17 July 2012

Roger informed me this morning that he was ready to go home.  This morning we left from Colorado City CO (south of Pueblo) and headed towards home.  You know you’re in Texas when you see on display longhorns.  This guy was nice enough to stop eating and pose for me.  Another lady came up to take a picture and it turned and walked away.  The lady asked me how come the longhorn stood for me to take a picture and I seriously told her “I’m working on becoming a naturalized Texan.”  To which she replied, “Oh, no wonder, I’m from Illinois.”

We’ve been hearing for years from my Mom that the show in Palo Duro Canyon is very good, so we’re spending the night at Sagebrush campground in Palo Duro Canyon.  When we passed through the entrance gate the thermometer was 100 degrees in the shade at the top of the canyon.  The campground, 600 feet lower, is in the bottom of the canyon and it is hot!  But it’s a dry heat, so it’s not as hot--- I keep repeating this and maybe I’ll believe it someday.  When Roger asked about cellphone service the grizzly bearded elderly gentleman replied “We haven’t had cell service since the tower was assaulted by baseball sized hailstones.  Guess the cell companies took that as a reason to provide some 20^th century tranquility to our visitors.”

 In the park there’s a show called “Texas”.  The plot is set in post civil war Texas.  The main characters are a rancher, who is fencing in land, and a farmer, who is more progressive in his attitude towards the railroad and the growth it will bring.  There’s a lot of Texas patriotism, with a dash of “we’re sorry to the Native Americans” thrown in to be politically correct.  If you don’t feel like putting on a cowboy hat and going to a ho-down by the end, you’re missing the point of the over the top Texas is the greatest state to be in.  The show even has horses on the stage and uses the canyon for a backdrop complete with lightning striking a tree and panhandle prairie fire.  After the story is wrapped up, the Pioneer players have added a patriotic salute to the USA.  They use water cannons, laser colored lights and fireworks set to music to get this message across. 

Well we missed catching up with our friends in Fort Worth.  In the 21st century you'd think we wouldn't have a problem connecting, oh well...

The grand total for the trip was 15,032 miles.  We got home around 6 pm, there was a basket full of mail, and the house was well tended in our absence.  Of course tomorrow we have a lot of catching up to do. 

I hope you won't miss reading my blog.  Until our next grand adventure, there won't be much out of the ordinary to report.

16 July 2012

Because we woke up early, we had an excellent start to our day.  The campground in Fruita was less than 5 minutes away from the entrance of Colorado National Monument Park.  Yesterday we had stopped at a Colorado visitor’s center and I was told to go through the Park from Fuita to Grand Junction.  Based on this advice, we picked our campground and last night selected the hikes we wanted to take today.  The route through the park is a 32 mile scenic drive, with lots of challenging turns and breathtaking views.  With a game plan in mind, we were strolling on Canyon Rim Trail to Window Rock Trail before 8 am.  This was a short hike, only 1.5 miles.  All in all we hiked less than 4 miles today.   There were some very interesting named monoliths that could be seen:  Praying Hands, Kissing Couple, Pipe Organ, Window, and Independence Monument.  On July 4 1911, John Otto climbed Independence Monument and placed a US flag.  The monument is over 400 high and he continued this annual practice until his death.  This tradition continues today, without a break in the tradition.  John Otto was the park’s caretaker.  He lived in a tent.  When he got married, his wife didn’t last very long because he refused to move out of his tent.  This trivia is posted on a sign overlooking Independence Monument.  Perhaps there’s a double meaning for Mr. Otto and the importance of his independence?

 

Roger mapped a route to get us to Pueblo Co today.  We took US 50 (the same 50 outside of Annapolis MD).   The road is mostly 2 lane.  The highpoint is coming across Monarch Pass, at a mere 11,321 feet.  Airplane pilots are required to use oxygen after 10,500 feet.  Our Era chugged over the pass, with only a little bit of huffing and puffing. 

