Trip To Rocky Mountain National Park

    The last part of our camping trip in the western United States was a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. We left Yellowstone from the west gate and drove through Idaho to Salt Lake City. That was when we found out that two escaped murderers had been seen in the park. In fact we may well have seen one hitchhiking in the Canyon area as the newspapers said he had been seen doing so.

On the way we stopped to visit some friends who live on a sugar beet farm near Rupert, Idaho. I had no idea sugar beets were so large!

    We spent two nights in Salt Lake City to clean vehicles, clothes and us. While there we visited the Utah State Capitol, Temple Square and the Great Salt Lake. The state capitol building is situated at the end of downtown on a hill. It is a gorgeous building and was recently beautifully restored including being raised off its foundation to put in a new earthquake tolerant foundation.

    Temple Square is the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, also know as the Mormon Church. The area includes the temple, the tabernacle, conference center, visitor centers and other buldings. The landscaping is lovely.

It is amazing to think that Brigham Young first brought a small group of followers to the desert that was Utah in 1847 and by 1853 they had not only survived but thrived enough to build this magnificent temple. He used the example of a beehive to motivate his people to be industrious, perserving and work hard for the sake of the community and they accomplished great things. Utah is now known as the beehive state.

   Next stop was Estes Park, Colorado which is at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. The town is cute with lots of shops and the historic Stanley Hotel. You reach it driving through a scenic canyon.

   In the park we drove Trail Ridge Road which is the highest continuous paved road in the world (continuous meaning it keeps going on either end to other destinations).

The highest point in the road was over 12,000 feet high. The views are magnificent!

Alpine Visitor Center on Trail Ridge Road

We saw a lot of elk at both the higher elevations and in the meadows. As winter approaches the elk will move to lower elevations.

We also saw marmots who live in the higher elevations. This one was at the Alpine Visitor Center.

We ate picnic lunches in the meadows with our friends, Meg and Brian, who live in Denver and came up to Estes Park for the weekend to visit us.  

Our campsite at Elk Meadow RV Park in Estes Park.






We found an amusement park in Estes Park so we did some go-kart racing and played a few round of mini-golf. My husband won every time.

 

   One last stop was at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abeliene, Kansas. The complex is on the land where Dwight Eisenhower grew up and includes his boyhood home, a museum, chapel and his and his wife, Maime's, final resting place.





That was the end of our trip. All we had to do was make the drive home - turn in 403 miles!

Over the whole 24 day trip we drove over 6,000 miles ("we" meaning my husband who drove all but about 20 miles of it). I don't even want to think of how much we spent on gas!

Trip To Yellowstone National Park

    After leaving the Black Hills, we drove to Yellowstone National Park via Sheridan, Wyoming, the Big Horn Mountains and Cody. This is a drive we've done several times before and are always captivated by the beauty of the mountains along a road that follows a stream into a large valley. Unfortunately it was raining when we drove through the mountains so we didn't get nice photos. We spent the night in Sheridan where we walked around downtown visiting the famous Mint Bar and King's Saddlery which sells quantities of anything anyone would need if they own a horse.

Our first night in Yellowstone we stayed (via reservation) at the Fishing Bridge RV Park hoping to charge all our batteries and replenish the water tank on our camper. Unfortunately their electrical system was broken (they gave us $5 off the camping fee of $36). We just could not get a break!

The next morning my husband and I got up early and drove to the National Park Service's campground at Norris and waited in line for a campsite (pictured). Still no electricity but it was a big site with lots of shade and only cost $7 a night (with my mother-in-law's senior discount). The sites at the RV park are very small so when you walk out your door you are right next to someone else's camper. I don't know why the National Park Service has such low standards for their campgrounds. It's really a disservice to people who like to camp without living like a homeless person. We had to drive 24 miles every day just to take a shower. (That's my editorial for this post.)

An advantage to driving in

the park that early was the

beautiful sight of fog (or maybe it was steam) in the valleys as the sun came up.

Our first full day in the park we drove north to the Mammoth area. This is the only part of the park that is like a town as the headquarters are there and there are homes for people who work in the park. This area features the Mammoth Hot Springs where the hot water creates terraces of chemical deposists that step down hills. Many of them have dried up but there are several that still have hot water trickling (or gushing) down the terraces.

