Day 90 - 23 Sept '23 - Carlsbad to Santa Rosa. We left the bustling metropolis that was Carlsbad, without having breakfast. This was not by choice.
The motel we were in, which had been fabulously renovated, had the worst provided breakfast we have encountered. No fruit, no milk, no hot water, no plates, no bread, one yoghurt, one type of cereal (instant porridge), one pastry, jam jars for everyone to share from, some microwaveable burritos, and a corn dog. They did have juice, so I had three cups of orange juice before we went back to our room for some bowls of our own cereal...
...which we promptly put down the toilet, as it turned out the fridge in the room hadn't been keeping anything cold, and our milk had turned sour.
Never mind!
We drove through Roswell today, and went to the UFO Museum. What a fascinating place! We again got to teach the kids about conspiracy theories, but after reading all the information boards inside, it sure did raise an awful lot of questions about what the government covered up in 1947, and why they would need to change their story 40 years later. Hmm...
Annoyingly, the information that was provided wasn't quite enough to give you everything you wanted to know; it was like reading chapter 3-7 of a 10 chapter book, so we didn't have the context at the start, nor the details at the finish.
We of course took obligatory photos with some of the MANY alien models around town!
By this time we were all pretty hungry, and had an amazing lunch at a local restaurant (none of us felt like sandwiches, again). I had a Mexican dish called chile relleno, which was two large peppers stuffed with cheese and then battered and deep fried, served with rice and beans and salad. Oh man, it was soooo yummy! And not very spicy at all (although the bit at the stalk that still had seeds was quite a bit hotter).
We continued our journey through the most depressing landscape so far. Previously, everything (including the plants) were brown. This time, there weren't really any plants to speak of. Just a long, long, loooong straight road through a vast wilderness of neverending nothing.
"Hey look!" Dan suddenly called out. "Look at the...thing!"
We looked, but weren't sure what 'thing' he was referring to. And then we all laughed.
"Ha ha ha, 'look at the thing'!!"
"What 'thing' Dan? There's nothing out there!"
Our stop for tonight was a small town called Santa Rosa, situated on the old Route 66. It was quite sad to see the run-down and closed cafes and shops, that would have once been thriving before the interstate took all the traffic.
Santa Rosa's other claim to fame was the Blue Hole, one of America's most popular scuba diving sites! It is about 24m across and 24m deep, although there is a capped off tunnel network that goes to 59m deep.
When we stopped to have a look, there were apparently 30 divers in the cerulean blue water. We watched a couple of people jump in for a swim, albeit briefly, as the water temperature was just 17°C.
Day 91 - 24 Sept '23 - Santa Rosa to Colorado Springs. Just in case you'd been wondering, the kids are still not sleeping well in the same bed. We now automatically bring their sleeping bags into our motel room, and last night it was Abi who ended up sleeping on the floor.
The arguments are still the same:
"He keeps moving his legs."
"Her arms are on my side."
"He is pulling the covers off me."
"She keeps touching me."
Sometimes both of them sleep on the floor, sometimes it's just one of them; it depends on who is making the most fuss!
The road to Colorado became a little more intersting to look at, with the occasional hill and flat-topped peaks, although at times, it did look a bit The Hills Have Eyes-ish. Especially when we were the only car on the road...in either direction...for miles at a time...with no cellphone reception...
The temperature also dropped quite dramatically from the sweltering 38°C we'd had just the day before, to a positively glacial 22°C. It's amazing what a few kilometres (okay, 823km) of travelling north will do.
Before checking in to our motel for the night, we went to the Garden of The Gods.
This is a striking natural landscape of thin sheets of red rocks, jutting out of the land like the spikes of a stegosaurus, and in 1909, the children of the owner of the land gifted it to the city of Colorado Springs, for it to be kept as a free and public park for all to enjoy.
We decided just to do a short 3km walk on a paved trail, that took us around the nearest spikes. It seemed like half of Colorado was also there!
Only trained and permitted climbers were allowed to go higher than 10' up the rocks, but there were a couple of places the average Joe Bloggs could scamper up a little.
