Denver, CO to Kansas City, MO: The U.S. Mint, exactly one mile high, the long state of Kansas, and Eisenhower’s home at night

Thursday, Aug. 23

We got up early and drove into Denver to find someplace with Internet access. We found a little place called Metropolis Cafe that probably had some of the best coffee we’ve ever had. Neither of us are coffee-heads, or coffee-aholics, or whatever they call people who are addicted to coffee, but this was good stuff. When I was done working we headed into the city to check it out.

Denver Art Museum, the U.S. Mint and exactly one mile high

We didn’t actually go to the art museum, but outside there was this large sculpture of a broom sweeping crumpled paper into a dustpan, so I took a picture of Bea from afar to make it look like she’s cleaning.

We walked around that general downtown area, which includes the state capitol building, a large city and county building, and plenty of parkspace. Both of us left Denver thinking we could probably live there pretty easily. Nice people, great weather, lots of things to do outdoors, etc.

So we walked over to the U.S. Mint and got ourselves some tickets to tour the place. Only thing was we had to go back to the garage where our car was to drop off our camera and cell phones because you can’t bring them on the tour. Only thing you can bring is a wallet and that’s it. You can’t even bring in outside change into the mint.

That tour was awesome, though. They were making pennies when we went in there. The blanks, which the mint ships in from an outsourcer, are in these huge bins. Then the machines suck them up and stamp them on each side, and then they get poured into another bin. One thing I didn’t know before is that all the coins made in Denver get shipped west of the Mississippi; all the ones in Philadelphia east of the Mississippi. There are also two other mints I didn’t know about. The one in San Francisco does proof coins (which are stamped a handful of times to make the image stand out more) and the one in West Point does investor’s coins and the Presidential Medals of Honor.

Anyway, the Denver mint makes something like $2 million worth of coins every day. Nice. This was one of our favorite sites in Denver, and actually favorite sites overall. We both got blank pennies as a free souvenir.

After the U.S. Mint tour, we retrieved our phones and camera and walked around some more, this time venturing up the stairs of the state capitol building. On one of the steps, I think it’s the 18th, you are exactly 5,280 feet — one mile — high. So we took a picture because we’re tourists and that’s what tourists do, and it was cool nonetheless.

East into the long state of Kansas

It was getting late by this time and we still had a healthy trip ahead of us to get to Kansas City. So we left Denver and headed east into Kansas.

Once you get east of Denver, Colorado flattens out like a pancake. And it’s a ways before you get into Kansas. After a while we drove into Abilene, Kansas, where Dwight Eisenhower was born. It was getting dark fast, and the museum and library were closed, but we were able to take a picture of his house, which was nice.

Along the way in Kansas we had to pass on a bunch of cool-looking roadside attractions because it was getting late. A quick list: The Oz Museum, Greyhound Hall of Fame, little Sweden, and lots and lots of forts.

Then we continued on continuing on. We weren’t really sure where we were going to stay that night. There were a few state parks we could camp at, but they were 30, 45 minutes out of our way. Plus, we drove through a couple of thunderstorm warnings in central Kansas on our way to Kansas City (never hit any serious rain), and as it was nearing the end of our trip, we weren’t sure that we wanted to get soaked by the rain. Bea had heard from her mom that they had gotten just pelted up there.

So as you can probably guess by now, we decided to stay in a hotel. We got to Kansas City around 10 p.m., maybe, and then started stopping at places, calling places, trying to find wireless Internet so we could look up places. Finally we ended up driving back west out of Kansas City, Miss., south through Kansas City, Kan., and into a southwest suburb called Overland Park. By this time, it was well after midnight, so we checked into the Doubletree, got our free cookies, ate them, and went to our room to sleep.

 

Moab, UT to Denver, CO: Arches National Park, driving through the Rockies and alongside the Colorado River,

Wednesday, Aug. 22:

We woke in Moab, Utah and I started work in the KOA site, which had pretty good wireless Internet access. We got out of there around 1 p.m. again and headed north toward Arches National Park.

Arches National Park

It’s full of these naturally formed sandstone arches and spires that come in all different shades of red and orange and brown. The theory is that millions of years ago the area was once an ocean, and when dried up, it left a giant salt bed. Thick layers of rock were eventually deposited on top of the salt bed. Because there was salt underneath, the rock eventually eroded underneath, leaving these gaps that turned into arches and spires. Got it? There will be a test later on all this.

