After a long day (6 hour drive) from Springfield, we set up our rig late on Sunday afternoon in a brand new KOA in Bluffton, Indiana, just a half hour south of Fort Wayne. The campground was quite large so we took a walk after supper and explored all the roads within the park.
When we passed one rig a few rows over from ours, a fellow invited us to come share his campfire with him and his wife. We sat down for a chat and it turns out the man, Monte, is a professional watercolour artist from Oklahoma, out for a few months RV holiday with his wife Linda. What a coincidence! So of course we had a lot to talk about - painting styles, pigments we use, how we teach students, build our own web sites, etc. They invited us into their lovely 5th wheel Montana trailer (three slideouts!) and we saw some excellent paintings he was working on. Then we had them over to our trailer and showed them the paintings I had done on our trip. I gave them a Doors of Port Perry poster and Monte said he would mail me one of his prints when he gets home. You can read about Monte Toon and his art at http://www.montetoon.com/. What a great evening!
The next day was nice weather so we bicycled into Bluffton for an hour or so to see the town (not much to see actually but the exercise was good). Then we drove the truck into Fort Wayne to the visitor centre to see what was happening. Turns out Monday is the day most venues are closed so we could not see the botanical gardens or museums, but the hostess said there was a baseball game on in the evening. We had a huge alfresco lunch at one of the down town hotels and then found Parkview Field, which is a gorgeous ballpark right down town, newly built this spring (see below). We bought tickets, which were less than $30 for the both of us, drove back to the campsite to sleep off lunch and change clothes and headed back to the stadium.
We parked for just $4 in the lot across the street from Parkview Field and found our seats which were seven rows up and directly behind home plate. What a great view! We were sitting with some off-duty players who were measuring the pitching speed with radar guns. In the photo below you can see the ball in the air between the pitcher and the batter. We could call the strikes and balls almost as well as the umpire! The stadium looked to be almost full and we heard there were about 6,000 in attendance.
The previous night’s game had been rained out after five innings, so the first game we watched was the remaining four innings of that unfinished game. Then there was a half our break, the national anthem and seven innings of the second game (shortened due to the double header). The home team, the Tincaps (Class A farm team for the San Diego Padres) won both games against the River Bandits (farm team for the St. Louis Cardinals). Although these are minor league players, the play was very professional and we really enjoyed watching the action. Monday nights are Family Feast so for a buck you could get either a hot dog, popcorn, pop or a pizza slice. What a deal compared to major league games at the stadium in Toronto.
On Tuesday we drove our trailer from Bluffton to Emmett, Michigan (just west of Sarnia) and rested up for two nights there at a quiet KOA out in the middle of nowhere.
On Thursday we made it to London and visited our friend Jade Herder who just bought a new home there. He is doing some renovations to the interior and totally redoing all the landscaping so it will be lovely when he is done. The next day we took a three hour ride along the bicycle path that follows the Thames River in down town London, stopped for a yummy lunch at a pub (nicely avoiding a sudden rainshower in the process - thank you JFR Tours) and headed back to the campground for supper.
The next day we had an appointment at Campkins RV in London to see an Earthbound trailer we had read about on the internet. It was a really nice tow-behind trailer - lightweight and high tech looking - but not a layout we were keen on for our purposes. We asked the dealer to let us know when the model we are interested in is delivered from the factory so we can drive back to London for a viewing.
Having spent three months on the road with our Wildcat fifth wheel toy hauler, we found we used our bicycles as much or more than our motorcycles, so the dedicated garage space is a lot of weight to haul around and an additional eight feet in length to manoeuvre, compared to the actual use we got out of the motorcycles. The other feature we ideally would like is to have is two table workspaces, so that I can paint on one and John can use the computer on the other. We really like the kitchen, bathroom and underfloor storage in our Wildcat but I have seen better functioning layouts for the bedroom storage space and living room seating areas we require. So we are hoping to find a new trailer that is lighter weight and has the features we would prefer. That being said, the Wildcat is a very well engineered, high quality product with many handy features and I would recommend them to anyone. You just have to find the particular model that suits your activities and travel style.
We left Port Perry on May the 4th and after 16,000 km (10,000 miles) we arrived home on July 25 safe and sound. We didn’t want the trip to end but once we were home we were delighted to be there. Since there had been springlike conditions at home while we were travelling, the lawn and gardens looked lush and beautiful. Dad had done a great job looking after our house and lawn and picking up our mail while we were gone.
Gas was much less expensive for our trip this year than last. John figures the average price we paid was about $2.35/Gal (US) which is in the neighbourhood of 75 cents per litre (CDN).
Of the twelve weeks we were away, we spent seven weeks in the desert and we had just four or five rainy days during our entire trip to the American Southwest. We really gained a new perspective about water resources and saw how precarious the water supply is in the Southwest. Very soon there will not be enough water to support people and agriculture down there. We are so blessed to have abundant rainfall and thousands of lakes in Ontario and we must strive to appreciate and protect them. I will never complain about a rainy day again! (Unless my paintings get wet at a show - then I might whine a little.)
Our favourite region to visit without question was southern Utah, because of all the exciting canyons to explore and photograph, fewer crowds and the weather was cooler there than in Arizona due to the higher elevation. We would love to go back and hike more of Zion National Park another year - anyone want to come with us? BYOT (Bring Your Own Trailer)!
The blog is finished for this year. Thanks for listening and commenting from time to time. We really appreciated hearing from you about going’s on back home. Bye for now…
Our main reason for choosing Springfield, Illinois as a stop on our homeward journey was to visit two Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. We set up our trailer in a quiet KOA in the country about 20 minutes outside of town and drove the truck into Springfield to find the sites.
On the way we passed the Muni outdoor theatre and saw on their sign that ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ was being presented on the weekend (today being Thursday) so we parked in their driveway, called their reservation line on the cell and bought two tickets to the Friday night show.
The first Wright site we visited was the Lawrence Memorial Library that he was commissioned to design inside of an existing school in1902. The library is unusual because it is only one of nine interiors designed by the famous architect for buildings he had not designed himself. Only three interiors remain in existence today.