 ’ve also included a picture of one of the many hay trucks we’ve seen, although it is missing its second trailer.  Writing of trailers reminds me that we’ve seen a couple of interesting private haulers: a heavy duty pickup truck with a 5^th wheeler, towing a jet ski; a pickup truck towing a dual axle camper, towing a boat; a pickup truck with a boat on its trailer on top of the truck’s passenger compartment also towing a dual axle trailer—just to mention a few.  Regrettably I didn’t get a picture of the last guy.

We’re spending the night in Colorado City CO, which is also listed as South Pueblo CO, on to New Mexico tomorrow.

15 July 2012

Eastern Utah is only green where irrigated.  There are giant crawling irrigation sprinklers making the land green.  You can easily see where the watering ends.

Dinosaur National Historical Monument was worth the drive and stop.  150 million years ago the caramasaurs roamed the area of the Uintah valley.  Then it is speculated that a flood occurred and killed off a whole bunch that eventually became exposed through continental upwelling.  During the Jurassic period allosaurus showed up.  All types of dinosaur bones have been excavated in the Uintah valley, between the Green and Yamas Rivers.   Most of the valuable bones that were part of one animal were sent off to Carnegie Museum. The first picture is wall of mixed dinosaur bones that was found in the early 1900s.  The wall is now housed inside a viewing building.  The head pictured below is an actual allosaurus skull and not a replica.  The third picture is off some bones still outside in the field.

From Jenkins Utah we headed east and south towards Grand Junction Colorado.  You can definitely tell when you cross into Colorado, as the irrigation stops completely and the scenery turns high desert mountains brown.  The scenic road we took crossed the Douglas Pass, which is at 8,264 feet.  This picture was taken looking down from the pass and where we had just driven up from.

We’re spending the night in Fruita CO.  It is at the “gateway” to Colorado National Monument Park.  We’ll be driving through the 32 mile scenic road tomorrow.  Weather permitting, we plan on doing some short hikes as well.  Right now it’s threatening to rain some more.

14 July 2012

 First stop Craters of the Moon National Monument, which is 18 miles west of Arco Idaho.  About 2200 years ago the last geologic forces caused by Great Rift, which is a volcanic fissure and covers over 750,000 acres.  There is no volcano in CMNM, however all the types of lava results are present.  This includes lava flows, splatter cones, lava tubes, caves, that have grown over the last 15,000 years due to a variety of eruptions.  It was fascinating to see the variety of plants from lichens to lumber pines.  Lichens are the first plant life to appear once the ground can support growth.

We drove through more irrigation.  The crop was green hay or grass that gets cut into large square bales, based on what we saw on 18 wheelers headed west.

 Next stop, Promontory Summit Utah at the Golden Spike National Historic Site.  In January 1863, Central Pacific railroad broke ground in Sacramento CA to start the trans-continental railroad.  Union Pacific started construction from Omaha NB in December 1863.  The two companies were taking advantage of Federal Land Grants to build their respective parts, to such an extent that the railroads actually run parallel for about 200 miles.  Congress had to declare a meeting place, Promontory Summit, in order to force the two companies to connect.  On May 10, 1869, Central Pacific’s Jupiter and Union Pacific’s No. 119, pulled up to the one-rail gap left in the track.  After a golden spike was symbolically tapped, a final iron spike as driven to connect the railroads.  Central Pacific had laid 690 mile of track across the Rockies and Union Pacific 1,086 across the central plains.

We got lucky and didn't get caught in too much rain, although it looked really ominous across the plains.  We’re spending the night in Ogden Utah.

13 July 2012

What do you think of geography wise in terms of eastern Oregon?  I certainly didn’t think of high desert country.  That’s exactly what we drove through today, mile after mile of brown desert with minimal trees and desert bushes sprinkled here and there.  The only green we saw as from irrigation.  The county closest to the Idaho state line produces over 1 million pounds of onions, plus of course potatoes (OreIda), corn, wheat and a variety of different types of hay.  Almost all of this is thanks to either Mathew or Snake River irrigation.