We didn’t have a whole lot of time here, so we weren’t able to drive and hike to the Delicate Arch, which is the most famous of the arches in the park. It’s the one that’s on a lot of Utah license plates. But we did get to go on a short hike to the North and South Window arches, as well as the Turret Arch. I actually think my favorite would have been the Landscape Arch, which is the longest in the park at about 300 feet. Sometime recently a 60-foot-long piece of rock just fell from the underside of this arch, making it even thinner. If you were under the arch at that time, you would have instantly become part of the geology.

East into Colorado

Once we crossed Utah and into Colorado, we started hitting these tremendous hills and our car’s engine groaned in protest, shifting to a lower gear automatically to pull us and all our junk up the inclines. At one point we were driving at about 11,000 feet and I was thinking that we were higher than any spot in New England, by about 6,000 feet. Our ears were popping like something that pops a lot, like soda or something, or like “pop,” as they call it in the Midwest.

For much of our Colorado drive, we were also following the path of the Colorado River, which was incredibly cool. At the Grand Canyon, we looked down at the river. Now we were driving alongside the river and looking up the mountains on either side of us.

Anyway, driving alongside the Colorado reminded me of William Least Heat Moon’s book River-Horse, where he travels across the country by rivers, from New York Harbor to the Columbia (even though he doesn’t go on the Colorado, I don’t think). If you haven’t read it, check it out. It’s probably my favorite book by him. It also reminded me somewhat of his more famous book, Blue Highways, because we were in the middle of a big trip. Then it occurred to me that those two books are about avoiding fast food chains and interstate highways and the general commercialization of America, and although we didn’t eat any fast food on our trip, we were all about the interstate highways. Then again, we didn’t have three months or however long it took for Moon to travel the country on its secondary roads, like he did in Blue Highways. I still think we’ve seen some cool things.

Vail and Cherry Creek

Eventually we drove into Vail, Colo. and took some pictures of the ski slopes and checked out the village areas there, which are very nice and fancy and so forth. But it was starting to get late by this point so we continued on toward Denver.

This was actually the first night in our trip to California and back that we didn’t have some kind of a reservation. Every other night, we had a reservation, even if we didn’t end up using it. But it was getting to be near the end of August and we were noticing that the campgrounds were less busy. The kids were going back to school. So we figured we would just find a campground and a spot pretty easily.

We were right. We went to Cherry Creek State Park just southeast of Denver and there were tons of spots. It took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to pay for a campsite during after-hours, but then we set ourselves up in a corner on a nice grassy spot. It was dark out but we’d gotten used to setting up the tent in the dark, so it was quick.

 

Grand Canyon to Moab, UT: Sunrise, Jenny’s Internet Cafe, more Canyon views, and standing in four states at the same time

Tuesday, Aug. 21

So we woke up at 4:30 a.m. We did this for a couple reasons. One, we wanted to see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. Two, we wanted to be able to take showers before we did so, because we thought we were going to have to drive down to Flagstaff, Ariz. after the sunrise so I could find a place that had Internet access so I could work.

Grand Canyon sunrise

So we got up and packed up our tent and headed to the showers. It was about 5 a.m. and we discovered that the showers didn’t open until 6 a.m. That was the first knot in our plans. So we drove to Mather Point again, opened the sun roof, reclined our seats and looked up at the stars. We saw the Milky Way and Bea identified a bunch of other constellations (I’m not very good at spotting them). I nodded off and on until the sun started to come up, and then we got out with our digital camera and an extra blanket to stay warm and watched the sunrise. Again, amazing.

We left there about 6:30 a.m. to go back to the showers. There we found out that the Grand Canyon is always on Mountain Standard Time and doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time. So according to them, it was 5:30 a.m. So we had to wait another half-hour to shower.

Finding Jenny’s

When we were ready to go, I was worried that by the time we got down to Flagstaff, I wouldn’t be able to work too long before we would have to leave for Utah. It was going to take us 90 minutes to get to Flagstaff and then another 5.5 hours to get to Utah from there, so we weren’t relishing the trip. Fortunately, we found Jenny’s Internet Cafe just south of the Grand Canyon in Tusayan. But it wasn’t open when we got there, so we drove into a nearby parking lot and I mooched free wireless Internet off a hotel in town (thanks Red Feather Lodge!). Once Jenny’s opened about an hour later, we moved there.

While I worked, Bea drove through the Grand Canyon Village some more and was able to take a picture of an elk that crossed her path. I was jealous that I missed that one. She also informed me that back at Mather Point, at an area with no guard rail, she saw an older, overdressed woman in high heels backing up perilously close the edge of the cliff so her husband/boyfriend could get a good picture. It would have been fitting if she fell off, I guess, seeing as it theoretically took millions of years for both the Colorado River to carve the Grand Canyon and for human evolution to occur through a little process called natural selection.

