Fish, Theater and Balloons…. and Home

We planned to spend a week in Creede, Colorado. It was rainy when we drove in, and that was the pattern for the week. Almost every day, usually around 1 pm, the storm clouds came over the mountains and it rained. That didn’t put too much of a crimp in our plans though.

Lannas fished each day and I read. We went to four performances of the Creede Repertory Theater . The productions were professional and we really enjoyed going. It is a charming little mountain town, with a number of excellent restaurants.

We found out that the Chamber of Commerce was sponsoring a small Hot Air Balloon event on the weekend, so we extended our stay one day. We got to see nine balloons inflated and floating around the valley on both Friday and Saturday mornings. We didn’t get to ride in one, but maybe another time.

Saturday morning after the hot air balloon launch, we took off for Santa Fe. We attempted to go to the capitol on Sunday, but it is only open Monday – Friday. We took a few pictures from the outside and later took a tour of the city. The tour guide was from London (?!?) and told us that the capitol, built in the late sixties, was very expensive ($8M) and it could not have a dome on it (by law there can be no building in the city that is taller than the Saint Francis Cathedral - seen at the right). The citizens hated it, so they planted lots of trees around it and now you can hardly see it!

Monday morning we took off for Amarillo. We ate at the Big Texan, but didn’t try for the free 72 oz steak with trimmings! Spent the night there and drove home on Tuesday.

We have been gone for two months and had a really good time. This trip has shown us some of the amazing beauty of our country and the unbelievable power of nature. We are also amazed and so grateful for the many people over the years that have worked so hard to make this beauty accessible to travelers.

The Land of Hoodoos

Tuesday morning we again packed up Toby Sue and this time headed toward Bryce Canyon National Park. On the way to Bryce you pass through a pair of natural tunnels into Red Canyon. The rock formations there are a deep, bright red color – just amazing. We got to Bryce Canyon about lunchtime, went to one of the viewpoints that had picnic tables, and watched the chipmunks and birds while we ate. I think all the chipmunks that Lannas saw as a child at Crater Lake have migrated southwest to Utah! They were everywhere, and despite all the warnings not to feed them, they seemed curiously unafraid of humans. Toby really wanted to chase them, but we bet she wouldn’t know what to do if she caught one.

Bryce Canyon is meant to be seen mostly by car. They have trails that you can hike down, but pets are not allowed on the trails and we experienced our first 100° day since leaving Arizona, so we couldn’t leave Toby in the car while we hiked. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! The scenery in Bryce Canyon is spectacular. They have these rock formations called hoodoos that are everywhere. The rocks are limestone and naturally acidic rainwater rounds the edges, but most of the sculpting of the rocks occurs due to freezing and thawing action. For 200 days of the year ice and snow melt during the day and refreeze at night. On top of the canyon walls are lots of trees, part of the Dixie National Forest. It was obvious that they had had forest fires in the not too distant past. They also set some controlled fires as part of the forest management system. On the day we were there you could see smoke from fires. Lannas asked a ranger about it and he told him the fire had been set last Wednesday. Despite two rain showers it was still smoldering almost a week later. The temperature at Bryce Canyon was much cooler than the previous day – only in the low 80’s. That’s because of the altitude – the highest point we went to was 9,100 feet and the canyon floor is more than 7,000 above sea level.

Wednesday morning we “broke camp” and drove back up I-15, then east on I-70 to Green River, Utah. After setting up camp at the local KOA we drove to Arches National Park. It contains the largest concentration of natural stone arches in the world – more than 2,500. To qualify as a stone arch a hole must have an opening at least 3 feet long in any one direction. That means that some of the arches are very, very skinny. While the park is famous for the arches, it has lots of very interesting red sandstone formations, some of them just huge. While the park has named some of them (Balanced Rock, Three Sisters, Delicate Arch), they have not named them all. Looking at them is kind of like looking at ink blots. Lannas and I saw different things while looking at the same rock. We are back in a desert area, with the temperature around 104 during the day.

