The Flaneur: 2010

Western Driving Trip

We’re armed with a 2003 Michelin North America Road Atlas, a 2008 Frommer’s Guide to the National Parks of the American West, a 2002 Rough Guide to the USA, and a daily itinerary that we’d prepared ahead of time, showing where we want to go each day and where we’re staying. Oh, and the laptop. Our car came with NeverLost but we almost never used it.

Day 1 (Saturday May 16, 2009)
This was a very long travel day. All in all, we drove almost 350 miles today in our bright red, fuel-efficient Toyota Carolla, Colorado license plate 914 SIT (Andy memorized it pretty quickly). We left Chicago early in the morning and landed in Denver around 9:30am. Picked up the rental car and eventually left the giant, spacious airport grounds (what a waste of land). Drove all the way down I-25 to the Colorado border, stopping first at a Denver suburb like Castle Rock or something to check the tire pressure (thanks to a malfunctioning tire pressure indicator light – good job Hertz) and to pick up a few random food things at the local Safeway, where our Dominick’s card worked! Funny how such an ambitious trip begins with such small victories. Continuing south we had lunch at The Café in downtown Trinidad. We only knew about the place because it was on the highway Gas-Food-Lodging signs but it was awesome.
All down I-25 the Rockies are off to your right, and it’s pretty cool scenery all things being equal. We saw the sign for the Focus on the Family Visitor Center but didn’t stop. A surprising amount of traffic, though, at least through Colorado Springs. Who the hell are these people? And can any of them drive in the right lane or does everybody have to keep left even when sticking to the speed limit?
Soon after entering New Mexico it’s a 100-mile (!) drive west on US-64 to Taos, going through some pretty fantastic scenery. Once you leave I-25 it’s a sort of grassland, looking almost like the African plains with the dry yellow grass and tree/shrub-lined hills and mountains, and creeks and broken veld. Then as you get to the mountains there’s lakes and pine trees and national forests and streams, and we started to think more of New Zealand South Island. Finally got to Taos around 4pm.
Not to sound like a worldly blasé jerk, but Taos is nothing special. We went to La Mesilla in Las Cruces, NM last year and the stores and galleries around the central plaza in Taos – where we strolled for 2 hours – sell exactly the same thing. It’s like the Gold Coast art fair. There’s all the same new agey stuff, plus t-shirts and guac mix and things made in Macau. So we picked up a Taos long-sleeve T-shirt for Andy and a cowboy dog poster to accompany El Biggo Grande, and some chocolate for Jen. Then we checked in at the Mabel Dodge Luhan B&B just outside of downtown, where they had us in the solarium room. (This needs an in-depth description. For now, just recall that there’s no lock on the door and no shades on the windows. But what a unique room and as of 9:53pm so far so good.)
Dinner, at Mike Daly’s excellent suggestion, was at Joseph’s Table in the La Fonda Hotel on the plaza. Outstanding food. Not cheap, but absolutely delicious. Also, Jen had the same champagne as we had at our wedding reception (it was New Mexican after all). The Minnesota couple at the next table weren’t digging the food so much even though they ordered a lot of the same things. It’s always strange when somebody complains about the same dish that you’re eating enthusiastically. Anyway, we were back at the hotel by just after 9 and Andy was happy to get internet access while Jen was happy to immediately fall asleep.
Okay, so at 9:53pm all was quiet and good in our room. By 10pm there was some loud drum-banging Indian chanting thing going on somewhere nearby, that threatened to keep us awake all night. Didn’t want to ask the locals to keep it down under the circumstances – seeing how we stole their land and everything – but no matter we were asleep within minutes regardless. The Solarium is a strange hotel room. Freezing during the night (it gets cold here) and not very soundproof. It’s like we’re performance artists – we’re staying in a glass square that sits atop this hotel, so if they’re so inclined anybody can pretty much watch anything we do. (Sure there are a few color windows surrounding the toilet but otherwise it’s wide open.) There are some well-placed adobe columns and wood posts here and there, and since the hotel expands below us at least 15’ in every direction there aren’t too many good viewing angles from the ground. On the other hand, there’s no lock on the door and the staircase to get up here is narrow and very, very steep. Oh, and the ceiling ain’t too high. In fact, the ceilings are low throughout – you get to the “reception” desk by walking through a 4’ high door. This would be a great place for a tall ewok to stay. Or a really short wookie. But it’s lovely, seriously, and this morning I woke up around 5:30am to watch the dawn light illuminate the mountain range to our east and slowly develop into sunrise. The obvious advantage of a room like this is that there are terrific views of the northern New Mexico landscape literally in every direction, like living wallpaper. I would stay here again. Just remember to turn the heat on when you go to bed and remember that the people you’re eating breakfast with might have seen you naked.

Day 2 (Sunday)
Today we had breakfast at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House and then left Taos and made our way down to Santa Fe. Breakfast was delicious! We chatted with a group of women in town for an annual education conference, including one who knew we were staying in the solarium. (Guess she still recognized me with my clothes on.) From there we stopped briefly at the San Francisco de Asís church in Rancho de Taos – apparently a first-rate example of old adobe architecture and building methods. Being Sunday, of course, there were services going on so the church was surrounded by cars. Then we headed onto the High Road (Routes 518, 75 and 76) that provided a very scenic route down through Chimayo to Espanola skirting the Carson National Forest. Terrific views of the mountains, forests, meadows and gradual change to much drier landscape as we went west. Also, fortunately, we found gas since we were really close to running out.
Our next big destination was Bandelier National Monument (we got in for free with our National Parks Annual Pass!) near Los Alamos. On the way we stopped at the White Rock lookout with a phenomenal view of the Rio Grande valley and almost 360-degree views down to the landscape. Bandelier is also totally worth the trip, as it’s a great valley with Indian cliff dwellings going back 900 years. We went on a 2 ½-mile hike that included a big ladder climb up to a high cliff.
Final stop, of course, was Santa Fe itself. It’s a much bigger version of Taos and, frankly, a lot more interesting. Better art, better shops, more to do. Taos is the Cheyenne to Santa Fe’s Denver (more on that at the end of the trip). Our hotel was the Old Santa Fe Inn on Galisteo Street, just south of the old city center. Even though we were only here from the afternoon we fit in a bunch of stuff. First we walked to the Georgia O’Keeffe museum, which has a nice little collection of her paintings and a short film explaining her work. Andy loved the Windmill paintings from 1916 – not famous at all – and Jen noted that there’s a big painting of Black Hollyhock and Blue Larkspur that O’Keeffe did of flowers she saw while staying as a guest at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House. Talk about coming full circle! Then we wandered through a few streets to the main Plaza, where we sat eating ice cream until we realized we were sitting in wet grass and went home for a quick change. Sadly, the couple near us sunbathing in their thong outfits did not change. The next trip was to walk back east to Canyon Road, which has a really impressive collection of art galleries stretching quite a few blocks. We almost went home with a Rick Stevens.
Our planned dinner was to be at Tomasita’s, which came recommended from several reputable sources. But it was closed (as we found out once we walked there) so instead we went back towards the plaza and ate at Coyote Cantina, sitting upstairs and outside and having a great meal and some strong drinks and getting a nice sunset view. Then back to the hotel and we unwound by watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off before bed.

Day 3 (Monday)
Another long driving day started in Santa Fe, where we had waffles at the hotel before walking back into town for a bit in the morning. We saw the rest of the plaza – they do Indian jewelry and other trinkets all along the north side of the plaza in front of the Palace of the Governors, and it’s pretty cool. We also checked out the Davis Mather Folk Art gallery since they had Delbert Buck items, but this turned out really to be just another hole in the wall full of stuff. But the neighborhood, around Lincoln and Marcy, is worth checking out. Also a quick visit into the O’Keeffe museum gift shop, which sadly does not carry any postcards or other reproductions of her Windmill drawings.
Saying goodbye to Santa Fe, we started the long journey along I-25 and I-40 to the Painted Desert, which was 270 miles away in Arizona. Like the other drives out here, this one changed landscape repeatedly as we moved from one valley to the next. Every now and then you turn a corner and run smack dab up against some massive sandstone cliffs, only to pass them and stumble onto a forest or a pasture. It’s largely brown but still productive land. Also, there’s a giant lava field you drive through at one point.
We ate lunch at the Cracker Barrel in Gallup, NM, just before the Arizona border, where we also got gas. This was probably the most disappointing meal of the trip. Here we are driving around this great natural and cultural heritage and we wind up in the fakest place we can find. I’d always thought Cracker Barrel pulled an Applebee’s and at least tried to decorate each place with local crap. But then we saw that next to us was an old-timey poster from Lee, Massachusetts – literally down the road from our house in the Berkshires 2,000 miles away. Plus every single piece of old-timey junk they hang on the walls has a bar code on it. Is there some bullshit Cracker Barrel factory somewhere that spews out distressed lookalike wagon train parts?
The drive improved immediately once we left because the New Mexico-Arizona border is really impressive. It’s a gap in a massive sandstone cliff, so it literally looks like you’re driving through this huge wall from one realm to another. They’re also an hour behind New Mexico because Arizona (except the Navajo Nation) does not observe Daylight Savings Time. This helped us in that we gained an hour on our drive west. It hurt us down the road because sunrise was at 5am. Who the hell needs to get up at 5 in the morning?
Soon after we got to the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert, which was another great place. We did a long hike down from Kachina Point to the desert floor to look at the eroded cliffs and petrified wood. The first few times we saw some wood pieces we treated them like great finds. Little did we know the stuff is littered everywhere. Finishing the hike, we drove south on the park road past the Route 66 marker (seriously, who cares) and to more hikes. We went through the Blue Mesa hike, where the striped landscape has a blueish tint due to the composition of the substrate, and then continued to the end of the road and the aptly-named Long Log walk. By now, however, there was a thunderstorm moving in so we cut the walk short and left for Chinle.
The drive to Chinle leaves I-40 and runs north on Route 191 through the Navajo Nation. We didn’t get a good look because it was getting dark and drizzly, but you can tell it’s not the wealthiest place in the country. We didn’t pass a large town for the 80 miles from the park to Chinle even though we were on the only major north-south road. Houses dot the sagebrush landscape here and there, and are easily identified because each has a streetlight over it. Just as you get to Chinle the road drops down from the cliffs and cuts across a plain; since it was dark all we could pick up was a massive dust storm slicing across the road in front of us. Getting to the Best Western Chinle at 9pm, just after the restaurant closed, we got dinner from Subway just down the street. Andy took a swim in the surprisingly good hotel pool then we were asleep soon after 10. We were exhausted.