It sure was lovely to be waking around in the sunshine without feeling sweat running down our backs! Only a few more hours of travelling north before we head west and south again, so we shall enjoy the reprieve while it lasts.
Day 92 - 25 Sept '23 - Colorado Springs to Morrill. What an interesting night we had! It was a cheap motel, with some dubious looking people and cars (ones full of all their belongings), but it was clean.
The walls were also paper thin...we got to listen to the man in the next room coughing and sneezing in the middle of the night, and around 6am we heard some puppies crying!
Our first stop of the day was Red Rocks Amphitheatre, in Boulder, Colorado. It was an incredible natural amphitheatre that had been enhanced with seating and a roof over the stage.
They were setting up for a Counting Crows concert that night; there have been performances here since 1911, and it seems to be one of those venues that bands need to tick off, as the list of who'd performed here was massive.
All the rocks were again jutting out of the ground at crazy angles. It must have required a terrific amount of force to alter the landscape so much. We could see spikes of rocks tens of kilometres in the distance, following along an apparent fault line.
Our next exciting stop was a garage in Fort Collins, for our rental car's obligatory oil change. It didn't take very long, and we were on the road again in about 20 minutes - we didn't even have to get out of the car! Totally different to the two hours we had to wait the last time.
We had a brief stop at the Wyoming Information Centre, and were given a bunch of brochures and maps by a very helpful lady who asked us where we were headed.
"We're staying in Morrill," we answered.
"Morrill?"
"Yes."
"Morrill, Nebraska?"
"Yes."
"I grew up near there, I didn't know there was anywhere to stay there."
"Yes, we're staying at a Travelodge there."
"Oh! I've never heard anybody say they were travelling to Morrill, never mind staying there!"
"Really?"
"You'll find out why, when you get there."
Sure enough, as we drove through the town to our motel, we realised what she meant. It had a motel, a shop (which closed at 6pm), a diner (that had no gluten free items), a petrol station (where we bought some petrol station food for dinner), and a tavern that looked even more rustic than its name suggested. But it was much cheaper here than in the next biggest town nearby, and one town closer to our next stop. Plus, it meant we ticked another state off the list, and puts us at 23 now! And yes, we are counting the ones we drive through, even if just for a few minutes.
Day 93 - 26 Sept '23 - Morrill to Mount Rushmore. I had a shitty sleep. The room was dark, and the bed was comfy, but my nose was blocked with whatever Dan had given me, the bed was only a double so we were squashed, and every little noise was annoying - more so than usual.
Consequently, when it was time to get up, I didn't want to. But it was definitely a relief to clear my nose out in the hot and powerful shower!
We drove through a lot of wilderness today crossing Nebraska and Wyoming. Even though it was vast, and seemingly endless, it didn't look as desolate as before, just empty, which in itself was bizarre, as there were more farmhouses here than we had seen elsewhere.
Our first stop for the day was Crazy Horse Memorial, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This is a granite mountain sculpture that will be the biggest in the world when it's completed...whenever that will be, possibly by the time Alex and Abi have grandchildren, based on their existing track record.
It was started in 1948, and is entirely public-funded by donations and admission fees. Twice in fact, the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski declined a $10,000,000 payment from the government as he believed they wouldn't complete it to the Indians' deserved needs. So far, only Crazy Horse's face, part of his arm, and most of his hand have been done. He sure will look impressive when he's finished, riding a horse with his hair billowing behind him.
After Crazy Horse, we drove 20 minutes up the road to see Mount Rushmore National Memorial. What an impressive sight to see!
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Unfortunately, the memorial never got completed due to budget cuts, the war, and the sculptor Gutzon Borglum dying - Washington was supposed to have more of his coat on show, and Lincoln's hands were supposed to be gripping the lapels of his coat. Being government funded, it was finished in just 14 years, not like Crazy Horse, still going after 70 years.
Following this, we drove further down the same road to Custer State Park, to see the wild buffalo that have been reintroduced.