More Grand Canyon views

So we were able to leave Jenny’s around 1 p.m. and proceeded to go back into Grand Canyon National Park through the south entrance. We drove toward the east entrance, where we hadn’t been yet. The views we saw along this path were the best by far. Lapin Point, in particular, was amazing. You had a good view of the Colorado River, which from so far away actually looks like a dried river bed. We both commented on how incredible it was that a river could have carved that whole canyon into what it is today. Lapin Point was also amazing because you had an expansive view of the canyon to the west, and then to the north and east you could see the Colorado River meandering back and forth through the rock.

Another place we stopped was a stone watchtower that was built in the early 20th century for visitors. We climbed up to the top of the cylindrical building, where they had telescopes that you could pop a quarter in to see closer views of the Canyon and the Colorado. It was through those that you could see that the Colorado is really quite alive, not a dry riverbed.

On our way out, we passed a couple guys going toward the watchtower. One of them had a football that he kept tossing up in the air to himself. I guess he wasn’t expecting the Grand Canyon to be exciting enough for him, so he was going to have to play with the football to stay entertained.

On to Utah, but first, let’s stand in four states at the same time

So we left the Grand Canyon, vowing to one day return to do some hiking and camping there. As we headed northeast, we saw signs for Four Corners, a landmark I had overlooked in planning our trip to Chicago. It was a bit out of our way but we figured it was worth the detour. Four Corners is the spot where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet, so you can stand in such a way so that you’re in four states at the same time.

On our way, we drove through Navaho Nation — Native American land — and I began to think about how weird it was that we were going to a landmark that was celebrating the exact geographic borders of four states that Navaho Indians probably couldn’t care less about. Then it got stranger, because we pulled into the landmark and found out that it was actually run by the Navaho Nation’s recreation department. It was just weird paying the Navaho Nation to see a landmark that I can’t imagine they’re huge fans of.

Needless to say, the landmark is cool. It’s a circular stone platform with a silver seal and cross in the center showing where the state borders are. We took our pictures and hit the road again. A few hours later, we were in Moab, Utah and setting up our tent in the dark at a KOA site there. We were asleep shortly after climbing in.

 

Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon: Breakfast crepes, the Hoover Dam, and racing against the sunset

Monday, Aug. 20:

So I got up early to start work, about 5:30 a.m. During our trip back to Chicago, I’m working online in the mornings and then making calls and writing in the afternoons while Bea drives. Somehow I had no cell reception on the 20th floor of the Monte Carlo, which is on the Las Vegas Strip, but I still managed to get some work done.

Meanwhile, Bea awoke and walked the Strip some more, returning with crepes from La Creperie in the Paris hotel. We both discovered this place about five years ago when we first came to Vegas together, and we were hooked. I’m not sure how they compare to crepes in Paris, although Bea said she likes them more, most likely because they tend to be sweeter.

Anyway, we split a breakfast crepe with eggs and veggies in it. Then she got one for herself with fresh berries and chantilly cream, and I got one with Nutella and sliced bananas.

To the Hoover Dam

We left the hotel around noon and went to Circuit City to look for a power inverter. The inverter plugs into our car’s cigarette lighter and provides an AC outlet. Circuit City didn’t have it, but Office Max did. The thing is a lifesaver, and has allowed me to write on the laptop while on the road, plus we can both charge our cellphones and the digital camera’s battery while we’re driving.

Then we headed east toward Hoover Dam and were there in the next hour and a half. It was hot again but we were able to park in the garage. We went into the visitor’s center, watched an introductory movie, and then went on a tour in the dam, where you get to see the underground turbines churning out hydroelectric power. It was obviously amazing to hear about how they built it, and especially how quickly they did it: five years. They were constantly pouring concrete during construction, at a rate of about three feet every 78 seconds, I think was the statistic. Both of us immediately thought of the Big Dig, a huge construction project in Boston that has taken decades, cost billions, and still wasn’t built right. Thinking about it now, it seems that most construction projects today tend to cost more, take longer, and not be built as well.

Either way, the dam is amazing. When you go outside and check out the view from the top, it looks like a giant slide. On the other side is Lake Mead, which the guides told us would be able to flood the state of Pennsylvania with a foot of water. You can tell the level of the lake is going down quickly by the different colors on the rock surrounding it. Bea read or heard something about how Vegas and much of Southern California could be out of water in 10 years if the current conditions — the drought and booming construction in that area — continue.