Day 4 (Tuesday)
Another great day. We woke up in room 223 of the Chinle Best Western and didn’t hang around long. By 9-something we were at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, which was incredible. It’s just east of town and apparently free to enter, since only the roads along the cliff tops and the trails down to the bottom are part of the park – most of the actual canyon land itself is privately-owned Navajo farmland. We drove the south rim and stopped at each lookout, including one where we saw a Swedish motorcycle gang. Well, a “gang” of middle-aged Swedes all dressed in leather pants and black Route 66 t-shirts and the like. Sadly, Jen was afraid to say hi.
We also did the 2+ mile hike down to the canyon floor to see the White House ruins. It’s a great switchback hike down the cliffs and onto the riverbed. The ruins are of an entire system of buildings constructed in the side of an immense sandstone cliff. They were abandoned probably 800 years ago but you could still see etchings that they did into the sides of the cliff where their roofs used to be – now the etchings sit 10 feet above the nearest structure. You could also buy jewelry or artwork from the numerous Navajo merchants (they’re at every conceivable tourist spot) and we bought a $10 stone etching of a Medicine Man Hand, which the artist explained to us personally.
By around 12:30 we left. We bought some more food at the supermarket in Chinle and then drove north on 191 before taking Route 59 northwest towards Kayenta. This was a short cut Andy improvised but it was totally worth it because the scenery along this road is phenomenal. Route 59 runs along the base of a mountain range, and there are mesas, cliffs and canyons strewn across the route. Connecting back with the main road just before Kayenta, we continued on towards Monument Valley, the famous landscape seen in so many movies and Ford F-150 commercials. You can make a case that the views on the approach to the park are more interesting than the park itself, but it’s still a worthwhile visit more or less. But since it’s a Navajo tribal park, rather than a real National Park, it’s a little different/worse than what we were used to. The map is poor, the signs are not helpful and, most importantly, the road you take to do the circuit of the park is unpaved and really, really bumpy. There are people selling crap at every stop. We also had mildly dubious weather which didn’t help. There’s a gift shop that actually sells a ton of stuff (we got a t-shirt and a Hopi kachina – Cloud Dancer) and a restaurant that apparently hasn’t figured out that you sell more food if you have somebody working there. By late afternoon we left the tour buses behind and were back on the road to our hotel at Marble Canyon, another 100 miles away.
A quick word on driving out here. The roads are generally excellent. They’re well-paved and can go in a straight line for miles. And there’s usually nobody on them and the cars that are there don’t go much above the speed limit. We passed 1,000 miles driven as we approached Monument Valley, and except for that park’s appallingly atrocious moonscape/road, there has hardly been a single instance where we were stuck in traffic or held up on an inferior road.
Also, the landscape is fascinating. Don’t think for a second that driving hundreds of miles through Arizona (or New Mexico) is boring – there’s something breathtaking to see almost every mile. The land is ancient and imposing, and its immensity can be stunning. If you’ve lived most of your life in a populated area, it’s almost intoxicating to spend days in places where you can see for dozens of miles in every direction and spy nary another human being. No disrespect to the people and animals out here, but this place is empty. Mountains that have existed as long as the continent of North America itself tower over terrain that has fewer people in it than your neighborhood 7-11. And those mountains, and the other features around here, are beautiful to behold. Every time we turn a bend, or crest a hill, or exit a valley, the climate seems to change and the landscape changes with it. Trees come and go and the land oscillates from green to brown to red and back again.
After Tuba City we took 89 and 89A north to Marble Canyon. This last part of our trip was the day’s most pleasant surprise. First of all, Route 89 runs north alongside the beautiful, jagged, red striped Echo Cliffs to the east. As you near the top of this route the rectangular Vermilion Cliffs come into view directly before you, and they are an imposing wall of stone soaring hundreds of feet into the air. Living in Chicago, you get used to thinking that the ground is flat and anything projecting out of it is manmade. Well, coming up on the Vermilion Cliffs you realize that they are a structure larger than a million Sears Towers. And only when you get near the junction of these two mountain ranges do you see that the Colorado River runs between them in a canyon cut into the valley floor – the earliest signs of the Grand Canyon which really gets going 75 miles further west. The cliffs burn red with the light from the setting sun.
89A crosses the Colorado at Lee’s Ferry, over the Navajo Bridge. The newer span is for cars and the older span is now a pedestrian bridge. We stopped here and enjoyed the entire spectacle – bridge, river, canyon, sunset light on the cliffs – to ourselves. It was magical. Then we went a few more miles along 89A to Lee’s Ferry Lodge, which we would highly recommend. Great views from the veranda where we relaxed with our feet up on the railing with some beers (they have 80 different kinds), then a great dinner in a restaurant that was much better than you’d think from looking at the outside. The scenery is majestic, there’s nobody here, and we’re happy.

Day 5 (Wednesday)
Shorter driving but just as much reward. Also, since matchbooks apparently don’t exist anymore Andy started a new trend by taking photos of license plates from every state he could see on the trip. Already we’ve found at least 25, including Alaska and Hawaii (!!) plus British Columbia and Quebec.
We started at Lee’s Ferry Lodge, watching the sun rise over the Echo Cliffs and enjoying a big breakfast at their restaurant. Andy finished the platter-sized pancakes to everyone’s amazement. Then we drove to the Grand Canyon North Rim, passing more great scenery on the way particularly where the mountainous Kaibab Plateau glares across at the Vermilion Cliffs.
We spent the day at the North Rim. We spent the morning going to the trails and lookouts along the Walhalla Plateau, which are along a road running about 25 miles southeast of the main visitor center. The best was the Cape Royal Trail, near the end, where you can see (and go onto) the Angels Window, a giant natural arch. The views of the Grand Canyon generally are impressive, but as much for the height as the distance – you’re at 8,000 feet elevation and the canyon cliffs fall down 3-4,000 feet in the distance you could throw a rock. It’s stunning.
After a quick lunch at the lodge, we had a 12:30 mule ride with Grand Canyon Trail Rides. The mule ride lasted almost three hours and went down to the Supai Tunnel on the North Kaibab Trail. Very painful, very dusty and very fun. Andy rode Ironman – the mule for fraidy cat beginners – and Jen had Dovey, who was a nice mule but very slow. They actually gave her a special whip to use. We were a group of 7 plus guide. The mules fart, pee and poop as they walk with seeming abandon. Coincidentally, we had to change our clothes when the ride was done and never wore those jeans again. (Because of the dirt, honest.)
Now into late afternoon, we hiked the trails from the lodge, the Transept Trail and the Bright Angel Point Trail. More great views and some closeup encounters with some neighborhood deer, who ignored us completely. We then had a drink on the patio before dinner, chatting for awhile with an Atlanta couple (who were also on our mule ride trip but in the other small group) and they gave lots of advice about the Utah national parks, all of which they’ve visited. Then dinner in the main dining room a little later than our 6:45pm reservation, but the meal was great. Finally, we went back north to the Kaibab Lodge where we stayed the night. We had the Deerview Cabin, up the back. It’s too late at night to see the advertised views, but the cabin itself is big. We suspect it’s a double-wide trailer.

Day 6 (Thursday?)
Holy crap we’re tired. Fortunately we didn’t drive as much today but we hiked a lot. The day started early in the Deerview cabin, where Andy actually did see a deer in the meadow while Jen slept. It was a freezing night in the doublewide.
We then drove up to Zion National Park in Utah, getting there (thanks to the time difference and the incredible rigamarole getting into the park via tunnel) a little before noon. We went north from the Grand Canyon, getting gas in Jacob Lake and then driving up Route 89 through Fredonia, Arizona and Kanab, Utah. It’s a beautiful, but slow, drive once you’re in the park because the road twists and turns, there are cars and buses and RVs, and there’s a mile-long tunnel that the jackass RVs can’t fit in unless they stop traffic in the other direction. It’s like driving the Amalfi coast.
Once we were there, however, we saw a bunch of the park. Parking at the Zion Lodge, we took the park bus all the way to the Temple of Sinawava at the end of the line. It’s a bowl that the river has carved out of the canyon. At the north end the canyon narrows considerably, so that to continue up it you actually have to walk in the river itself. From this point downriver, however, the water meanders across the narrow valley. This was the most crowded place we’ve been in any park. We ate a picnic lunch on a boulder in the middle of the current, enjoying a sunny view of the massive sandstone cliffs towering over us on either side and the trees and other greenery dotting the canyon walls and especially the valley.
The next item was the big one – a hike up to Angels Landing. The Atlanta couple we chatted with last night said this was the one thing to do in Zion, and they noted that it ended with a butt-scary climb across a narrow cliff edge with only a chain to hold on to. Sure enough, that’s how it looked in real life. The hike was really tough, going up almost 1500 feet under a hot sun with a bunch of switchbacks. (Great views though.) Then at the top it gets really narrow, and suddenly you’re scampering across cliff edges and outcrops and if you look down to either side you can clearly see that if you trip, you will die. We tempted fate for awhile before heading back down. Then we had some well-deserved frozen yogurt and ice cream at the Lodge café before doing the shorter (and less scary) hike along the Emerald Pools trail. This goes up to a big arched bowl that has several waterfalls dripping off it. Very, very refreshing to stand under a dripping stone cliff after sweating all day!
Then back to the Lodge to check in. We’re in room 138, which is quite impressive. The rooms are big, comfortable, with great views and with wireless internet access to everyone’s delight. We showered and then had a delicious dinner at the restaurant (lost reservation notwithstanding), before an early night to bed.
[Postscript: It’s now mid-August, 2009 and Angels Landing is in the news, thanks to a tragedy. A woman fell to her death climbing the Angels Landing trail. She was in her 50s and was hiking with her husband and her three sons on a hot Sunday morning. According to the reports, they were out at the end of the trail when she stumbled, lost her footing, and fell a thousand feet to her death. Jen was almost sick when she heard the story because it was so easy to imagine doing it herself. This was precisely what we were terrified of when we tried this hike. RIP.]

