Thanks Kids!

One month ago yesterday Rebecca and I left Seattle for Washington DC. It was a wild (and long) ride. You can read back through all the post to see everything we saw and did, but I wanted to take a moment to thank both Rebecca and Adam for joining me for this adventure. I had such a great time for me.

We saw so many things. In case you weren't sure, the United States of America is a very big place. With both kids I had a nearly 900 mile days (895 miles with Rebecca and 892 with Adam).

I wouldn't have made this trip without both of you and I'm very grateful for the time and love you shared with me.

Thank you!

I Love you guys.

Dad

Day 15 - Idaho and the return voyage or "How it all came to an end"

The final day of our trip was also had the earliest starting time of our leg. I set the alarm for 7 because there was a lot of things to do before we left Idaho. By 730 we were on the road to Craters of the Moon. The drive was pretty bleak, lots of potatoes, but there were a few interesting views along the way, like this one:

The craters were really cool. I'd never seen a lava field before, Dad was telling me that it reminded him a lot of Hawaii. I'd expected the rocks to be a lot smoother, boy was I wrong.

Our next stop was going to be City of Rocks but we decided that was too much back tracking so it got nixed,  so we were off to Minidoka. This turned out to be extremely difficult. Minidoka is an old Japanese internment camp in the middle of nowhere Idaho. It's also one of the newest facilities under NPS authority and as such a visitor centers is not yet finished. Apparently they also haven't put up many sign for it either. We drove around these rural dirt roads for half an hour trying to find the place with no luck. We later found that we were closer than we thought.

Once we found our way back to the interstate there was only one thing left on the list for the day, Hagerman Fossil Beds. Google maps failed to provide me with a valid location and instead took us to a little river area where people were swimming. That's where we came across this little waterfall:

Dad used his cunning to find a sign that pointed us in the right direction and we were off. Unfortunately we weren't going to see much. Turns out that about a week before our visit the entire area fell victim to a fire and pretty much everything was shut down. Here are a few shots of the area though:

After touring the area we heading off for the freeway. On our way we went through the town of Hagerman, where we found the visitor center for both the fossil beds and the temporary one for Minidoka. This is where we found out how close we actually were and when the fire happened. There was also a short film about the geology of the fossil beds that was really interesting. Apparently the majority of the cliffs were formed in just eight weeks when an ancient lake in the Utah basin spilled over its banks and water went rushing through the valley.

Then it was back on the freeway and the long drive home. Not much to speak of at this point. We made it to Oregon.

 I've been on the majority of the route from that point on. The one cool thing that happened was while I was driving in eastern Oregon. Since Nebraska I'd wanted to see tumble weeds with no such luck. However while doing about 75 down the interstate one came out of nowhere and hit my door! Shook me up for a bit, but well worth seeing.

Then we crossed the river into Washington.

It was about 8:00pm when we crossed Snoqualmie Pass. We were welcomed back to Western Washington with rain. It was most fitting and very appreciated. After everything we'd seen I was happy to find that home was just as it's always been.

I'm going to do a final wrap up post, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, with my final impressions. All in all though a great trip. Thanks so much Dad for the experience. You rock!

Day 14 - Colorado and Utah or "Where have all the Dinosaurs gone?"

First off I'd like to apologize for the delay in getting the final posts up. Our hotel Friday night was a bit lacking in the wifi department and I decided to go out for a couple beers instead. Then when I got back to Seattle I was just wanting to relax for a couple days. This is how it all went down either way.

By the time I woke up Dad had already got the car over to have the breaks checked out. Turns out it needed new pads so we had a few hours of just hanging out in the hotel room. Wasn't so bad, it was a nice place. It was more like a hunting lodge than anything else. There were stuffed bears as you walked into the lobby and various horns scattered about in strange places. This is how I will remember Craig, CO. Here is a shot that Dad got while waiting for the car. Apparently it wasn't just the hotel that had a thing for hunting:

Once we were sure that we could stop safely it was off to Dinosaur National Monument!

The monument is divided into two areas. The first is the canyon area. I was amazed at how beautiful it was. When I'd decided to stop by I was expecting it to be all about dinosaurs but the cliffs and canyons were a pleasant surprise.

I've never been to the Grand Canyon which is what Dad compare this to. I feel like I have to go now because this was magnificent. The variation in color and texture was surreal, the pictures don't do it justice. While we were touring this area Dad told me that he wasn't so excited about the idea of going to a place to look at dinosaur bones. That'd be "lame" in his opinion, so he was happy that it wasn't just a bunch of bones. 

After leaving the canyon area we had to get back into Utah (a portion of the canyon is in Utah):

The Fossil area was the second section which was a little disappointing and a little unexpected. Turns out that the area that has all the dinosaur bones wasn't open. You read that correctly. Dinosaur NM had no dinosaur bones to be seen (with the exception of a few in a temporary visitors center). You can imagine the frustration. It seemed that everywhere we went something was closed for some reason. But it turned out to be fairly interesting in the end. Driving through there were even more crazy rock formations all around us. And to top it off there was a variety of petroglyphs etched into the rocks.

This is just a small sampling of the pictures I took. There was so many things to photograph I went a little crazy. But I figure it's better to have too many than to regret not taking more. 

