Category Archives: Cowboy West

Day 5: Fort Robinson State Park, NE to Cheyenne, WY

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Yesterday was a bittersweet day for us.  We woke relieved that the wild wind had stopped.  Henna caught up on sleep while Corey and I drank coffee and grilled sausages over a small fire.  There was no hurry and after Henna woke we ate some more and walked back into the main square of Fort Robinson.  For just $5 the three of us took a short carriage ride (in the type of carriage that Cinderella took to the ball).  Corey and Henna liked it; I loved it.   Henna also took a pony ride (they said I was too big) and we left the state park feeling good.  Route 20 continued west and it was a pleasant happy ride.  Turning south on 29 I felt a genuine sadness over the part of our trip ending.  We had taken 20 from the vaguely country strip malls of Rockford into the wild ranch land of western Nebraska.  Before this trip I always thought of Nebraska as dull and the people rough.  Not so.  Without exception every person met in Nebraska was kind; people wave when they drive by and conversations were easy to come by.  The land too is majestic in its largeness, a type of canvas fitting for the cows and windmills that populate it.  And judging by the many tourists with Colorado plates, I am not alone in this opinion.

After leaving Fort Robinson it was time for more bones.  Agate Fossil Bed National Monument is set against that “broken cattle country” scenery.  The exhibits were nowhere as cool as they were in Ashfalls, but the hiking opportunities made up for it.  We took a short trail that led to the highest point of the monument and passed several spiral beaver den fossils called devil corkscrews.  The road linking 20 with 71 was the 60 empties miles of the trip. At Scottsbluff, however, the roads turned back to divided highways and soon we were humming along at 80 on the interstate with the same number.  Off to Cheyenne, WY for the night and we tented at the KOA.  I felt a bit like a hobo as Corey and I drank beers a few yards from the interstate (with that noise sometimes drowned out by the freighter trains that passed nearby).  In the morning the hobo experience was completed as I had to dig through a garbage can in search of the CD I had accidentally thrown out (I found the CD- Hank Williams).  That night in Cheyenne we had our first dinner out and got a taste of Cheyenne; more genteel than Gillette but nowhere near as warm as Missoula.  There where coffee shops and book stores, but also muttering homeless and dark streets at night.

But now I am in Rocky Mountain National Park.  It would be heaven if it had a swimming lake.  So very, very dry here; as the fires rage  nearby here there is a complete fire ban meaning there will be a smore break.  We plan on camping two nights here then one night on the other side of trail ridge road.  Hopefully we will be able to share pictures with you soon.

Days 6 and 7: Moraine Park Campground, RMNP

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Greetings from Rocky Mountain National Park.  You can get here in two long driving days (Corey and I once did that).  A smarter way to go would be to take three moderately long driving days.  It took the three of us nearly a week to get here.  All the adventures on Route 20 and the sharp journey downward to Cheyenne made our entry into the mountains just that much more exciting.  I thought that maybe the slow ascent would help with the altitude adjustment, but I was pretty light headed the first day here (Corey and Henna did not seem affected by the 8,000 + feet of our campground).  We spent the first day exploring the campground and the adjacent valley.  Do you want to see herds of elk, a lot of pretty birds, and mountain flowers set against a rugged mountain landscape?  Come here.  Do you want to escape road work and roast marshmallows?  Stay home.  The wildfires near Fort Collins and the extremely dry conditions have forced the park rangers to put a total ban on all fires (campfires, smoking outside your car, and charcoal included).  And there also is a massive road work project going on resulting in the Bear Lake Road (probably the second most popular destination here after the Trail Ridge Road) with a road closure from 9AM to 4PM (free shuttle park busses are allowed on the road during that time).  A campground on this road is closed for the summer making our campground (usually a first come first served) more crowded than typical.  None of this bothered us.  We came in on Thursday and grabbed a beautiful site with a trail leading up a short ridge behind our tent.  From that ridge we can see the mountain valley.  The fire ban mean going to bed earlier but Henna snuck a smore on on our propane stove.  And the road closures meant a less crowded Bear Lake when we drove there after 4.  The only drawback to our campsite was that our tent and picnic table were a good and steep distance from our car.  This was solved with team work as the three of us formed a conveyor line to get all the necessary materials to the top.  We also ate all our dinners out at various picnic tables throughout the park.