The school is now an adult learning centre, closed for the summer, but the groundskeeper let us know to ring the bell and ask for admittance. We did so, got buzzed into the school and met one of the administrative staff who unlocked the library room for us to enter, and she left us alone in the room (gasp). The most amazing thing is that the library is still in use, after a $100,000 renovation in 1992, so the shelves were full of rather untidy rows of books and I could sit in a FLW chair (another gasp), something that is not allowed in any FLW house tour we have experienced so far. Admittedly, all the furnishings were recreations, but they came from Wright’s original plans and drawings.
The room and the furnishings were beautifully designed and executed, but we found a big puddle of water on the wooden floor (not a surprise in a FLW building – I hear they frequently leak!). John discovered the window air conditioner was dripping condensate inside the room – not Wright’s problem after all – so he called the staff person and she had the custodian come in and clean up the puddle while we were there. She thanked us very much for letting her know about the water before it damaged the floor.
After seeing the library, we drove a few blocks to the visitor centre downtown to see what highlights we should see while in town. Springfield is state capitol and the home of Abraham Lincoln and his tomb is there, so many tourist sites revolve around his life and presidency. We left the truck parked downtown and walked about six blocks to the Dana-Thomas house and signed up for the one hour tour (only $5 each).
What a magnificent building this house is. When Susan Lawrence Dana inherited about 3 million dollars from her father in 1902, she commissioned Wright to renovate her parents’ Victorian mansion into a palatial home for entertaining. Apparently she was one of the few clients who saw eye to eye with the egotistical architect about his artistic vision and it was one of the most expensive private homes he designed. Can you imagine the awe inspiring result when you partner an artistic genius with a very wealthy and willing client? Man oh man… Of course we were not allowed to photograph inside the home but these exterior views of a few wings will give you an idea of the look of the home. You can see more details online at www.dana-thomas.org.
The next day was Friday and while John had the brakes inspected on the truck (they were fine) I worked for four hours on a sketch for a house portrait commission, which is due in September for a 50th anniversary celebration. That evening we drove over to the Muni outdoor theatre, parked in the grass field and made our way to our seats. We were in the 11th row and there were a few thousand people there. What a great facility! It’s been operating for over 50 years and is one of the largest all-volunteer community theatre organizations in the US. Last year they entertained over 40,000 patrons. Fiddler on the Roof was quite well done – good sets and lighting, a decent chorus, great lead actors and every singer had a remote microphone so we could hear really well. The weather cooperated with moderate temperatures and no rain. What a great evening!
On Saturday we drove down south to the town of Chatham to take in their Sweet Corn Festival in the park. It was a small town so the event was not large, but they had a good display of highland game contests (caber tossing, etc.) and the cow chip tossing state championships (I kid you not - the photos prove it!) Here you can see one contestant in mid-throw and another selecting his chip from the wheelbarrow.
The next day we drove our kit and caboodle northeast to Bluffton, which is near Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Leaving Kansas City, we decided to leave the big interstate corridor and take a more northern route, so we could pass through the small town of Chillicothe, Missouri. Why you ask? Because it perports to be the home of sliced bread. Seems the local bakery was the first commercial user of the loaf-at-a-time bread slicing machine in 1928. They have lots of lovely murals throughout town, including this one below.
John and I had visited Hannibal, Missouri, home of Mark Twain, on the Mississippi River, back about 25 or 30 years ago on a motorcycle trip with our friends the Whitneys. Back then we stayed in a delightful former house of ill repute called The Bordello, toured the famous local caves and took a moonlight cruise on the Mississippi on a paddle wheeler. Even I with my terrible memory, remember that as a fun time.
On our 2009 trip we had not been able to locate a local campground on the internet ahead of time so we got a list of three campgrounds from the local visitor centre when we arrived in town. We looked at the closest one, called Injun Joe’s, paid for two nights and then found the site was too small for our rig and the campground looked like it had seen better days. Many permanent trailers is always a warning sign for us.
So we got our money back and went to the second campground, outside of town between the river and the train tracks. It looked a little better, other than that it had rained a lot recently and there were large puddles everywhere. When we paid for two nights (cash only), we hadn’t planned to be awakened every two hours each night by the train whistles, but there you go. Can’t win ‘em all…
As we found out later, the third campground was close to downtown and was ‘big-rig friendly’ so we should have stayed there. A hint for other RV’ers: when booking campgrounds sight unseen, look for the following and you will not often be disappointed – campgrounds should offer free wi-fi, have a 1-800 phone number for reservations and a web site and they should accept payment by credit cards. Any campgrounds not offering these services are often in decline, in our experience anyway.
Our first night in town we went to a play called ‘Mark Twain Himself’ at a small theatre and really enjoyed the solo production. The actor talked to the audience in the manner that Twain did when he was alive - he was a renowned public speaker as well as a writer. We were spellbound for the 80 minute performance.
The campground we stayed in had no internet service but we found an internet café in Hannibal and spent a nice morning there the next day enjoying coffee and warm sticky buns, catching up on emails. There was a little public garden in downtown that featured the work of the local master gardeners so I got some decent flower photos there, two of which are pictured below.
That afternoon we took a one hour guided tour of the Rockcliffe Mansion in Hannibal, shown below. It is a 13,500 square foot American ‘castle’ on the National Register of Historic Homes and was built between 1898 and 1900. Many of the furnishings and personal belongings such as clothing and hats were intact, which made for a very interesting narrated tour.
Several table lamps had been made by Tiffany, as was this impressive stained glass window in the main stairwell. Photography was not allowed inside but we lucked out and ended up having a private tour (because no other visitors showed up) and the guide gave me permission to photograph the window when I asked. You can read more about the house at http://www.rockcliffemansion.com/.
That evening we saw the new Johnny Depp movie ‘Public Enemies’, which was the story of the final days of the American bank robber John Dillinger. I found the style of cinematography very disjointed which kind of spoiled the film for me, but I am always amazed how Depp can reinvent himself with every character he portrays. I almost did not recognize him in this movie.
The next day we moved our rig from Hannibal, Missouri to Springfield, Illinois, in our steady trek homeward in an easterly direction. Below is the bridge we went over to cross the Mississippi River into Illinois and the photo is taken from the Hannibal waterfront.