We drove out of the northern gate (the original formal entrance to the park) to Gardnier, Montana. This was the only time during the week I could get a wireless internet connection. Most of the time in the park we couldn't get cell phone service and the only place with wireless was at Old Faithful Inn but it was secured so I couldn't use it.

We drove west to the Lamar Valley which is famous for wildlife viewing. We hoped to see some bear or moose. This area is close to the Gallatin National Forest where a bear had attacked campers at Soda Butte the week before, killing one of them. If we saw bear, I was happier to see them on the other side of the park from where we were camping. Alas, we never saw bear or moose at anytime when we were in the park. We saw buffalo and pronghorn in this area.

On our way back to our camp, we saw a herd of elk in the Canyon area. Canyon was where we went each night to take our showers. It was 12 miles from our Norris campground.




Of course the highlights of Yellowstone are the hydrothermal features. They are all over the park and you can see steam rising from them along the roads, in the various geyser basins and in the hills. We spent the next couple of days touring the different geyser basins to see all the different features.

One day we drove to the Canyon area and took the scenic highways that go on either side of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Here the Yellowstone River, which flows north, has created a canyon of yellow walls and has two big water falls. This is the Upper Falls as seen from the South Rim Drive.

There are many overlooks along both the South Rim Drive and the North Rim Drive. The most famous is called Artist's Point on the North Rim. Many photos and paintings have been made from this point. This is my husband and I at Artist's Point with the Lower Falls in the background.

On Friday night we went to the Old Faithful Inn for dinner. This historic inn was designed and built in 1903-04 by architect Robert Reamer and set the standard for the great rustic lodges in the National Parks. It is the largest log hotel in the world.

You can view Old Faithful geyser from some of the rooms. There is a viewing porch of the Upper Geyser Basin that has a great view of Old Faithful and many of the other geysers in the area.

The other area of the park we visited was Yellowstone Lake. The lake is huge covering 136 square miles with 100 miles of shoreline. It sits in the bowl of an ancient volcano. Fishing Bridge, Bridge Bay, Lake and Grant Villages are all located in this area. The West Thumb Geyser Basin is along the shore of the lake.


The Lake Hotel was built before Old Faithful Inn but in the style of the grand resort hotels of the turn of the 20th century.




Here are some photos of buffalo I took on our drive to the lake:

The last night in Yellowstone it rained as we drove back from the showers at Canyon VIllage. Just as we reached camp the sun came out and we saw a beautiful double rainbow over the meadow next to the campground.

Trip To Black Hills

   Last week we went camping in Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We didn't make a reservation ahead of time and all the campgrounds that have electric and water hookups (which is most of them) were all booked up. We ended up at the Center Lake campground which has no hookups at all. This will be partially retro back to the days when we tent camped.

The site was very nice, nestled in the tall pines trees and the temperature was cool enough to sleep well. It was so fortunate that Mike fixed us up with a generator. We were only allowed to run it for 2 hours at a time and then only between 8am and 8pm but it was enough to keep the battery on the camper charged so we had lights and refrigeration. Between the generator and the aux plug in the van, we were able to keep our phones, computers and camera batteries charged as well. The camper also has a fresh water tank but we were not sure how long it would last and we had no way to refill it. We could use the commode in the camper but we use water jugs and our gas stove to get hot water.

    Custer State Park is one of our favorite places to visit. It's in the middle of the Black Hills which has many attractions from Mount Rushmore to the Flintstone Theme Park. The park is an attraction in itself. There are three scenic highways, there are historic lodges and lots of wildlife. Besides my husband and myself, we have our dog and my Mother-in-Law and her dog.

Our first order of business was to drive the Iron Mountain Road to Mount Rushmore. This road was built as Mount Rushmore was being carved and was designed to highlight the monument. There are three tunnels on the road and each frames a view of Mount Rushmore. The monument and the surrounding mountains are also viewed from several scenic overlooks along the way.

The road features several "pig-tail" bridges. The supports on these bridges are made from huge wood timbers. You drive over the bridge then circle around under it.

There were several 180 degree turns and many curves. This was the road as depicted on our GPS unit.

No visit to the Black Hills would be complete without a stop at Mount Rushmore National Monument. The monument was carved in the 1930's and 40's by Gutson Borghlum. The Visitor Center contains films and exhibits about the sculptor and how the design was transferred onto the mountain.

