Day 26 - Oct 31 - Logan to Rexburg - Home again

After a great visit and some golf and other R&R in Logan, the Dragons and I loaded into the tour bus for the last leg of our tour.  Compared to several other travel days, this 180 mile hop felt like a cinch!  

Before leaving Cache Valley, we made one more stop at the Pepperidge Farm outlet store in Richmond, UT.  If you are ever in the area, and you like things like goldfish crackers, Milano cookies, etc., then treat yourself right, drop in and pick up a snack or two.  But, there are no guarantees about what will be on the shelves day to day.  So, it's kind of a treasure hunt.  And the prices are great!  The main reason I stopped in was to pick up some of their chocolate chip cookies - I got some the previous Friday - but when I got there, that shelf was bare!  :-(.   Oh well.  I consoled myself with some chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies instead, and some X-treme Cheddar goldfish crackers.  

A few miles later, we crossed that last state border for the tour...and I knew I was on the glide path that leads home.  Ah, home, what a great word!  HOME.  

Once over the border, it's not long before you reach Preston, ID, hometown of that great American Napoleon Dynamite!  

If you are interested, there are websites you can visit that will help you find sites that appeared in the movie: Napoleon's house, Pedro's House, the Cuttin' Corral, Pop n Pins bowling alley, the site of Rex Kwando's dojo,, etc.  This movie is now a piece of Americana, and the film makers totally nailed life in a small Idaho town - my wife should know, she graduated from a small Idaho HS herself (not Preston's though). 

I wanted to stop and grab a bite to eat at Big J's in Preston, but, alas, I went through town before it opened.  I'll be back!

Anyway, there was one more scheduled stop that I want to tell you about before I wrap up the last driving day.  

Have you ever heard of Red Rock Pass?  It's a cool place, geologically speaking, between Preston, ID, and I-15.  It's worth a stop because something both amazing and catastrophic happened there sometime around 11,000 years ago.  This is where ancient Lake Bonneville flooded out.

OK, so what's the big deal about Red Rock Pass?  Well, I'll tell you.  The image above shows the ancient, massive Lake Bonneville during the last ice age, and Red Rock Pass is where the lake finally spilled over and flooded out.  Geologists estimate that once the flood was going, it probably reached a peak discharge flow rate of 1,000,000 cubic METERS of water per SECOND!!!  That flowing water contributed to gouging out the Snake River Canyon and created other cool features.  

I climbed to the top of the small hill shown in the photo above and took a photo looking towards the south - where the lake used to be (upper image below) and to the south (lower image below) where the flood waters went.  

Lake Bonneville has since dwindled down to the present day Great Salt Lake.

OK, once we were back on the road, it was a straight shot to IF where the Dragons demanded that we stop at prominent Idaho Falls locations, including Costco and Winco...they were hungry :-D.

I pulled into Rexburg in the mid-afternoon on the scariest day of the year - Halloween.  I celebrated by meeting up with my daughter Emily and her husband Nathan for diner at Applebee's to put the final touches on the tour.

Here are a few final stats about the trip:

• Trip length: 26 days
• Trip distance =  4537 miles (38% on interstates and 62% on other highways and roadways)
• Number of National Parks, Monuments and Sites visited = 12 (Teton NP, Devil's Tower NM, Badlands, Minuteman NHS, Carlsbad Caverns NP,  Guadalupe Mtns NP, White Sands NP, Petrified Forest NP, Bears Ears NM, Natural Bridges NM, Arches NP, Canyonlands NP)
• States visited: 10 (Idaho, Wyoming, S Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah)
• Nights in motels: 8
• Family members visited: Immediate family 12 of 13, plus my mother, and my sister and her family
• Movies purchased at thrift and used book stores: 13

Lastly, once I got rolling, I started thinking about what mementos I might want to collect to commemorate the trip, and this is what I decided on:  Postcards of National Parks and Monuments, etc.  

Man, I LOVE my senior lifetime national parks pass!  It paid for itself probably 2-3x over on this trip alone.

And so, the Mud Dragons/I am home again.

This was a wonderful, yet bittersweet trip.  Time and again when I went someplace or saw something I thought to myself, "This is beautiful/amazing/inspiring/quirky and Kat would LOVE this!"  