This morning we packed up and headed down I-70 toward Colorado. We are staying in Montrose tonight, and then going on to Creede tomorrow. We plan to stay there for a week. If the weather doesn’t cool off in Texas, we may be here longer! Lannas will fish, I will read and we will both go to the theater!

Toby enjoys watching people go by while she is waiting for us to return from dinner!

Zion National Park

Before leaving the Salt Lake City area, we thought we ought to see the Great Salt Lake. We took about a one hour detour from our route to dip our toes in it. Curious about how salty it really was, I scooped up a handful and stuck my tongue in it. Wow! It was very salty – apparently several times saltier than the ocean.

There was a very interesting little pool of water on the beach that was full of large salt crystals.

I-15 out of Salt Lake City was under construction for miles. The existing road was some of the bumpiest we have seen since we left California :) Once past that, the road was smooth and the landscape was one of rolling hills – very pretty. This road was the first time we saw a speed limit of 80. The road was straight and smooth, but still, 80? In our coach Lannas moved it up to 60. Cedar City, Utah is a little bigger town than we were expecting – about 25,000 people. We ate at dinner at local restaurants (no chains) – Mexican, steak, and barbecue – all pretty good.

On Monday we drove to Zion National Park. We took Toby with us, as the trip would be too long to leave her in the coach. Zion has beautiful rock formations. You can see the layers of stone and where the land was pushed up and slanted.

Some of the rock looks like it flowed, like syrup that was poured on a table and dried, layer after layer. There is one rock named the Checkerboard that has amazingly straight lines (cracks) in the rock, both vertical and horizontal, that definitely give the impression of a checkerboard. We drove through a one mile long tunnel through a mountain. The tunnel had no lighting, except for four or five cut-outs to the outside. We drove the Ford, but for those that drove an RV, they had to stop traffic on the opposite side and make the tunnel one-way so the RV could drive down the middle.

We were not able to see all of the most famous rock formations, as Zion does not allow any vehicles on that route except their own shuttle, and they do not allow pets on the shuttle. Zion and Bryce were the most expensive parks we have been to - $25 per vehicle for a 7 day pass. Lannas was so mad about their policy that he wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Interior! He hasn’t heard back from him so far.

Boise and Salt Lake City

I’m catching up. In the last week we have been in four states. Last Sunday we were at Grand Coulee Dam in Washington. We left there Monday morning and drove to Pendleton, Oregon, a half-way point on our way to Boise, Idaho. We just spent one night in Pendleton, but managed to make our way to the Pendleton Wool Factory store. We got there too late for the tours that they give, but we watched a woman running a loom (?) making a blanket through a glass partition. I also bought a couple of cotton shirts and Lannas almost bought a fedora:).

Tuesday morning we left for Boise. We saw lots of potato, onion, and hay fields. The RV Park in Boise was quite nice, with lots of grass for Toby to sniff. One evening when we were out walking her, a man came out of his RV with a Giant Schnauzer. She was 14 years old, solid black, and about the size of a Great Dane! Toby and I were both a little intimidated, although he assured us she was very gentle.

The capitol in Boise was quite lovely. It is rather traditional, sandstone exterior and was recently updated and remodeled. There is a statue in front of the capitol of Frank Steunenberg, governor of Idaho around the turn of the last century. They stated that he was governor during a period of “organized lawlessness”. He was assassinated a few years after he left office.

Thursday morning we left very early (well, it was actually 7:50 – very early for me these days) for a long drive to Salt Lake City. Friday we went to Temple Square in Salt Lake City. It is amazing! There is so much to see. The Temple is quite magnificent, but the one building in the Square that non-Mormons are not allowed to go into. In the Visitor Center they show models of it and describe the purpose of each room in the Temple. We got to the Tabernacle, where the Choir performs, just in time to attend an organ recital. It was wonderful! We toured the Assembly Hall, went to the top (26^th floor) of the Church Office Building, and toured the Conference Center. The Conference Center was built in 2000 and seats 21,000 people. Just like the Temple, the Tabernacle, and the Assembly Hall, it also has a huge organ. The landscaping all over Temple Square is just beautiful! One of the tour guides told us that volunteers maintain all of them. The pictures below are the Temple, inside the Mormon Tabernacle, a room inside the Beehive House (Brigham Young's home), and the Assembly Hall.

