Black Hills South Dakota

Well here it is. The last installment of pix. The rain was still pounding in Denver so we decided to move on.

We still drove through a fair bit of rain. It finally let up when we reached Wyoming. Met a couple of bikers at a rest stop that had traveled to the west coast from Pennsylvania. They'd been in the rain for a couple of days as well.

We took a highway off the beaten path and needed to make a pit stop. When you're off the interstate you have to rely on small towns you meet along the way. Well we came across a street of a town, but it had a bar. Guy running it was very friendly, but unfortunately the "rest rooms" weren't working. So we had to use some porta potties outside.
It was small town enough to allow people to have their beers to go...lol.

The last rest stop we hit before leaving Wyoming had all kinds of signs touting it's ecological and environmental foresight. Basically it was an outhouse with no running water. Big whoop...

Reached Hot Springs and were checked in by late afternoon. Had supper and drove around a bit.

We decided to move on the next day and get to Rapid City for a couple of nights.

On the way there we went through Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and a neat little town called Keystone. Had supper there and looked around the numerous shops. Very tourist freindly.
We've already decided that the Black Hills is a place where one could spend a few days looking around.
At Mt Rushmore, we took a path that was used during the filming of National Treasure 2. It's quite an amazing story, the carving of the heads that is.
Did I mention the donkeys? Seems that along the wildlife loop you run into this group of donkeys/burros that know you have food. So they kinda block the road and come walking up to your window. It was kinda cool.

After a day of sightseeing we headed for our hotel in Rapid City. Holiday Inn Express. Unfortunately, we went to the wrong one at first. There are 3 of them. The next one didn't have our name either. Upon further review, we realized they had us in as Beters instead of Peters.
Once we had that straightened out it was all good.

Next day we headed off to Deadwood. I'd been there back in 1980. It's quite different. Almost every shop is a Casino. Apparently, it's how they funded the refurbishing of the town in 1993.

We did find a museum that had the history of Deadwood, as well as, the story of Wild Bill Hickock who was shot and killed in the #10 Saloon in Deadwood.

From there we went to the Crystal Caves. There's several to choose from, Rushmore Caves, Wind Caves etc. This one was the least strenuous. Believe me it was strenuous enough. Very interesting though. We didn't realize the extent of the series of caves in the Black Hills and that they dated back thousands of years.

Aug 19: Checked out and headed for Fargo. On I90 we started to notice, about every half mile, signs about a place called Wall Drug. Soooo, we decided to check it out. Glad we did! Nice little place, family friendly, lots of places to eat and shops to check out.

We hit Fargo by evening. Found a Select Inn and again got the Senior Rate. Did breakfast at a Denny's in the morning and the waitress suggested we check out the Burlington Coat Factory. Wow, what a store! Lots of stuff and in BIG sizes. Picked up some stuff for Jax and Alex then headed home.

No problem at the border. We were home by 4:30. Still had a couple of days to unwind before going back to work.

Great trip! Figured out some things we'd do differently, but isn't that always the case?

As per usual, if you want to see more pix, click on the title of this chapter.

Thanks for coming along....

Albuquerque to Denver - Sunshine to Rain

Aug 15: Another sunny warm day. After breakfast we checked out and headed off to Denver.
On the way we went through Santa Fe where we stopped at an Albertson's to pick up some lunch and snack stuff for the road.

We were really enjoying the whole southwestern Mesa style colours and bldg styles.

After Santa Fe, we came across some people rafting down none other than the Rio Grande River. The name brought back a flood of memories of all the westerns we'd seen on TV as kids. Jax, of course, had no idea what we were talking about.

We did stop to take pix. Little more relaxed pace out here, so the winding roads through the hills are more enjoyable.

The Garmin we borrowed from friends really came in handy. Sometimes it was difficult to trust, but it usually picked the right route for us and took us to sights like the Rio Grande and on through a little town called Taos, New Mexico. Very cute, quaint little town. Arlene picked up a newsletter with some history on Taos. According to the newsletter, Taos is one of the country's oldest art colonies, historic trading center, world class skiing destination in winter and summer getaway. For those of you who read, English novelist D.H. Lawrence is quoted as saying, "It was the greatest experience from the outside world that I ever had. It certainly changed me forever." It has a large number of B&B's and is located in a valley ringed by mountains.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stay there. But, it was certainly one of those spots along the way we marked for the future.