Day 7 (Friday)
Writing this midafternoon, we’ve had a mixed but mostly good day so far. We’re in Bryce Canyon National Park, about 85 miles up the road from Zion. First impression: meh. Bryce is basically a long road along the crest of a mountain range, with eroded cliffs tumbling down on either side. It looks a little like Cappadocia but much smaller and greener – indeed, all of southern Utah is a lot greener than I thought it was. There are rivers cutting through verdant valleys and there are trees all over the place.
But the road that runs through Bryce is within alpine forest (we’re at 8-9000 feet generally) so you can’t really see much from it as you drive. And we started at the southern end of the road and checked out each overlook on the way back, and many of them are only moderately interesting. The real fun begins at the Bryce Amphitheater, which is a massive bowl eroded from the mountain where the best hoodoos (eroded columns) and crevasses and canyons and gulleys and cliffs are found. There’s a lengthy trail that runs down from the cliff’s edge at Sunset and Sunrise Points, and we wandered all through the basin looking at the amazing scenery. Like the Grand Canyon, the cliff walls are striped but the color seems richer here – red and yellow and white and grey and the occasional purple. But it was cold and rainy today so there was no sun setting things aflame. That also meant we weren’t baking like yesterday in Zion. Also, the rain turned the dust at the top of the trail into a muddy clay the consistency of oatmeal cookie dough. Our shoes immediately picked up a heavy layer of this stuff on the soles as we hiked down.
By 3 we (and by “we” I mean Jen) were feeling pretty tired so we checked in, getting room 214, and kicked back for a bit. This building looks almost exactly the same as the one in Zion.
Now it’s the end of the evening and we’ve had more excitement. First we walked over from the lodge to the general store that’s nearby, picking up a few snacks for the car from their cute little grocery store department. Then we took the park’s shuttle bus back up to the visitor center, where we watched a 20-minute film on Bryce Canyon (so named because it used to be behind the ranch of some dude named Ebenezer Bryce), looked briefly in the museum, then got back on the bus for the ride down to Bryce Point.
Bryce Point is the southern end of the bus route and, frankly, the most southern point you need to go in this park. There’s an arch and a few other neat things further south, but seriously who gives a crap. Between Bryce Point and Sunrise Point north of the lodge you get to take in the entire Bryce Amphitheater and all its convoluted valleys, crevasses and hoodoos. The color and landscape are fascinating. The best views are from Bryce Point and from Inspiration Point, which is the next main overlook north along the 2.5-mile rim trail. (The mileage on the signs is highly dubious.) That’s where the best formations are. Our recommendation for coming here – go to Bryce Point, hike the rim trail north to Sunset Point, then hike down the Navajo trail and any side trails you want on the canyon floor. Done.
Eventually getting back to our room just in time for our 7:45pm dinner reservation, we tried briefly and unsuccessfully to get a new room that didn’t connect to a room with a crying baby, then gave in to fate and enjoyed our dinner. (The baby’s parents came soon after us and sat in a corner where their baby monitor worked clearly.) The entrees were delicious and so was the bread pudding, though the chocolate cake was marred by obvious freezer burn. After a final visit to the gift shop and a stop at the ranger’s slideshow in the auditorium, we walked through the cold rain to bed. C’est la vie. Hopefully the baby sleeps soundly.

Day 8 (Saturday)
The baby slept like a champ! On the other hand, we awoke to cold, drizzly conditions here in Bryce Canyon. So much for seeing the two things they really advertise here – the starry night sky and the amazing sunrise and sunset views. C’est la vie. Now it’s a long drive across southern Utah to Moab and Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.
It rained on and off all day. Plus it was cold. Who knew that southern Utah has the same climate as Scotland? They may need to revise the guidebooks. Anyway, we had a good drive across the state, watching the scenery change dramatically from one mountain range to the next. After stopping at a few scenic lookouts, and getting gas in the eminently-missable Green River, we arrived at Canyonlands around noon.
Despite the weather Canyonlands was definitely worth the visit. The drive approaching the park is itself spectacular, as it twists and turns through cliffs and across hills that afford great views of the surrounding countryside. The park entrance is nothing special – they didn’t even bother to have somebody working the gate when we arrived – but because the park is generally pretty empty you get to explore everything with only a few other people nearby. We stayed in the Island in the Sky sector, which is by far the easiest to access and closest to Moab. First we looked out from the visitor center, then drove down to Grand Point where we hiked the mile out to the overlook for a phenomenal 360-degree view of the park and the mountains, rivers and valleys beyond. On a clear day you can see over 100 miles easily, and even today with the thunderstorms rolling in you could still see pretty far. The eroded canyons in the park look vaguely like the Grand Canyon (the Colorado even runs through here), but among other things are not as high and have more solid layers that don’t erode easily, making the whole thing look like the Grand Canyon if it had been stepped on and compressed in half. If the Grand Canyon is a s’more ready to be cooked, then Canyonlands is that s’more after you’ve pushed it together and are ready to take a bite. Turning around we hit the Upheaval Dome trail, going only to the first overlook as recommended. By now it was raining again, however, and we were getting pretty tired so we left and found our hotel, the Gonzo Inn, in Moab. Nice place.
After a stroll through the t-shirt and knickknack shops of downtown Moab, we had dinner at Zax up the street, which is your standard high-end family-friendly eatery. It’s good enough and everybody was really nice. Moab’s sort of a dumpy town, but if you’re so inclined, you can do almost any adventure-activity. As Jen said, you come to this area of the world for the natural attractions, and the town has sort of just grown up to accommodate that. There’s no need to spend any more time in Moab than you need to.

Day 9 (Sunday)
A totally mixed day with a great start and painful finish. We awoke in Moab to a sunny (!) morning and delightful weather. Because we were here all day, and there’s nothing to eat in the park, we came up with the following plan – we would get up early and drive into Arches National Park and do the hike to Delicate Arch, then come back out late morning to shower, change, check out of our hotel (noon checkout time at the highly-recommended Gonzo Inn) and have lunch somewhere in Moab and go to the supermarket. Then we’d return to the park in the early afternoon and stay until we felt like driving up to Salt Lake. This worked beautifully.
After a quick breakfast downstairs we drove over to Arches around 8:30am and did a morning hike to Delicate Arch. The park wasn’t too crowded – maybe 4 cars in line in front of us at the entrance station and the parking lot at Wolfe Point (for the Delicate Arch Trail) was maybe ¾ full. The hike went great and the views of the arch and the park were pretty impressive. It’s a pretty long uphill hike and best done when it’s sunny but cold, like early in the morning or very, very late in the day. A lot of the hike is on sliprock so if it’s wet you might easily lose your footing. We also looked at some petroglyphs on the way out. Leaving the park we passed a line of about 40 cars to get in. By around 10:45 we were back at the Gonzo Inn to change, take a swim in the pool (Andy), check out and get lunch. We ate at the Red Rock Bakery just up the street, which we also recommend. Delicious sandwiches and smoothies and the oatmeal chocolate chip cookie was divine. Before we went back into the Arches park we drove further south on Center Street to the supermarket, and filled up on stuff.
Then back into Arches, and this plan totally worked out. By the time we were re-entering the park, around 1:30pm, the line was gone and we just sped into the place. Apparently everyone comes to Arches between 10am and noon. We drove all the way out to the end to see Landscape Arch, which was crowded on the trail but is easily the most impressive arch in the park and well worth the visit. Heading back south along the main road we stopped at all the other spots along the way, including the highly-underrated Double Arch. We thought about doing one of the other hikes at this spot, but decided not to since a passing thunderstorm looked like it was approaching. The bad news was that it rained a bit. The good news, in addition to the awesome thunder and lightning show, was that it chased everyone out of the park. Seriously, when it stopped raining 30 minutes later maybe 75% of the people had disappeared. Our last stop was at Park Avenue, another great overlook of a canyon of sandstone cliffs, and Andy had a brisk walk down the trail to listen to the sounds of a creek and of thunder reverberating off the cliffs.
Arches might be the one park to see if you’re seeing only one; it’s close to a decent-sized town and it sports a bit of everything that we’ve seen so far – sandstone cliffs, canyons, hoodoos, petroglyphs, fantastic views of the mountains and valleys beyond, plus of course the occasional arch. It’s more crowded than most of the other parks we’ve visited, but even so it’s not actually “crowded” in any decent sense of the word. Everywhere you look you see empty space. That’s the thing out here.
It also occurred to us that this was the end of the first part of our trip. Our vacation really is two separate 1-week trips punctuated by a night in Salt Lake City, the only true city on our trip. The first week we have been driving in and around the Colorado Plateau, a massive uplift defined by semi-desert climate, sandstone and limestone formations, and eroded canyons and cliff sides. No two parks we have visited are identical but they all sport similar features and they were all created out of the same geologic processes. (Perhaps one day they’ll create a Colorado Plateau National Park akin to Adirondack State Park in New York.) We’re sorry to be leaving. Next week we’re in the very different environment of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota.
Finally we left for Salt Lake City around 6:15pm, knowing we had a long drive ahead of us. (It’s about 240 miles.) What we didn’t know was that it would rain for most of the drive. This was white knuckle time. We made great time out of Moab on US-191 and passed 2,000 miles driven as we did, then over on I-70 and up on US-6. Around 8pm we stopped in Price for gas and dinner, enjoying a satisfying McDonald’s meal of Big N’ Tasty and Chicken Strips. But getting back on the road, the light started to fade just as the rain started to fall, just as the road started to twist and turn, just as the construction zones started to appear. Long story short we drove for two hours in a driving nighttime rainstorm along a winding mountain road we didn’t know and could barely see. Oh, and the lane paint was turning black in the rain and became virtually impossible to follow, so with the huge shoulders and construction zones and temporary lane shifts and other cars and trucks, driving became improvisation because you seriously couldn’t see where your lane was. It was as if the road was saying to us, “why don’t I hide and you try to find me.” It’s one thing for a road to do that in flat Illinois; it’s another thing entirely on the edge of a cliff.
We got to the Hilton Garden Inn Salt Lake City around 10:30pm and were thrilled to be here. The rain has stopped and the hotel is fabulous. Big room, great amenities and it seems very comfy. We might sleep in tomorrow, like till 8.

