Our Travel Blog

As I said yesterday, last nights accommodation was a little different to where we usually stay.

When you are used to the door keys being credit card size, carrying this one around was a pain in the *ss, literally! But the room was fine, even though it did drop to 2C (36F) overnight.

One of the issues we had planning the last few days of the trip was a combination of distance between destinations and available hotels in, or near them. Today we finished up with very little travelling, but not really enough time left to go to Zion. So, we did some sight seeing and then some credit card abuse (aka shopping). For some items it is still cheaper to buy in the US rather than Canada despite the abysmal exchange rate of $1 Cdn = 73c US.

On the trip down to Cedar City UT we took a side road off to a National Monument, free with our National Parks card!! We climbed up to 10,575 feet, the highest so far on the trip. Again there were plenty of spectacular views.

Tomorrow marks the last day of  the trip and the start of the homeward journey. Depending on what state of mind I am in when we reach Colorado tomorrow night, after our visit to Zion National Park, there may or may not be a blog. I wont write any on the trip back as it will just be speed limit Interstate driving. I will write a conclusion when we get home next week where I will reveal our next TWO adventures!!

After breakfast we headed out to the first of the two “must see” places that the trip was built around, Bryce Canyon National Park.

Unfortunately, our first impression was one of disappointment. We decided to drive to the end of the road and visit all the viewpoints on the way back as they would be on that side of the road. The drive was through wooded areas and probably for the first 15 or so miles there was no indication of “spectacular scenery” that we had been used to just driving public highways for the last few days, perhaps we have been spoiled? We then started climbing up to 9100 ft and started getting glimpses of the red rock that Utah is famous for.

At the top our spirits lifted some as there was, after all, some scenery once we got out of the car at the overlook.

We stopped many times at various viewpoints on the way and were not disappointed with the view.

I would not like to do this trip at peak season though, almost every parking spot at the viewpoints was taken, with no opportunity to park other than in designated areas.

Below are some of the scenes. A Natural Arch

Results of a Lightning Strike Fire

We managed to get in a reasonable walk at the far end of the park, but any up hill climbs sure takes it out of you at 9100 ft!

For anyone planning a visit, be sure to take the side road off to Bryce Point, that was well worth it, and probably had the best views in the park. Bryce had redeemed itself by the time we returned to the park gates.

We started the drive to our hotel, and made a few stops along the way, one being a couple of arches across the road

We also took a side road off to a couple of canyon trail heads just to make the car dirty again!

We finally reached out destination of Hatch, Utah population 124 and checked into our accommodation. No big name hotels around here, just some comfy row cabins. Hotels in this area below $250 US are hard to find!

Before I get onto today’s trip, a couple of pictures from outside our hotel last night. All I can tell you is the car was in great condition, it was a Chevrolet and had 1935 Oregon plates. Any further identification??

We headed out this morning in search of ….. you’ve guessed it, more scenery. Actually around here you don’t need to search, it’s just there!

Our first stop along the way was the Anasazi Indian Village State Park. This was an area inhabited by the Anasazi tribe around 1050 AD (that would be 1050 CE for the more politically correct among you, if there are any). Either way it was nearly 1000 years ago.

Replica of Buildings

Ceiling Beams Supporting Earth and Stone Above

View of Roof

Above are pictures of the original village buildings, the short black vertical objects are the original wooden wall supports. When the tribe left the village after 50 years or so it is believed that they intentionally set fire to it.

To help preserve heat in the winter, underground accommodation was built.

After the village we “discovered” a 45 mile scenic route. It went by the name of the Hell’s Backbone . This was the original road that connected Boulder to Escalante back in the 1930’s. A new road replaced it in the ’60’s. It started off fine, but then changed to an OK gravel road, then slowly deteriorated as the miles went by. There was a great deal of wash-boarding and at times 4 wheel drive was needed to keep both traction and control. In all I had fun driving it, colour has now returned to Lyn’s knuckles and the scenery was probably the best yet.

The picture above is a zoom in of the above it, taken to show the marks on the rock.

Hell’s Backbone Bridge joins two escarpments which were approximately 30 ft apart, with a 1500 ft vertical drop between them. When the first bridge was built in the 1930’s two stout trees were felled, planed flat on two sides and placed over the gap. A bulldozer and equipment were then driven over the trees to the other side by a local farmer. His only safety equipment was a rope tied around his midsection.

The modern bridge was built about 50 years ago when the timbers of the old bridge started to groan ominously whenever a car crossed it!