I enjoy a good adventure, but few things compare with the peace, stability, and comfort of home.  

Thanks for joining me on this journey.   Now it's time to start my real adventure, discovering my new reality and crafting a new life.

Cheers!

Day 20 - Oct 25 - Moab UT to Price UT with Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in between - WHOA!!!

Today was amazing...again!!

I stayed in Moab UT last night so I would have a chance at getting into Arches National Park before the entrance gate got overwhelmed and vehicles formed a line a mile long!  I got up and moving and arrived at the entrance gate at 7:15am, as dawn was breaking but about 30 minutes (at least) before the sun broke over the mountains to the east of Arches NP!  

My first stop was a no-brainer - The Windows and Twin Arches area.  I got there and waited and waited and waited for the sun to arrive.  BTW, I had to scrape my windshield and window for the first time this year!  The temp when I left for the part was a balmy 31oF.  

But the wait paid off!  BTW I took this pic on my way out the park (thus the sun! :-)

South Windows Arch

North Windows Arch

South Window from the west side

South and North Window Arches from the east side...the only way to see both at once.  It felt like the world was looking at me!

March of the elephants near double arches

Double Arches (my favorite formation of the day!

After hiking around these formations for 2.5-3 miles or so, it was time to move on.  My second stop was also a natural choice - DELICATE ARCH.  This is the arch that is the franchise formation for the park.

I got this shot from the view area...not hiking to it.  Since it was the morning, I was able to get the fully lit side this way...and you can see the people on the ridge who hiked for around an hour one way to get there, but they could see only the shaded side.  Win for scientific thinking + laziness!  Not all of the Mud Dragons like to do every hike!  :-D

On the way to see Delicate Arch, I saw The Devil's Garden (below) and Skyline Arch (second photo down).  

There was one last thing I HAD to see before heading over to Canyonlands National Park, and that's LANDSCAPE ARCH.  It takes about a 1-mile hike (one way) to reach the best viewing point for that arch.  But it was completely worth it.  Besides, 1 mile isn't all that far.  

And this is the backside of The Devil's Garden.  Sweet!

Before leaving Windows and Double Arches, I stopped off at the restroom, and was taken back to see something I hadn't seen for over 40 years.  It's a squatter toilet!  Don't worry, there was still a western style toilet in the restroom as well, but these were all over in Japan.  In fact, about half of my apartments had only these.   

The thing that was notable in there was this plaque giving directions on how to use a restroom.  This placard is painful evidence of lessons the National Park service learned the hard way as more and more people from the orient came to visit American National Parks.  Enough said.  The placard says it all! 

And I was off to Canyonlands NP.  The part of that park that I visited had its entry booth only about 30 miles from the one at Arches NP.

Canyonlands NP is exactly that...a national park that preserves and highlights extensive canyon lands.  Since this is the case, there is no way to access all of the park from one entrance point.  There are, in fact for regions of the park.  I had time to visit only one - The Island in the Sky area.  

Here's a tip...if you are a first timer at a national park, go to the visitor's center and chat with the park ranger(s) that are in there.  Most people beeline directly to the gift shop...which is OK, but I like to talk to the rangers.  I just tell them that (as in this case) it's my first time in the park and I have 3-4 hours, so how should I prioritize my visit?  Then they fill in the blanks and off I go.  There's no shame in asking directions.  Haha.

Before we even left the parking lot, the Dragons and I made our first spotting at Canyonlands!  A raven.  These are the smartest birds in North America, and perhaps beyond!

And I was off to see what else I could spot.  First off, I discovered that arches aren't found only in Arches National Park!  This sweet arch overlooks a sweeping vista of canyons below it, and mountains in the distance. 

Then I moved on to the second of my three planned stops.  This one had a 2-mile (total) hike to a vista point and back again, with views like these.

OK, so the views are pretty breathtaking...but the hike was what was REALLY fun!  If you look carefully at the photo below, you'll see that there are people walking along this rock ledge, which is part of that trail.  And yes, that is a MIGHTY long drop...maybe 1000'.  But I was completely safe...I mean, I stayed away from the edge.  A lot of the hike was like this.  And it was FUN!

