The Road to Colorado

While I was in NJ, Doug visited Wind Cave National Park. I didn’t get to see the unusual formations known as boxwork but Doug enjoyed the mile and a half tour through the enormous caverns.  He took a 7 mile hike in the park (something he can’t do with me around) and saw the wildlife along the trail. Our RV home during this time was near Sturgis, so we were still right in the middle of the largest motorcycle rally in the country.

Boxwork in Wind Cave

Formations in Wind Cave

View while hiking at Wind Cave National Park

Chimney Rock, NE

Scottsbluff National Monument, NE

When I got back, our next stop was in Gering, NE, the home of Teresa Scalon, a former Miss America.  Gering is right on the historic Oregon Trail and our campsite was in the city park.  It was great to have a beautiful site with incredible views – you just can’t beat living in a pretty park. The history of the Oregon Trail interested us so we stopped at a few historic markers that depicted significant moments in the lives and deaths of the pioneers who traveled this famous road.  There are still places where you can touch the original wagon wheel ruts.  We saw the wagon wheel memorial of a woman who died along the trail.  Most of the dead were in unmarked graves so their graves wouldn’t be disturbed.  The Oregon Trail is known as the longest graveyard in the nation, but it is also a testimony to the strength and perseverance of the 200,000 pioneers who took the chance to journey through the country.
We drove a short distance to see Chimney Rock National Monument and read about the history of the travelers that used this strangely shaped rock as a guidepost to orient themselves on the huge open plain they were moving through. On another day we went to Scott’s Bluff, a large formation which we could see from our campsite.  This was also a gathering place for the many adventurers who were moving west.  At these places the trails of Mormon handcarts, gold rush hopefuls, the Pony Express, the native nomadic tribes, farmers looking for the green fields of Oregon and many others crossed paths here.
Sometimes Doug and I take a break
from the great outdoors and on our 29^th wedding anniversary we had a dinner and a movie date.  We ate a delicious Chinese dinner at the Tea Garden Restaurant.  We were a little unsure of the food we would experience when we saw the large sign outside advertising “Buy one spaghetti dinner; get one free.”  But the food was fresh and wonderful.  Then we saw “War Dogs.”  The movie was good but the theatre was strange and we were the only ones there.  The mall the theatre was in had only a few cars anywhere near it.

To give you an idea of the terrain we are traveling through let me share a few of the establishments we pass:

Bullwacker’s Saloon
Full Throttle Saloon (which advertised Red Ass Rhubarb Wine)
Dick and Jane’s Naughty Spot
Rush No More
Hamm’s Ammonite Ranch (I can’t imagine what roams here)
The Town of Interior, population on one sign 94; population on another sign 67
Used-a-Bit Second Hand Store
The Town of Melbeta, which means sweet beets, population 116 (the sugar beets are the largest crop here and production of sugar is the biggest industry other than cattle ranching)
Bit-O-Wyo Ranch
THAT’S WY!
The towns are tiny, empty, but picturesque.  The scenery is beautiful – the homes on these ranges are modest and spread very far apart.  The blue skies have wispy clouds.  The ranges are green and gold rolling hills, with scattered, slowly spinning, three-armed giants.  It makes sense to have these windmills since the wind is wicked here.  But those windmills are the only things you see moving on this peaceful plain.

We don’t expect to visit this part of the country in the winter.  The snow must get massive here.  Every road we’ve been on has snow gates – these come down when the road is snow-covered and you have to turn back to wherever you started from.  No signs to use chains, no attempts at snow plowing – just close the roads.

Our beautiful home for this leg of the trip was Curt Gowdy State Park.  I was under the mistaken notion that Curt Gowdy was a cowboy (he was a local guy who became a national figure as a sportscaster) but the old west cowboy feeling prevailed any way.  The park is located exactly midway between Cheyenne and Laramie.  Our site was very pretty and the whole park is just a wonderful area to explore.  The visitor center/museum is spectacular – with modern and historic displays.  It’s hard not to contrast the magnificent visitor centers out west with the dinky little stops we’ve been in along the east coast.  These places are destination in themselves.

