The Three L’s Travel The West

The alarm went off at 7AM this morning, and I rolled out of bed.  This was probably one of the worst places we have stayed during this entire trip.  The only thing that was good was the shower.  Lots of hot water and great water pressure.

We had the continental breakfast and packed up the Buick.  It was so much easier with more space!  We actually made more space for Lynnae in the backseat.  We programmed the GPS for Yellowstone and hit the road. 

We stopped in Buffalo, Wyoming for fuel at $4.25 per gallon.  Louie is getting to be a pro at pumping gas.  Hope it’s not a precursor of things to come.  🙂 

We had lunch at a great little cafe in Tensleep, Wyoming.  It was almost surreal as when we opened the door to go in, almost everyone turned to look at us.  There were about 30 people or so in there, and I soon realized they all knew each other.  The food was excellent, and servers very friendly.  The town was tiny, maybe 300 people total. 

On the way to Yellowstone, we were slowed down by a herd of sheep.  There were men on horseback, and working dogs moving the sheep across the road.  Neat!

We arrived at Yellowstone around 4PM and started making our way through the park.  The first thing we saw was a bison not 10 feet from the road.  Traffic basically stopped for everyone to take pictures.  We found this commonplace as we worked our way northwest to Big Sky Montana where our hotel is located.  We did make a few stops to take pictures, and finally arrived at the Whitewater Inn around 8PM.

Louie and Lynnae headed for the pool immediately as there is a 90 foot tube/slide in the pool room.  They swam/slid for about an hour until the slide was turned off for the evening.  While they did that, I ordered pizza from a local place here in Big Sky.  I also included chocolate cream pie for dessert.  We ate it all up while watching a bit of TV.

Lynnae fell asleep while Louie and I watched the evening news.  We watched footage of the earthquake in California.  I think this was the most news I have seen since we left home.  I have heard a bit on the radio as we are driving, but it’s very limited (ABC or CNN 3 minute blurbs mostly political news).  I realized that I haven’t been missing much. 

Ready to get up in the morning and start exploring the park again.

I set the alarm for this morning a little later than normal as our trip today is short.  Besides, I thought we all could use a little more sleep.  At least I know I could!

We packed up and started loading the car.  We also packed up two boxes of souveniers and unneeded items to send home.  A little excessive to say the least, but we are out of room in the car (again).  Besides, when we get home it will be fun to go through every thing.

 After taking the boxes to the Post Office, we headed back to Sonic for breakfast.  I will really miss Sonic when we get home.  I think I like it better than McDonalds or even Burgerville.  Really digging the Mocha Java Chillers!

Our first stop was Sturgis, South Dakota.  With Sturgis Week coming up, I just had to see what it was all about.  We stopped at a few shops and picked up some “official” t-shirts for 2008.  The town was already starting to fill up and it wasn’t even the weekend yet.  Harleys, Indians, etc lined the streets and people in their leathers were walking up and down the sidewalks.  I saw a couple billboards from Progressive Insurance saying : “See you at Thunder Road”, advertising they have the best rates on motorcycle insurance.  Made me smile a bit because I’m pretty sure they DON’T insure racing of said motorcycle.

After Sturgis, we drove through Deadwood, South Dakota.  We didn’t stop, but I took some picutres of the historic town.  Hard to imagine it’s gunslinging history.

Moving on, we drove to Devils Tower.  Again, tons of bikers on the road.  The Tower was interesting, but I guess I was expecting more (aliens and Richard Dreyfus perhaps?).  We took some pictures and then had lunch at the cafe right outside the park. 

After lunch, we pointed the Buick west and headed for Gillette, Wyoming.  This is just a stopover on our way to Yellowstone.  We arrived early afternoon, and decided to watch a bit of TV before thinking about swimming.  Louie turned to the Sci-Fi channel and discovered Star Trek, The Next Generation.  We ended up watching four episodes and he loved it.  I had to explain a few things to him, but he seemed to get it and enjoy. 