 

Temecula, CA to Las Vegas: A “ghost” town, world’s tallest thermometer, and Las Vegas gluttony

Sunday, Aug. 19:

We said our goodbyes to Jeff and Janine and thanked them for letting us stay with them for five weeks. Honestly, without them this trip would not have been possible. Then we jumped on the freeway and headed northeast to our first stop,Las Vegas.

Calico ghost town

Our first stop along the way was in Calico, an old silver mining town that has since been largely abandoned and turned into a tourist attraction. We obliged and went in. It was hot hot hot that day, the temp in our car hit 112 at one point. Outside the sun beat down and hurt the backs of our necks.

Apparently Calico was a silver mining town that at its peak in the 1880s had about 1,800 residents, and in total they mined $86 million worth of silver out of there. Then when the price of silver dropped, the town crumbled. We walked through and saw a reconstructed town hall and a reconstructed fire house.

The original barber shop was there, which for some reason doubled as the dentist’s office. Outside there was a sign advertising “Goose Grease moustache wax.” Get me some of that, please.

The original pharmacy was still there, with a list of what they used to sell there. It included “cures” for ailments like German dyspepsia. Sounds nasty.

Then we walked through the mine and were able to have an idea of what it must have been like to work in there, which must have been horrible. We were both thinking about the recent mine collapse in Utah as we were going through. In the tour of the mine, they have mannequins in different locations set up to look like they’re mining. Some of them were smiling, and it was creepy.

Then we went into a cafeteria down the street and we bought a sarsparilla to split. Cost was $2, but with tax it came to $2.16. I almost asked if they had food tax in the Old West but kept my smart-alecky comments to myself. Turns out the sarsparilla, which was called Sioux City Sarsparilla, was made in New York state. Now that’s a genuine “ghost” town. Seriously though, we did actually enjoy it there.

 

It’s been a while

Yes, so it’s been a while since we’ve blogged on our adventure. We left off in San Luis Obispo. Well, the next day we were due in Temecula. We went through Santa Barbara, Malibu and L.A. to get there. Then we stayed with Jeff and Janine for about five weeks, saw them get married, went to wine country in Temecula, watched their cat and dog while they were on their honeymoon, and left.

There’s a lot more to say, but now that we’re back on the road and heading to Chicago, we’ll just skip it. Maybe we’ll reflect on it later if we’re feeling nostalgic about Southern California, but for the time being we’ve had our fill. Weather’s great, staying at Jeff and Janine’s was great, everyone drives SUVs, Hummers and jacked-up pickup trucks, and the drivers are about 10 times worse than Massachusetts drivers. Bea agrees.

There’s a lot of construction and smog and you breathe it all in and cough and wheeze. Or at least I do because I have bad allergies. I’m also allergic to the animals. Now I’m complaining so I’ll stop and we’ll move on to the return trip.

 

Half Moon Bay, CA to San Luis Obispo, CA

Saturday, July 14:

So we woke up on Saturday ready to hit the Pacific Coast Highway. Given that the direct route we ended up taking — from Half Moon Bay to San Luis Obispo — was about four hours, we decided we could take our time and enjoy the sites as we headed south.

As a quick side note, it’s funny how quick you can be accustomed to such long, all-day drives, so much so that you get to a point when a four-hour drive is like a dream.

Driving the highway and snacking on berries

The first place we stopped was off the highway and on a side road. We saw a sign for fresh strawberries. We came upon an old rundown farmhouse with an old man and his old dog. He sold us a crate of strawberries for eight bucks and asked what our last name was and then asked where in Italy my grandfather was from. He was Sicilian.

Unfortunately, his strawberries weren’t that good, which we discovered down the road when we actually started eating them. They were mostly absent of any flavor, but had a dry aftertaste that made you go looking for a glass of water. We should have tried a couple before we bought a crate of them. Oh well.

Our next stop was prompted by a sign that said, “Olallie Berries pick your own.” Well first, we didn’t know what olallie berries were, which intrigued us. And second, one of the things Bea loves to do is go to these pick-your-own stands, whether it be for blueberries, strawberries, peaches, whatever. So we were sold.

So olalllie berries are blackberries. Technically, it’s a cross between a youngberry and a loganberry, which are themselves crosses between a blackberry and some other berry. But basically it’s a blackberry. The guy running the pick-your-own stand told us that “olallie” means berry in Chinook Indian. So when you strip it all down, an olallieberry is a berryberry. So Bea and I went to pick some berryberries.

They were good. We didn’t spend too long there — maybe 15 minutes — but we picked quite a few berries and paid a couple bucks for them. Then our hands were covered in black and as we drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, our mouths quenched by delicious berryberries.

