Here we are, thirteen days on the road! Today, we knew we didn’t have much distance to travel, so we decided to get some necessary jobs done. After having breakfast in the hotel this morning, we came back to the room, and as it is the beginning of the month, I paid some bills. For years, I have paid as many bills as possible online through either the ABC Credit Union or Citibank, and actually that lends itself very well to staying current with your bills while on the road. The first thing I did before leaving home was look back at recent months, and I made a list of bills that were due at the beginning of the month, the middle of the month, and the end of the month. Then, I made sure that I had the web sign-ons for the various accounts. This morning, I went to the beginning of the month section, checked the amounts due on the various web sites, and paid the bills via the credit union or the bank. Took me about 20 minutes all told, and now we are current.
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!
Then, it was time to gas up the Sonata, and buy some ice for the new cooler. Right next to the gas station was a self service car wash, and I spent $5 there and gave the poor Sonata the best wash it has had since we left Mineola! 3500 miles takes it’s toll on the outside of the car (forget the inside..perhaps we can get that done in Vegas), and I’m not even talking about the bugs! Oh My God…what a mess they make of the windshield!! I have a bug screen on the front of the car, but the poor windshield looks like hell by the time we end our days! Even using the squeegee at gas stops doesn’t get it as clean as the power wash wand at the car wash! We had a beautiful windshield for about 100 miles. It looks like shit again!
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.
On the main floor were lots of displays about history of the area, including a full size gas pump, a fire engine, a display of Doctor’s tools from the 50s, household items, dolls, clothing, Native American articles, and displays about notable people from the area, including one about the Governor and Senator from Colorado in the 50s named Edward Johnson, Susie’s Grandfather’s name!
Then we went up to the second floor where there were several different displays. One incredible one was called Cowboys and Gunfighters. It was the work of one man who started collecting at the age of 9! There were saddles, chaps, holsters, spurs, rifles, hand guns, knives, ammunition belts, horse bits, hats, and memorabilia from various people. An incredible collection! Then around the side of the floor, there was a collection of Then and Now pictures. Pictures from the area in about 1915 and pictures taken from the same vantage point done in 2014. It was great to see how roads changed, what buildings were in both pictures, and how the areas had grown up over the years!
It was just a wonderful way to spend an hour and a half, and is indicative of the small wonders you can find all across this country. On the way out we talked to the Assistant Curator of the Museum who gave us a little history of the building (it was originally the area’s Armory and then became a Community Center before becoming the home of the museum), and it was nice to be able to tell him how much we enjoyed our visit. Again, like our brief visit with the fireman in Rock Springs, a Travels with Charlie moment!!
Dinner tonight was a real throwback. Years and years ago, when Susie and I would road trip alone, and even when we’d do it with Billy, Krissi, and Kenny, sometimes dinner would just be fast food brought back to the room. Tonight, Susie looked through all the information she could find on restaurants in the Craig area, and unless we wanted Mexican, there really wasn’t a lot. We figured that after Vegas, we will be spending better than 2 weeks in the home of Tex/Mex food, and to do it in Colorado would be silly. Also, we’ve noticed a total lack of Italian Restaurants in our travels so far! Funny, because both on Long Island, and down in Ocean City, there is an Italian Restaurant on almost every other block! Well anyway, since Craig seems to be the home of lots of fast food franchises, our throwback meal tonight was a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken back in the room! It was a really lame KFC, as they seemed to be running out of everything. If we wanted the extra crispy we ordered, it was a 15 minute wait. If we wanted the biscuits that came with the meal, it was a 10 minute wait! We ended up with the bucket of chicken (in a weird mix of pieces), potato wedges, and of course the famous KFC cole slaw! It was a great meal, and only set us back $24!
That’s it for tonight. Tomorrow it’s off to Rocky Mountain National Park, and our drive across the peaks! Wish us luck!
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!!