Day 10 (Monday)
Andy slept in till 7:30, Jen till 8:15. So we’ll split the difference. Andy took a swim in the very nice pool and then we got ready. This is a good hotel; it looks like a Pottery Barn showroom or something, and for the $90-whatever a night we’re spending it’s a steal. No wonder this is the #1 rated hotel in Salt Lake (which is still kind of an indictment on the town). The rains we had last night have dumped some fresh snow on the Wasatch Mountains behind town, and it’s sunny this morning, so Salt Lake is putting on a good show.
We drove into the center of town and walked around the Mormon temple complex, which was populated by very friendly people. The rest of downtown SLC was empty this Memorial Day morning. After a brief stroll we found a late breakfast at the terrific JB’s Restaurant on South Temple Street, then left town for good to drive north into Idaho. JB’s was terrific probably just by virtue of being open, but what the heck.
(Turns out “Idaho” is a fake name that a railroad lobbyist created. He wanted something that sounded Indian, and first tried to affix the moniker to Colorado. When Colorado turned it down the name went to Idaho instead. Oh, and as we drove north into Pocatello we learned that in the mid-1860s the settlers dealt with the “Indian problem” in the area by murdering 400 Indians indiscriminately in one attack. Problem solved.)
It stays pretty green as you drive through northern Utah and into Idaho, and the mountains are more rounded and the valleys broader and flatter. It’s very majestic scenery. We had a long drive through southern Idaho with a couple of stops. First we filled the gas tank in Blackfoot, and Jen took a photo of the potato museum. Then we left I-15 and traveled northwest on US-26 towards Arco. On the way, totally on a whim, we stopped at the EBR-1 museum in, um, well it’s not really actually “in” anything but rather sits in the absolute middle of nowhere somewhere between Blackfoot and Arco, surrounded by plains and mountains beyond. (This is all the Snake River Plain.) It was about to rain anyway so we figured we’d get inside for a bit.
EBR-1 is currently the dark horse gem of the trip. It was great. “EBR-1” is “Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1,” the world’s first nuclear reactor. After the war, the U. of C. guys who did the pile under Stagg Field came out here and put a complete nuclear reactor together for research purposes. Which explains why it’s sitting in the middle of a broad expanse of nothing, with nothing anywhere near it, rather than in the middle of populous Chicago or something. Anyway, we pull up to this building, the parking lot virtually empty and nobody or nothing outside to greet us but a bunch of signs saying things like “visitors welcome” and “free entry,” and we wonder whether we’re going into a museum or the hideout for one of those crazy Idaho doomsday cults Jen’s been reading about. We walk inside and we’re immediately greeted by a happy, smiling young woman named Marti who offers to give us a tour. There’s a scene in the new “Star Trek” movie where Kirk meets Scotty for the first time in a giant, empty research building in the middle of nowhere on an ice moon and this was similar. (Ironically, Marti and Andy traded Borg jokes.) We had a great tour, learning all about how this reactor was set up and operated, and seeing all the original machinery. It looks and SMELLS like the 1950’s. It was an enriched uranium plant that produced plutonium as a byproduct. It also tested the containers that transported all the Three Mile Island rods and they’re still stored down the road. The place is very well preserved and it started a history of nuclear power and research in Idaho that continues to this day – INL, Idaho National Laboratories, is the major presence out here and they own most of the land between Idaho Falls and Arco. The EBR-1 museum is basically a PR effort by INL to make nuclear power look good. It wasn’t quite the Beef Council promotional film from the Simpsons, but this exhibit was very pro-nuclear power. Sounds good to us.
Then it was just a couple dozen miles west to Craters of the Moon National Monument, a giant lava field. Starting at the visitor center, we slowly worked our way south to each overlook and hike. Frankly, you can skip most of the close stuff and just go directly to the southern part of the loop. We climbed the Inferno Cone (with its false hilltops that Jen cursed) for a great view of the park, saw the Snow Cone whose hollow base preserves a pile of snow from the sun, and hiked the trail to and through the Indian Tunnel – a 600-ft. long cave formed when a giant lava tube collapsed. This is the part of the park where you’re really out amongst the lava and it makes the trip worthwhile.
Once we were all lava-ed out, we largely retraced our steps and drove back east, across the Snake River Plain, to Idaho Falls. Our hotel is, once again, a Hilton Garden Inn but this time it’s across a small canal from the Snake River just north of downtown. They’ve got a great riverwalk that we strolled along (after getting the combination for the locked bridge over the canal) and there’s a view of the Mormon temple on the other side, which is a multilayered white building that captures the setting sun quite brilliantly. Following some lousy directions from Google (the horror!) we eventually found our dinner destination, the Brownstone Restaurant & Brewhouse. Good pizza. Then a walk home past the spillwater over the falls – a really weird diagonal structure that almost runs parallel to the river’s edge – and back to the hotel to bed just as it was finally getting dark around 10pm, over 90 minutes later than at Grand Canyon.

Day 11 (Tuesday)
Awoke to a beautiful, sunny morning in Idaho Falls. Andy took a swim downstairs while Jen stole some extra sleep. Then Andy had a breakfast of hotel room coffee and leftover Brownstone pizza while Jen took a loooong hot shower.
(Quick aside: It was seriously a beautiful morning, with sunny skies and cool temps and dry air. The Snake River runs right outside our hotel and there’s a great walking path along it. Despite this, there was somebody mindlessly walking on a treadmill in the gym this morning. Why would you do that? It’s like bringing a stairmaster to the leaning tower of Pisa. (If the tower was open, of course.) Why go on a simulated walk in a completely interchangeable hotel gym when there’s an actual first-rate walk right outside your door?)
Anyway, today we’re heading over to Jackson, the Tetons and Yellowstone. We’ll probably cruise through Jackson then spend the day in the Tetons. We’re pushing Yellowstone back a bit, at the expense of a leisurely midday drive through the Madison Valley to Bozeman we had scheduled for Thursday. Valley schmalley.
Now it’s the end of the day and things have been pretty good all things being equal. The drive from Idaho Falls to Jackson on Route 26 is terrific. Idaho Falls sits at some rapids on the Snake River, surrounded in all directions by flat potato fields that stretch to the mountains on the horizon. Idaho also has these cool potato barns that are long structures with 45-degree sloping roofs that they grow grass on top of. Then as you leave Idaho you reach the mountains and the Snake River again and you drive through this tremendous alpine canyon with the snow-peaked Tetons in the distance. (You could see the Tetons from Idaho Falls.) It’s much, much greener than the Colorado Plateau and the land is granite rather than sandstone. It looks more like Vermont or Gaspé.
We got to Jackson almost in time for lunch and it was fun to arrive, from the opposite direction, at a familiar place. We found a parking spot right off the main square and wandered through the shops. Having just been in Taos and Santa Fe, we were amazed to see that Jackson has exactly the same central plaza as those Spanish-inspired towns, just with Western cowboy architecture instead of adobe. And the shops here are very upscale. We had a great outdoor lunch at Jedediah’s House of Sourdough (that’s really its name) just down the street while keeping a wary eye on an approaching thunderstorm. On our way out the owner was, for whatever reason, really happy to talk to Andy about how much rent he pays and how expensive it is to live here.
Grand Teton National Park is just up the road, past the Elk Refuge, and is not to be missed. The Tetons are these massive, jagged, rocky peaks that shoot up 6,000 feet from the surrounding plain. No idea why the French explorers who discovered them thought they looked like breasts.
Somebody named Craig Thomas has a brand-spanking-new Discovery and Visitor Center named after him and that’s where we started our tour. They spent a fortune on the place. From there we drove up to Jenny Lake and took a very wet, one-way boat ride across the lake for a hike up to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point, past snow fields. If you skip the boat ride back you then have a 2-mile hike around the lake back to the parking lot. We got to the car just in time to beat a big rainstorm that had moved in. We drove up through the rest of the park, stopping at a few overlooks for inspiring views of the Tetons in various stages of storm activity, and driving up to the Signal Mountain Overlook to scan the whole park, then headed north into Yellowstone.
To our great surprise, once you hit Yellowstone there’s about 4 feet of snow on either side of the road and some of the lakes are still frozen over. What the hell? We were late for an 8pm dinner so we sort of just shot through the park until we reached the Old Faithful Inn, where we are staying for two, yes two, nights. Our dinner at the restaurant was a very overpriced and forgettable buffet for two, and our first room, 2065, was awful. The buildings have very thin floors so you can hear every step above you, and the people in 3065 apparently thought that if they stopped walking they would die. It was like the movie “Speed” for pedestrians. Fortunately we were able to snag the only remaining top floor room, 326, which just happened to be much nicer, and was in the east wing with a direct view of Old Faithful, which erupted as if on command just as we entered the room.
Oh, and the Inn itself is spectacular. We didn’t really look around when we first arrived due to the whole late-for-diner/humanitarian-crisis-of-a-room thing, but once we got a chance, wow. Look up when you’re in the lobby. It’s just over 100 years old and has a central atrium built kind of like a 7-storey high birdcage with a massive sloped roof. The architect put all these nooks and crannies in there and you can wander for awhile. There are indoor and outdoor places to sit and a giant fireplace and chimney. They’ve got a restaurant, a pub, a coffee shop, café, patio bar and reading lounge. You can hang out here all day. The building is at least as interesting as half the sights in the park.