We didn’t go to the pool, we just walked across the street to Hardee’s for a late dinner.  Took it back to the hotel and sat on our beds to eat it.  Watched a little more TV, and listened to the train across the street add more cars to it’s load.  I tried not to think about it doing the same thing at 3 in the morning.

We are looking forward to getting to Yellowstone and doing some exploring tomorrow. 

An easy start today.  I slept until 8AM, and let Louie and Lynnae sleep until they woke up (about an hour later).  We were too late for the hotel’s continental breakfast, so we decided to seek out our breakfast.

After I checked the oil level in the Buick and added a quart to top it off, we were off to Sonic for breakfast.  We noted there were hundreds of dead bugs under the hood and on the radiator.

After breakfast, we filled up the gas tank at $4.05/gallon and headed toward Mt. Rushmore.  It was only a 30-minute drive from Rapid City, and I think the number of motorcycles outnumbered the cars on the road.  Sturgis week is coming up, and I think they are starting to arrive now.

The town of Keystone was very small and lined with Black Hills Gold shops and other souvenir shops.  Harleys lined the streets and I tried to picture them as horses instead to go back in time.  If we ever come back this way, I will definitely stay in Keystone.  Cute hotels and you can walk to everything.

We arrived at Mt. Rushmore and paid our $10.00 to park.  It didn’t seem too crowded as we found a great place to park and didn’t have to fight crowds.  Took plenty of pictures and strolled along a short trail to the base of the monument.  It was awesome to look upon something so huge.  (I swear I saw a zit on Washington’s nose).  As we contemplated the work involved, Lynnae suddenly asked me if this was the same place that was in “National Treasure; Book of Secrets”.  I advised yes, but you couldn’t get in behind the faces.

After dropping a few dollars at the gift shop (I found some great books about Laura Ingalls Wilder), we headed out of the park toward the Christmas Shop to get some local ornaments.  Then we stopped at the Bear Wildlife Park.  This is a drive through park where you are right in with the animals.  We had a pair of reindeer come right up to the car.  The best part was the bears.  There had to be at least 50 grizzly and black bears ambling around their enclosure as we drove through.  I was hoping one of them would start licking the bugs off the bumper, but no luck!We arrived back in Rapid City and took a short rest until dinner.  We walked across the street to the “Golden Corral” restaurant and took in their buffet.  They had a lot to offer, but the wait staff was very slow in our section.

Up early this morning to catch the continental breakfast that was quite the disappointment to Louie.  We’ve been spoiled lately.  I had to remind him this was a true continental breakfast (toast, juice, coffee, cereal, pastry).

After gathering our things, we headed east toward Wall and The Badlands.  Wall’s claim to fame is the Wall Drug store, started in 1937 and has grown to 76,000 square feet since then.  According to the official story, it all started by giving away free ice water to travelers.  So we partook in our free ice water and also partook of their doughnuts.  I think they were about as perfect as a doughnut gets.  Yes, better than Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, and even our local bakery.  We did a little shopping, then worked our way to the “Backyard” of Wall Drug.

 Louie and Lynnae panned for fossils and also posed for pictures on the six-foot tall rabbit.  After looking around a bit more, we made our way back to the car and continued on to the Badlands.

We got up early this morning in anticipation of our drive to Rapid City, South Dakota.  We knew it would be a long one and wanted to get an early start. 

After another great breakfast, we packed the car and made our first stop of the day at Garden of the Gods, right in Colorado Springs.  This is an area that is full of unusual rock formations.  There is much to study here if you are a fan of geology.  The drive through the park takes about 30 minutes, and that’s with stopping for photo ops.  We also toured the gift shop at the Visitor’s Center as well as the Trading Post that was by far the largest gift shop we’d seen so far on this trip.

Leaving the park, we stopped to top off the gas tank and run through the car wash to get rid of the mud from the Pike’s Peak trip yesterday.  Lesson learned:  “touch less” car wash won’t do the job for this kind of mess.  But at least all the bugs from the front were removed. 

