The end of our 19th day on the road, finds us in a gorgeous new Comfort Suites hotel, with a beautiful king bed suite on the second floor, in Kanab, Utah. Today was not a heavy mileage day, as we only drove 157 miles, and checked in a little after 3 PM.
We knew we didn’t have a lot of driving to do, so we had kind of a lazy morning, and also did some tasks we’ve been meaning to do for a couple of days. After breakfast at the hotel at about 9 AM, we started to reorganize and clean out the back seat of the car. After all this time on the road, we had garbage that we needed to get rid of. Susie also repacked the food in a smaller bag, and because of the way our days have turned out, and the fact that we are eating breakfast most days at the hotel, she threw out a box of Cheerios and paper bowls we left home with. We had honestly figured we were going to eat cereal and milk in our room, and then lunch in the car, but the hotel breakfasts have turned out to be so good, and included in our room rate, that those plans have changed.
One thing we have noticed about the “free breakfasts” is that an awful lot of people are pigs! My God, some of their plates look like they are in a Vegas Buffet, rather than a Comfort Inn! One day last weekend, we were in the breakfast room, and were unlucky enough to be behind this couple. When they got to the eggs and sausage, they both filled their plates and Susie and I found the cupboard was empty when we got there! On the way out, we passed their table, and they had 4 or 5 plates full of food with everything from eggs to sausage to toast to waffles, not to mention the cups of juice and coffee! Not going to eat lunch? These two were not eating for the rest of the day!!! A lot of selfish human beings in the world, but then I’m sure you all knew that already!
Another area that has been effected by those changed plans, is our cooler. If you remember, last week in Rock Springs, Wyoming we downsized our cooler at a Walmart and then donated our old cooler to the Rock Springs Fire Department. We were obviously still thinking back to road trips from long ago, and having lunches in the car. Well, because of the hotel breakfasts, we rarely eat lunch, so that almost never happens. Frankly, yesterday we had to throw out the remaining items we had in the cooler, because they were 2+ weeks old. After doing that, we seriously looked at the notion of food in the car and the cooler. The fact is that we just don’t need the items we have to keep on ice. Buying ice every day or 2 is a pain, and all we were doing was preserving something that we’re really not using. So, the cooler is now on the back seat floor, all our water is in it, and if we get to keep it cool, fine, but if we don’t also fine! We’ve still got cheese sandwich crackers, some Goobers peanut butter and jelly, and Ritz crackers…we won’t starve! Compared to buying ice all the time, if we have to have a hamburger at Mickey D’s every once in a while, we are still ahead of the game. We still have our little zipper soft sided cooler we take into the hotel every night, but since most rooms we’ve had have refrigerators, the contents gets unpacked every day, and kept cool. We will probably shop for a better soft sided cooler in the future, and as long as it’s big enough to fit a bottle of rum and vodka, we will be happy!
Once we got the car back together, we headed back to the room for a few minutes before heading out. Rather than get right on the road, we headed across the street to the self service car wash. Nothing gets the bugs off the windshield and the front end of the car like the power wand at these car washes, and we have availed ourselves at several along the way in the last couple of weeks! A couple of minutes and $3.25, and we have a clean car again! Nothing dries a car as well as going 80 MPH on an Interstate, so off we went on Interstate 70.
As we had all the time in the world today, Susie found something in one of the guide books that she wanted to stop at. It was called Fremont Indian State Park and Museum. It cost us all of $6 to go in, and we saw a very nice movie and got to wander through a very well put together museum. The museum and the park are dedicated to a group of Native American’s who lived in the area by the Fremont River from about 300 AD to 1300 AD. A lot of the material about them had been discovered in the 80s when they were building Interstate 70, which is right out front of the park. All they know about these people is what they have found in the area. They don’t know where they came from, or why after a 1000 years of residence in the area, they left. It was another interesting little stop along the way.
We were the only ones in the place, besides the older gentleman working the counter. On the way out, we told him we were going to drive route 89 to Kanab, and he said, “If I drove 89 every day from here to the state line and back, I’d be a happy person.” So, that’s what we did! The road goes between mountains, so there are a lot of turns, but the scenery is beautiful. We will backtrack a bit tomorrow on this road heading to Bryce Canyon National Park, but we really don’t mind.
These next two days before we head to Vegas are kind of relaxing days. This is just the 3rd time on our trip that we have spent 2 nights in one hotel, and Susie already has done laundry, and is now reorganizing suitcases for Vegas. We both realize that we took too many clothes, as we have worn things more than once, and today is the 3rd day that laundry has been done. We found it hard to plan for 2 months on the road, especially since two weeks of that time will be a Caribbean Cruise, where we will obviously need different clothes than we’re wearing on the road and in National Parks! Not sure yet. but we may even send a suitcase home!