The drive from WaKeeney in western Kansas all the way across the state to Kansas City was a straightforward haul along the interstate, so I took the opportunity to write the text for my artist journey blog on our lap top during the five hour drive. It felt great to catch up on some stories since often we are so busy having fun that it is hard to find the time to document it!
We found a lovely KOA about a half hour drive west of Kansas City, which is a bustling place. John found out about a large Cabela’s store near the Kansas Speedway so after we hooked the trailer up to utilities we drove the truck into town. We drove by the Speedway which is the big professional race track where NASCAR events are held. Impressive grandstands and acres of grassy fields for parking (empty when we saw them). Just as well – if it had been a race weekend we would not have found a campsite in the vicinity I am sure. We checked on the internet and they were selling tickets for the fall races already.
It was Saturday afternoon and Cabela’s (which is an outdoor store like Bass Pro, selling clothing, camping and hunting gear) was having their weekly outdoor clearance sale (75% off) so John found a nice pair of leather loafers and a gift for a friend back home. We explored the store for a few hours and had supper at Jimmy Buffet’s restaurant ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’ at the newly buiilt mall next door, which was called Legends Entertainment District. The photo below shows a band playing in one section of the outdoor mall. There were lots of people there - not sure if they were actually buying stuff or just there to be entertained.
Having seen several advertisements for the Nebraska Furniture Mart, we passed by that store, which took up a huge section of the outdoor mall. The first photo below shows the entrance to the parking lot and the second photo shows just two wings of the store from the outside.
There were about seven lanes of cars – maybe 100 vehicles – lined up in the Customer Pickup lot, which made us wonder what sort of bargains would attract that many buyers during a recession. We decided to return on Monday for a look-see, when it would not be so busy.
The next day, Sunday, we were awakened in the early morning by a loud thunderstorm. It was so lovely to hear the rain on the roof of our RV and feel cosy and sheltered inside so we slept in late. During our whole three month trip we only had a handful of wet days so we enjoyed the rain. After doing the laundry and going on a grocery run in the village nearby, we got out the motorcycles and drove back to ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise’ for the weekly motorcycle ride-in that the restaurant hosts. As it turns out there were only about ten bikes there so we had a snack, took the photo below of our bikes in front of the restaurant and headed back to the campground, but the ride was really nice through country highways.
Monday we headed into the Nebraska Furniture Mart first thing in the morning and more or less had the store to our selves. It took us over an hour to walk through all the departments and we have never seen such a large showroom of furniture, appliances and electronics. What surprised us was that prices were about the same as at home, so I guess it was the large selection that brought in the buyers, or else they had had a special sale on during the weekend when we saw so many people lined up to pick up their purchases. There were perhaps 30 or 40 fridges on display, some retailing for as much as $7000. We saw all kinds of those nifty coffee tables that swing up to dining height. It was a very interesting visit.
We checked out a few more stores that John was interested, including the LMC Truck Accessory warehouse, and he made us some delicious back ribs on the BBQ back at the campground. The next day we loaded up and headed for Hannibal, Missouri.
Just inside the western border of Kansas lies the village of Goodland, a blip on the interstate whose main claim to fame appeared to be this giant reproduction of one of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings on an 80 foot easel. You can see our rig parked behind it in the photos below. Yes it’s a big sucker. The Rotary Club has made a bit of a park around it and you can see John signing the register.
WaKeeney is a tiny freeway town in western Kansas (read: flat) and does not have a lot to recommend it, but it had a stock car track and fortunately the one night we spent there was a Race Night.
So at 7:30 we drove over to the fair grounds, paid our $10 each entry fee, got our two beers for $5 and settled down in the stands to watch the races. This photo below shows the back of the bleachers from the parking lot.
We had a blast! There were three classes of races – stock, hobby and modifieds. The early races usually involved 4 to 7 cars at a time and they raced five laps around the 1.5 mile dirt track. The stock cars were older style Oldsmobiles and Cutlasses from the 1990’s.
My favourite class was the modifieds because they went the fastest and made the most noise (what a caveman I am!), looking like something between the Back to the Future Delorean and a comic book cover. The later races involved a dozen cars or more in races of 15 and 20 laps. The bleachers were on the side of the track with the start and finish lines, and there is nothing like the sound of those cars all bunched up in two rows bumper to bumper, roaring past the start line – enough to make my empty beer can vibrate in my hand! Then a few seconds later, the cloud of gritty dust drifted over us, deliciously tinged with a whiff of nitrous oxide! The races were over at 10 pm so we went back to the RV and had showers to wash off the grit before heading for bed.
The journey from Glenwood Springs took us up into the mountains (over 10,000 feet) and back down to Denver which is just over 5,000 feet. John wants to know if our stay in Denver qualifies us for the mile high club. Lol
The photos below show some of the mountain scenery we passed.
Skihills don’t look so exciting without their snow cover.
We saw several runaway lanes for vehicles that lose their brakes. This sign below was interesting. It says “Lost Brakes? Do Not Exit - Stay On I-70″. The runaway lane was built inside the guardrail and ran along the right side parallel to the traffic lanes.
That evening we saw this double rainbow above our trailer.
The next day I didn’t really feel like touring museums and stuff in Denver so John found out on the internet about a big Bass Pro store in a shopping complex in Denver and suggested we go there to start. We ended up staying the whole day there and had a great time. The Bass Pro store was a large two storey one with good displays of clothing, hunting and camping gear. I got some shorts on sale and John got a pair of reinforced hunting pants on sale. They have Kevlar on the lower legs so burs don’t stick to them.
Elsewhere in the complex I found a ladies wear shop with a great summer sale on (50% off the lowest marked price) and got three lovely tops. We had a delicious lunch in a Mexican cafeteria style eatery and saw the new Disney animated film ’Up’ in the cinema. It was a heart warming story about an old widower who flies his house using helium balloons from the US to the South American jungle. We enjoyed it. Then we checked out this neat Gadget store and bought a few gifts for people at home. The old printer that we had brought with our laptop had died a couple of days ago, so we got a nifty compact HP printer on sale at Office Max. We hauled our loot home and the next day we moved our rig to Kansas.