Currently, there are around 1500 roaming this state park, as well as pronghorn, white tail deer, burros, coyotes, mountain lions, and prairie dogs.
Seeing the buffalo just standing by the side of the road was pretty awesome, and we could only imagine what it must have been like a couple of hundred years ago, when they roamed in the hundreds of thousands.
We stayed in the town of Custer tonight, and enjoyed a rare dinner out (as our room didn't have a microwave). I had a delicious Korean bulgogi beef with coconut rice and broccoli, Dan had good old fish and chips, Alex had a burger, and Abi surprised us all by having a smoked trout BLT with broccoli as her side instead of chips! (And it was yummy, as I ate the second half of her burger).
Day 94 - 27 Sept '23 - Badlands and Devils Tower. We had planned on heading west towards Yellowstone today, but instead decided to go backwards a bit, and visit the Badlands, two hours in an easterly direction.
What an incredible geological place to see! Flat land everywhere, that would suddenly drop hundreds of metres to more flat land. The rocks were striped white and pink, and formed in such a way as to look like draped folds of material, or fondant icing over the top of a cake before you smoothe it down.
It went on, and on, and on, so that the distance could only logically be measured in time instead of miles, as in "those hills are a month's ride away".
Homesteaders that were granted rectangular parcels of land here, irrespective of geography or agricultural usage, soon called them "starvation claims" and moved back to cities. It's not hard to see why.
Originally, the Lakota tribe found this area bounteous, but French trappers in the 1700s had different opinions, and later the Lakota also changed their mind, hence the name Bad Lands.
We walked along one trail, over the tops of the crumbling rocks, and marvelled at the change in landscape. Sudden drops were everywhere - this was not a time for selfies! That being said, not a single one of the 44 photos I took here, do any justice at all; the perspective and expansiveness is completely lost. (I also got to try out the pretty cool remote capture ability of my camera!).
Because we kept stopping at every viewpoint, the 67 mile loop road took quite a long time! We eventually got to the end, and went back on the highway heading west, at the legally allowed speed of 80mph (128kph). The shudders and vibrations, no doubt from the innumerable potholes and cracks we have driven over, meant it was much more comfortable at a more sedate 77mph (124kph). I would like to stress, the car was much more comfortable - I didn't much enjoy going that fast!
Another geological marvel we were heading to was Devils Tower, more correctly known as Bears Lodge Butte. (As an aside, the US Naming Board have decreed that no place shall be named in the possessive form, therefore no apostrophe, in case you were querying my lack of punctuation!). This was the world's largest example of a columnar butte, and because of the vertical parallel spires of rocks, a favourite with crack climbers.
We got there just after 6pm, to see it bathed in the setting sun. It stands 264m from base to summit, and most of the columns are hexagonal. It was also the United States' first national monument, so named in 1906.
By the time we checked in to our motel in a town called Gillette ("The best a man can get" I kept saying, EVERY time the town name was said), it was 7:30pm. Our room was cheap, and sometimes you get what you pay for - hopefully the cigarette smell that permeated the reception, restaurant, corridor, and our room, doesn't seep into our bags too deeply.
I'll buy some Febreeze tomorrow!
Day 95 - 28 Sept '23 - Gillette to Cody. It was a brisk 13°C when we got up today, with the smell of snow in the air. We were heading towards Yellowstone today, and we'd spoken to someone yesterday who was there the day before, and it had suddenly snowed while they were eating lunch!
The motel provided us a cooked breakfast, which was delicious. The restaurant still stank of cigarette smoke, so we ate as quickly as we could. The beds were comfy and the motel was quiet, but we wouldn't recommend it based on the smoke smell alone. Luckily, it seemed the smell didn't permeate our belongings.
We decided to take the scenic route through Wyoming, which wound through mountain passes and expansive farmland. We have certainly seen some incredible landscapes on our trip so far, but nothing soothes my soul quite as much as mountains and trees. For Dan it's the ocean, although I could get him with mountains and trees if there was a river running through it.