Highlights of the time spent here were our first good hike (to Cub Lake), hanging out at a national park campground where even on a crowded weekend you have spacious sites and quiet at night, and watching Henna build a very detailed acorn village complete with characters such as the king, Gracie, and a fat and lazy dad (not sure how I feel about that one).  Today we break camp to travel the highest public road in North America- Trail Ridge Road which tops out at over 12,000 feet.  Our plan is to camp tonight on the other side of that road and then enjoy two blissful days in Breckenridge.  Talk to you soon.

That night….

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Fort Robinson, Nebraska has been a mighty important staging point for the U.S. wars against the American Indian, a jail for some of those same Indians, a training ground for soldiers for the Spanish-American war, and a P.O.W. camp for German soldiers during WWII.  Now it is Nebraska’s largest state park and does a good job of showing off western Nebraska’s broken cattle country (that is how my National Geographic Book on state parks describes the landscapes, as well as presenting what life was like for the soldiers stationed here (I do wish they did a better job of discussing the treatment of the imprisoned American Indians as late as 1912 this fort was still sending out soldiers to put down “agitated” U.S. citizens i.e. American Indians).  We camped a few yards from route 20 which over here was little more than a country road.   We could have lodged in a variety of barracks including former officer quarters (and by midnight I wish we had).  The state park also has a small archaeological museum that includes a complete Columbian Mammoth skeleton that was uncovered in a “death embrace” with another mammoth.  And Summer Stock is here too.  We saw Godspell (which was a nice counter point to all the evolution facts we kept stumbling upon- I will still go with evolution but I have to say Godspell had better music).

At 7 PM the three of us kicked back on Adirondack chairs and watched the blue sky.  It was in the mid 70s and beautiful.  By 8 (the time Godspell started) the sky was looking sinister and the temperature had dropped.  By intermission there had been some rain and there was not a visible star in the sky.  When the play ended the wind was gusting pretty strong, lightning was to the north, and the tent was not looking so good.  We drove into our campsite and stayed in the car to watch nature’s fireworks.  Wind was picking up and Henna kept nagging us to go into the tent.  All night the wind howled and a couple of times I sat up in mild (maybe moderate terror).  Henna slept soundly (and is still sleeping as I type this up).  Corey slept pretty well.  I nodded off around sunrise with the storm over and a little water at the creases of our tent.  Right now I am sipping coffee, writing (which I love), and sitting next to Corey (whom I love as well).  There are  sausages on the grill and the cool breeze feels good.  We leave Route 20 today to head south into Colorado.  Will update you all soon.

Note:  I am posting this now from the KOA in Cheyenne, WY.  Headed to RMNP today; we are all excited.  Having a lot of trouble posting photos.  Down the road we will post lots of photos.  Hope all is well with you.

Day 4: Valentine, NE to Fort Robinson, NE

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Hello, Corey here. Today was a most amazing road day, the exact reason we pack up our essential belongings each summer and hit the road.  We were up pretty early this morning, and heading out of Valentine, NE without coffee. So with a quick stop at a local store for provisions, and a quick hello to our campground owner (yep, in small towns it is very difficult to escape anyone) we continued our sojourn west. Below in bullet form…I love bullet points, gathers up some of what our day looked like.

  • Noel drove today due to a minor hip injury I acquired. Henna and I the read in the car caught up in our own two literary worlds as the southern badlands landscape passes by or window (hers fairies and mine embarrassingly 50 Shades of Gray).
  • We can definitely feel the cowboy vibe in these parts as everyone male is donning his cowboy Stetson hat and the old men are driving big Ford pickup excruciatingly slow. So it was fitting when we spied on our atlas that up ahead in a town called Gordon there was the Tri-State Old Time Cowboys Memorial Museum.  So after some searching, as gems like these are not always fitted with bright neon signs, we stumbled upon the city park for Gordon and the museum,  The only problem with our glorious stop is that the museum didn’t open until 1:00 and it was at that time only 10:00.  Ugh.  The best laid plans of improvising!  But wait, a note on the door providing three nice folks to call at a moment’s notice if you want an access to this small museum?  Sweet.  We called and 20 minutes later a nice old cowboy named Bud came to our rescue.  He was obliged to let us in to something he keeps so dear to his heart, being a cowboy.  He showed us graciously and proudly around these old relics of days gone by.  Saddles, rope, pictures of old cowboy’s.  We learned about him, his wife who lived in Chicago for 4 years, and the whereabouts of his five children (all living in various cities around the country).  He is quick to state that they all remember fondly growing up in this small Nebraska town.  My heart strings were tugged as I listened to this blue eyed old cowboy shared with strangers his personal information.  He let us in and I’m presuming that most folks in town (especially the young ones) have heard these old cowboy stories so many times, and are not impressed anymore.  He informed us that the countless windmill we’ve been seeing on the ranchlands are not turbines but instead wells pulling up water from sometimes as deeps as 200 feet below ground to keep the cattle hydrated.  He shared a sweet story about his Dad long ago picking up a solder on the highway, and how incredulous he was that the solider in need of water had no idea the water was fit to drink.
  • Our luck. Bud questioned our further travels and gave us a great tip of what we could do next, which are always the best tips the road can bring.  Godspell was playing at the Post Playhouse Theatre in the state park.  Thank you Bud!
  • Two hours down the road we entered the state park, bought our tickets for the 8 o’clock show, by a very friendly theatre major from Nebraska, and went for a swim.  The above mentioned theatre major was named John, a native of Nebraska and an ardent theatre buff.  He vows his love for this summer stock as it’s the closest folks in these parts can get to real theatre.  We wondered what it was like for him growing up in cowboy country when he appeared to be lifted from the set of Glee.  Thank goodness for him that this existed for him.  Make me glad we come from a big city in which cultural experiences are a short train trip away…might be why Bud’s kids all moved away.