This is how flat eastern Colorado is. Most people think of mountains when they hear Colorado, but the whole eastern half is a large flat plain.
We left about 10 in the morning on a beautiful sunny day and headed upriver on the bicycle trail from our campground in Glenwood Springs. The trail snaked alongside the Colorado River and we got good views of the roaring, muddy rapids as we went along. We met lots of other cyclists, joggers and river rafters during our ride.
We carried Gatorade, water, cheese, fruit and my camera, all without knap sacks which was nice. We bought our mountain bikes about 25 years ago (from Wayne Robinson’s Bicycle City shop in Oshawa, for those of you who would remember) but they are still in really good shape and we used lots of gears. The trail went 13 miles upriver but after 5 miles we had lunch and decided to turn back. The return journey was easier as that was the downriver direction so there was a fair bit of coasting.
My new bicycle seat is divided in two halves with a long valley carved down the centre. When I asked the young salesman in the cycle shop if this was to improve air circulation he said no it was to “relieve pressure”, which I thought was very delicate phrasing from a 20-something guy to a lady old enough to be his mother. Anyway the new seat technology helped considerably and I was glad I upgraded. I suggested John replace his bicycle seat as well and he is considering it.
That afternoon we drove into Glenwood Springs to get groceries and stumbled upon a trailhead going to the Doc Holliday memorial in the old town cemetery. So we parked and hiked up the hill to take in the lovely view of the town in the gorge (sorry – no camera with me) and found the marker that said Doc Holliday was buried “someplace in this cemetery”. Apparently the old burial records were lost, stolen or destroyed back in the early part of the 20th century so no-one knows which grave is his. Doc Holliday took part in the shootout in the OK Corral with Wyatt Earp but Doc actually died of tuberculosis at the age of 36 when he came to Glenwood Springs to take the healing waters. Ironic.
While on the hike we met some other people who let us know the weekly farmers market was taking place downtown that evening so we took the groceries back to the RV, got all the fresh stuff in the fridge and drove back to the market. It was interesting but there were definitely no bargains. I bought two blondie squares for our snack and a small focaccia loaf and that came to $13. Should have asked the price before he wrapped everything up for us… There were perhaps twenty vendors there selling organic produce and wine, jewellery, the usual.
The next day we loaded up and headed for the KOA campground just east of Denver.
Well this is a red letter day! When we were in Moab we met a young couple from Florida who were out on a five month RV trek. They like to do outdoor stuff and had kayaks and bicycles with them and we had several nice chats with them in the campground. They let us know about a really great national park in the mountains of Colorado where the hiking was really great, so when we left Grand Junction we headed for the area they suggested.
Before we pulled out we noticed this baby dove that had fallen out of a nest on our campsite and stayed put long enough for me to take some photos. Mom and Pop Dove were nearby so we knew it would be OK. First flight day maybe?
As we left Grand Junction we got a good view of some of the vineyards and orchards for which the area is famous.
Our journey that day was alongside the Colorado River which, unlike our blue rivers at home, was very muddy and it seemed fairly high on the banks. It was so great to finally see some greenery and to leave the desert behind., although temperatures were still in the 80’s.
As we drove through the Glenwood Canyon area, the river valley narrowed to a gorge so there was lots of action in the Colorado River in terms of rapids, rafters and kayakers. The divided freeway had to become a double decker structure to fit in the canyon and we could see a bicycle path that ran for many miles alongside the river, below the freeway. It was really dramatic scenery and we were enthralled.
The reason for the red letter day is that we got about twenty miles past Glenwood Canyon, heading for this national forest park our Florida friends recommended and John said “How about going back to stay in Glenwood Springs and bicycling the trail along the river”. This is very unusual for John to suggest backtracking when we are underway with our rig. It’s like this inertia thing that says “must go forward!” I thought it would be fabulous to go back there. So we pulled off the freeway, checked our campground directories, found a campground in Glenwood Springs, phoned them on the cell to make sure they had room for us (they did) and turned back. Good move!
This is our campsite in the Glenwood Springs RV Park, which is between the freeway and the Colorado River. Our truck is to the right of centre and our trailer is to the right of that. The river is behind the building down a big hill. What a gorgeous spot!
We arrived in the early afternoon so after we got hooked up to our services we got on our bicycles and peddled three miles to downtown Glenwood Springs on the excellent bicycle trail. It appeared to be the old road, now closed to automobiles and reserved for pedestrians and bicyclists and it went right along the edge of the Colorado River. Pinch me somebody! Oh wait, my old bicycle seat was pinching me just fine…
Downtown was really busy with traffic and we had to bicycle over this long footbridge that went over the freeway, the river and the rail yard (did I mention I hate heights). We checked out an outfitters surplus store which was overpriced for the most part but I did get a neat balaclava for snowmobilng. We cycled through some residential streets that were interesting and shady. It was mostly uphill on the way back to the campground so the trip back was very challenging and my tush was suffering somewhat.
After supper at the RV we drove back in to town to browse the shops (that is John’s favourite time to go window shopping with me – when the stores are closed). Honestly it was just as well because prices were really high, this being such a popular tourist town. But we did find a cycling shop that was open and I bought a new bicycle seat – one designed for girls! My 25 year old seat was falling apart (I mean the bicycle seat silly – my behind is somewhat older than that). John installed the new seat on my bicycle and we were all set for our Colorado River trail bike ride the next day.
On Sunday we went to yet another Farmers Market in the nearby town of Pallisade, which has dozens of wineries. Prices were relatively high so I just bought some organic salad greens. I talked for quite a while to a very nice lady who was selling her handmade jewellery that I had seen at the other Farmers Markets in the area. She said she went to shows spring through fall as well as working full time at another job and raising a teenager. Once he was done high school she planned to sell her house, give half of the money to her son for his college education and use her half to buy an RV and go on the road selling her jewellery full time. I told her about our RV trips and about me doing art shows for about 18 years while working full time and now doing art and travelling full time. We had a really nice chat.
We picked up groceries at a City Market store near our campground. What a fabulous grocery store chain. They have a huge fresh produce section, an in store bakery and deli, a good fresh meat counter and offer an amazing selection of ready to eat entrees the like of which I have not seen at home, even at Costco. We got one of their free membership cards to qualify for all the special price deals, typically saving 20% on our groceries.