My favorite part is just sitting in front of the monument on the tiers of viewing platforms and comtemplating the building of the monument and what it was meant to mean to us. The four presidents were chosen to represent the founding, expansion, preservation and conservation of our country. It occured to me that maybe the people who want to add Ronald Reagan to the monument have a point, if they ever add another head to the monument it may well be the president who initiated the demise of our country. 

Another scenic drive in Custer State Park is the Needles Highway. This road winds it way through an area of the park where the rocks have weathered into tall narrow peaks, called needles. The original idea for what became Mount Rushmore was to carve these needles into famous figures but the rock was too brittle.

One of the needles has an opening that looks like the eye of a needle.

In some places the road squeezes between the rocks. Tour buses drive through this everyday. This is my husband driving our van through the needles.

At the end of the Needles Highway is Sylvan Lake and Sylvan Lake Lodge. This is the prettiest lake in the park and one of the historic and beautiful lodges.

The third scenic road in Custer State Park is the Wildlife Loop. This is the area where the large buffalo (American Bison) herds roam most often. There are hundreds and hundreds of buffalo in the park.

One buffalo herd seemed to like walking around in the area of the State Game Lodge (which has stores, hotels, cabins and a campground). We saw them several times in that area causing a "buffalo jam".

How do you get on your motorcycle when the buffalo are around it?

You wouldn't want one of the buffalo to get too close to your car either. Here is my husband carefully driving through the buffalo herd.

Other wildlife we saw in the Black Hills:

My husband's favorite "wildlife" are the Beggin' Burros. These are wild burros left over from the days when they were used for transport in the park. The park tolerates people feeding them (which is the only wildlife you can feed in the park) so they will come up right to you for food.

The area around Custer State Park has many attractions. There are many little towns like Custer, Keystone and Hill City with shops, restaurants and attractions. There is a historic train that runs between Keystone and Hill City.


Keystone at night



Rapid City is the largest town in the region. The downtown area is filled with shopping and historic buildings including the Hotel Alex Johnson. Unlike the smaller towns, the shopping is more diverse and includes some very nice art gallerys. The sidewalks are wide and there are nice benches with small gardens around them. Some of the alleys are painted with grafitti-like murals.

Rapid City has placed bronze statues on their downtown street corners of most of the presidents (I think they only have 4 left to do) and some other famous people. We took the opportunity to pose with some of the statues.

One day we drove back east from the Black Hills to the town of Wall, home of the famous Wall Drug store. It is also at the terminus of the scenic drive through the Badlands National Park. Wall Drug is the ultimate tourist destination but it is so touristy it is fun. They have billboards all the way down I-90 advertising all the things to see at Wall Drug. They give away free ice water, have nickel coffee and make homemade donuts every day. You can buy almost anything there from postcards to Indian art to camping supplies and, yes, even over the counter medicine. One of my favorite things is the mechanical cowboy band singing harmonized cowboy ballads.

After stoking up at Wall Drug, we drove through the Badlands. I always think of the pioneers in their covered wagons coming up and seeing the terrain. We look at it and think it is beautiful. What they must have thought! Fortunately I think they were able to go around it although it's a long way around.

Another fun day was spent driving to the northwestern part of the Black Hills. This is where the towns of Deadwood, Lead, Spearfish and Sturgis are located. Deadwood is famous for Wyatt Earp (who was shot and killed here) and Calamity Jane. You can visit the saloon where Earp was killed and the cemetery where he and Jane, amongst others, are buried.

The day we visited there was a parade in Deadwood for the Days of '76 festival celebrating the days when the town was booming because of the discovery of gold and other minerals.

Gambling is legal again there and there are many casinos, some in historic buildings like the Seth Bullock Hotel. Jean and I had to partake of the slots but neither of us won anything.

Nearby is the town of Lead which still has a large mine that is open for tours. We did not take the tour (we have toured similar mines in the past). We drove through scenic Spearfish Canyon which took us back to I-90 and then on to the town of Sturgis.

Sturgis is famous for the annual motorcycle rally which was scheduled to start just nine days from the day we visited (we planned to be long gone before the rally started). Still there were a lot of motorcyclists in the area and the tents were going up, some already open for business.

Our last night, we drove over to Mount Rushmore for the night ceremony. The monument is dark while they present a program of patriotic music and readings. Then they slowly light the monument until it is fully lit casting differing shadows on the faces. This was a nice night cap to our visit to the Black Hills of South Dakota.