We had an oh-so-fun time in the car, with Alex and Abi arguing over crayons. In fact, Dan and I started laughing at the ridiculousness of it.
"I gave Abi my crayons yesterday and she has USED them!" Alex complained. "And now she won't let me use hers!"
"No," Abi replied, "as I did texting with you on my kindle like you asked."
"Mummy! Mummy!! Abi used my crayons, and now they're used, and she won't let me use hers!"
"I'm sorry," I said while laughing, "how do you not use a crayon?"
"It's a crayon!" Dan joined in, also laughing. "It's going to get used - that's the whole point of a crayon!"
Then the wheels fell off: Alex hit Abi, Dan slammed on the brakes, I braced against the dashboard, and Alex started crying when his crayons fell on the floor and some broke.
"LOOK WHAT YOU DID, DADDY!" Alex sobbed.
"ENOUGH!!" Dan roared. "Alex, stop making deals with your sister, and Abi, SHARE YOUR CRAYONS!"
And thus we carried on in silence. For a while, anyway. (Alex has been consistently screwed by his sister when it comes to making deals, as she never upholds her end; he's even started writing contracts).
We got to the campground at Cody around 2:30pm, and as soon as the car was unloaded, the kids were off to the playground. They were the only children in the whole place, which meant they got all the equipiment to themselves! The campground was pretty quiet on the whole, as everyone apart from retired people were back at school and work, and they were closing for the season at the end of the week.
So, while Alex and Abi enjoyed some much needed running-around freedom, Dan and I enjoyed some much needed peace and quiet. And I did the laundry.
Day 96 - 29 Sept '23 - Yellowstone National Park. We were cosy warm in our centrally-heated cabin. This was the first night we've had separate rooms to sleep in since Washington, so Dan and I took full advantage of it...and watched TV in our room, and had an undisturbed sleep with no arguing children!
It was a brisk 9°C when we stepped outside and got in the car to go to Yellowstone. It was a gorgeous day, with clear blue skies, so we didn't mind the biting wind too much.
Today we did the lower loop. To travel through Yellowstone, you enter through five possible locations, and drive around the figure-of-eight sightseeing road in the middle. It's a massive park, with over 3000 acres of mountains, fields, rivers, and geyser basins.
We stopped at a lot of different locations on our drive; mud pools, geysers, waterfalls, and rivers. We saw a number of huge male bison, going about their business; we'd seen so many females and calves at Custer State Park, the thrill of seeing them wasn't as acute as beforehand, but it was still incredible to see the males at Yellowstone.
The biggest geyser in the world, the Steamboat, is at Yellowstone. It's nickname is 'Old Unfaithful' as it is very unpredictable; it can blow anywhere from four days to 50 years. The last time was on 25 August, so we weren't going to hang around and wait. It was bubbling and steaming away, and it was amazing to see how much the steam had decimated the land behind it.
One of the big drawcards at Yellowstone was the Grand Prismatic Spring. This is a large pool with gorgeous colours around the edge, however, when we stood on the same level as the pool, we couldn't see anything special at all. Add in the billowing steam, and it was all a bit of a letdown. I'd read there was another walkway to a viewing platform higher off the ground, but we didn't have time to do that today, as we had to get to Old Faithful!
This world-famous geyser erupts every 90 minutes (plus or minus 10 minutes). At a brief moment of one bar of reception on my phone, I found out the eruption schedule for today, and we were in time to see it go up (only had to wait 25 minutes).
What a sight! Water and steam shooting high into the air for about one-and-a-half minutes, before tapering off back to a constant bubble, ready to build up pressure again for the next round.
We stayed at a lodge in park grounds tonight, and they really had us by the short and curlies - we got an 'end of season flash sale' price, and even then it was $185USD! The beds were doubles, there was no microwave, the sheets (although clean) had stains on them, and there were patches of paint missing off the walls.
And breakfast wasn't even included!
We weren't allowed to cook in the room, so had a cooked chicken and salad in wraps, which was a pleasant change from microwave meals. Plus, they didn't say 'no eating'!
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