After stashing the groceries and having lunch in the RV, John wanted to check out another car show nearby. Since it was in the vicinity, I had him drop me off at the Ross store for an hour while he looked at cars. I found another fabulous blue cocktail dress, fully lined, originally priced at $130 and I paid only 5.99. Made my day!
The botanical garden in Grand Junction has free admission on the first Sunday of each month so we decided to check it out on our way back to the campground. Good job it was free because it was very small and a little sad looking. They had a butterfly conservatory with lots of cocoons but only one butterfly that we could see. An indoor greenhouse offered a few tropical flowers and orchids, and there was a small outdoor display of desert plants and a water lily pond. At least I got a few good photos for painting ideas.
The next day we said good-bye to Grand Junction and headed for the mountains of Colorado.
The fourth of July fell on a Saturday so there were lots of events to go to in and around Grand Junction and we had a fun day.
In the morning we drove to the nearby village of Fruita to take in the Farmers Market which is held in the green space park in the middle of downtown. There were the usual booths selling local produce (bought some lovely green beans and baby zucchini) and jewellery and other girly stuff, as well as a farm selling alpaca wool products and they had two small alpacas in a petting pen. They looked a little shy so I just looked at them – so white and cute little guys… or girls…?
While strolling and window shopping in the small downtown area we noticed a poster for a Mopar Car Show being held that day in Grand Junction so John’s eyes lit up and we headed to that event next. It was held in the parking lot of a lovely big hotel complex and there was a good display of about 60 or so Chrysler cars and trucks, mostly from the 1970’s to present day.
Each visitor got a ballot for the People’s Choice award so I voted for this spiffy 1957 pickup truck. It’s the same age as I and when I joked to John that it looked to be in better shape than I was, he said if I had as much cosmetic surgery as the truck did then I could look like that too. I think he honestly meant it as a compliment so I gave him a squeeze.
Then we treated ourselves to a nice lunch at Appleby’s, went back to the comfort of our air conditioned RV (it was really hot out by now) and I spent a lovely afternoon painting the lizard in my latest work in progress.
At 5 pm we drove to downtown Grand Junction (same street that had the Farmers Market on Thursday evening) and settled in to watch the fourth of July parade. It was a small parade with no marching bands but lots of American flags flying. The theme was ‘Abe Lincoln’ and I got this nice photo of the parade marshal and some horses.
There also were some great tributes to the troops and veterans.
Nineteen Corvettes drove by, each with a veteran riding shotgun and in the front window was a sign indicating which conflict the veteran served in. Several were WWII and reminded me of my parents who also served in that war.
What a classy way to appreciate these folks who served their country in their younger days. The crowd really responded with applause and “Thank You”’s as the veterans drove by.
We sent a photo of one of the Vettes for Vets to the Scugog Standard newspaper at home as a suggestion of something our local Corvette club could do in a Port Perry parade. The editor thought it was a great idea and said he would try to set up something like that for our next parade which is the Labour Day Fair parade in September.
Several local business were touting their services, this one below being a limo company with a stretched limo and a stretched Hummer.
And of course what is a parade without the Shriners?
We went back to the RV and had a delicious spaghetti dinner with fresh salad and wine with garlic toast made on the BBQ. Later that evening we listened to the fireworks going off but couldn’t see them due to the trees in our campground. A lovely day!
Our second full day in Grand Junction we took a morning motorcycle ride up into the Colorado National Monument which was only about a twenty minute drive from our campground.
The monument is a big escarpment that overlooks the wide valley that contains the Colorado River and all the towns, farms and vineyards in the area. There were lots of switchbacks on the road to climb up to the top but the road surface was well looked after and we meandered along the edge of the cliff at the speed limit of 25 mph.
It was a lovely ride, cool enough to be comfortable in all our gear. We stopped a few times to take photos of the great views.
Here we are back at the KOA campsite with all our toys and John firing up the BBQ (below). You can see where we store our mountain bikes - they lock to a rack on the hitch kingpin at the front of the RV. We store the motorcycles in the side-loading garage to the rear of the RV.
We hauled our laundry over to the KOA Laundromat where I settled in for the afternoon and had an unexpectedly wonderful time. It was one of the nicest laundry facilities I had used on our trip, with eight front loading washers and commercial driers. With five washing machines filled, I was thinking of settling down with a good book when another camper came in to do her wash. I struck up a conversation with her and we ended up yacking for a couple of hours while our clothes got clean. Her name was Mary and she and her husband Bob are full time RVers. They sold their house over a year ago and travel around in a nice diesel pusher (bus) with a small car and two bicycles in tow.
Mary said she had been leery of getting rid of most of her possessions, moving away from her kids and grandkids and living on the road all year but very quickly adapted to their new way of life. When they sold their house they bought an old Pace Arrow RV and enjoyed it so well they traded up to a newer (2005) coach that had more modern conveniences. Mary does a lot of handcrafts to pass the time, such as crochet and tatting. When I told her about me being a watercolour painter she said she had done some of that too. It was so great to make a friend.
Our campground was next door to the local fairgrounds, so we walked over there in the evening to take in a Gun Show. I found it interesting as there were quite a few antique and collectible guns there, as well as turquoise and silver jewellery and a lady selling homemade jams and sauces. She let me know there was another Farmers Market on Sundays at a nearby town so we made a note to go there.Since this is the fourth of July long weekend, we had booked four days at a nice quiet KOA on the outskirts of Grand Junction, which is a good sized town on the west side of Colorado. We figured there would be enough to do and see there to entertain us for three full days and likely there would be a parade and fireworks for Independence Day. We were not disappointed.
Once our rig was set up we drove a few miles back into town to treat ourselves to lunch at the Olive Garden and then I shopped for an hour at Ross while John checked out an outdoor store next door. In case you have not heard of Ross, it is a chain of stores similar to Winners, where they sell end of line clothes and home décor stuff at good prices. I lucked out and found a classy silver cocktail dress for $4.99. (Coming soon to a Rotary dinner near you!) Unbelievable!