Fare thee well for now.

 

Day 3: Sioux City,SD to Valentine,NE

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Yesterday was the day we started mid-west and ended up west.  We started our trip at the most eastern end of the Central Time Zone.  Right now as I type these words in our tent, we are at the most western end.  Big difference in sun-set times; last night about 10.  Given that we are almost exactly 800 miles west of Chicago (and only a tad north) I know the difference in times can be attributed solely to lateral travel.

The route to Valentine was what I suspected it would be.  Two lane (one each direction) and alternating between flat and hilly ranch las well as some corn fields.  Besides the hillier nature the land had a decidedly more cowboy feel to it than it did in Iowa.  Maybe it was the squared off nature of those hills or the lack of humidity.  Trees were also smaller and less common and at times it all felt like a high desert.  By the time we got to Valentine we felt exhausted by the day and searched a while before finding a former KOA campground run by the laid back and shirtless Mike.  I understood pretty quickly why Mike left the KOA system; he was friendly enough, but swore more than my auto mechanic Bruce (and that man knows a few things about colorful language).  The campground was on the banks of the beautiful Niobrara river which, by us, was shallow and sandy.  Henna and I had a lot of fun swimming there.

On the way to Valentine we saw two wonders:  the Klown Dolls Museum and Ashfalls State Historical Site.  For the first I have to admit that after a few hours driving we were not too picky about our roadside attractions (although I kept thinking of the movie Dolls where killer dolls come to life; plus clowns can be a little creepy).  But inside the museum (located in Plainview, NE) are thousands of donated clown dolls.  It started almost 60 years ago with a volunteer klown band (they wanted to be different so they spelled clown with a k) and grew to the marvel we saw yesterday.

Ashfalls has a bit longer history.  About 1.2 million years ago Yellowstone exploded (it is a giant caldera that erupts every million years or so) and sent massive volumes of ash pretty far west.  In eastern Nebraska there was a watering hole that filled with this ash and slowly (over about a month) choked prehistoric rhinos, camels, and three-toed horses to death.  The ash hardened and preserved the remains better than a fossil (fossils tend to be flattened, these bones were more like in a plaster).  At Ashfalls a big barn was put over the excavation and you can watch a dozen interns work the earth with very delicate and small tools (the type you use to mold clay).  Very, very cool.  Making it even more cool was that one of the original archaeologists who discovered this place (“a bunch of bones sticking out of a farm field”) was there.  A very modest and open fellow whose love for the place he helped found was contagious.

So that is all for now.  The ladies still sleep, this tent is getting warm, and I fear the bugs outside.  Talk to you all soon.

Great Alpine Lakes of the West: Lake Marie off Hwy 130 in the Snowy Mountains of WY

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Beyond the one stop travel marts and manicured rest stops is a parallel world of state parks, lonely drives, exciting vistas, and opportunities hard to find when going 70 MPH.  To us the best planning involves endless staring at our Rand McNally Road Atlas in search of the possible.  Such planning got us first to Curt Gowdy State Park (in time to catch a blue grass festival) and then on top the snowy mountain range to camp at beautiful Lake Marie (elevation high enough for year round snow, maybe +9.000’).  We spied moose, hiked around the alpine wonderland, and wondered at night if the light rain would turn to snow before morning.  A real bummer was Henna repeatedly becoming sick through the night. Corey and I tried our best to comfort her and knew that there was nowhere to go until daylight.  My friend Louie (who also first told us of this Swiss Alps like place) thinks it was altitude sickness.  Corey suspects stomach flu (she was sick two nights later at Angel Lake State Park in Nevada).  Me, I try not to choose sides.  Either way we slinked off the mountain the next morning and regrouped in Evanston, Wyoming.  The next day Henna was her usual, cheerful self.