A little difficult to see, but the picture above is looking vertically down and an original grey timber can be seen .

A Twisted Tree

When we reached the end of the track, and got back onto a smooth and solid road surface, the scenery had changed yet again. Scattered all over the area we had seen bright green fields with watering systems, we were soon to learn the crop was Alfa Alfa, one of the few that would grow in the area.

Our next stop was Mossy Cave where we managed to get in a decent walk. The cave was nothing spectacular and certainly not photogenic. However there was a good walk along a fast flowing stream to a waterfall.

This trips mystery plant, answers on a postcard (or the comments section) please.

We now headed to Panguitch for the night. As we were driving along we saw a pickup truck pull off onto the shoulder, I thought I saw the driver wave to us, so figured he may need help. We reversed back to find out that the truck had a flat tyre. The occupants had all they needed to fix the problem with one exception… a tyre wrench. Unfortunately ours would not fit the larger truck nuts. We offered the driver a lift to the next town where he and 179 other people lived and he was able to pick up the tools and return in his own car. It turns out 50 years ago he was a missionary in Wales ( I always thought the Welsh were a little slow in adopting modern practices). In gratitude for giving him a ride he gave us some home made apricot and prickly pear cookies (a prickly pear is the fruit of a cactus). They were delicious.

We arrived at the hotel in anticipation, we had booked the last available room (I suspect not only in the hotel, but also in the area). Hotel rooms are a scarce commodity here, we’ve now booked rooms for the rest of the week. Anyway, the only room left was a suite; it  has a nice sitting room, large bedroom and a Jacuzzi bath, which Lyn is making use of right now!

Another sunny morning and warm temperatures. Today was another scenic tour day, this time with a couple of walks thrown in. There was one walk we chickened out of, 1.3 miles in each direction with a 1300 ft vertical rise. Had we had suitable footwear we may have tried it (well maybe not).

We left Nephi heading south to Torrey UT for the night, but the main purpose was to visit Capitol Reef National Park. The route down to the park was, as usual in these parts, quite scenic, we climbed out of Nephi (5500 ft) up to 8500 ft, then back down into Torrey.

Again, pictures will do most of the talking. From comments made in previous blogs, we are much happier driving around seeing the sites rather than staying in one place for a week visiting museums and galleries. If you think we are putting on the miles driving you are right, but we are enjoying it, chacun à son goût! Thats my French exhausted for another year.

Wheat Fields as we Left Nephi

Main St. Utah

Swiss Cheese Rock?

Those Holes get Everywhere

The two photos above are in area known as the Goosenecks. We found it at the end of one of our walks, I am not sure how far down it was, but I’d guess 750-1000ft. There is water running around the rim at the base from the Colorado river which is gradually eroding the rocks.

More Holes!

Close-up of the Picture Above

Unfortunately the camera can’t faithfully capture the scenery we see, the colours are deeper than shown in most cases. It is also not possible to capture the sheer size of the rock formations.

Tomorrow is more of the same.

It’s still the weekend, so another relaxing day. After breakfast (which finished at the unearthly hour of 0900) we headed out for a scenic drive through the mountains to our destination Nephi, UT.

We made a pit stop for coffee as the hotel stuff was pretty poor, then onto the scenic route. It didn’t take too long to realise we were off the beaten track; there was a cowboy walking with a couple of horses down the side of the road. Just beyond him on a curve was a guy waving an orange flag out of the window of his pickup. I assumed he was warning drivers of the horses ahead. WRONG! as we came around the corner, having not slowed down, this is what we saw

Having been caught in a similar situation last year in Australia where the appropriate behaviour was to drive through the crowd, we applied the same rule here. It worked, no sheep were hurt during our trip! By the way the “S” word is not sheep, that comes later.

Our first route was the Mirror Lake Highway, the pictures can do the talking.

Pretty High at the Top of the Pass

The “S” Word on the Mountains

The second run was in the Mt Nebo area. After dropping down from over 10,000 ft to around 7500 ft we climbed back up to 9500 ft on this run. The temperature at 6000 ft reached 29C (85F) and dropped to 15C (59F) at the peak.

The last 3 pictures were taken with the phone as the camera died! Once at the hotel I started “playing” with the camera, and the problem turned out to be a deceased memory card. Luckily the card had the good grace to die in such a state that allowed me to recover all the previous pictures.

Off to do more planning.