At Canyon Falls Village we decided to have lunch. We’d hoped to have lunch in the Canyon Falls Lodge’s Dining Room, but due to staff shortages (probably kids going back to college), it was closed for lunch. Damn! So we instead went into the Cafeteria and both of us had Rice Bowls (think Chipotle). While not as elegant as I hoped our lunch would be, they were good and we left filled up to continue our exploration. Oh, and everywhere you see signs about the wildlife. Well, as we pulled the car out of our space, and proceeded around the parking lot, there was a deer standing on one of the lot medians munching away on a bush. I guess they too stop there for lunch!
At Roosevelt we both decided that we’d had enough for today, and decided to head home. We have a two hour sunset tour in one of the famous Yellowstone historical Yellow Busses tonight at 5:45, and felt we need a little bit of down time before that, so we turned around and headed back to Lake Yellowstone and the Lake Hotel. On the way back, we very clearly saw evidence of the many fires in and around Yellowstone Park. The big one is of course in the northern part of the Grand Tetons, and as of now, is closing Yellowstone’s South Entrance (which we were planning on taking tomorrow), but that is by no means the only fire. We clearly saw the smoke from several other fires in an around Yellowstone, including now which started 3 days ago 9 miles from our hotel, and the smell of smoke was very evident in the air, as well as the hazy conditions when looking in the distance. The Park Service’s policy is to let the fires burn as a natural regeneration of the forest environment. All over the park you can see the evidence of past fires, and on many of the ones from longer ago, also the young growth of new trees that nature has provided. As that old TV commercial said, you can’t fight with Mother Nature!
As Susie was driving back, traffic stopped dead. We’ve been here long enough to know we were probably looking at the results of an animal crossing or walking on the road. Sure enough, there was a huge bison, just ambling up the road at his own pace. First he was on the right side of the road, then the left, seemingly oblivious to the cars and RVs around him. Eventually we were able to pull to the left side of the road, and get around him. Ranger Laurie told us this morning that the roads in Yellowstone by in large follow the earliest laid out paths through the park, and those early paths many times followed animal paths, so in reality we are on their turf, not the other way around! Always an adventure in Yellowstone!
It is a little after 10, and we just came back from sitting in the the sun room, listening to wonderful piano music, having a couple of drinks, and a few nibbles for dinner. The Sunset Tour was phenomenal!! Our vehicle was a 1937 White Motor Car Tour Bus. The entire body is made of wood and the canvas top rolls back, exposing you to the sky. It seats 13 plus the driver. Originally there were 98 taking visitors all over Yellowstone, but in the 60s they seemed to fade from style, and Yellowstone got rid of them all. They had a colorful history after that, some even ending up in Alaska!! Well, in the late 90s, the 8 that were in Alaska were offered back to Yellowstone, and they bought them. In 2007, Xanteria, the main concessioner in the park, sent them out to be rebuilt. The wood body and the peal back top still are in place, but now they are powered by a Ford V/8 and shifted by an automatic transmission.
We were less than 2 miles into the park when the traffic stopped dead. We had no idea why, until we rounded a curve and found out why. Coming down the double yellow line in the road, like he was doing a sobriety test, was the largest bison we’d ever seen. He continued to amble down the road until he passed about 3 feet away from the car, and we all went on our way! Talk about seeing wildlife!!! Then we continued to Yellowstone Lake, which is huge! We are staying for 2 nights in the Yellowstone Lake Hotel, and it is both old (it opened in 1891) and beautiful…but more on that later.
Our destination this afternoon was Old Faithful Geyser. As we traveled from the Lake area of Yellowstone to Old Faithful, we passed over the Continental Divide, twice in each direction. Amazing to think that rain on one side eventually drains to the Atlantic, and on the other side, the Pacific. I actually thought the first time we’d see it was in the Rockies, but Yellowstone has it all!