Great Alpine Lakes of the West: Lake Tahoe

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As you can tell by our count down icon, the trip is coming soon.  Where are we headed?  West.  And in going west we hope to revisit some of our favorite spots.  Many of those spots combine two topographical features we hold dear:  altitude and water.  Some allow a little work to get there, others not so much.  A few, like our dear friend Lake Tahoe, are even overcrowded.  Its banks are lined with timeshares, casinos, parking lots, and other man-made entities (we have heard rumors though that there are quieter spots away from the crowds).  But man, those waters are beautiful to swim in.  And if you float on your back and glance sideways to the cliffs you can feel all alone out there.  Then you dry off and walk into town for a drink.

Missoula, Montana

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We are starting the process of summer trip planning.  Truth be told, this started some time during our last summer trip.  Corey and I both are suckers for maps and routing out trips is a great road game, especially on the interstate.  Even Henna gets into it a little.  Right now we are probably headed west through then down Colorado to the Grand Canyon, further south to visit family in Phoenix, west to S. California and then hitting Sequoia and Yosemite National Park on the way home.  We also would like to hit the pretty parts of Idaho.  And somewhere in that jumble of parks and beaches, maybe a night spent in Missoula, Mt.

Missoula is a funky western town at the intersection of I90 and route 93.  Not funky like San Francisco, but funky in that it is everything you like about the American West and everything you like about college towns blended together.  It also is set in an understated high desert landscape of low hills and buttes.  One of those hills has a giant M on top with a steep trail leading to it.  I have yet to touch that M.  Corey and I first came through Missoula on the way home from our Alaska trip.  Just married, it was our last trip sans kid and we hung out at the college bars.  The county fair was going on and we had fun betting on horses, checking out livestock, and watching some bad karaoke.  The next time through was with Henna.  No bars, the county fair was there again, and we discovered a laid back and very cool children’s museum.  They also have a great park with a restored carrousel.  If, while on the carrousel, you are able to grab the brass ring, you earn another free ride.  If I remember correctly I earned three free rides.  This summer, if we end up spending the night there, I know which horse offers the best brass ring access point.  I also plan on dragging Corey and Henna to that M.  Or more likely they will be eating ice cream while I venture a solo ascent. 

 

Angel Lake State Park, NV

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Off the interstate near Wells, Nevada (which is about 60 miles west of Utah) exists Angel Lake State Park.  The park is near but well above the sun scorched desert that is Wells.  So far above that there was snow near the campsite on the mid-July day we were there.  The state park is an oasis with a pretty campground, a stocked lake, a waterfall that we never made it to, and stars a plenty at night.  Oh, and you have to drive up a windy, not quite 2 lane road that should (but doesn’t) have a guardrail.  If you go, buy a fishing license at the gas station in Wells.  We did not and ended up paying the campground host a little something extra so we could not catch any fish.  Ah, but that ended up being the least of our worries.  Two nights before Henna woke up in the middle of the night on top of a mountain in Wyoming to get sick in the tent.  After a restful hotel stop in Evanston, Wyoming, Henna was feeling great.  The night at Angel Lake found Corey hurling under the stars.  A camping second for us.  Corey and I have since debated whether it was stomach flu (Corey’s position) or altitude sickness. 

The morning gave us a careful drive down the windy path and a fragile Corey moaning in the front seat.  Corey got a shower at the gas station/ diner (the one we should have bought the fishing license at) while Henna and I had a mighty fine breakfast.  I was feeling pretty down and out and a couple people gave us sympathetic looks.  We drove that day to Winnemucca, Nevada to sleep under the linens and then camped the day after at Lake Tahoe. The road can give good, bad, or a little bit of both.  We just roll.

Lost Dutchman State Park, AZ

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I was looking through some albums and came across our visit to the Lost Dutchman State Park which is near Tortilla Flats in Arizona (not to be confused with Refried Beans, Maine).  Legend has it that there is a gold mine hidden somewhere within the park.  Never found it.  We did find sun.  A lot of sun.  Even though it was a beautiful early Spring day in the low 80s, that sun bakes you.  And deserts, by definition, do not offer much shade.  But the blooming desert and cactus views made for an enjoyable day.