We are now in Idaho.  The eastern part of Oregon and south central western part of Idaho are considered part of the historical Oregon Trail.   The first part of the road in Idaho was windy!  Roger ended up pulling over and did a tire check, because we were being pushed around so much.   Fortunately there wasn’t a problem.  After we got off of I-84 and headed more east than southeast, the wind died down.  We passed through several big acreage grass fire areas on I-84.   Roger measured one black area of over 3 miles on the Interstate.  There was also a big one on US 20, which was in the rocks and made the dark stone darker, but all the grass was gone.  We passed through Sawtooth National Forest and wondered if there were ever any trees in the Sawtooth forest?  All we saw was sagebrush plains.  There were several “open range” signs that lead us to believe that the area was actually part of the Camas Prairie or Snake River Plains as indicated on the Idaho state map.   Once we got off of I-84 and onto US 20 we drove in and out of light rain showers, which made this part of the plains green, whatever the exact name of the area is.  The elevation we were driving at was about a mile high and the mountains that we could see off in the distance were listed as having summits of about 7500 feet or so.  So I guess we were still in what gets called “high country”.  There were snow sticks along US 20, athough not nearly as tall as what we’ve seen elsewhere.

We’re spending the night in Arco Idaho.  It is about 20 miles east from the entrance to Craters of the Moon National Historical Monument.  The game plan for tomorrow is to go back to CMNHP and do the loop and any walks that might interest us, from there we’ll head to Utah.  We drove a lot today, over 450 miles.

12 July 2012

We found sunshine after leaving the Oregon coast.  We estimate that as the crow flies about 20 miles inland, the grey clouds and marine layer were abandoned.  However it took us a while to get there.  From Florence we drove south along the coast to Reedsport.  Then we turned east onto Oregon 138 and found the sunshine.  Oregon 138 parallels the Umquia River for about 60 miles and is a pretty drive when you can see the river.  Otherwise you’re surrounded by tall lumber pines on both sides of the road, traveling in a green tunnel.  We thought the 150 miles to Crater Lake National Park would take under 3 hours, but we were not well informed.  Oregon 138 has a lot of stimulus money road improvement going on.  So several times we were stopped, engine turned off, waiting our turn across miles of one way roadway.  The good news is that the locals will have a much improved road once the roadwork gets finished, whenever that occurs.

Crater Lake is a volcanic lake.  It is the deepest lake in the USA at 1943 feet, third deepest in the world according to our Ranger guide.  We took the Trolley around the lake.  At least that’s the concept.  The trolley is supposed to go all 33 miles around the lake, but we were too early in July for this to happen.  The road connecting the North East part of the lake isn’t open yet.  It should be open next week.  The reason why it is currently closed is that the road crew is just now finishing up winter clean up.  As you can see from the pictures there is still snow on the ground throughout various parts of the park.  The park gets an average of 544 inches of snowfall/year (that’s about 44 feet.)  Of course this doesn’t occur all at one time, but throughout winter which starts the end of September and goes until late May.  The snow packs down over the winter leaving large icy piles of snow that will eventually melt off by the end of August. 

Below are just a few pictures that show the blues of the area.  The lake is a very beautiful shade of blue due to its depth and purity of water.  The blue wavelengths are the only ones that don’t get completely absorbed resulting in the deep blue hue.

 

Roger got to play Pooh sticks this evening. He is not fond of Pooh sticks, but it could have been a lot worse. The toilet is now back to full working order.  I was smelling the tank so I investigated and called in my resident plumber. With some imaginative equipment and triple flushing the tank, I'm a happy camper now. Roger was rewarded with the biggest double scoop of ice we've ever paid for. (Rose Mary I made Roger wash his hands before he got his ice cream, just in case you were wondering.) The flavors were bosenberry cheese cake and no sugar added black cherry. I hope Roger doesn't think fixing the toilet will always result in a big bowl of ice cream.

Tomorrow we'll be heading to Boise Idaho.



Tillamook Air Museum
All these aircraft are fully functional and frequent airshows.

Two seater P-51 

 Size perspective of the large wooden hangar.

ME109 

P-2 Neptune 

P-38 Lightning 

PBY Catalina