After going back to the RV to let Toby out for a while, we went back into SLC. This time we went to the capitol, just a few blocks from Temple Square. It is a lovely building. The lawns were beautiful, but there were not many trees around it. We found out later that a rare tornado came through downtown Salt Lake City in 1999 and took out all the trees.

The next day we planned to visit the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine in the morning and go back to Temple Square in the afternoon. When we got to the mine, they told us we could not enter until noon because they were blasting too close to a road we would use! So…..we went back to Temple Square. We took a tour of the Beehive House, the lovely restored home of Brigham Young. Two young missionaries, one from Albania and another from Armenia, were our guides through the house. Then we went to the Church History Museum. They do a wonderful job preserving and displaying relics of the past.

After going back to the RV again to let Toby out, we went back to the Bingham Canyon mine. It was about a 30 minute drive, and well worth the time… both times. The mine is owned by Rio Tinto and operated by their subsidiary Kennecott Utah Copper. This mine is the largest open pit mine in the world – 2¾ miles across and ¾ mile deep. Watching the huge trucks running throughout the mine is fascinating! It’s like watching a beehive from the inside. At the Visitor Center they have displays and a 20 minute video that describes the process of mining, concentrating, and refining the low-grade ore. Amazingly, gold and silver are by-products of the process – they must be making a bundle these days with the price of gold!

The Grand Coulee Dam is Grand

On Saturday, August 13 we left Castle Rock, Oregon on our way to the Grand Coulee Dam. It was too far to drive in one day, so we spent the night at a KOA in Ellensburg. The wind got up late in the evening and we were reminded of home..:) On Sunday we drove on to Grand Coulee. On this route we went through valleys of apple orchards and other crops irrigated by the Banks Lake Reservoir created by the Grand Coulee Dam. Then there were great rolling hills covered with sage brush…..until it turned to coulees. Coulees are steep walled canyons formed by water. We learned that the coulees (Grand Coulee among them) were formed by a series of massive ice-age floods that occurred when ice damming the Glacial Lake Missoula melted 18,000 years ago. In fact, the Dry Falls, about 30 miles from Grand Coulee, is the site of the largest waterfall in the world, (back in the Ice Age), but now has no water.

We had a slight mishap when we got to the town of Grand Coulee. Lannas had made the reservations for the RV park and forwarded me a link to the directions. I printed them out and we followed them. When we got there Lannas said that he didn’t think this was the place he made reservations. Turned out he was correct. Luckily, the RV park where we actually had reservations was in the same town.

We had a great lunch at Pepper Jacks’s restaurant and then went on to tour the dam. We were kind of surprised that they still have tours of the dam. We had to go through a metal detector, could carry no bags on the tour, and a guy with a gun on his hip followed us around.

The Grand Coulee Dam is the largest concrete structure and power plant in the United States. It is the seventh largest power generator in the world. The tour went to the newest of the three power plants at the dam. There are six huge turbines in this plant and we got to see one of them up close. After looking at the power plant we were taken to the top of the dam (it is closed to traffic). The thing is massive (almost a mile across at the top). In the evening we went to a laser light show that is played on the downstream face of the dam. Though normally there is very little flow from the spillway, they increase the flow out of the dam during the light show so it has a white background.

The Unbelievable Power of Mother Nature

We left Salem, Oregon on August 9 and continued up I-5 into the state of Washington. Going through Portland we saw an amazing sight. We were on a four-lane expressway and a motorcycle cop had pulled over to the breakdown lane on the left. He jumped off the motorcycle and pointed to a car, indicating that he should pull over – which he did. Seems kind of dangerous!

We had reservations at a RV park near the Toutle River. I may have finally learned my lesson to not follow the GPS instructions, but use those published by the parks when we get close. The GPS told us to turn on this road, which we did. We came up to a railroad crossing with no bars or lights. We looked right and saw a light from a train. A freight train flew by with at least 200 cars! We went over the tracks and the road dead-ended! There was not room to turn the coach and the tow around, so Lannas had to unhook the Ford. While he was doing so, an Amtrak train rushes by – really fast! We finally got out of there and to our site, which is right by the tracks – you hear them throughout the day and night.