We grabbed lunch and headed north around 1PM.  Our route took us through Denver (saw the stadium where the Broncos play), and then turned northeast toward Rapid City.  Our route took us through Nebraska and saw tons of cattle feed lots.  I remembered from my time at Fulton Provision a good portion of their beef came from IBP (located in Nebraska).  There were cows everywhere! 

As we passed through southwest Nebraska, a massive thunderstorm was forming and we heard on the radio about possible flooding, 60 mph winds, and quarter sized hail.  The sky was almost black and we would see lightening strikes every few minutes; long flashes of maybe two or three seconds arcing across the sky. While I drove to stay ahead of this (worried mainly about the potential for hail damage), Lynnae proclaimed she needed to make a rest stop.  Keeping in mind there’s not much around, we drove about 40 miles before arriving in Dalton, a small town with no gas station, but two taverns and one grocery store that were open.  I opted for the grocery store and we went in, leaving Louie in the car.  This was an old store with wood floors. We were greeted by the cashier (who I assume was also the owner) and he showed Lynnae the way to the restroom.   I browsed the store and picked up some bottled water. 

While I was at the register, Louie came flying in the door, eyes round as saucers.  Apparently the lightening struck a little too close for his liking.  He also decided to make use of the restroom.   We went back to the car and the rain started to fall. 

It took us about an hour to get ahead of or around the storm.  Somewhere in this time period was my first killing of an animal on this trip.  It was a little sparrow of some sort that just didn’t get out of the way.  Hit the front bumper with a thump and was knocked into the grass along the highway.  Upon later inspection, there was just one feather in the front grill to show its demise.  I’ve considered myself lucky to go this far and not hit something. 

As we drew near Rapid City, we could see another lightening storm forming.  By the time we reached our hotel, it was dark, and that was a first.  The wind was blowing hard and the sky would light up.  We checked in, dragged our bags up the stairs and got ready for bed.   

Miles traveled:  519 miles, travel time 8.5 hours, average mpg 32

We had a great night’s sleep and got up early to discover an amazing complimentary breakfast.  This was similar to the one in Carson City, but instead of eggs, bacon, and sausage, there were two waffle makers.  Yummy!  Lynnae made the first one, then Louie and I followed suit.

Our destination this morning is Cripple Creek, sight of historic town and gold mines in Colorado.  The first thing that came to mind was the song by The Band: Up On Cripple Creek.  According to Wikipedia, it’s possible the town inspired the song.

Our first stop in town was the Cripple Creek and Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad.  This is a four mile track travelled by a steam engine train and educating the riders on the gold mining history in the area.  There were a few stops to view abandoned mines and towns.

After the train ride, we toured the Cripple Creek District museum.   This included three buildings with six floors of mining memorabilia, maps, paintings, glass and china, children’s items, furnishings, an assay office, a photograph gallery, Indian artifacts, mineral displays and two Victorian apartments.  It was a great view into what life was like at the time.

The most amazing thing we learned about Cripple Creek was that it almost became the capitol of Colorado.  A statewide vote proclaimed the city of Denver the state capitol in 1881 by one vote.  Looking at the town now, it’s hard to believe there were enough people there to swing the vote. 

As we drove through town, I noticed an excessive amount of casinos.  There were a couple large ones, but mostly they were little ones, maybe the size of a bar or tavern.  Apparently the state voted to allow Cripple Creek to establish legalized gambling around 1990.  Prior to that, it was almost a ghost town.  I spoke to one lady at the museum gift shop, and she loves living in town. 

We headed to the American Eagles Scenic Overlook, where we drove up a gravel road to an abandoned gold mine.  As soon as we left the car, it started to rain.  Big gloopy drops that drenched one within a minute.  We ran from building to building to avoid the rain, but when the lightening and thunder started, we opted to leave.  As we made our way down the mountain, we had to cross the “highway” for the working gold mine where huge dumptrucks were moving back and forth carrying loads of crushed rock. 

Moving back through the town of Victor and Cripple Creek, we stopped at the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine tour spot.  Here is where the tour takes place 1000 feet under ground.  Transportation is by skip (elevator) to the tour level.  They crammed 7 of us into the skip before they sent us down to the mine.  It was about a 45 minute tour, including demonstrations of the air powered mining equipment and how the mines were created and worked.

