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 19 - Oct 24 - WOW! What a day! Bear Ears and Natural Bridges National Monuments

I stayed the night in Blanding UT with my first college roommate, Brent Flavel.  He and his wife were fantastic hosts and tour guides.  I told Brent that I'd leave it completely up to him to decide what we did and where we'd go today.  At one point we were going to do some exploring via 4-wheeler, but the weather just turned too cold for that...so instead, he opted for a driving tour of two national monuments in SW Utah - Bears Ears NM and Natural Bridges NM.  These were both fantastic picks!

The main focus of Bears Ears (at least the part that I saw) was ruins of Anasazi Native Americans.  So, let's go there first.

This was nice compensation for not being able to go to Mesa Verde NP on this trip.  We also did some really fun hiking around the hills above these ruins, and saw a natural bridge there as well.

From here, we went to Natural Bridges NM.  Also incredibly beautiful, interesting, and enjoyable.

And as if that wasn't enough, Brent and Susan took me to a riverbed where you can see dinosaur footprints.  Whoa!  Cool!  Each footprint was about the length of my foot, and the stride was about 3' - a pretty good stride. 

So, the Mud Dragons and I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Brent and Susan for the great tour and warm hospitality.  THANKS!

And to wrap up the day, I drove north to Moab UT where I'm staying the night so I can get an early start and increase my chances for easier access to Arches NP, and then Canyonlands NP after that.

But even more importantly, Moab is MY TOWN.  How do I know...well, just check THIS out!

My Great-great-grandfather's brother and his family were part of the Hole-In-The-Rock expedition way back when to colonize SW Utah.  His family relocated north to Moab shortly thereafter, and thus, the naming of this road.  

Stay tuned for what happens next!

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!