As you can imagine our elevations changed constantly. On this leg we went through a Pass that reached 9413 ft. As we were travelling this stretch our sunny warm day had plunged from 30C down to 13C and poured rain. We later found out these were the same rains that caused a dam to break in the Grand Canyon we'd just left. It was a little eery.

As you can see by the pix we saw the storm coming. There was a lot of lightning, but I couldn't catch any with the camera.

There was a fair bit of road construction so along with the rain it slowed us down. We finally reached our hotel around 8 pm. We stayed at a La Quinta hotel. Nice room. We were bushed so we just stayed in and listened to the pounding rain.

Again, if you click on the title of this chapter, you'll be taken to the pix we took.

Flagstaff to Albuquerque

Aug 14: Had breakfast by the hotel pool again. Pretty easy to get used to this! After two nice days in Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon it's off to Albuquerque today. All things considered it's a relatively short drive compared to some of the distances we've driven on this trip.

Such a mix of desert like conditions to tall pines then back to desert and rock. Temp was 34C at 10:30 this morning. Looking to be another warm one.

Stopped and took some pix at a rest stop. Lots of red rock. Interesting signage inviting people to walk their pets in an area with poisonous snakes and insects...hmmmm....

Stopped at a place, or rather two places on the same spot, that both sold Indian crafts.
One was a little more modern than the other. That one had large billboards advertising it as "Indian City". The other, a little smaller and plainer had a billboard right beside the other and a large red arrow pointing to it's location. It advertised being privately owned and therefore better prices. That was not the case however. The prices were actually a fair bit more.
So off went back to the bigger store and had a $7 lunch for all three of us! Gotta love that.

Arrived in Albuquerque around 3:30. Hit the pool for a bit then off to a Mexican restaurant called High Noon in Old Albuquerque. Interestingly locals told us not to walk alone in that area and to make sure we hid everything in our car. We didn't really encounter anything.

Restaurant was really nice, food was great and they had live music. A fella playing classical guitar ala Ben Kehler. It was a very nice evening. By the way, the bottle Jax has is Root Beer. We've found that she's a pretty light eater.

Back to the room to catch the Bomber game on CJOB via the internet. Jacki did more reading (she finished 5 books during the trip) and Arlene caught up with the Olympics.

Tomorrow we head off to Denver.

The Grand Canyon

We woke up early to get a good start to the day. Every place we've stayed has offered breakfast. The one thing we've noticed coming south is that in addition to the usual bagels, cereal etc are biscuits and gravy. The biscuits are similar to what Arlene has made before and the gravy's a bit like schmaunt vat or a cream gravy. People put a few bisquits on their plate, smother it in the gravy, mash it all together and go to town!
Never did try it.
They also have an instant omelet. Basically it's a semi prepared egg thing folded over with cheeze in the middle. You throw it in the microwave and voila! You have an omelet. Throw some sausage or bacon on top, maybe some biscuits and gravy and you're set for the day.

We took our breakfasts and sat out by the pool looking out to the San Francisco Peaks. Could it get any better than this?

Nice thing about Flagstaff is that it's less than an hour from the Grand Canyon. Trying to book a hotel/motel in the actual Grand Canyon area was next to impossible.

Lot of the stores or Trading Posts as they are called are run by the Navajo Indians. Nice stuff and busy this time of year. One place we stopped was ok to look around in until about 6-7 tour busses came rolling in. It was like the United Nations had landed. Italian, French, Slovac, British, Japanese, Chinese you name it and they were there.

It got a little crazy so we moved on. At one of the many "scenic view" stops along the way we found a couple of long rows of Navajo selling crafts. It was kind of like the booths you'd see at Harvest Festival or Corn and Apple only they were all connected under long roofs.

The beauty of it was it wasn't quite as commercialized as the "Trading Posts" were and there was no tax to pay!

This is also where we climbed down to a viewing area that thankfully had railing all around it. There was one section, right at the end of the area that had room for one person to squeeze into and look straight down as it was built right on the edge! I was shaking as I peered over the edge to take a pic.

Amazing sight though. Again, the camera didn't catch the full feel of it all.

About this time it was around 37-38C. I know it's a dry heat, but it's hot nontheless. I give full credit to these people that hang out here from sun up to sun down selling their crafts.

There were a couple of different places to stop in this park. They run all around the rim and you can see by the pictures, that's a large area to cover. We started at the east end and worked our way to the southern rim. We stopped at a place that featured an old brick tower you could climb up and take pics from. It was crawling with people and the view we had from below was spectacular anyway.