Susie commented today as we headed down 89, that we had great timing on this trip. First, with the exception of one full day of rain in Pennsylvania, and a couple of showers last week in Colorado, we have had perfect weather. The days have been warm, but with 20-30 percent humidity, it doesn’t feel like July in Florida! Also, as most kids are back at school, the folks traveling have been our age, and the crowds are less.
Another thing to share with you, as today is a little light on National Parks, cog railways, or incredible sights, is our National Parks soundtrack. A number of years ago, at Red Rock Canyon National Park, just outside of Vegas, we bought a beautiful Native American flute CD, that we always took to Vegas with us. The haunting melodies just seemed to go with the other worldly sights we were seeing in Red Rock. It wasn’t until we were at Badlands National Park, our first park of the trip, that Susie realized we’d left it or something like it home. In the gift store she found a CD called National Parks Soundscapes, and it has been our sound track of every National Park or National Monument we’ve visited. Jimmy Buffett and Sirius/XM’s Margarita Radio is our #1 audio companion on the road, but once we hit the entrance gates, the satellite goes off, and the CD starts playing. Just sets the right mood for us!
Dinner tonight was at another local place…Houston’s Trail’s End Restaurant. Nothing fancy, just a local place, full of local people, with good food. It’s been in business for 32 years, so it must be doing something right!
Hope you have a good night…we plan on a drink and some TV!
Nightie night!
When we got there, we thought it would be hard to find parking, and drove around the block a couple of times. We were just about to give up, when suddenly someone pulled out of a space as we drove up the block. We parked, walked around the corner, and wondered if anyone else in their right mind would be heading to the Molly Brown House! Well, turns out we followed the crowd down the street. Who knew it was apparently one of Denver’s landmarks! We had hoped to get the 45 minute tour that started at 12 noon, but when we got to the desk to purchase tickets, we found out that the next two tours were sold out! That would mean we’d have to kill an hour there, and then be late getting to the ball game! Susie graciously said we should just move on to Coors Field!
By the time we got back in the neighborhood of the ball park, it was about 12:30 and now our task was to find parking. Didn’t see any Rockies “official” parking, but did find a city lot about 3-4 blocks from the field. We paid our $20, grabbed our hats and sun glasses, and started the trek to our ball game. The walk seemed much longer than the drive we’d taken getting there, but all’s well that ends well. We entered the main gate, said no thanks to the bobble head doll that was offered today (just what we needed, more stuff in the car), and wandered around the stadium a bit. Eventually we found an escalator to the second floor where our seats were.
Leaving the ball park, the traffic was kind of heavy, as this is the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend. The Interstate moved below the speed limit, till we got out of the city limits. I commented to Susie, that so much of our trip so far has been in rural areas, that even Denver feels like a big city. We both agreed that we liked the smaller areas, that we’ve spent so much time in the last two weeks! Saw some interesting rock formations on our way to Manitou Springs, such as Castle Rock, which lends it’s name to a huge community just south of Denver!
Here’s our handy tip for tonight. If you’ve stayed in as many hotels as we have, you’ve noticed how there is always a little sliver of light that manages to get into the room between the two room darkening curtains. The solution, travel with a little clip that you can use to attach the two curtains, and seal out the light! The one we have is a metal clothes pin, but a Chip Clip would work equally well. If you are in this predicament, and don’t have anything with you, grab one of the pants hangers in the closest (if you’re lucky enough not to be staying in a hotel that has them welded to the rod, so you don’t steal them), and use the clip that you would normally use to hang pants, and connect the curtains together. Suddenly, it stays dark in the room, and you don’t wake at 6:30 to that one stream of sun light that manages to hit you square in the face!
If you remember a couple of posts back, we decided that we weren’t happy with the cooler we’d picked for our trip. It was too big, both inside and out side, and we said we’d like something smaller, and it didn’t need wheels. Well, as we came into Rock Springs, Wyoming yesterday, there was a Walmart right across from the Interstate exit ramp, so after paying the bills, we decided to go check out what they had. We found a very nice Igloo cooler, about half the size of what we had. Then we went to the grocery section of the store, bought some Gladwear containers for our cheese and pepperoni, and we were good to go. We went out to the parking lot, transferred our supplies from the old cooler to the new, and strapped it into the car. As we went into the store, firefighters from the Rock Springs Fire Department were in front of the store collecting for their “Fill a Boot for MDA campaign”. Yes, it is Labor Day Weekend, and if you are of a certain age, you will remember that this was the weekend always dedicated by Jerry Lewis for the MDA Telethon. Well, I rolled the empty cooler over to one of the firemen and explained that we no longer had a need for it, and could they make use of it. He said that yes indeed they could and thanked me for the donation. He then came over to the car and asked us about our trip. There are nice people everywhere in this country, and not to sound like John Steinbeck in Travels with Charlie, meeting them is one of the great things about traveling like we are!