It’s the weekend, so a relaxing day today! After breakfast we headed out to Hill Air Force Base just outside Salt Lake City. They have a museum  there, and today was “open aircraft day”. What’s more the price was right — free!

We had about a 4 hour drive to get there, again through a mix of scenery from flat to mountainous. It appears that Lyn and I have different interpretations when it comes to “boring” scenery. Evidently anything less than mountains smaller than Ben Nevis is flat and boring according to Lyn. I found the flatness and small hills quite interesting. The outcome of boring scenery is the production of many knitting and sewing crafts!

We crossed into Utah after crossing the Continental Divide a couple more times! Highest elevation we reached today was 7,500 ft.

Boring

Getting Interesting

Getting More Interesting (Train)

The railway followed the road for much of the trip, and was very well used, sometimes with only a few minutes between trains. Many have 5 engines hauling them, and on one, where we counted, there were 157 rail-cars.

Finally Getting Interesting!

We reached Hill AFB around lunch time, and although it was busy we managed to find a parking spot quite easily. There are a number of “old” aircraft parked outside, many of these were types that flew into the local RAF airfield when I was a teenager. The thought of crossing the Atlantic at 9,000 ft at 200 MPH as a passenger in one of theses makes even the lowest of the low cost airlines look like first class!

Pictures below, identify them if you can!

#1 (Triple Decker!)

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

Having a bit of down time now as we were in the hotel earlier than usual. Tomorrow Lyn has some scenic drives organised for us.

Well we got two out of three from the title today, the third comes tomorrow. We woke up this morning and thought that the world had come to end —– there was blue sky with a large yellow orb!

After breakfast we headed down to Hill City train station to catch the steam train for a return trip to Keystone. The railway was built in the late 1800’s to serve the tin and gold mining communities.

For those interested (John B) the engine was a 2-6-6-2T articulated Mallet, the only one of its kind in operation worldwide. Each trip requires 2000 gallons of water and 200 gals of used motor oil.

Below are pictures of the trip

Just Add Water On Our WayBlowing off Steam

The picture above show clouds of steam coming from the engine, once a trip the steam pressure is diverted into the boiler pipes to clear out minerals deposited from the water, the steam is then vented to the air.

Keystone Station

Keystone Main St.View Through the CarriagesRock FormationsView of the Train

Miners Cottage

We left the train station and headed towards our next stop Rawlins Wyoming. This was just a stopping place for the night with no activities planned. Leaving Hill City was a great drive through twist mountainous roads, but very shortly we ended up in the high plains with miles and miles of nothing, including cell signal. This area is not recommended for teens!

Even lunch had to bought at a gas station as there were no restaurants for many miles

As we approached Wyoming we planned to get a picture of the State welcome sign (we needed to relieve the boredom!). Initially it looked as though there wasn’t one so we took the following picture;

Wyoming starts where the road changes colour

We then found a (small) sign

Once in Wyoming the scenery got more mountainous, and we started to climb.

There were rock formations of many colours, the one above was one of the lightest, there were also many shades of red. As you can see it was a sunny day with the temperature climbing to 78F (25C).

Somehow we managed to cross the Continental Divide twice, which would infer we are now going the wrong way, I would have much preferred crossing it an odd number of times. We climbed up to 7300ft before starting a slow descent into Rawlins at 6800ft. Tomorrow is another positioning day, with a stop at an aircraft museum on the (sort of, but not really) way.

Well last nights storms weren’t tornado producers, but they did unleash plenty of rain. Some parts of South Dakota got over 8 inches (20cm) overnight. This morning it had cleared where we were, but the temperatures had dropped.

After breakfast we headed out to the town of Deadwood about 70 miles away, unfortunately the temperatures continued to drop and we drove back into the rain. By lunch time we were down to 8C (47F) and torrential rain with strong winds.

The scenery was superb, despite the weather, and the driving was fun on mountain roads with many turns and hills. Good MGB roads!!

As we didn’t need to be in Deadwood until 1400 we stopped off at a Mans Store …. Harbor Freight and another quilt store!

Deadwood was added to the itinerary as we had a very short trip to our next stop. It was a typical Western themed tourist trap, with 95% of the stores being gift shops. The “highlight” of the day was to be a gun fight in Main St. at 1400!

Main Street Deadwood SD

There was nowhere close by to park so we bit the bullet (sorry!!) and headed out of town towards Hill City SD. The scenery was still good and the weather started to brighten up. We climbed up to 5700′ before descending a little into our destination. We drove over a large dam, to one side was a river on the other Paktola Lake.