 

Petaluma, CA to Half Moon Bay, CA: Ditching KOA, Going east!, Napa, Sonoma, and As I Like It

Friday, July 13, 2007:

As I said, we really hated the Petaluma KOA. When we woke up there Friday (July 13) morning, we realized our site was wet because KOA waters them with sprinklers. Who in the hell waters their campsites, especially the tent ones? So even though we had reservations to stay there Friday night also, we packed up with the intention of only going back there as a last resort.

So we left there and headed toward Napa and Sonoma valleys — wine country. This was also a defining moment because we went on Route 166 East. It was the first time since leaving Massachusetts that we had actually gone on a road going east.

As we were driving, we both decided that there was no way we were going back to that Petaluma KOA. So Bea called the place and told them our thoughts about their miserable campground, and we got a refund for that night so we could go elsewhere.

The original Taylor’s

To make things a little lighter, I told Bea that I had a surprise for her as we were traveling toward wine country. We had gotten a bit of a late start and it was nearing lunchtime. I was traveling up Route 29 in Napa Valley toward Calistoga and then we came upon it — the original Taylor’s Refresher in St. Helena. I wasn’t sure Bea would like the surprise because after all, we were inNapa. But she loved it, and we ordered lunch and, of course, milkshakes, and then started our wine country tour.

 

Lake Tahoe to Petaluma, CA: Swimming in Lake Tahoe, the hospital, and milkshakes at Taylor’s

We got up early on Thursday morning. Bea had had a rough night with her eyes and sinuses. She felt like she was getting a sinus infection and we decided that she needed to see a doctor soon, meaning that day.

Before we left the site, we walked on a path to Lake Tahoe. After pondering how cold the water is, I eventually went in and cooled off. The lake is so clear — supposedly there are areas where you can see 67 feet down the lake — and it’s the second deepest lake in the U.S. behind Crater Lake in Oregon. Nice.

Finding a hospital

We left and drove up the west shore of Lake Tahoe, and eventually came to Tahoe City. We found a place called Syd’s Bagelry in the town that had free WiFi, so we ordered some breakfast and settled in to search the Internet for a doctor for Bea. Eventually we decided to just go to the hospital, and ended up at the Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee.

As Bea suspected, she had a sinus infection. I can’t believe that she’s been able to keep traveling and sleep in tents this whole way with how she’s been feeling. I probably would have ended this trip long ago if I was the one who was sick. So the doctor prescribed her some medicine and we were off again, headed for San Francisco and Petaluma. Along the way, we stopped in Sacramento to pick up Bea’s prescription. We saw the State House and were hoping to catch a glimpse of Ahhnold but no luck there.

If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair (and go to Taylor’s), on the jump…

 

Kaysville, UT to Lake Tahoe: the “Great” Salt Lake, Bonneville Salt Flats, the up-and-coming Reno, and ah…Lake Tahoe

Wednesday was a long, long day for us. We had to drive from Kaysville, UT to South Lake Tahoe, CA. More than eight hours of driving, with most of it in northern Nevada on Route 80, one of the most boring drives that has ever existed. But oh well, we got there, eventually.

The Great Salt Lake

So our first stop was the “Great” Salt Lake. We say it like that because I don’t think we got the full experience. I think it was a mix of not seeing what we expected and not going to the lake in the right spot to go swimming. We got onto Route 80 and got off at what we thought was the Salt Lake State Park. Well, we arrived at about 9:30 a.m. and it wasn’t open yet. So we drove down the street and found an opening to a walk toward the lake.

First of all, the first 100 yards of the lake is all marsh. It’s not something you can or want to dip your feet into. Then as we walked closer and closer to the lake, these huge flies started buzzing around our heads and trying to bite us. It was insane and neither of us wanted to hang around.

Here are a couple pictures of me in front of it. The second one is a close-up of my face so you can see how much I disliked the lake and the flies buzzing around it. Again, I think much of our problem was a lack of time to explore this huge body of water and not knowing where the best place was to go swimming (we now think Antelope Island would have been good).

The Bonneville Salt Flats

As we continued on Route 80 in Utah, there were some cool sights. At one point we were driving through the Great Salt Lake, with water on our right, our left, and on either side of the traffic going the other way. As we got farther west, we saw a few industrial plants with mountains of salt that it looked like they were processing. And we saw long stretches on the side of the road that looked like snow but was salt.

Then we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats, which is where they have a measured mile to record all of those land speed records. It was pretty cool — you could walk out onto the flats. With the salt being so white and the sun being so bright and reflecting, it felt like we were on another planet. Kind of creepy, actually.

Here’s Bea pretending that she’s running.

Smoke but no fire, up-and-coming Reno? and ah…Lake Tahoe, on the jump…