We are staying tonight in a Best Western in Craig, Colorado. Today we left Wyoming for the last time on our trip, and entered Colorado, a state we will travel through for several days. We only traveled 180 miles today, because we are setting ourselves up for our passage tomorrow through Rocky Mountain National Park. I know, what were we thinking, hitting the road through the Rocky Mountains on Saturday of Labor Day Weekend? Well, some things just work out the way they do! I originally wanted to go through the Rockies because I wanted Susie to be able to say she’d crossed the Continental Divide. Little did I know that you cross the Continental Divide virtually everywhere in the West! We did it 4 times in Yellowstone, and another 3 or 4 times since then! Hell, we crossed it on the little two lane road from the Interstate to Craig today! Oh well, what can I tell you!
We got to Craig really early today, and after we found the hotel it was still only about 2 PM, way too early to check in. Just as we got into Craig, we passed a building that said it was the Museum of Northwest Colorado. Susie had read about it in some book she’d read about the area, and we decided to go back and visit it. What a wonderful little museum, and were we glad we decided to visit it. It is housed in what was a local Armory for Craig, and it was just a wonderful collection of local artifacts. A very nice lady greeted us and explained a bit about the museum and what was where. We went downstairs to start, mainly because the bathrooms were there, but then there was so much more! The basement was a school room display and we enjoyed it more than we really should have. The display was of an early 20th Century schoolroom, with those desks we all remember as kids and remember having to squeeze into when we were adults at the “meet the teacher” night. But what really got us, was the displays of class photos from the Craig High School Seniors from 1924 to 2008. We really enjoyed looking at the photos from the years we graduated from high school, and realizing they looked exactly like our yearbooks. Looking at the older classes (from the early 50s), Susie commented how old the seniors looked. They almost looked as old as the teachers.
Temple Square in beautiful, with broad streets and nice looking buildings. After circling Temple Square once, we entered an underground garage and parked. When we took the elevator to street level, we realized we were in City Creek Center, a beautiful Mall, but a mall! Eventually we got our bearings, and figured out which way to walk, and entered the Square. Temple Square is a beautifully landscaped 3 square block area containing many beautiful buildings, 3 of which were built by the pioneers. The Temple, Tabernacle, and the Assembly Hall date to the 1800s.
If you know anything about the Mormons, you may know that in 1894 they started collecting genealogy records, and now in Salt Lake City have the largest repository of genealogical records in the world! Just across the street from the Tabernacle is the Family History Library, and it was our next stop. We walked into the lobby and a church member immediately asked what they could to to help. We said we were interested in doing some research on ancestors from the British Isles. He directed us to the elevator and level B2, which contained the British Isle records. A very nice lady, also a member of the church, set us up on a couple of computers, and helped us through the records, and helped Susie find her family’s roots in England. I wasn’t so lucky, but I know my cousins Jeanne and Walt have tons of records on the family, so it was really just an interesting way to pass an hour or so. The people there couldn’t have been nicer, and are more than willing to help members and non members alike trace their roots.
We did for dinner tonight what has been our norm on the trip, to seek out a local place rather than take the easy way out, and go to the Applebees that’s just down the road. Susie found an interesting looking place, just a couple of minutes away called Wingers Roadhouse Grill. It is a local chain, with outlets in Wyoming, Nevada, Oregon, 
Idaho, and Utah. We walked in, sat at a high top in the bar, and immediately the waitress brought us a bowl of popcorn. We ordered a couple of Amazing Blonde drafts, that they brew themselves. The beers were good, and only upon getting the bill did we discover that they were just $2 each. Susie asked our waitress Sam what she would recommend from the burger section of the menu. Without a second of hesitation, she said, “a Fowl Cow Burger.”. Following our, “When in Rome” advice, we both said, “sounds good” and two of them were on their way to us. Let me copy from the menu, exactly what a Winger’s Fowl Cow Burger is:
The first was a fun thing, The Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho. If you remember back to when our trip was still in single digit days, we stopped one day at the Spam Museum and then had a photo op with a huge Green Giant statue. Susie joked in our blog that we’d had our protein and vegetables that day. Well, we completed the meal today in Idaho!! The museum is housed in an early 20th Century train station, which in itself was interesting to look at. All through the building there were exhibits on how potatoes are grown, why in Idaho, and how they are shipped all over the country. They even have a cafe when you can get fresh french fries, and chocolate milk that actually has potato flakes mixed in. The young lady at the counter said that it’s the best tasting chocolate milk she’s ever tasted, but we didn’t partake. A really neat exhibit they had was a whole wall of potato mashers. There were well over 300 of them, many kinds we’d seen before, but some really unusual, and interesting ones. After looking at the “wall of mashers”, we discovered it was a Boy Scouts Eagle Project! Because we were “out of staters, we got free taters” upon leaving. Our free taters, were Hungry Jack Scalloped Potatoes, which after reading the box, we found out are made in California! It was a fun place to stop, and although not as odd as the world’s biggest ball of twine, does complete our food museum triple play!