By the time we were finished at Dinosaur we decided to skip the caves in Utah. It was too late to do them and we were both starting to want to get home. So instead of staying in Salt Lake City we set our sights on Pocatello, ID. 

Since we weren't staying in SLC there wasn't much reason to stop there, but I did snag this picture while we were cruising through:

We also stopped just north of the city in a place called Roy, UT to get some food at Burger Bar (a triple D site). The food was great, the only down side was that it was a drive in and we had to eat in the car. Usually not such a horrible thing, but after spending 10 hours a day in it for a week you can understand that I wasn't enthusiastic about it.  The burger made up for it though.

Not much else to speak of. We drove north to Pocatello in the dark and got ourselves a room. Dad was beat and called it an early night while I ventured next door for a couple of beers. Didn't expect a couple things about that. First, Idaho apparently doesn't have indoor clean air laws so the place was smoky as all hell. Secondly, rural Idahoans are a strange bunch when it comes to karaoke. We'll leave it at that. 

Day 13 - Rocky Mountain National Park or "I've never been so high in my life"

This morning started off early. I got up and finished uploading a bunch of pics from yesterday. I had hoped to get a post out, but as you can see that didn't happen till this evening. We had breakfast with the Greenfield's and conversed for a little while before I had to start pushing to get on the road. However that wasn't until after I tried to breathe my coffee and nearly spit out a whole mouth full on the entire table. I was able to choke it back, but the downside to that was my choking for about five minutes. It was pretty hilarious.

But back to the real story. We left around 10 o'clock, a little later than intended, but still a decent hour. It wasn't far up I-25 before we started back west. Pretty much as soon as we shifted directions we began to gain altitude. The Roosevelt National Forest was pretty. I had been wondering if the Rockies were really that rocky. Rest assured, they are.

Estes Park was pretty cool. It's the kind of place I could see myself spending summers at.

Now you may notice that little black dot. It's in all my pictures. I'm not too happy about it. Honestly I'm really angry. I'm hoping that once I take some more time (I should say Rebecca takes some more time) to figure it out it can be fixed. Hopefully.

Just after Estes Park we entered Rocky Mountain National Park.

We weren't even two miles in when we encountered a herd of Elk roaming around in the lowlands.

There was one male running the show and another would be suitor straggling behind. One of the rangers stopped to take some pictures with us and told us the term for it, but I can't remember. Dad might.

After this we ran up to Hidden Valley for a bathroom break. There's a little creek that runs through that I was diggin'.

Then I met a new friend!

His name is Barry

It was after this point that Dad got a little uncomfortable with the whole scene. You see he isn't a big fan of heights and we just kept going higher and higher while the drops got closer and closer. At Many Parks Curve I got out and got some great pics. I'm really hoping that my attempt at a panoramic turns out, but I have to spend some time on that one.

Now while I was out gallivanting along the edge, Dad was making sure no one stole the car.

The roads were just as beautiful as the vistas.

The next stop was at Forest Canyon. On the way up we hit a short of milestone. I can say with certainty I'd never been that high before.

Once we got up to the Forest Canyon view point, wow. Spectacular! It was so stunning that Dad even had to get out and have a  closer looker.

Now to give you a better idea of how nerve racking some of this driving was take a look at this shot where the road winds around and then seems to drop off entirely (even I'll admit, it was a steep drop).

Okay I'm going to pick up the pace a little bit with this post. Next major thing we saw was Lava Cliffs.

Here we have a shot of Dad driving, almost like he's flying a helicopter.

Just before the Gore Range look out we hit the highest point of our trip.

The view was just amazing, but there was one thing that seemed to be missing - snow! The majority of these peaks are over 14,000 feet high and there was only the occasional spec of snow left. It must get a lot hotter here than I would have guessed. As a frame of reference for all you Washingtonians out there, Mt Rainier is 14,411 and can you remember the last time you saw it without any snow?

We had lunch up at the Alpine Visitors Center (elevation 11,796). Didn't take any pictures here because the place was tore up due to construction. We were actually about to find that the whole west side of the park was under construction along the roadway for repaving. Now we were going slow to begin with, about 25 mph, but we came to a grinding halt and ended up averaging probably 10 mph for the majority of the road down. Most of that was because they had pilot cars set up and we spent a lot of time waiting.

I really thought I got some pictures of the Colorado River at this point, apparently not. I've seen the Colorado before, at Hoover Dam, but this was nothing like that. It's a small windy river that contrasts beautifully with the surrounding landscape. I'm really kickin' myself about this now.

When it was all said and done we'd spent 6 hours traveling about 70 miles. By far the slowest traveling day so we had to make up for it a bit. We cruised for while through north-central Colorado. The landscape seemed to change every time I looked up.

After a little while we decided to call it quits in Craig, CO where I am currently sitting at a desk in our hotel room writing this post for you. Tomorrow should be interesting. We're going to start off by having the brakes double checked, there was a slight noise and it's better to be safe than sorry. We're also staying at a place that happens to be adjacent to a dealer so they should be able to help us out. Then it's off to Dinosaur National Monument, Timpanogos Caves and Salt Lake City, UT!

Phew, I can't believe I'm now all caught up on blogging! YAY!!!!!