After getting back to the surface, we ran through the rain to get to the car.  After hashing it out, we decided to travel up to Pike’s Peak.  We were too late to ride the cog railway, so we started to drive.  When we paid our entry fee, we noted the temperature at the Peak was 49 degrees and windy.  Elevation, 14,100 feet.  The road is 19 miles of curvy, twisty road and mostly gravel.  It took almost an hour to reach summit.  Seemed like we would never get there.  Along the way we saw a few marmots, as well as passed snow banks.

At the top, it was raining and cold.  We ran to the gift shop and looked out the window.  If the weather had been clear, we could have seen for miles.  We were able to see Colorado Springs down in the valley.  As we walked around the gift shop, Louie and I noticed that we were dizzy, and Lynnae commented that she was getting a headache.  Definitely symptoms of altitude sickness.  We walked back to the car and headed back down the mountain.  I dropped the car into 1st or 2nd gear, depending on the grade.  By the time we were halfway down, the ranger at the brake checkpoint told us we had to pull over and cool down the brakes.  So we sat there with the hood up (along with 3 other vehicles) for 30 minutes.  While there we noticed quite the build up of mud on the car.

The rest of the trip down the mountain was smooth and slow.  We made it back to the hotel by 8PM and got ready for bed after watching a little TV.  It was very tiring and a bit stressful after that drive.  We saw alot today, and took in alot of information.  I bought a few books about the area and am looking forward to reading them when we get home.

This morning we were up and at ’em early.  I packed up our bags while showers were being taken.  We had one of the best continental breakfasts so far in our journey.  There were omelettes, bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy along with your normal continental breakfast fare.  We chowed down as we knew a long day lay ahead of us.

After packing up the car, we drove to Boot Hill Museum.  We toured the museum and the reconstructed Front Street buildings.  There were an amazing amount of authentic artifacts on display, and well worth the admittance fee.  We also viewed the cemetary and the jail.

After this, we headed for a nearby tire shop to check on the Buick’s tires.  The man there took one look at the front driver’s tire and saw the problem immediately.  Apparently there was a flat spot indicating a separation was going on.  This would have lead to a blowout or flat tire.  YIKES! 

Two new front tires later, we started heading west toward Colorado Springs.  We were glad to get out of Dodge!  It was already 100 degrees by the time we left town.  So hot!

Our drive to Colorado Springs was uneventful, other than it seemed to take forever.  We really couldn’t pin down why.  Yes, it was flat. Yes, there were thousands of cows in feed lots.  Yes, there were many fields of corn we passed.  The weather did turn ugly as we drew near Colorado Springs.  The skies darkened and the rain started to come down.  We saw many lightening strikes that made Louie wonder if he would be swimming tonight.

We found the hotel with no problems (thank you GPS).  I checked in and was delighted to have a ground floor room that was not on the highway side of the building.  As we unloaded, we noticed the temperature was definitely cooler here, and the wind was fierce; no doubt due to the storms we passed through.

Dinner at Village Inn next to the hotel.  Unremarkable, and slow service.  Will definitely pass them up next time.  We walked back to our room and got ready for bed.  Very tired and cranky after today’s drive.  Hoping better things for tomorrow as we have lots to see and do.

We were up early this morning to pack up our bags and get ready to leave.  It was very hard to say good-bye to April and Arik.  She left to go to work, and we had a small breakfast while packing up. 

Louie loaded up the car and we locked up April’s house.  Our first stop on the way out of town was the post office to mail home a box of souveniers and some items we no longer needed on this trip. 

After taking care of that, we headed north toward Dodge City, Kansas.  We stopped in Dumas, Texas for lunch (Subway, again) and ate our sandwiches in front of the county courthouse.  I also tapped into some Wi-Fi and made our hotel reservations for Dodge City.

We had a bit of concern as we were crossing into Oklahoma.  Our tire pressure light came on, so I pulled into the Shell station in Texhoma and put some air in the tires.  Then reset the warning light.  It didn’t come back on again, but we noticed a shimmy to the front end that didn’t seem to go away.