They have, as all places like this do, the obligatory gift shop and cafe, but this center also had a bunch of static displays, a museum, and a collection of Oregon Trail art. What we really enjoyed though was the time travel they allowed us to do, as we joined an 1852 wagon train across the country. It cost us $20, but it was a small price to pay for a very enjoyable and educational experience. First we went to the gun shop, where we learned that every person above the age of 12 had to have a rifle at a cost of $20. Then on to the General Store, where he talked about what supplies a family would have to take on the journey, and how much it cost. Then we were taken to the wagon shop, where we learned that a Studebaker Covered Wagon would cost us $100 (yes…the same company that made cars when we were kids), and how much 6 oxen to pull it would cost us ($20 each for another $120). The total expense for a family of 6, to travel with the wagon train was approximately $1200, this in a time when the average annual wage in the country was $156. Our Wagon Master pointed out, that because of this cost, the members of the wagon trains were not wage earners, but by enlarge, people who sold businesses or farms, and who were putting their entire life’s wealth into this trip across the country. They truly had a lot at stake!
our trip so far since leaving Long Island is 3088, as of pulling into the Ogden Sleep Inn tonight. It’s still incredible to us that we have driven so far since we left home! We both think that those weekend trips we made from Long Island, to Ocean City for the past 11 years we have owned the house, have made spending the day on the road easy for us. Whatever the reason, we haven’t minded the driving, or the roads, and we are still speaking to each other. Perhaps mark that up to the rum and coke we end each day with, and the vodka we end each night with! That and having a nice hotel, with a king sized bed to sleep in! Oh, and what with all the mountain driving, Susie has learned, and perfected, the art of putting the Sonata’s transmission into the manual mode, and down shifting! Good girl!!
For those of you who may not know, IN-N-OUT Burger is a West Coast fast food chain. All their meat comes from one of two company owned plants and is delivered fresh daily to the stores. Because of this, they are basically in California, and the South West, and I guess Utah!!! They hand cut the fries in the store daily, and have a very simple menu, with their only entree items being burgers! It is a favorite meal stop for us every time we are in Vegas (I know where all the Vegas area ones are located), and we’ve also eaten at locations in California in our travels. In addition to the regular menu, they have what’s called a “Secret Menu”, but it’s not really that secret! What we had tonight was Double Doubles, Animal Style with Animal Style fries! Heaven!! The burgers are great, the fries are so fresh, and going Animal Style is just the icing on the cake! Take a look at the attached picture, and if that doesn’t look good to you, then you are missing a real treat!!
The closer we got to the South Entrance, the more smoke we saw, and the heavier traffic was heading to Yellowstone. By the time we went through the South Entrance, the smoke was heavy and there was lots of evidence of fire fighting, including a field full of helicopters. Our first view of the Tetons was smoke shrouded, and we traveled through an area where it was very obvious that the fire had burned on both sides of the road. We even passed an area where there was still smoke from smoldering brush. It was very obvious that the fire had affected this northern area of the park, but the strange part was, that as soon as we were past the immediate fire area, the smoke became much less an issue. The smoke from this fire, that we had smelled in Yellowstone for 3 days, was obviously blowing north and not affecting Teton as much as Yellowstone.
Then it was on to Idaho. We are staying tonight in Idaho Falls, and we ended up getting here a little after 3. Because we’ve been on the road for 10 days, Susie was very desirous to do some laundry. Lucky for us, the Comfort Inn we are staying at tonight has laundry facilities. The hours between 3:30 and 5:00 were given over to laundry, and now we have some more clean clothes and that makes Susie happy!!
Tonight we had a wonderful dinner at a place called The Sandpiper. I picked it because at Yellowstone, we were staying in the Sandpiper wing of the Lake Hotel, but boy did we make a good choice! We so like eating dinner in the towns we stay in at a local restaurant. Yes, Chlli’s, Applebees, or an Olive Garden may be fine, but we really like the idea of getting a taste of where we are and not chain food. We both had pork..Susie had pork medallions in a bourbon mushroom gravy, and I had a pork ribeye! Excellent dinner, in a lovely setting. After dinner, we took a little ride, and actually found the falls that Idaho Falls are named after! Success!!