There was a snack place and grocerie store here so we stopped for a bite to eat. Cafetria style and it went slow due to the many different languages being spoken.

We moved on to an area called Grand Canyon Village. It featured some hotels and a starting point for train rides and mule rides to the bottom of the Canyon. We didn't plan the time or else it would've been nice to try one or the other. I think I'd probably prefer the train to riding a donkey to the bottom.

We took a scenic route back to Flagstaff. A little hot tub time, more Italian at the Roma Pizza place we ate at yesterday.

Tomorrow it's off to Albuquerque...to make a left turn...;-)

Click on the chapter title to see more pix.

Vegas to Flagstaff, Arizona

Woke up at 4:30 am (would be 6:30) back home. Called a quick family meeting and decided to make a break for it while the traffic was still light.

So we packed up and checked out a day early. Staff was ok with it, but because we booked the room through Expedia, they wouldn't do the refund. Said we had to do that through Expedia. So I phoned Expedia, they said the hotel had to do it. However, the person at Expedia was nice enough to call the Tropicana immediatly and process the refund.

The thing about Vegas is it never sleeps. People were still busy in the Casino. Watched as one guy, who had too much to drink, tried arguing with one of the pit bosses about a bet he should have won. His claim was that someone moved his chip to a different number than the one he was betting on.
I figured, good luck with that buddy.

It was still stinking hot at 5 am as we were leaving. Traffic was indeed lighter and on the outskirts we saw places we would rather stay. That way we could visit the strip rather than be in the middle of it. Oh well, next time.

We didn't realize it at the time but the road we took to Flagstaff took us right over the Hoover Dam. What a neat surprise!
Now, something you should know about me is that I don't like heights. I know this is weird for a tall guy, but it's the truth. So all these hairpin turns on narrow roads amongst the rocks were a little unnerving for me.
We did stop and take some pix. It's quite an amazing sight. Can't imagine what would happen if this thing broke. I guess that's why there's troopers all over the place.

After the Dam, we headed on through some desert like terrain spotted with the odd house trailer. This really felt like you were in the middle of nowhere. Have no idea what people do out here. There wasn't any vegetation for animals to speak of. Land didn't look like you could grow anything on it.

Heading southeast it was back into the mountains. We stopped for gas at a town called Kingman, Arizona. The gas attendent noticed one of our tires had a leak. As it turned out, all four tires needed replacing as the rubber was seperating from the belts. This was a bit of a kick in the teeth, but what are you gonna do? Roll the dice? We'd seen tons of blown tires on the side of the road and in this heat, that wasn't something we were prepared to take a chance on.

So, new tires were installed while we had breakfast in a quaint little place called Lotta Lou's. Finding some of these little places are the highlight of the trip for us. Had a nice visit with the owners. Everything done by pen and paper, old style cash register. She even counted my change back, a lost art form for sure!

With new tires on we went. We reached Flagstaff around noon and found a nice place to stay for a couple of nights. The Fairfield Marriot. For us the main criteria was a clean room, non-smoking and free WiFi! Being connected allowed us to keep up with what was happening back home and communicate as was necessary. Also, helped in checking weather, maps etc.

We checked out Historic Flagstaff. Nice area to walk around with lots of shops to explore. We had a late lunch at an outdoor oriental cafe which was really nice. Really relaxing. It rained a bit, but we were under a roof so no problem.

Took a pic of a plaque dedicated to Howard Krueger. Now I'm guessing it's not the same one involved with 99.9 Bob FM, but interesting nontheless.

Back at the room, caught up with downloading pix and watching the Olympics. All American coverage of course.

Went for another walk in the evening and found an Italian place, the owner was from Italy, that made great pizza/pasta.

Then it was off to bed. Tomorrow...the Grand Canyon!

Again, click on the title of this chapter to see pix from this leg of the trip.

Cheers!

Idaho to Vegas via Salt Lake City

Hi, still catching up. We've done a lot of driving. When we left Idaho Falls, we felt refreshed and energized. We'd just finished a loooonnnng day of driving and were lucky to get a great room with great beds! As it turned out, we'd need the energy for this leg of the trip. Idaho has a few different looks to it. Some parts look like desert, some normal and some like the moon. We also noticed as we drove that the speed limit began to creep up. The posted speed was 75 MPH, but most were going faster. This was really evident when we hit Utah. There was so much scenery to take in, it was hard to do while driving that fast. Luckily we had Jacki along who took a lot of pix from the back seat of the car. She did a good job of learning on the fly when using my camera.