I was amazed to see how flat it was in this area.  I also noted the oil rigs in the midst of corn fields, backyards, grazing land for cows/horses.  Something I found fascinating was the flatness, but you could see a town coming up; notable by the water tower and the town’s co-op grain silos.  Another 20 miles of nothing, then another little oasis. 

We also passed through Meade, Kansas, site of the infamous Dalton Gang hideout.  We didn’t stop to tour, but I did take a few pictures.

This scenery went on all the way to Dodge City, Kansas.  We arrived at La Quinta, which appeared to be brand new.  Our room was on the second floor, and had not only a fridge, but a flat screen TV as well! 

We opted to have dinner at the local Chinese/Japanese/American food buffet.  It was ok, but not as good as the one back home (in Beaverton–has over 100 items to choose from).  After dinner, Louie and Lynnae wanted to go swimming, so they donned their suits and we headed to the indoor pool.  They swam until 9:30PM while I read.  Then back to the room and into bed for an early start tomorrow.

Miles traveled: 328 miles, average 30.2 MPG 

Up early today to see April off to work and also to get started on our day.  The plan today: Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, post office, Wal-Mart, and fix April and Arik one of my favorite dinners.

After finishing my last load of laundry, we heading for the Museum.  What a great place to visit!  There was a little of everything there.  From the geological to Plains Indians to oil drilling.  Even a full size replica of an oil rig from the beginning.  We spent several hours there, and enjoyed the interactive exhibits and learned more about the Texas Panhandle than I had hoped.  There was also the Samuel Colt exhibition, with more different guns imaginable.  Louie was very impressed with that part of the exhibit.

We stopped at Wal-Mart after this wonderful tour.  Picked up a few groceries and made our way back to April’s home.  Louie and Lynnae put in a movie to watch, and I started on dinner.  I made oven fried chicken, Lipton Noodles, and brown sugar carrots.  Also put together an Oreo Pie (from a box) for dessert. 

April’s friend Mandi joined us for dinner, and I believe it was a hit.  I did feel bad about using the oven and heating up the house, but the appreciation was worth it!  It was also like having a little bit of home right here in Texas.

After Mandi left, April and I moved to the front porch and talked some more.  It seemed like we couldn’t talk enough as we knew this visit was drawing to a close.  The children were asleep by 10:30PM, but once again, we were up until midnight.  I tried not to think about leaving tomorrow.  Lynnae had even told me that she wanted to stay longer.   Just incentive for another visit in the future, I suppose.

Today we decided to sleep in a bit and then head over to Cadillac Ranch and Wonderland Amusement Park.  We picked up Stacey and headed out.  It was so hot and windy today. 

After having a great Subway lunch, we drove out to Cadillac Ranch.  I must say, I was disappointed.  I don’t know why I expected more than just 10 cars stuck in the ground.  We didn’t know that the thing to do is to bring out cans of spray paint and paint the cars.

 After Cadillac Ranch, we headed to Wonderland Amusement Park, located on the other end of Amarillo.  We arrived there around 2PM, and were impressed with the ride selection.

The rides there were great.  Better than your fair or carnival.  There were three roller coasters, and Louie and I road them all.  I think Louie and Stacey rode all the rides, with the exception of maybe two.  We were there all day and finished off the day with sharing funnel cakes. 

We took Stacey back to Janice’s house and hugged her goodbye as she is leaving for home tomorrow.  Then we left to head back to April’s for a late dinner and some sit down time.  I made it almost all the way back there without asking for directions.  Amarillo is very easy to navigate around, as long as you know North/South/East/West. 

We had a light dinner of ham and cheese, and some grapes.  Got the children to bed by 10PM; April and I spent some time chatting, but she has to work tomorrow, so I told her to get to bed.  She told me that we wore her out with all our activites.  I replied that my work here was done and we could move along.

Sunburns for Lynnae and I today, and a little dehydration for all.  I’m sure Dasani stock rose with as much water we were drinking, and yet we were still thirsty at the end of the day.