I pumped gas this morning, I found the outside crevasses of my car filled with a tan-colored dirt.  When I tried to wipe it with my finger, my finger became greasy black.  It is either Iowa dust or smoke soot from the West.  We breathed that stuff?  I will forego the chemical analysis.  I am tired of the smoke and dust.  I am glad to be back in the lush vegetation and relatively clear air of the East.  Who would have thought that?

We may not have Internet access our last two nights in Austin, Pennsylvania.  So we’ll complete the blog after we get home on Tuesday.

[Photograph © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 11,291 – Waterloo, Iowa. Since we spent the night in Wall, South Dakota, P.J. made the obligatory photograph of Wall Drugs (before they opened!). We spent another quick hour in the Badlands, and then it was drive, drive, drive, all day long.  The landscape gradually changed from dry grassland to dry farmland.  Politics does make a difference: in South Dakota we saw no windfarms— in Minnesota, they are ubiquitous.

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 10,677 – Wall, South Dakota. New Englanders tend to turn up their noses at fall colors elsewhere.  This morning, we drove through Spearfish Canyon, in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Colors were at peak, and it was absolutely gorgeous.  We did not expect this, but it was one of the highlights of the day.  The other one was driving through Badlands National Park.

We are running out of time on our trip and we crammed in a lot the last day, so we arrived in the Badlands in the late afternoon and stayed until sunset.  The Badlands are stark and peaceful.  It was kind of poignant: the last major attraction of our trip in the setting sun. 

Earlier we drove down the Needles Highway, in Custer State Park.  P.J.’s Aunt Esther left a pile of postcards of that 11-mile drive, and it was difficult to match them all in the time we had.  But the highway is definitely unique and worth a visit: two-billion-year-old, hard volcanic rocks (many “needle-like”) that were exposed after the surrounding soil eroded away over the eons.

After the Needles Highway, we went to Mount Rushmore— we had to because P.J had never been there and Aunt Esther left post cards.  When I was last there, I remember loudspeakers blaring with either patriotic music or propaganda, completely ruining any sort of experience for me.  Now the memorial has been renovated (1998).  The loudspeakers are gone, definitely an improvement.   But instead, there is an airport-style parking system that charges $11. National Park passes are not honored because it is a private concession.  Our Mount Rushmore parking pass we bought today is valid until the end of the year!  I’ll just have to fly back a couple of times to get my money’s worth (actually P.J. paid for it).  From what I’ve read about George Washington, he might have disapproved of all that “royal treatment” in his honor.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 27: Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 10,408 – Sundance, Eastern Wyoming.

Once Upon a Time, man invented the [New England] hiking trail, narrow with lots of rocks and challenging obstacles.  Then man moved West, where there’s more space, and man invented the wider, smoother hiking trail.  Then hiking trails needed to be made accessible, and they were paved, and man saw that it was good.  Today, I walked around the Devils Tower in Wyoming and discovered another incremental jump in hiking technology— paved hiking trails with speed bumps (for bicycles)!  I can’t wait for hiking trails with traffic lights and interchanges!

All kidding aside, Devils Tower (remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind?) was interesting and impressive.  We walked around its perimeter, at the base.  Watching others climb the tower was an enjoyable spectator sport.

Earlier today, we drove across the Big Horn Mountains, an unusual mountain chain.  The southern end (Cloud Peak Wilderness) is essentially a plateau that was pushed up above the surrounding countryside.  The oldest rocks are on top.  There are no towering peaks like the Grand Tetons along the plateau, but there are deep canyons where roads wind up and down to the high plateau. Powder River Pass, at 9666 feet, was the second highest elevation of our trip (after Wolf Creek Pass).

Before we leave Wyoming: my compliments about the Rest Areas maintained by the state of Wyoming.  They are not only on Interstates but also on the long, endless highways and byways, and they often have informative geological, cultural, and historical displays.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 26: Devils Tower, Wyoming

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 10,066 – Cody, Wyoming.  Until now we’ve had fabulous luck with weather, but the last three days in Yellowstone our luck ran out.  Today started with rain and smoke, then some sun and clouds, and later more rain.  Once we left Yellowstone, skies cleared on our way to Cody, which is in Yellowstone’s rainshadow.

Because of the weather, we spent most of the day in visitor centers, but we also spent time at Hayden Valley where the buffalo roam.  One of the highlights was a bison standing in the middle of the road, blocking traffic.  After a while he decided asphalt is not very nutritious, and people staring at him from those funny glass and metal boxes was annoying, and he moved on.

I want to come back to Yellowstone in the future as a destination and plan it better, and also hope for better weather.

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 9864 – Still in Moran, Wyoming (“local” miles only).  Imagine if you wanted to visit Connecticut but under one condition: You cannot stay in the state, you must stay outside the state and commute in-and-out every day.  That’s what it is like if you don’t have reservations in Yellowstone.  That’s why it is a little too challenging to see everything we wanted in three days. 

When we departed this morning, there was dense smoke again in Grand Teton, near where we are staying.  But in Yellowstone, it was pleasantly sunny.  In the late afternoon, the rain started and the smoke almost disappeared.

Nevertheless we had a good day.  The rain held off till 5 PM and the park has so much varied scenery and wildlife to offer, not just geysers.  Just wish we could stay longer and in a better location.

My advice to potential Yellowstone travelers:  Plan a year in advance. With an RV or a tent, you are more likely to stay in the park, but in the summer even that may not work out.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 24: More Yellowstone National Park

[Photograph © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 9453 – Moran, Wyoming, near Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.  We left Rawlins in the morning and drove through hours and hours of impressively desolate scenery.  We crossed the Great Divide Basin, where water has no way to get to either the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans.  We stopped in Dubois (pronounced “do-boys”) and had lunch outside at the Cowboy Cafe.  Very enjoyable, good food, and pleasant conversation with semi-locals (a girl who lived in Lander but was originally from Wisconsin and was questioning her choice of future mother-in-law).

As we approached northern Wyoming, we saw more and more smoke from forest fires and finally encountered a big mushroom cloud from a fire about 15 miles from where we are staying now.  It is creating its own towering cumulus cloud and from a distance looks like a continuously exploding atomic bomb.  Fortunately, the wind is blowing it away from us. 

In the late afternoon, we arrived at the Grand Tetons, supposedly named by French voyageurs who must not have seen women for a while, because those mountains are much too craggy to evoke that image for me.  My idea of “grand tetons” would look more like shield volcanoes.

As we approached sunset, we arrived at the classic vista point where Ansel Adams took the iconic picture of the Snake River with the Grand Tetons in the backgound.  Lots of people with super-fancy camara equipment were lined up to take their own Ansel Adams picture.  Alas, the mountains were only visible as silhouettes in the smoky haze.  P.J. felt very frustrated.

The Aspens are at peak here.  Difficult to capture foliage glory in the smoke, but somehow my mind’s eye filtered that out.  For me, it was a fabulous sight to round out a very enjoyable day.

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 9151 – Rawlins, Wyoming.  Departing Colorado Springs in the morning, we went north on I-25 and then on US 287 to Laramie, Wyoming, where we had a very slow lunch.  Then on towards Rawlins via I-80.  The landscape is dry and desolate and mostly flat.  Weather was sunny but hazy, probably because of the fires in Wyoming and Idaho.

[Photograph © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]