A lot of reddish rock in the hills of Utah. If you click on the title of this chapter you'll see some of the pix. Scenery is really nice in Utah, the pictures just don't do it justice. We didn't get to the arches although it would've been interesting as one of them collapsed while we were on our trip.

We had planned on looking around Salt Lake City, but when we hit the freeway there, it was like getting flushed right through. I kid you not....I was doing 80 MPH and people were passing me like I was standing still! Six lanes of traffic, everyone on a cell phone and vehicles zooming across lanes like nothing. The craziest ones were the women in huge SUV's on cell phones.

It took an hour to get through like this. I think Arlene needed about that much time to pry my white knuckles off the wheel. More great scenery, then more mountains as we entered a corner of Arizona. Beautiful amazing awesome scenery!! I just wish it was a little slower pace going through so that we could enjoy it more. No place to pull off and take it in. So we made a spot which freaked Arlene out. I just pulled over, problem was it was around a corner so it was hard for anyone to see us. Getting back on the road was a bit of a "gun it" experience. LOL.

When we finally got on the other side of these, it opened up into the desert of Nevada leading to Vegas. Temp at this point was 43C. It was hot! Basically sand and sparse brush all around us. Not sure what people do that live in some of the homes we saw out in the middle of nowhere.
Finally made it to Vegas. We were booked into the Tropicana. Little did we rookies realize it was in the heart of the strip! Crazy busy down there and ridiculously hot.
When we finally found the hotel and a parking spot we went to check in.....an hour later (long line up) we went to get our stuff. I saw one of those baggage carts outside the hotel so I grabbed one to help bring our stuff in. Big mistake! It seems regular folk can't use those. You have to hire one of the bell hops to do that for you. We passed on that and wound up dragging our stuff in ourselves. (Yes we were on a budget)
Our room was on the 12th floor and it was evident right off the hop the A/C wasn't close to keeping up with the heat. Older style hotel, which was ok for character. If only the room had been cleaner. There were stains all over the floors, we found two pairs of earrings near the beds and there were two wires hanging out of the wall where the smoke alarm used to be.
We went downstairs to have a late supper, took a walk around. It was crawling with people. The Tropicana is on a major intersection kind of like a Portage and Main, only dressed up. There are overhead crosswalks around the whole intersection with escalators taking you up and down. This is done so as not to disrupt the non-stop traffic below. It's a very busy place with all kinds of flashing signs inviting passers by to come in.
Maybe it was the long day, maybe it was the heat, but we just couldn't get into the swing of Vegas. In fairness, it appeals to a lot of people and looks like it could be a fun place. Just not our speed. So we decided to cut our stay short and only stay one night instead of two.

Next stop...Flagstaff Arizona.

Bismarck to Idaho Falls

So I've been a little behind in getting updates on this thing. Way too busy driving and seeing stuff. We took off from Bismarck around 9 am. Really friendly service at the Select Inn we stayed at. Driving west we were again surprised at the change in terrain. We saw a scenic view turnoff and decided to take a look. What opened up was a sampling of the Badlands. The view was beautiful. Again, we've been so amazed at the scenery and changes in elevation, soil type and temperature. On this leg, while we were traveling through Montana we went from 37C down to 19C in a hurry as some wind and rain hit us while going through the start of some rugged areas.
We stopped in Billings for lupper and had some great food at a place called Famous Dave's BBQ.
It was recommended by a friend of mine and didn't disappoint. It's kind of like a Montana's in Winnipeg. Although people in Montana had never heard of Montana's....hmmm
It was a long day driving through some winding mountain roads. The regulars have no problem doing 75 mph through these areas....me not so much. The tough thing was to try and drink it all in while concentrating on keeping the car from going over a guard rail!
We took a secondary road which cut through part of Yellowstone and a really pretty mountain range which shot us out to the other side into Idaho and some spectacular cottage country.
Again, a little stressful for a prairie boy to be driving through mountain on one side and sheer drop on the other. All this with speed.
We did make it to Idaho Falls after about 13 hours. We figured we'd rather spend more time on the road early so that we could spend more time in the south. Found a very nice Best Western - CottonTree Inn. Pillow top beds, 24 hr access to pool area, free breakfast, free wi-fi. Just what the Dr ordered for a long day on the road.
If you click on the title of this chapter for this blog, it will take you to some of the pix we took on this leg of the trip. More to follow...