Day 12 (Wednesday)
For the first time this trip, we started and ended the day in the same place. This was a great development.
We were in Yellowstone all day and really got to do and see a ton. Yellowstone is the country’s most famous national park and so we won’t reinvent the wheel in this description, but we saw all the natural phenomenon and wildlife we could ask for. The park is enormous – it took as long to get from major site to major site within this park as it has taken us to drive from one park to the next. In fact, we drove as many miles within Yellowstone today as we drove just to get from Zion to Bryce. And since you usually don’t go too fast – the park is not at all crowded right now but you average 40-45 miles per hour nonetheless – the distances seem much longer.
They had a big wildfire in 1988 and you can see its effects all over the place. Indeed, many of the parks we visited had notable fire damage. But that’s apparently a good thing; the philosophy on forest fires has changed dramatically in the past generation or two. It’s now understood that fire is an integral part of a healthy Western forest. Fire helps the trees germinate, it fortifies the soil, and it clears out old growth and spurs new seedings. Plus lots of animals apparently love the taste of burned tree bark and seeds. Eventually, we may see burned forests and think it’s no more unusual than seeing leaf-less trees in the wintertime.
Our new room looks directly at Old Faithful and we saw it erupt this morning at 7:30am. Then, at last night’s waitress’ suggestion, we started the day by hiking the nearby Observation Point loop trail, which takes you up to the local peak to get a good view of the area. Old Faithful went off again just as we got to the peak. Then we walked the trail through the geysers and hot springs in the area. These were terrific. Returning to the lodge, we got in the car and started our drive northward to do the southern loop of the park.
Our first stop was Biscuit Basin, where we saw more geysers but, much more importantly, stumbled across a wandering herd of buffalo which included several young calves. We got as close to them as we felt comfortable doing so on foot and took a ton of photos. Like every buffalo we saw today, they seemed utterly unmoved by the presence of humans.
Next we stopped at the Midway Geyser Basin, which was an underrated gem of a find. It includes the Grand Prismatic Spring, which is a large, multi-colored thermal pool that not only shows brilliant reds, greens and blues but also gives off red and blue steam. Sweet. We also saw a bald eagle right overhead. The next notable stop along the loop was Norris Geyser Basin, which is a big thermal depression akin to the ones we saw in New Zealand. We hiked through the basin and also visited the local bookstore and chatted with the guy inside for awhile.
Heading east we got to Canyon Village in time for a rather late lunch at the old-time diner/soda fountain. This was the lowpoint of the day; suffice to say they were still working out the kinks in their operation. (This is a common theme in Yellowstone for some reason – there’s a real amateur hour feel to the place. You know when you get a waiter or somebody who admits up front “I just started so this might take a little longer” or whatever? Everybody here is saying that. Hopefully the guys monitoring the caldera have more experience.) The foreign couple next to us had been there for an hour, just to eat a couple of cheeseburgers, and were now apoplectic trying to get their check so they could leave. Avoid this place if you can. But right down the street is Artist Point and the North and South rim hikes over the Yellowstone Canyon. These afford great views of a canyon that looks vaguely like a cross between something from Bryce Canyon and something from the Tetons. There are steep cliffs dropping down to a raging river with a waterfall at the head. It’s a great sight.
Continuing the loop drive southward towards our next destination, Sulphur Caldron and Mud Volcano, the real excitement began. Somewhere along this road we came across a large group of cars that had stopped, with everyone out looking in the same direction. That’s the can’t-miss Yellowstone signal that Something Important Is Nearby. So we pulled over and, after a bit of trial and error, clearly saw with our own two eyes (and binoculars) the following animals – buffalo, a wolf, and two grizzly bears. Seeing the wolf was cool enough but holy crap we saw two grizzly bears! A big mother bear and a pretty big 2-year-old cub that was just about to cut ties and go out on its own. All these animals were hanging out in this vast hilly field separating one forest from another. The bears were foraging in the plants by themselves and whatever the wolf eats, it wasn’t those buffalo. They’re huge.
The rest of the drive was more thermal springs and geysers, interrupted by lots of buffalo sightings and a visit to the giant, but slightly disquieting (think The Shining), Lake Yellowstone Hotel on the giant Yellowstone Lake. As you stand at the shore of this lake you are finally hit with the staggering size of this park – the lake itself is immense and is merely the water feature at the center of this section of the park. Yellowstone is everywhere around you, as far as the eye can see in any direction, including to the snow-capped mountains ringing the horizon.
Our last stop was at West Thumb Geyser Basin, then we completed the loop (seeing elk up close at the West Thumb junction where the south road meets the loop) and drove back to the lodge. As soon as we got to the room, around 8pm, Old Faithful erupted again. What a great bookend to the drive and a nice sight. Showering and changing, we had a really good and cheap dinner at the bar downstairs that not even the most awful music we have ever heard could destroy. Then listening to some piano playing in the main lobby before returning to the room for bed. Up here it doesn’t really get dark until after 10.
(Postscript: we finally had a clear night sky, for the first time this trip. So Andy went out to look at stars and just as he turned to come back in, Old Faithful went off again. Must be 11pm.)
(Double postscript: as best we can tell, we’ve seen at least the following animals: grizzly bear, wolf, buffalo, elk, mule deer, yellow-bellied marmot, chipmunk, bald eagle, raven, duck and goose.)

Day 13 (Thursday)
Our last morning in Yellowstone. Andy gets up early and is surprised at how few people are out and about at 6:45am. The coffee lady says it’s because people are all from California and they’re an hour behind. Ordering box lunches at the restaurant reservation station, the kids working behind the counter are all atwitter because, didyouhear?, Bruce apparently just got sent home this morning. He showed up for work only two hours after he had finished drinking the night before and in his drunken state decided to give an impromptu “tour” of the building. Bruce apparently finished it by announcing that it’s customary for tour guides to throw creamer at the chimney, whereupon he whipped a thing of milk at the fireplace. We wish Bruce well.
Xanterra’s highly-qualified seasonal employees aside, we had another great day all things being equal. We started our last day in Yellowstone with a seriously informative tour around the nearby hot springs and geyser with ranger Valerie, that started right after we watched Old Faithful go off. (Funny how that’s becoming routine.) Who knew there are people called Geyser Gazers who just sit around and watch these things all day? During our tour they were parked in front of Beehive Geyser, which is twice as high as Old Faithful but only goes off once every 17 hours or so. Consistent with our good timing, of course, Beehive erupted just as we were checking out of the hotel and we saw it perfectly. Suck it, Geyser Gazers.
From Old Faithful we drove north towards Mammoth Hot Springs, with our plan being to see the remaining sights on the west side of the park then head out through the West Yellowstone exit and drive north to Bozeman, Montana through the Madison Valley.
While in Yellowstone we had the best highlight of our time in the park – we got caught in the middle of a herd of buffalo that were being driven south along the road back into the center of the park. We literally sat parked for 10 minutes while buffalo of all ages walked past and around our car, slowly being driven by 3 park service rangers and two actual cowboys, all on horseback. What a sight.
Putting the buffalo behind us, we moved north towards Mammoth and into elk country. We stopped for a picnic lunch at Beaver Lake (so-so, since you couldn’t really see the adjacent meadow too well from the picnic tables and we had hoped to see wildlife there) and then drove into Mammoth Hot Springs at the top of the park. This was the biggest letdown of the trip. There are travertine terraces here, formed by dormant hot springs, but they just looked like extinct thermal features and had lost all their color and, well, interest. They were dead versions of what we had been looking at for 2 days. Imagine walking through the Louvre for a day, then taking a 2-hour train ride out of Paris to look at blank canvas. Anyway, Mammoth Hot Springs itself is a cute enough town (it’s a former army barracks) and we had decent, if oversized, ice cream in the shade of a tree while watching elk.
By now it was midafternoon and we turned around and left the park through the west gate, passing 3,000 miles driven as we did so and entering into Montana. Taking our old friend 191, which then turned onto 287, we drove northwest past Hebgen and Earthquake Lakes and into the Madison Valley. These lakes are the site of a major 1959 earthquake that significantly impacted the thermal features in Yellowstone. We had read that the scenery here was majestic and it’s true – there are mountain ranges on either side of you and the Madison River, which runs from Yellowstone all the way to Bozeman and eventually into the Missouri, is alongside you. We saw some bighorn sheep and pronghorn, amongst the cattle that predominate here. We also saw lots of new vacation homes overlooking the mountains and the river. It is clear that Money has taken root in the Madison Valley.
After a quick stop in Ennis to stretch legs and get some iced latte, we took 84 through more steep valleys and over to Bozeman. Bozeman is an interesting town; it’s the home of Montana State University and also is where the Money goes for wine and ciabatta. They’ve got a Main Street and nearby shops that reflect that. Some people look like cattle farmers, some look like art students and some look like Southern California beautiful people trying too hard to look like they’re not trying. Bozeman’s like a big city but with blocks instead of neighborhoods, so if you stroll Main Street for 20 minutes like we did you pass through the artsy block, the yuppie block, the nouveau riche block, the blue collar block, etc. We’d expected . . . less. We had a terrific, delicious, surprisingly cheap dinner outside at Ted’s Montana Grill then went back to bed at our third Hilton Garden Inn, which sits in the giant mall on the edge of town across from a Home Depot on one side and a Lowe’s on the other, with a chain called “Old Chicago Pasta & Pizza” down the street. We did not go there, even though their slogan is “Eat. Drink. Be Yourself.” We like to do all those things, just not while we are jamming a sharp stick in our eye or bashing ourselves in the head with a brick.

Day 14 (Friday)
Started in Bozeman and we (Jen) slept in. Andy tried a swim in the pool but at about 20’ across, the pool was more of a very lukewarm giant hot tub. This being a beautiful morning at the foothills of a snow-capped mountain range, however, there was of course somebody inside the gym on a treadmill just walking slowly and staring at nothing.
Having another 300+ mile drive ahead of us, we left mid-morning and started east on I-90. At this point I-90 runs with Routes 89 and 191, so all our paths are sort of combined here. 191 takes you south to Moab or Chinle. 89 takes you to Lee’s Ferry or Bryce. I-90 takes you right to Chicago, though of course it doesn’t look anything like the Kennedy Expressway out here (thank god). And you can tell we’ve left the semi-desert of the Colorado Plateau because the bugs have multiplied 1,000-fold. A giant fly bounced off Andy’s cheek in Bozeman with a “thud” that sounded like a spitball. And our car looks suddenly resembles an insect genocide device. The hood and windshield are littered with bug residue and blood. We’re like an ice breaker clearing a channel through a frozen sea, and on two occasions the sound on the windshield has been loud enough that we thought it was raining.
We stopped in Billings for lunch. Billings makes an odd first impression – the marked exit for downtown, which is how any tourist is going to approach the city, takes you right past the women’s prison, the courthouse, the probation & parole center, and various social welfare agencies. So as you slowly make your way into the center of whatever the hell place this is, you’re wondering whether you better turn around before you get knocked up and tattooed. There’s a sort of historic city center, though, and we had lunch at the Log Cabin Bakery on Main Street. The employees seemed like nice people. If Bozeman is Great Barrington or Northampton, Billings is Pittsfield.
Driving through undulating grass hills we got to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument around 2:15pm. Surprisingly (to Jen), we stayed for 3 hours, listening to a really good ranger lecture on the battle and touring both the walking paths and the driving tour. (Somebody needs to proofread the walking tour pamphlet, though – it’s only “it’s” when it’s short for “it is.” Indeed, apparently they use the apostrophe “s” out here whenever anyone wants. Sorry, “want’s.”) We learned all about Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse (more on him tomorrow) and the background to the Sioux War and the westward movement into the Black Hills (more on them tomorrow). This is a good stop if you’re in the area but isn’t worth a special visit unless, like a lot of the other visitors the day we were here, you’re some ex-military retiree who likes to tour these things and meet other people like you. The average visitor here was definitely older and flabbier than in Utah or northern Arizona.
The park itself is impressive. Lots of white gravestones scattered around the prairie where the soldiers fell, though the ranger admitted to us that the markers around Last Stand Hill are basically made up – they showed up with the right number of grave stones but didn’t have exact locations for everyone so they sort of just fudged it in that area, adding a few extra markers here and there for aesthetic effect. Indeed, Custer’s body was found at the top of the hill but they moved him to the side with all the other markers so it looks like they’re surrounding him. Also, the walking path down to the ravine is scattered with grave markers, giving the impression that soldiers were killed as they retreated up to higher ground. In fact, though, those soldiers were almost all killed at the base of the ravine a couple hundred yards away. Some of the grave stones also look much newer than others, and we learned that they’ve had to replace many of them – some are on their 5th generation – because people used to chip pieces off them to take home. Who goes to a cemetery and desecrates the graves? We were happy to get out of the sun and back into the car, however, because it’s in the mid-80s today and we (Jen) are getting very exhausted and we (Jen) relished a chance to sleep in the car for awhile because we (Jen) are freaking sick of the constant walking and hiking and getting up early.
Then we continued on to Buffalo, our end point for the day after about 300 miles driven. This is a very cute town at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains. Our B&B is the Mansion House Inn on Main Street, which is walking distance to downtown. We had dinner at the Clear Creek Café which sits outside next to the river and is part of the Occidental Hotel. Good food and great location especially given the lovely evening. Remember Moose Drool amber ale – Andy’s had it three times now and it’s great. And since they didn’t do dessert but we were still hungry we walked across the street to the hopping Sol de Vallarta, the obligatory Mexican restaurant in Buffalo (Mexican restaurants are a feature in these towns). Not sure what we were expecting but the food here was awesome. Seriously – the chips and salsa, the margarita, and the desserts were all at least as good as anything you get at the best Mexican places in Chicago, and without all the crap. Maybe this town shuts down early, however, because by 9pm the restaurant was virtually empty and we left to return to our room via the very nice riverfront walking trail, where we got lost and ended up taking a short-cut through a junk-yard.