The next morning we drove up to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. There are several very nice visitor centers and observation areas along the 54 mile route to the final viewing area at Johnston Ridge Visitor Center. At Johnston Ridge they have a 20 minute movie on a giant screen about the eruption on May 18, 1980. It was very interesting with excellent video of the collapse of the side of the volcano, the resulting landslide, and the subsequent explosion. At the end of the movie the screen comes up and you are looking through a huge window right at the volcano! It was very impressive! As many of us remember from the news at the time, the landslide and explosion blew down trees up to 17 miles away and covered the land with ash. While the private land (much of it owned or managed by Weyerhauser) has been replanted with Douglas Fir and Noble Fir trees, the land inside the National Park has been left to regenerate on its own. You can see evidence all around of the trees that were blown down 31 years ago. You can see the pumice field that went down the side of the volcano and into the Toutle River bed. You can also see some of the 130 lakes that were created by the explosion. One preexisting lake – Spirit Lake – received debris from the blast that raised the level of water in the lake 200 feet! All in all, it was an amazing, scary reminder of the unbelievable power of Mother Nature.

Incidentally, the northwest is Bigfoot Country. Along with Mount St. Helens souvenirs, Bigfoot souvenirs are sold in the area. We even ran across a huge statue to Bigfoot!

On Thursday we went to Olympia, the capital of Washington. We participated in an interesting tour of the capitol. It is quite beautiful – with huge chandeliers, lovely coffered ceilings, and a pristine antique rug and table in one of the rooms we went to. The grounds are not as elaborate as California or even Oregon, but still pretty. We had a very pleasant lunch outside by the water – no bugs or heat!

We finished up the day by driving to the ocean from Olympia. It was quite chilly and the sand was unusual. It was a salt and pepper color. Toby loved romping through it, but she almost blended in!

The Most Beautiful Place in the World!

On Friday, August 5 we moved on from northern California to southern Oregon. Funny… they didn’t “quarantine” our fruit as we went into Oregon. The roads are full of huge trucks hauling loads of logs – this is timber country. We stayed at a pleasant, shady RV park on the banks of the Rogue River in Grant’s Pass, OR. The next morning we drove to Crater Lake. I do believe that Crater Lake is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen! The lake is actually in a caldera – a caldron-like feature formed by the collapse of land following a volcanic eruption – formed almost 8,000 years ago. Water goes into the lake from rain and snowmelt and out from evaporation – there are no streams or rivers going into or out of the lake. It is the deepest lake in North America – up to 1,900 feet deep – and supposedly the cleanest. It is the most amazing blue color you can imagine. You can drive around the 33 mile rim, with many pull-outs to stop and take pictures. We did not see hardly any animals – none of the many ground squirrels that were there when Lannas went as a kid.






This past year they received a record snowfall at Crater Lake - 56 feet... yes, feet. There was still a good bit of snow left. One road was still closed due to snow.






The next day we moved on up I-5 to Salem, OR. We stayed in a huge RV park with some of the most amazing flowers and plants. One was the Oregon Grape (state flower), a holly-like shrub with little blue/purple berries that look kind of like grapes.

There was another plant that we were never was able to find out what it was. There were two varieties - one with orange berries and another with red. The berries were the size of pyracantha berries, but they were in great clusters and there were no thorns on the trees.

We have decided to try to visit as many state capitols as we can. The current capitol of Oregon is the third one they have built – the two previous having burned down in 1855 and 1935. It is built in the Art Deco style with a gold plated statue of a pioneer on the top.

They have beautiful murals on the walls of the rotunda and a tour that goes to the very top of the building – up 121 steps! We took pictures from the top – pictures of Willamette University and the grounds. The grounds have some gorgeous trees – Giant Sequoias, Coastal Redwoods, and the very interesting Camperdown Elm shown below.