We heard there was a weekly Farmers Market in downtown Grand Junction every Thursday night, so we headed over there for the 5 pm opening and were really impressed. The downtown buildings reminded me a bit of Port Perry in that they are made of brick and have been well preserved (photo below). The flowerbeds were looking good too.
About four blocks of the main drag were closed to traffic for the evening and three or four live music acts were set up every block or so to entertain the visitors. Some of the performers were really talented and we sat on the boulevard planters to listen a while. Here is one of the bands pictured below.
The street is lined with beautiful large shade trees with lots of colourful flowerbeds in brick planters (below). There were about a hundred vendors set up in tents along both sides of the street, selling lots of local produce that included peaches, cherries, vegetables of all kinds, frozen beef and chicken, wine, jams, salsas, BBQ sauce, etc. There were tents offering fresh fast food, handmade jewellery, clothing, handbags, pet products and books as well as information booths for political parties, churches, humane society, etc. We really enjoyed strolling around a few hours and the temperature in the shade was very comfortable.
On our last full day in Moab we decide to get up early and enjoy an early morning hike in Negro Bill Canyon on the outskirts of Moab. This was one of the hikes recommended by the Rotarian from U of T. So we dragged our tired buts out of bed at 5:30 and were at the trailhead (below) with our knapsacks and water bottles by 6:30.
This was an unusual canyon in that it had a ‘perennial stream’, meaning it flows all the time, not just during floods, so there was much more greenery than we had seen before on our desert hikes. The trail was fairly easy to follow and went alongside the creek for about two miles, meandering back and forth across the creek by means of stepping stones (below). The best part was that it was mostly in shade and the temperature was very comfortable.
After two miles we turned into a side canyon to check out Morning Glory Bridge (below), which is the sixth largest natural bridge in the USA. The second photo below shows John at the base of the bridge which is the rock pillar on the right of the photo. We had a picnic lunch of cheese, crackers and fruit while sitting under the bridge, listening to all the birds singing. On the trail back we had to be careful of some poison ivy on steroids - the plants were as high as my shoulder! Yikes!
The sun was a little higher now so some parts of the trail were in sunshine and it was much warmer in those parts. On our way out we passed a few other hikers near the parking lot at 9:30 and I was thinking ‘suckers!’ because it was getting really hot out and they had three hours of hiking still to go.
We drove back to the campground, had nice cool showers and went back to bed for a three hour nap with the air conditioning set on high. When we got up in the early afternoon the outside temperature was 98 degrees and the UV factor was 10 (that’s on a scale of 1 to 10 by the way). We stayed in the RV all afternoon escaping the heat and walked across the road for dinner and a couple of cool ones at the Moab Brewery. Then we walked to the grocery store and stocked up for the next few days. The next morning we packed up and moved our travelling road show a whopping 70 miles mortheast to Grand Junction, Colorado.
After our week in Green River we moved our rig a whopping 70 miles southeast to Moab, an exciting town we discovered on our first foray to Arches National Park. Here is a photo of our campsite which was very conveniently located near the heart of town, just a short walk from an excellent grocery store called City Market, a short bicycle ride to the creek trail through downtown and across the street from a microbrewery restaurant.
The locals said it had been a cool, late spring but the hot weather finally arrived just before we did. Oh joy. Temperatures reached the high 90’s daily during our four day stay in Moab.
On the first morning we bicycled to the lovely, shaded, paved creek trail that snaked through the town. We explored for a couple of miles altogether, cycling past residential areas, community vegetable patches and Rotary Park (more on that later). Then we returned to our RV to change into our decent duds and drove over to a Mexican restaurant at the far end of town to have lunch with the Rotary Club of Moab. It was only an hour meeting (not like in Port Perry) and the Rotarians were glad to meet us. We presented them with one of my autographed Doors of Port Perry for their fall auction fundraiser and they gave us their Moab Rotary pennant. Their guest speaker was a Rotarian from Toronto who was a professor at U of T and he spoke very eloquently about his department’s ongoing research into climate change. He flies all over the world doing presentations about this. After the meeting we stayed and spoke further to him and he gave us some tips about the best trails to hike in the area. It was a lovely visit. (He has a vacation home near Moab.) We drove back to the RV and went for a walk up and down the downtown strip for the remainder of the afternoon.
The next day we drove into Arches National Park to do one of the easier hikes (2 miles total) called Park Avenue. In the photo below you can see John starting down the canyon. The other photos show some of the unusual rock formations we saw.
After our Park Avenue Hike we drove along the Colorado River for an hour or so. We saw several rafting excursions on the river.
Unlike our blue rivers in Ontario, the Colorado River is an opaque brown colour due to the suspended dirt in it. Disolved mountains…
We saw this interesting natural cave (below) at the top of an enormous rock ridge. Very impressive.
When we arrived back at the campground we retreated to our air conditioned trailer and had a nice cool nap for over an hour. Then we got on our bicycles and rode to the creekside trail back to Rotary Park. I brought my camera with me so I could photograph a unique feature of the park – it had a permanent outdoor installation of percussion instruments made by a company called http://www.freenotes.net/.
There were lots of different xylophones and the hammers were attached to the instruments with cables. Also there were drums of various types as well as cymbals, maracas and tambourines. We had fun composing some tunes on the various xylophones.
Some young boys were playing on the instruments too (below)
All the sounds were fairly muted so the notes were soft, kind of like wind chimes, and the ‘music’ people create does not disturb other visitors in the park. The installation was near a picnic area and next to the bicycle path. We thought this would be a fabulous idea for Palmer Park in Port Perry if the instruments can withstand winter conditions.
On our fifth day in Green River we finally had rain so we relaxed in the RV and I started painting the stones in my lizard and cactus piece. I’ve decided the painting will be titled ‘Desert Compadres’.
The next day was our last full day here so we decided to take an interesting short hike that was just west of town, in Black Dragon Canyon. (Something much simpler than Horseshoe Canyon!) We had to drive through a couple of washes to get there but they were fairly firm despite yesterday’s rain and we were parked at the mouth of the canyon in no time.
The first two photos below show John in the canyon. In the left photo his tiny silhouette can be seen just above the shadowed canyon floor just right of centre. The photo on the right shows him below the wall where the pictograms (ancient drawings on the rock) are located.