Day 15 (Saturday)
Mixed day, with lots of driving and some reasonably interesting sights. We had some quick breakfast stuff in Buffalo and then left the delightful Mansion House Inn for the drive east to Devil’s Tower and the Black Hills. They have a canyon here called Crazy Woman Canyon. That’s funny.
Everything changed as we entered this final phase of the trip. With the snow-capped Bighorn Mountains behind us, we left the realm of the big peaks and went into the Plains. From here on the landscape has looked like southern Utah but with topsoil. The roads and the land are still pretty empty, however. The big landmark is a coal mine at Gillette whose freight trains snake out constantly.
We got to Devil’s Tower late morning and had a few stops. The park itself is only a mile square, but it has a prairie dog town and a good 1.3-mile walking track around the tower base, through a forested area strewn with old rocks that have fallen off. The tower rises out of the ground much the way Close Encounters of the Third Kind shows it. But they don’t really mention the movie here. Also, the license plate hunt took a tragic turn when we saw, but could not photograph, New Brunswick. You’re not going to see that again. We’ve now seen D.C., Maine and N.B. We have every Canadian province between B.C. and Quebec except for Saskatchewan, and we have most U.S. states except for Louisiana, and some of the crappy eastern ones like Rhode Island and Delaware. Somewhat surprisingly, Devil’s Tower probably had the most diverse plate population after the Grand Canyon North Rim. Generally speaking, other than the local and border states, the most common plates have been from California, Washington, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri and then maybe Texas, New York or Florida.
Then we continued east to Spearfish, S.D. and the Black Hills. We got to Spearfish in the early afternoon to find the visitor’s center closed on weekends (huh?) and Main Street, which had been hyped as an interesting place to wander, to be pretty uninteresting. Skip Spearfish and go to Hill City or Keystone. But we’d heard about a place called Sanford’s for lunch so we ate there (once we found it) in their outdoor patio. Think Dick’s Last Resort but without the mean waiter schtick. Indeed, our guy was super nice. But here, listening to the smoking customers on this outdoor patio, it hit us – we were back in the Midwest. There’s a cultural border somewhere in the comparatively flat landscape between Buffalo, Wyoming and Spearfish, South Dakota. Whether it was the different accent, the increased public smoking or the jean shorts, we were back in Middle America.
The Black Hills fit in this cultural landscape. They look more like Upstate New York, or eastern Tennessee, than anywhere we’ve been on this trip. They’re greener, more commercialized, and more crowded. Motorcycles are everywhere. Campsites, fun parks and tourist traps are all over the place. People don’t look as fit. Whereas Bozeman looks like a colony of Santa Monica or Nob Hill, Spearfish reminds you of Sevierville. It’s kind of depressing, much like Sevierville. C’est la vie. There’s still some remarkable stuff here.
We took the aptly-named Spearfish Canyon Scenic Drive south to Lead (pronounced “leed”), then took Route 385 south to the Crazy Horse Monument, which is the Indian answer to Mt. Rushmore. Frankly, this monument provokes some very mixed responses. Sixty years ago, the Lakota Sioux elders invited a Boston sculptor named Korsczak Ziolkowski to come out and carve Crazy Horse out of a mountain. Literally. You know how Mt. Rushmore is just four faces in the side of a hill? Here, by contrast, they came up with a plan to totally blow away the entire freaking mountain and leave behind a 500+ ft. high statue of Crazy Horse on a horse, pointing to the horizon. They’ve done his face and some preliminary work on his arm and the horse, and it’s taken them since the Truman Administration and only seems to have continued because this Korsczak guy was crazy and devoted the rest of his life to the project. Now his wife and 7 of his 10 kids continue the effort.
The Sioux obviously have every right to honor one of their heroes with a monument in the middle of the hills they revere as sacred. But Crazy Horse also seems like a project that has gone totally off the rails. Sure it’s to honor Crazy Horse, but the whole museum, gift shop, visitor center etc. really seem to glorify Korsczak himself (who died in 1982). It’s his poem that apparently will go up on a tablet to the left of Crazy Horse, meaning only his name will be up there. The name “Korsczak” is on absolutely everything in the place. (I mean, how many times have I mentioned him already?) And while there’s a bunch of exhibits and displays that honor Indian history, you easily learn more about Korsczak than anyone else.
And they really, really need to bring in a professional museum curator to sort things out. There’s just no rhyme or reason to how anything in the museum is laid out – it seems like a big warehouse that just holds everything anyone’s ever given them. Why, for example, does a museum about Crazy Horse and Indian history have a whole section of sports memorabilia? (What the hell is a Nationals’ 2005 Inaugural D.C. Season banner doing here? Or a Brett Favre jersey?) Why did they put a 19th-century stagecoach in the middle of Korsczak’s sculpture studio? Who are these people in the paintings and why are they laid out this way? They could put a “Price is Right” pinball machine in here and it wouldn’t look out of place. I read the card for a painting of a Sacred White Buffalo that was born in Wisconsin in the 1990s. The card said the sacred buffalo died after 10 years even though it was expected to live 30-40 years. Yet they never say why such a revered animal died so prematurely – isn’t that an important fact? Did somebody back over it on the way to the gym? Did it smoke? Who knows? Who cares? Anyone? Bueller?
Moving on, we made our way to Custer State Park in the southern Black Hills and to our hotel room at the State Game Lodge. The drive in along Routes 87 and 16A is very, very scenic (Needles Scenic Highway, through some very tight tunnels). Good lookouts, hiking opportunities and wildlife options – we saw buffalo and deer, and a wild turkey. The general store has by far the most impressive t-shirt collection we’ve seen anywhere on this trip, and is run by a guy who was very happy to chat. We had to move rooms at the Game Lodge since our first room looked directly onto the dining room (shades of Hobart) and thus was intolerably noisy, but we moved into a room in the Creekside Lodge that seems great. Tomorrow it’s Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, and some State Park hiking if we have time.