Paktola Lake.

We made it to Hill city mid afternoon, but too early to check into the hotel. As the rain had now stopped, we left the car at the hotel and took a walk along the main street. We desperately needed some exercise to burn off beer and desert induced calories.

The main reason for the stop here is that there is a steam engine rail trip that we will take tomorrow morning. As there was a train due in we extended our walk to the station to get some pictures.

The forecast for the next few days looks promising, climbing up to the 30’s (Mid 80’s) by midweek, IF the forecasters are to be believed. After the train trip tomorrow we head out out to Rawlins, Wyoming for a night stop, then down to Utah, our main destination.

Usually I am stuck for titles but today I have two!

The second refers to last nights weather; we had storms throughout the night with some good lightning shows, but it appears that these storms intensified as they headed east resulting in three tornadoes touching down in Sioux City Falls SD causing a lot of damage. We had driven past Sioux City just a few hours earlier.

We had planned to visit a sculpture after dinner as it was lit up at night and was meant to be worth a trip. That plan was scuttled for a couple of reasons, one being the weather and the other being the “large” beer we ordered at the restaurant. Normally (to me at least) a large beer is a pint and a small beer somewhat less than a pint. Here is Lyn dealing with the large beer.

After breakfast, we headed up to the sculpture. The sculpture is called “Dignity” and is of a Native Indian lady with a quilt on her back, it is 50ft tall and was built to commemorate South Dakotas Native heritage.

“Destiny”

From the other side. View of the Mississippi from the statue.

Next stop on the list was back into Chamberlain as there just happened to be a quilt store there!

The Quilt Shop Chamberlain SD

At least it had a small man cave there!

Interesting, since we left Chamberlain (and the Quilt store) the credit card has been randomly declined. Hopefully it has been sorted after a call to MasterCard.

Our next stop was The Badlands, about 100 miles west. Again it was Interstate and pretty straight and flat for long stretches. We also crossed into another time zone, Mountain, hence the first part of the title. I feel jet lag coming on.

I-90 

Badlands is a National Park, so our annual pass got its first use. National Parks charge around $25 – $35 entrance fee so the annual pass at $80 should be a good purchase.

As in previous blogs I will provide a link that describes an area we have visited rather than type it all in, after all I am on vacation! So info is available here:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badlands

A collection of pictures:

NoNo Kidding

As usual photos don’t do the views justice, particularly as it was an overcast day. We drove around this area for some time before heading a few miles north to the town of Wall. We had been seeing sign posts for various activities relating to “Wall Drug”, for a couple of hundred miles. Back in the ’30’s a drug store was opened in the town of Wall, but they weren’t getting many customers so they advertised free iced water, and the crowds started to arrive. The “Drug Store” now occupies 1 city block and consists of many stores based on a Western town of the late 1800’s. It’s interesting in a tourist trap kind of way, but at least their coffee is only 5c a cup!

The rain started as we headed off to the hotel, and as I am writing this there is torrential rain and thunder outside, but it seems the twisters have taken a break for now.

Well, despite the pies that were forced upon us last night an excellent nights sleep was had. In fact if you allow for the fact we crossed into the central time zone we slept til 0945 body tine, 0845 local. After breakfast we headed out on a warm and sunny morning, destination Chamberlain South Dakota. Hopefully this is our last “travel day”. Today’s trip is the shortest of the 3 so far at “only” 750Kms (465 miles).

The further west we went, the flatter the land got and we went from forested areas to farm lands.

The title refers to the fact that after today there is only one US State I haven’t visited, Hawaii. North Dakota has been conquered!

The Conquest of North Dakota

I have now visited all Canadian Provinces and Territories and 49 out of 50 US States, not bad for a Brit!!

Once in the Dakotas the land flattened right out and dairy farming and corn fields were the norm.

Who Stole the Hills?

On the upside, the Interstates were quiet and it was perfectly legal to drive at 80MPH (130Kmh), which we did! As we approached our destination the sky ahead turned an ominous dark grey and about 10 miles from the hotel lightning appeared. We made the hotel before the rain, but we were greeted with sirens going off. We thought at first it was a tornado warning, but a quick check with the receptionist confirmed that it was only a severe thunderstorm siren, tornado ones play a different tune.

If the rain eases we may head out after dinner as there is a 150ft statue of a native with a quilt just down the road that is lit at night and is meant to be worth visiting.