These photos below are a sampling of the pictograms we saw about a half mile up the canyon. Some were difficult to find since they are very faded and worn.
We found these lovely white flowers blooming on the canyon floor. The photo is close to life size. The plant growing out of a rock crevice cast a beautiful shadow on the canyon wall. How can the plant survive and bloom there?
I couldn’t resist taking the photos below of some of the colourful pebbles at our feet. Watch for these in future paintings! Guess I’m just a ‘rocker’ at heart. lol
We only spent about an hour in Black Dragon so decided to hike up some nearby canyons that were marked on our trail map. They were totally different - climbing very steeply up a large outcropping. We made it to the top and ate our picnic lunch up there. We saw some very unusual shapes and colours of rocks. In the photo below John is perched on some big ones near the summit.
We descended down another canyon from the one we climbed up. In the photo below you can see the dry wash where rainwater flows down. Our truck is parked by the cluster of greenery in the plain in the distance. Hard to believe we climbed that high!
While we were in the Green River area we saw lots of Fedex trucks with triple trailers. An unusual sight for us! Would love to see the driver backing that sucker up…
Before venturing onto our various hikes we try to read the brochures handed out by the national and state parks and visitors’ centres, so we know what to expect, what highlights to see, what to bring, etc. In the process we have learned to respect the desert in many ways.
For many years we have followed the code of ‘leave only footsteps and take only photos’ in any protected area, to preserve the land for future generations. Down here in the desert we have learned that even those footsteps we make are damaging the fragile ecosystems. The signs that say ‘keep on the trail’ are there to protect the rest of the desert floor from damage. A single footstep or a bicycle tread can destroy decades of growth of lichens and other minute vegetation that are required for larger plants to become established. We even learned not to pursue lizards or any other desert wildlife. Why? Because their existence is so tenuous that the extra energy they expend trying to evade us can put them over the edge of survival.
The other way we learned to respect the desert is that we have come to realize that yes, even smart folks like us could die out there on a simple outing if we screw up or misfortune strikes. Several of the parks we visited let us know that park rangers, tourists and locals all die accidentally every year in the parks. We met an RV couple in the campgound in Green River and the lady told us a true story from when she was 12 years old. She was in a youth group that did the same river hike that we did in the Narrows in Zion Park. It started to rain, so they skedaddled out of the canyon and made it to high ground before the flashflood came through. But another group of kids that was hiking there the same day took a wrong turn trying to escape the canyon and went into a box canyon (as in dead end). All six of them died in the floodwater.
How to avoid such a fate? Consult the weather forecast before you go and avoid canyons and streambeds if there is rain forecasted anywhere nearby. Flashfloods come with little or no warning and carry away anything in their path. Bring a trail map and follow it carefully. Never go out alone. Carry lots of water (one gallon per person per day - that’s the equivalent eight 500ml bottles of water - each!) and eat high energy food every time you stop for a drink. Protect your brain from overheating by wearing a hat. Wear sunglasses and sunscreen or long sleeves and pants. Sturdy hiking boots are a must. Tell someone where you are going and when you will be back. Make sure your vehicle is mechanically safe and carry spare gas and spare tires if going off road. And the list goes on even further for longer excursions, since the desert gets quite cold at night. Many areas do not have cellphone coverage or are very remote so you can’t just dial 911 and ask for help if you are injured. You need to be responsible for your own safety.
So, bearing all this in mind, John and I set off on a 50 mile drive on a desert backroad to see Horseshoe Canyon, famous for its petroglyphs. The map says the road is impassable when wet but there is no rain in the forecast and we have about 4 bottles of water between us and a picnic lunch. Pictured below is the road. It looks pretty good here.
We crossed perhaps ten dry washes (shallow gullies where streams cross the road when flooding occurs) and bounced through all of them OK. But about half way out the road got less gravelly and more sandy and we started bogging down in the sand. After we slithered through one ugly patch I said to John that would be a good place to turn on the four wheel drive so we would have better traction and he said “We ARE in four wheel drive.” The sky had gradually gotten cloudy and there were a couple of drops of rain on the windshield. Crap…
I start thinking about what would happen if we got stuck up to our axle out here in the middle of nowhere. We have food and water for perhaps half a day and nobody knows where we are. John says I wore grooves in the armrest holding on so tightly. Then we finally saw the sign for the turnoff to Horseshoe Canyon and made it to the trailhead (see photo below).
When we got out of the truck it actually felt humid out and smelled like rain. So, discretion being the better part of valour, John said “Let’s head for the nearest highway” and we took a photo and drove out. We took another route which was only 25 miles out to the highway and fortunately for us, it did not rain, we did not have to cross any more washes and only ran into a couple of sandy patches. This is what that road looked like (below).
The silver lining in all of this is that we saw lots of desert flowers in bloom and I was able to get some good photos (below).
We made it safely back to Green River, eating our picnic lunch in the truck on the way, and we did our laundry at the KOA that afternoon. Maybe we didn’t get to see the petroglyphs in Horseshoe Canyon, but at least we got clean clothes!
One of the key destinations in eastern Utah I had selected for photography purposes was Arches National Park and I wasn’t disappointed. It is a truly breathtaking place with the highest concentration of natural sandstone arches and bridges in the world (over two thousand with more still being discovered). The park is very busy with visitors because you can drive on good roads through the park and then go on various hikes to see the arches. Also there are other interesting balanced rocks and fin formations such as those shown here.
Below is the most famous arch in the park (perhaps in the world if you believe the brochure) called Delicate Arch. It is pictured on all Utah licence plates as the state emblem. I took this picture with my zoom lens from across the gorge. You can see tiny people on the horizon to the left of the arch - they took the 3 mile hike with no shade to get up there but it was just too hot for us to attempt that today.
The photos below show various other arches we saw from the road or hiked to.
The over 2,000 arches and bridges (a bridge being an arch over water) range in size from a three foot opening to this big sucker below. It is called Landscape Arch and measures 306 feet base to base. In 1991 a rock slab 60 feet long, 11 feet wide and 4 feet thick fell from the underside of the arch, leaving behind an even thinner ribbon of rock (only 6 feet thick at the narrowest part). It is expected Landscape Arch will fall down completely in the forseeable future, a result of water, ice and extreme temperatures.