Day 16 (Sunday)
We only know it’s May 31 because people keep saying it. We had another long and surprisingly satisfying day today. Our plan was to get up early and head over to nearby Mt. Rushmore for breakfast, then drive east to the Badlands and come back for dinner. We wound up coming back to the State Game Lodge 13 hours after we left.
From the Game Lodge we took super-scenic Iron Mountain Road north to Mt. Rushmore. The road is brilliantly designed – it winds through the forested mountains, with several tunnels that open directly to a view of Mt. Rushmore in the distance. This is first-rate landscaping on a momentous scale. Very Olmsteadian. Rushmore itself was surprisingly impressive for something we’d seen all our lives. The parking lot feels like an airport garage but the sculpture itself looks stunning. We ate a blah breakfast in a nearly empty outdoor restaurant patio with Rushmore almost all to ourselves (definitely go early in the morning), then joined a ranger walk around the forest path that loops underneath the faces. Not bad. The walk ended in the sculptor’s studio and the exhibitions and theater hall, where you learn all about the history of the project and the histories of the presidents depicted on them. Well worth the trip. (And we inadvertently discovered how to get in for free – apparently the garage is the only place in the Black Hills that only takes cash, so if you show up with an empty wallet and credit card they tell you just to pay on the way out. But then as you leave you discover there’s no way to pay on the way out so you’re forced to leave without paying. Oops, who knew?)
Rushmore is a really well put-together monument and museum. It makes Crazy Horse look like some harebrained Tower of Babel project that the weirdo neighbors can’t drop. Rushmore’s exhibits are coherently organized and informative; Crazy Horse’s are neither. Rushmore’s design changed dramatically during the 14 years it took to build, as the sculptors cut away at the mountain and pragmatically adjusted their vision to conform to what they found. Crazy Horse is a monstrously oversized project that does not seem to have been altered once in 60 years, regardless of circumstance. (This is a potential problem – at this point, if they mess up anything on Crazy Horse, then everything will be flawed because the sculpture is the mountain and you can’t put a mountain back together again once you blow it apart. On Rushmore, by contrast, they were able to start Jefferson on one side, get halfway done and realize it wouldn’t work, then blow it away and move him to Washington’s other side where he is today.) Rushmore is a joy to look at from multiple angles and distances; Crazy Horse can only be seen in profile so half the face is invisible to the public. Rushmore honors America and the presidents on it, and then the sculptor who created it (Gutzon Borglum), in that order. Crazy Horse is a shrine to Korsczak Ziolkowski first and foremost. You half expect them to call him their Dear Leader or something.
Whatever. Finished doing our patriotic duty, we left the (Midwestern) tourists behind and drove into the plains and the Badlands National Park, about 65 miles east of Rapid City along I-90. It was a hot, sunny day as we rocketed onto the prairie. After spending so much time in the mountains, this new landscape was slightly unnerving. There’s so much flat and so much horizon; at one point we were at the crest of a hill, with the land falling down and away from us in every direction, and it seemed the ratio of land to sky had been skewed. This must be what sailors feel when they leave the coast for the first time and head, untethered, out into the enveloping sea.
On the way we stopped at Wall, to take in the (apparently) famous Wall Drug. It’s kitschy, it’s cheesy, but you know what? It was pretty cool. Wall is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere South Dakota, and this huge store has literally turned itself into a tourist destination. Wall Drug is a series of connected buildings and enclosed walkways selling all sorts of stuff. It goes back to the Depression and has been catering to travelers ever since. They’re famous for their cute little billboards that are planted for miles in every direction – we saw our first Wall Drug sign somewhere before Devil’s Tower. We got some fudge and some actual drugstore stuff we needed, but skipped lunch – the cafeteria menu was dreadful. (Ground beef BBQ sandwich? Really?)
Then, with a brief stop to look at the closed Minuteman Missile Silo visitor center, we went to the Badlands. This was also pretty cool. We started the loop road at the far end and made our way back west. First we had lunch at the Cedar Creek Lodge diner, then hiked the three trails at the eastern end of the loop (including the “strenuous” trail to the Notch with ladder that was much tougher for the French tourists we had to wait 10 minutes for). Then, in the evening light, we did the scenic drive and lookouts of the western ¾ of the drive. There was some fantastic scenery of the eroded cliffs and the prairie; Badlands looks like a cross between Bryce Canyon and Painted Desert. We saw a pretty big collection of mountain goats hanging out on the side of one big hill, and had the park more or less to ourselves.
Heading back west we got to the Black Hills in time for late dinner. Since we wanted to drive fast, we skipped Rapid City and instead took Route 79 straight down towards Hermosa, where we had a very good dinner at Lintz Bros. pizza at the intersection of 79 and 36. Passing 4,000 miles driven, Route 36 then took us back into Custer State Park, past a herd of buffalo bringing their young downhill to a watering hole right at the road’s edge, and to the lodge to bed.

Day 17 (Monday)
We’re nearing the end and we dread it – this trip has (knock on wood) been almost flawless. Everything has gone so smoothly we’re shocked.
This was our last full day and we spent it touring the caves. Waking up in room 133 of the Lodge building at the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park, we had leftover pizza for breakfast then dodged a bullet when we were able to check out for the rate we had already paid even though it turned out our new room was $60/night more expensive – they’d accidentally told us the room was cheaper when we moved.
Our plan then was to hike the Mt. Coolidge trail in the state park, which gives great panoramic views of the area. However, this plan quickly fell apart when we discovered – as we drove past it – that the road to Mt. Coolidge was closed because it’s in the middle of a construction zone. So it was time for plan B. Continuing south on Route 87, we went to Wind Cave National Park. This is a very nice combination prairie/cave park, with a 25,000 acre buffalo and elk preserve above ground and the 4th-largest cave below it. We got a Maine license plate, which somewhat makes up for the Great New Brunswick Catastrophe. We also had to kill a bit of time before our cave tour then took the $8/person 11am Natural Entrance tour with about 35 other people. Not bad. We saw the box formation, which is the signature feature of this cave, and walked for awhile underground with a ranger who was clearly going through the motions. But she let Andy carry her big flashlight so he felt like a deputy ranger.
Next stop was lunch, and since we decided, after some debate, to go Jewel Cave National Monument for another cave experience we decided to find something in Custer, which is the only big town between Wind Cave and Jewel Cave. To our very pleasant surprise, we stumbled upon the excellent Sage Creek Grille on Mt. Rushmore Rd. (ie, Main Street). Great sandwiches in a laid back setting. And Custer is a pretty neat town to stroll through – the more time we spend in these southern Black Hills towns, the more we realize that Spearfish is a dump and we wasted an opportunity by stopping there. Indeed, you can bypass the northern third of the Black Hills entirely.
Speaking of which, our trip to Jewel Cave changed our minds completely about how to see caves here. The difference between Jewel Cave and Wind Cave is like the difference between a Van Gogh and a fingerpainting. We took the $8/person 3:20pm Scenic Tour, also with a large group, after killing time in a torrential downpour. But the cave experience was vastly, vastly superior. First of all, ranger Shay was actually excited about this stuff and on the ball. But much more importantly, the cave is phenomenal. The rooms, crevasses and tunnels are huge – some with ceilings that go up almost 100 feet – and the formations are so much more varied and colorful. There are sections where it looks like somebody has used a 20’ spoon to drip melted caramel over bowling ball-sized dough, and other areas where ancient straw formations (and giant bacon) look delicate enough to break in a strong breeze. The cave itself is significantly more awe-inspiring. Plus the ranger officially made Andy the “caboose”, ie. deputy ranger, of the group with special responsibility to keep everyone in front of him.
After the cave tour we quickly did the 3.5-mile Canyon trail hike around the outskirts of the Jewel Cave park (on top of the cave), where we walked mostly through a former wildfire district and saw a few deer and a historic ranger building. It had stopped raining and cooled off, though, so the big change in elevation during the hike wasn’t so bad. When we finally returned to the parking lot there was only one other car left – that of another couple we had passed on the hike going in the other direction.
We finished the day by driving south to our hotel in Hot Springs. We’re staying in the Red Rock River Resort Hotel & Spa downtown, on River Street. Hot Springs is an interesting town – it was clearly a more important place 100 years ago and has the solid neo-classical sandstone architecture to prove it. The hotel is also, well, interesting. The building is 100 years old. The hotel is not expensive and comes with access to a spa with hot tub and dry sauna, among other things. It also seems like it’s still being renovated and was not exactly crowded when we arrived, though to be fair this is Monday and apparently a lot of things, including the hotel’s restaurant, are closed on Monday. Anyway, first we ate dinner at the wonderful Blue Bison Café down the street, where the bison chili was outstanding and the ice cream and brownie desserts were, too. Then, tired and sore, we came back to the hotel and hung out in the spa for awhile before going to bed. Mmm, hot tub.
For the 5th night in a row we have had cable TV in our room but never turned on the set.

Day 18 (Tuesday)
Last day and, like any final day of a vacation, it basically felt like we were getting ready to leave the whole time.
We awoke in Hot Springs after a fitful night’s sleep. Our room, 207, is a huge corner suite but when we checked in the night before it sounded like some of the windows were open. Now, in the light of day, we can see that they were – the top panes had dropped on 3 of them, letting in all the lovely street sounds of Hot Springs’ main drag. Sure that only meant a car every 5 or 10 minutes, plus a drunk guy or two, but we’re sensitive.
It’s cold and overcast. Since we had a long drive down to Denver for our evening flight, we didn’t stick around long after we officially woke up. We got a quick breakfast at the Fall River Bakery down the street then drove over to the Mammoth Site, which is a private museum built above a former sinkhole that contains the bones of over 50 mammoths. The mammoth remains are interesting enough but even more entertaining was the museum and the tour they make you take. The place was built in the late 1970s (in cutting-edge South Dakota no less) and they have barely changed anything since, so going in there is like walking back 4 decades. Plus they make you stop and listen to these old phone receivers at each stop, while the tour guide talks into a microphone that the phone picks up, but since the guide is standing 5 feet away you can hear everything she says with your ear and you’re standing there with this stupid phone in your hand looking like a dipshit. We’d recommend this meta museum and practical joke laboratory.
Finally putting the Black Hills behind us it was time for a long drive back down to Denver. All in all we drove over 430 miles today, the most for any day on this trip. Fortunately we were able to get a lot of it out of the way on this next leg, since there is, to be generous, virtually nothing between Hot Springs and Cheyenne, Wyoming, where we stopped for lunch. (Except more coal trains.)
And to say that “virtually nothing” ends when you get to Cheyenne is being charitable. It’s a nice enough state capital but hardly worth a trip. It is the Joliet to Denver’s Chicago. As we drove around downtown looking for a place to eat that didn’t have a liquor store or pawn shop next to it, Andy kept asking whether we’d missed the real city. Nope. There’s a big USAF base on the north side of town and a big Union Pacific railyard on the south, and Topeka in between. So we ate at Shadows Bar & Grill in the old train station, with a railroad view that the hostess recommended for reasons unclear to us. Shadows has half-price Wednesday beers and all-you-can-eat specials on game days; you’ve been there.
Quickly finishing lunch we got back onto I-25 south. It’s been drizzling all day and is still cold. But since our flight still isn’t for another 5 hours, we decided to quickly detour into Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s sort of on the way. This idea was great in theory but the execution suffered from two problems – first, the drive up is slow and long so by the time we arrived (4pm) we almost had to turn around; and second, the weather still stunk. It was cold, drizzly and foggy. Since the park is famous for its views of the surrounding snow-capped peaks, the low-lying fog was sort of a bummer. C’est la vie. We drove speedily to the Moraine Valley museum/visitor center then went to Sprague Lake for a lovely ½-mile hike around the water. Signs along the trail helpfully tell you what you can’t see.
Aaaand just like that we were done. With the Sprague Lake hike over, we had no more trails to hike, no more parks to visit, no more places to go. With some genuine sadness we got back in the Toyota and raced to the airport – by now it was almost 5pm and we had at least 50 miles to drive just to get to the airport before our 7:35pm flight to Chicago. (As anyone who’s been to Denver knows, they mysteriously put the new airport way out in the prairie miles away from anything. It’s practically in Nebraska.) Looking back, we should have skipped Cheyenne entirely and just picked up some lunch at a drive-through or something. Fortunately the drive down from the park was faster than the drive up, and then for $5 we took the toll road shortcut, E-470, that seems to have about 8 cars on it at any given time. This was a godsend – there’s nothing like being able to drive 90 mph when you’re racing to catch a flight. We got there just in time, checked in the bags, dropped off the car, and got on the plane. We’d driven almost 4,600 miles since we left Denver 18 days ago and we made our return flight with 20 minutes to spare.
Got home around 11:30pm to an apartment that smelled a little stale but otherwise seemed intact. Funny how things rarely change while you’re gone.