Moms and Dads...keep a close eye on those kids!  (Yikes!)

This is a shot taken looking the other direction, and yeah, it gives you an idea of what the drop-off is like!  Cool, and scary!  But more cool than scary!!  By this point, the trail is no longer near the edge at all. 

I then headed for the third major viewing spot, and, sadly, given the time and energy I had left by this point, I was only able to get to the closest viewing point of a meteor impact site, but all you could see was the edge of the crater and you couldn't even tell what it was.  Oh well...it was time to go, and I headed north to the ever popular town of Price UT for the night.  And, by the time I got here, I passed the 4000-mile driving mark on my trip.

It was another AMAZING day in nature!

What's up for tomorrow?  Stay tuned.

Day 18 - 23 Oct - Buckeye AZ to Blanding UT and everything in between

The Mud Dragons and I spent a full day on the road, over 500 miles.  And it was a good 500+ miles, too.

I happened to be visiting my daughter and her family over the once-a-year weekend of the annual Primary Program.  And who's NOT going to miss that when you have the chance!?  I'm not!!!

And so, the tour bus pulled out of town after the Primary Program - an annual program at church featuring children aged 3-11 - and you never know what's going to happen.  The program was, BTW, very nice.

I do not recall ever making the drive between the Phoenix area (elevation ~1000') and Flagstaff (elevation of nearly 7000') , and it was amazing how the landscape and bioregions shifted.  As I left Phoenix and started the climd toward Flagstaff, the hills were absolutely covered by saguaro cacti.  It was beautiful!  Then, as I kept climbing, cacti were replaced by small scrubby juniper trees.  Then, as I approached flagstaff, the junipers were replaced by a full-on pine forest.  It's amazing what happens when you climb to a place that's over a mile higher than the place where you started!

Also, I started seeing signs for my old friend, and favorite soda stop - Maverik!  I was back in my bioregion!!!

The main planned stop today was Petrified Forest National Park, but I kept getting distracted along the way.

The first side-trip was a sign advertising Meteor Crater National Landmark.  I thought, OK, I'll bite.  And $23 later I was admitted into the inner sanctum where only those willing and able to part with $23 are able to see an incredibly large hole in the ground!  Seriously, it's a pretty cool stop.  I'm not saying it's $23 cool, but it's cool.  The visitor's center has lots of interesting astronomical info as well.

The downside of this stop was two-fold.  First, there was no sign of S.H.I.E.L.D., and second, THOR and his hammer were both no-shows!!!!!

Oh well.  And having seen this once...there's now no reason to stop again.

All righty then...back on the road.  Then I saw the exit sign for Winslow AZ.  And I mean, who's not going to go there and stand on a corner!?  

And yes, there is a complete homage to the musical group, The Eagles, in Winslow.  And why not!?  

After all, who doesn't want the chance to be standin' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona!?

If there was any downside to this stop, it's that there "was (no) girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a look at me." :-D

This was, for me, WAY cooler than the meteor impact site...and completely free, too!  I'd do this stop again whenever I pass this way.  It's a place where you can "Take it Easy"!

And so, the tour bus (er...my red Camry) finally pulled into the parking lot at the Petrified Forest National Park.

I'm sad to say that during my stop here, I was able to visit only the visitor's center.  The other side trips ate up my National Park time...but, oh well.  It's OK.  I guess I can say I was here...though a bit as a poser, because I didn't have time to go see anything.  :-(

But if I could have, I would have seen things what's shown on this poster: 

I did visit this place once as a little boy, and who knows...maybe I'll have another chance someday to spend a day here.

But the tour must go on...and so I did.  And the clock was ticking and sun was westering, so I had to roll on.

And "the sun went down on the coconut tree" (who knows this children's book?) and I kept on rolling, eventually crossing the state line into Utah.  I think you'll have to take my word for it that, this is a welcome to Utah sign...at least what it looked like at 65mph in the dark of night.  Ha.  

Utah is the last state on my trip, and I'll do it bottom to top.  

So the states on my tour were Idaho Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.  

And I happily and gratefully pulled into the home of my first college roommate, Brent Flavel, in Blanding UT.  

What happens next?  You'll just have to stay tuned!