By lunchtime we were exhausted from the heat despite having drunk water all morning while hiking. We drove the truck out of the park to the nearby resort town of Moab on the Colorado River and were so impressed we decided to move the RV there after our week in Green River.
The next day we rested up from our exertions and I spent about four hours working on the drawing for my next painting, a lizard beside a cactus in bloom - my first southwest painting subject.
On our first full day in Green River we drove about 50 miles southwest to hike in Goblin Valley State Park, touted to be the jewel of Utah’s State Parks. It is one of the strangest landscapes we ever have seen. It looks like something from another planet, which is why the movie Galaxy Quest was filmed here.
The photos below show John and I beside the goblins (also called hoodoos) which are intricate shapes created by erosion. It was very hot in the valley so we were glad we had paid attention to the warnings in the brochures and brought water and energy snacks and wore hats and sunscreen.
You can see the formations are appealing because of their small size - more on a human scale I guess. There were literally thousands of goblins in the valley and we spent a couple of hours climbing all around them. What fun!
Then we got back in the truck (air conditioning - bliss!) and drove through a back country road through the San Rafael Swell back to the interstate. We picked up a lovely flat yellow rock for a stepping stone in my garden at home. I spotted this small herd of antelope on the way. Cool!
Then that afternoon I had time to work on my third painting that I had started at home and brought with me to finish. It is a watercolour of a foggy day in a small Newfoundland fishing village. You can see my painting setup on our RV dinette in the photo below.
Having had quite a few fun but hectic weeks exploring southwestern Utah and northern Arizona, we moved our kit and kaboodle about 200 miles from the Bryce Canyon region to southeastern Utah. We decided to ’take a week off’ at a quiet KOA campground in Green River, which is an unimpressive little town at the intersection of Interstate 70 and the Green River in the Utah desert. We needed a holiday from our vacation!
Well, it seemed to be a pretty dismal place at first, with lots of abandoned buildings downtown, but once we stopped in the visitors centre and got some local hiking maps, we realized there was lots to do around Green River if you like seeing natural wonders without the crowds found at higher profile tourist destinations. Yippee! And there are many national parks within an hours drive of Green River.
The photos below show the landscape of the San Rafael Swell, which is a huge dome formed by pressure from beneath the earth’s crust. This caused great ridges to form on the surface as it cracked from the pressure, and then erosion created amazing, colourful canyons in the Navajo Sandstone. We drove through the Swell as we approached Green River from the west. John especially got a kick out of the roadsign in the second photo. Love those switchbacks when towing!
Finally we stumbled upon a chance to see some good specimens of petrified wood when we took a short hike up a small mesa in Escalante Petrified Forest State Park.
You can see John in the first two photos below, touching the rocks that were formerly tree trunks millions of years ago. The trees fell into mud flats and silt deposits built up around them, which protected the wood from decomposing. Then over the millenia, minerals gradually replaced the wood fibres so what was wood is now a statue of colourful rock that looks almost like jewels up close (shown in the last two photos). Amazing colours!
While in the Bryce Canyon area we took a driving tour on a scenic byway through the Escalante Grande Staircase. The road wound through many weird rock formations and we were very glad we were not towing the RV at the time!
One stretch of road went along the top of a long, high ridge for several miles, so that the canyons yawned on either side of us. No guardrails of course!
We had lovely views of the valleys below us. What a great day!
We stayed for three days at a nice KOA in the small town of Panguitch, Utah so we could explore in and around Bryce Canyon National Park. We took a drive towards the park, going through a fairly muted landscape of greyish limestone (shown below).
Then we entered Red Canyon and the scenery instantly changed to the reddish orange hue pictured below. It was really picturesque and we stopped to hike a short trail beside the highway to take a closer look and get some photos.
Further down the road we entered Bryce and drove the full length of the park and back to get an overview. The road runs along the top of the cliffs so you look down into the canyons and see the rock formations from above.
There are some fairly short but very steep trails that lead from the rim down into the canyons, but it was just too hot to do any hiking during the day. Maybe if we come back some year in the fall we will get a chance to experience the landscape up close.
After a week in Page in northen Arizona we moved our RV up to the Bryce Canyon area in southern Utah for few days stay. On the way, we stopped for a half hour at a unique museum of natural history built into a cave.
Moqui Cave had displays of dinosaur tracks and fossils, fluorescent minerals from all over the world (including sodalite from Bancroft, Ontario!) and lots of interesting artifacts from ancient civilizations. The photos below show some of the excellent historic pottery displays.
I found this prickly pear cactus in bloom in front of Moqui Cave. Nice to look at but do not touch!
On our trek back from the Toadstool Trail in southern Utah, we took some time to look at the desert beneath our feet and found things that seemed unusual to our Canadian eyes.
The two photos below show the seed pods of a type of agave (possibly a yucca). The seed pods are large - about the size of my fist. These pods are fairly fresh, as we saw others that had turned a dull purple shade. We came across a few that had been picked and half eaten and saw they are filled with stacks of hundreds of flat seeds.
I believe the flower below is a Dune Evening Primrose. The blossoms are about 1 to 2 inches across. The pebbles I couldn’t resist due to the colour mix - love those dark blues and mauves!
John noticed the arcs and circles in the sand dunes (photos below) and realized the breezes have tossed the dune grasses around, so that the tips of the grass stalks swept grooves in the sand. Crop circles explained at last?
I don’t know the name of this plant (below) that was about a foot tall, but I liked the shadow pattern it cast on the dune. It seemed too fragile to survive in such a hot and dry environment.
The town of Page is in Arizona, just a few miles south of the Utah border. During our week long stay in Page, we took a morning hike on the Toadstool Trail, just over the border in the Paria Rimrocks area.
We parked beside the highway and walked up a wash (dry riverbed) into a canyon. About a mile in we found these rock formations called toadstools for obvious reasons. They form this way because the dark rocks on top are harder so act as a protective layer over, but erode slower than, the reddish sandstone underneath. In the first photo below you can see me leaning on a small one. The rest of the photos show other interesting views.