Epilogue
Typing this the next day the trip already seems like ancient history. I had to re-read the Bandelier section just to remember what we did there.
On driving: the first impressions remained. You can drive forever, really fast, without seeing anyone. We never saw a car accident or anything close to it. Never saw a jackass on a cell phone until we returned to Chicago. And these Western guys benefit from a lot of federal spending on their roads. In fact, there are signs at every road construction project showing how much funding comes from each source. Typically, it was about 85% federal, 15% state and 0% local. Keep that in mind the next time you hear Westerners grumble about being self-sufficient or about the feds butting in. (But we really never saw any politics.)
People in Mormon country and in Montana drive slowly in the left lane. Californians drive closer to the speed limit. Locals all have white pickups. There are a surprising number of giant RVs – these land-based mega yachts that are so big they can tow an SUV the way a yacht tows a dinghy. And the land remained enormous and empty. We drove almost 4,600 miles and almost always we were in open country. After leaving Denver and the corridor down to Colorado Springs, we briefly passed through an urbanized area on the way between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, then again saw some built up sections between Provo and Salt Lake one week and 1,500 miles later. During the ranger lecture at Little Bighorn, the ranger commented that if the 8,000-person Indian encampment that Custer attacked in 1876 was there today, it would still be one of the largest towns in Montana. We drove through six massive states – New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota – that combined have the same population as the Chicago metro area. Even adding the other two states on our trip, Arizona and Colorado, you only get to the NY metro population spread across a physical area larger than the original thirteen colonies. And our trip through Arizona was almost entirely in empty desert and in the sparsely populated Navajo Nation.
Which brings up the Indians. They’re poor. On the interstate between Santa Fe and Painted Desert, most of the major stops were for Indian casinos and their accompanying gas stations and rest areas. Otherwise it’s not entirely clear what they do for a living besides sell cheap stuff at tourist sites. In and around Chinle, especially, it looked like the Third World. Junk and trash surround these decrepit houses that border a dirt and sand “lawn.” Trash blows away across the arid yards. Maybe there’s also a horse standing pitifully in a small enclosure. It’s bad. Also, their history out here is much more recent and catastrophic. Back East, you grow up knowing that Indians lived on the land hundreds of years ago but that they slowly, slowly disappeared through a combination of conflict, disease and migration. A shame, sure, but ancient history by now. Here, Indians and “whites” butted heads comparatively recently and almost always violently. When the Wounded Knee Massacre took place in 1891, New York City was almost 270 years old. The Sioux took possession of the Black Hills by treaty in 1868, then were expelled 10 years later when the gold supposedly found there made the hills more valuable than previously thought. In these sudden, brutally violent conflicts one group simply took from the other and dramatic reversals of fortune took place. It makes it very jarring to drive the Black Hills today, for example, and see signs touting “Black Hills Gold” when you know that’s the direct result of a specific bloody theft and that somebody is still demanding justice for it.
On us: as if we needed confirmation, but we’re not really extroverts. We didn’t make any new lifelong friends, we didn’t hang out with strangers and we generally left no mark on where we’d been. By now we’ve probably been forgotten everywhere we visited, which is sort of how we like it. The photos we took are overwhelmingly of the natural world that we saw. We’re also in better shape than when we left. We walked, hiked and climbed a ton. We almost always seemed to be doing more than the average park visitor and, except for driving hundreds of miles virtually every day, we spent as much time outdoors as we could. We watched very little TV and really didn’t try to stay up to date with the world. The wireless internet connections were great, but we usually used that to check maps or tourist info. On several occasions we had a sincerely tough time trying to recall what day of the week it was.
On the trip: Things went amazingly well. The car never broke down (faulty tire light notwithstanding) and got great mileage. We never fell off the schedule and everything was where and when it was supposed to be. Nothing was stolen (unless you count a 1/3-full water bottle that somebody swiped at Bandelier) and nobody got hurt. This seemed like the perfect time of year to visit these places – not too early that anything was closed for snow, but not late enough into summer that the crowds had shown up yet. We were consistently told, wherever we went, that the busy season was a few weeks away. In most of the places we traveled we kept an eye on the real estate market – we could see ourselves owning land almost everywhere we visited.
Finally, if this were an article or something there’d be a bunch of awards. Barring that, some quick thought recaps:

Best hotels:
Chains: The Hilton Garden Inns were consistently top notch. The SLC hotel is close to downtown, cheap, quiet and spacious. Great pool and other amenities. The other 2 ones we stayed in (Idaho Falls and Bozeman) were also excellent, with each looking slightly more “Western” than the previous but all following the same layout. The Old Santa Fe Inn was fine, no complaints, and the Best Western Chinle was actually better than the reviews made it sound. We’d stay in any of these again.
Boutique: Maybe the Gonzo Inn in Moab, though the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos had the best breakfast we had all trip and the solarium room is unique, to put it mildly. Mansion House Inn in Buffalo was also perfectly good, and cheap too.
Park lodge: Zion. It was the only one we stayed in where we didn’t want to switch rooms. The Old Faithful Inn is a beautiful building and definitely worth a visit if you’re ever in Yellowstone, but only stay there if you can get a room on the top floor. Bryce is probably the same as Zion, but they have a handful of rooms with connecting doors and we got one of them. The State Game Lodge gave us a room that looked onto the dining room – only stay here if you can get in the Lodge Building. It looks like a miniature Hilton Garden Inn.

Best restaurants:
Upscale: Tie between Ted’s Montana Grill in Bozeman (Andy) and Joseph’s Table in Taos (Jen). Honorable mention to the lodge restaurants in Zion and at the State Game Lodge (for food), and at the North Rim (atmosphere – it’s hard to beat sunset over the Grand Canyon as your décor).
Casual: Lee’s Ferry Lodge. It’s the kind of place you want to take your friends to. Honorable mention to Blue Bison Café in Hot Springs, with its phenomenal bison chili in a cute little shop with great service (and cute waitresses) and to the Café in Trinidad. Maybe it was only because the trip had just started, but it was a neat little place in an old-timey small town in southern Colorado that served delicious and healthy food.

Best park:
Colorado Plateau: This is tough, but probably Arches. It’s got some of virtually everything that the other parks specialize in (except perhaps for abandoned pueblos and petrified wood), and is a compact park with comparatively good hiking and viewing options. Plus it’s close to a town. Canyonlands has great scenery and is largely empty, but much of it is inaccessible and it lets in noisy 4x4s and ATVs. Bryce is all hoodoos. Grand Canyon is obviously wonderful to look at but is a largely passive park and once you’ve seen it you don’t need to go back. Zion is probably a close second to Arches but it’s even more crowded.
Yellowstone-Black Hills: Okay, the fix is obviously in here because the winner is Yellowstone. Maybe not the best park experience on our trip simply because it’s so big and time-consuming to navigate, but this is the place you could stay a week and still not do most of what you wanted. We saw grizzly bears. We sat in the middle of a buffalo herd rounded up by rangers on horseback. We saw hot springs, thermal pools and geysers that shot steaming water 150’ into the air. We drove alongside canyons and lakes and waterfalls and through forests, mountains and alpine meadows. There are majestic old lodge buildings that themselves could keep you occupied for a day and there are hiking and boating trails that we never had enough time to even contemplate taking. It’s a nice place to visit.

License plates:
We saw DC, New Brunswick and Belgium. We took photos of the following: CO, IA, IL, WI, SD, AL, NV, ID, NM, CA, AZ, TX, WA, British Columbia, FL, TN, PA, SC, OR, Quebec, MN, Hawaii (!), VA, MI, MO, NY, Alaska (!), GA, KS, MD, Italy (!), Ontario, KY, AR, UT, OK, CT, NC, VT, WY, NH, Manitoba, WV, NE, Germany, Alberta, ND, the U.S. Government, and ME.
So the only states we didn’t get were Delaware, Rhode Island, Louisiana and Mississippi. I’m positive we saw New Jersey and Ohio and Indiana and Massachusetts and Montana (of course) but we don’t seem to have shots of them either.

Do’s and don’ts:
Do get a National Parks Annual Pass. Ours was $80 and we probably saved at least $100 with it, to say nothing of the reduced hassle. Great deal.
Do bring lots of layers and a waterproof jacket. We traveled between May 16 and June 2, and went from south to north thinking the weather would get warmer as we went along. Turns out, we had the hottest and coldest days of the trip at the Black Hills. It was 90 degrees and sunny when we went out to Badlands and it was 42 and raining when we drove down to Denver only two days later. Also, contrary to all research and common sense, it was cool and intermittently rainy virtually the entire time we were in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
Don’t count on constant cellphone or blackberry service. Nothing worked in the Black Hills except for about a 5-mile stretch in Custer. Ditto Yellowstone.
Do bring a couple of clean and decent-looking things to wear. Andy resorted to wearing his black polo shirt whenever we went out for dinner, for lack of any other presentable collared shirt. He did this at least 6 times.
Don’t bring a lot of stuff. Luggage is heavy and when you’re checking in and out of hotels every day – we stayed in 15 different places – it’s a pain to deal with. We each brought one backpack and one medium-sized piece of rolling luggage. Also, we bought a bunch of t-shirts and other clothes at the places we visited. So no need to bring too many with you.
Do bring shoes you can get dirty. Don’t assume you will be able to clean your clothes too well when you get home. Some of that dirt gets worn in real well.
Don’t bring CDs without thinking about how often you’ll listen to them. U2 was great in the desert. Vivaldi, for whatever reason, worked perfectly in the Grand Canyon. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” was great in theory but has a bunch of boring, quiet crap on the back side that doesn’t play well in the car. And for some bizarre reason, Andy never got to listen to Boston.
Do plan to take lots of photos. Sometimes it seemed as though the sole purpose of going to one of these parks was to photograph it. People had tripods, zoom lenses and high-end cameras. Whatever – we brought our little digital guy along and it worked great. Jen did, however, buy a new 2GB card halfway through. It was $19 at Zion and Bryce but $29 at Arches – make a note of that.

It was perfect.

The Flaneur

September 6, 2010

Ground Zero Mosque

March 24, 2010

River North Old and New

March 20, 2010

Fried plantains

Driving the West

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