We spent a day exploring Cheyenne and got a flavor of the old west town it was.  The modern day Cheyenne is a thriving big city with a respectful look-back at it’s colorful past.  We spent a few hours at the State Museum which was a free and interesting way to understand the history and charm of Cheyenne.  We happened to be there on they day they dedicated the new addition to city hall.  The old, beautifully domed building will have lots more space added to it.

The next day we went in the opposite direction to check out Laramie.  This was Women’s Equality Day, August 26^th. Bella Abzug, the Democratic Representative of New York, got Congress to approve this holiday to commemorate the 19^th Amendment which (finally!!) gave women the right to vote.  We were happy we were spending it in the Equality State of Wyoming.  The first legal vote by a woman happened in Cheyenne.

Now Laramie is a beautiful town.  We happened to be there during its weekly farmer’s market.  A robust event compared to some of the tiny markets we’ve been too.  We walked around town looking at the murals and stopped for Thai take-out that met our discriminating tastebuds’ needs.

Driving around this area you can see that the cattle ranchers won their battles against the sheep herders.  The ranches are faintly outlined by barbed-wire fences.  Not much left of herds of sheep.  The only litter you see here are occasional piles of rusty farm equipment and old trucks.  I love the fields and fields of sunflowers and the black-eyed susans all along the roadways.

We had to leave lovely Curt Gowdy State Park and then spent a night at Terry Bison Ranch.  This RV “Park” was a stark difference – with tiny sites and some really tacky fake old west facades on the buildings.  One night was plenty here.

Family of deer at our Horsetooth Reservoir campsite

And then we arrived at Horsetooth Reservoir – our huge site overlooked the pretty reservoir and the mountains surrounding it.  The town right outside of our site was called Stout and the population sign read 47½.  We used this site to travel one day to Fort Collins and had an interesting lunch at the Fo-Co.  This is a community restaurant that has no cashier and is staffed only with volunteers.  The food was great – we had a fresh cucumber salad and I had the spicy tomato soup and Doug had a good ratatouille, which and we topped this off with yummy almond cakes.  The deal here is that you pay what you think the food is worth or what you can afford.  If you can’t afford to pay, you go to work in the kitchen or serving to cover the cost of your lunch.  There is also a Freedge outside – a refrigerator with excess produce that anyone who can use it can take.  We enjoyed this place and even had an interesting conversation with some local men who were engrossed in talking about “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”  It was cool to meet Brooklynites in Fort Collins.

Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park

Proof we made it to this altitude!

The highlight of our stay in Horsetooth was our trip to Rocky Mountain National Park.  As Doug drove up the long high road through the Estes Park entrance I drank lots of water and took some prophylactic doses of Advil.  I have had problems with altitude sickness in the past and was already having some shortness of breath and headaches while we were only at 5 or 6,000 feet.  So I was a little nervous going to over 12,000 feet.  But I did it and even was able to walk around and explore some short trails.  We ate our picnic lunch at the Alpine Lodge area at over 11,000 feet.  We sat looking out at a glacial cirque – a circular bowl formation formed a long time ago by the pressures and movement of a glacier.  The mountains are enormous, the tundra we walked through was incredible and I loved every breathless moment of this experience.  The day before we left this area we explored Estes Park, a cute little town with a really nice park and farmer’s market.

Our next stop was at the Limon KOA – not a place we would recommend.  But it was only for two nights.

Now we are in John Martin State Park.  Our views of the lake and reservoir are just lovely and our site is the biggest we’ve been in yet.  To get here, we had to turn our backs on the magnificent Rocky Mountains and we anticipated (and drove endlessly through) mile after mile of virtually nothing on the horizon.  Finding a place as lovely as this makes those miles worthwhile.  We are going to have a picnic lunch on the little beach today and spend our three days here relaxing.  Well, it will be relaxing if the weather holds up.  We had really high winds last night which rocked the RV and kept both of us up.  Today is just beautiful but we are watching out for the dangerous thunderstorms that plague this area and hopefully will not have more of those treacherous winds.  For now we are sitting outside in 80 degrees with bright sun and a little breeze.