After the eruption, we returned to the hotel and got changed for dinner. We had 5:30 reservations in the Lake Hotel Dining Room, and felt we should get out of the shirts and t-shirts befitting eating in a nicer venue. This hotel has a real old school elegant feel to it, 
and we wanted to feel like we were upholding the history of the place in our dress. We felt good about what we did, but obviously some folks didn’t feel the same, as we saw every mode of dress! I’m sorry, but there is just something about someone eating dinner in a wonderful, historic dining room like this hotel has, in a baseball cap, that bothers me. Oh well. We had a wonderful dinner, starting with an excellent charcuterie plate, and then had an excellent Bison Filet. A nice bottle of bubbly and a couple of scrumptious desserts rounded out a really excellent meal!
After dinner, we sat on the front porch of the hotel for a bit, looking at the lake, then came inside and sat in the lounge. We had a couple of drinks, listened to the lady playing the piano, had a nice conversation with a couple from the UK, and wrapped up our day in a great way!
Susie and her much needed Rum and Coke tonight
Black Hills. The town attained further notoriety as the place that Wild Bill Hickok was murdered while playing poker…the famous “Dead Man’s Hand” Aces and Eights Hickok was holding when he was shot and killed at point blank range. Today, there is legal gambling in the town, combined with it’s checkered past, making it a tourist destination.
Our first destination in Wyoming was Devils Tower, which you have seen if you have watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Devils Tower is a laccolithic butte in the Bear Lodge Mountains near Sundance in Northern Wyoming. Devils Tower was the first declared US National Monument, established by President Theodore Roosevelt on September 24, 1906. The Native Americans have a tale that 7 sisters jumped on a rock to get away from a bear, and the rock grew and grew till the sisters were in the sky. The bear attempted to climb the rock, leaving deep claw marks in the sides, which had become too steep to climb. When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the stars of the Pleiades constellation.
After our planning session, we were ready for a good meal, and lucky enough, happened on Wyoming Rib and Chop House. Not realizing that it was Friday night (what day is it???), the restaurant was pretty crowded, but the hostess offered us a couple of seats at the bar. Not strangers to eating at certain bars we frequent, we had no problem sitting there and had a couple of real cold beers and a great meal! We even missed a rain storm while we were at dinner!
Sunset over the Bighorn Mountains
We are staying tonight in Keystone, South Dakota, which is Mount Rushmore’s home. It looks like a crazy Western Mountain Tourist Town!! Dinner tonight was at Ruby House Restaurant with drinks supplied by the Red Garter Saloon next door! Susie had Country Fried Steak, while for the second night in a row, I had Buffalo! A Buffalo Rib 
Eye! Now we are back in the room, even though we should be on our way back to Mount Rushmore for the Nighttime Illumination program, but it is pouring out, 58 degrees, and heavy thunder storms are predicted for later! So, as I write this, we are here in an Econo Lodge, rather than celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the US Park Service…August 25, 1916 to August 25, 2016! Happy Birthday and good night!!
We stopped at a rest stop as soon as we crossed into South Dakota to pick up a map (well, after we hit the bathroom) and ran into one of the most incredible S. Dakota Tourism employees! Susie and I spent close to 10 minutes listening to him lay out things for us in the Black Hills, including Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Custer State Park, Deadwood, and even Devil’s Tower…which is in Wyoming! I told Susie I could have spent the whole afternoon listening to him! What a great ambassador for the state he is!
Next we headed to a place he didn’t mention, but that Susie had read about and that we’d seen signs about along the side of the road for miles. The Corn Palace in Mitchel, South Dakota! I don’t know what we expected, but what we got was a local auditorium where they play basketball and have shows (Styx is performing there tomorrow night). I guess its claim to fame is that every year the front facade is decorated with various designs that are all made of corn. Yea, I know…BFD! We were not the only disappointed folks, as Susie heard the wife of a couple that had come in with us say, “I’m sorry we came here.” I guess we should have remembered our South of the Border lessons. Too many billboards on the side of the road usually equates to a rip-off tourist attraction!
R New Adventures 