Westacular

We’ve decided to stay an extra day here in the Mt. Rushmore area and forgo Yellowstone on the way home.  Not only are there a million things to do in the area, this Mt. Rushmore KOA is great (thanks again, Mike, for the suggestion)!  There is a water slide, two pools, mini golf, a big trampoline-type thing, Sarah Michael absolutely loves it.

There are a ton of kids here too.  They’re all having a blast.  Sarah Michael has already announced we’re coming here every year.  It would be fun for her to come with a friend, we would probably never see them!

The internet connection here isn’t great (I had to drive into Custer to use the library’s network to upload our pics to Flickr) and our phones display No Service most of the time, but maybe that’s a good thing when you’re supposed to be on vacation.

Our dilly dallying around in 19th century history in Wyoming meant a late arrival into South Dakota.  We had made arrangements to stay in Custer State Park and called ahead to let them know we may arrive a day early and we finally got to the campground around 1am.

But not before seeing wildlife.  As we drove through the park towards the campground we saw some deer near the road but even better we saw two buffalo.  The first one we saw freaked us out, it was walking just next to a curve in the road and we both only realized what it was just after we’d passed its dark shape.  Jessie was thrilled, she may just get to see some wildlife on this trip.

Shortly before we got to the park Jessie realized that we had not booked a campsite with full hookups, instead it was electricity only.  That’s just not the way we roll.  So we pulled up an email from my friend Mike that recommend a good KOA resort near Mt. Rushmore.  I ran around and confirmed that the entire campground was in fact only had electric hookups, but we had to decide, should we stay here tonight and move in the morning?  I was still plenty awake from all the energy drinks I’d consumed during the drive so I decided to drive to the KOA and figured we could park in their lot until they opened in the morning.

The road suggested by the GPS navigation device took us out of the park to the north, not the way we had just come in.  As we turned out of the park a sign warned that the road ahead was narrow and steep and came with one-lane bridges and tunnels, the shortest clearance only 12 foot 4 inches.  I asked Jessie, “How tall is this RV, didn’t the guy tell us it was 12 foot-something?”  She pulled out the RV information sheet from the rental place and it said “Most of our RVs are 12 feet high…”  Uh oh.

We pressed on.  I figured I’d stop at the tunnel entrance when we found it and climb the ladder to the roof to see if we’d make it in.  I was definitely nervous.

The road itself came through on the narrow and steep promise.  I traveled slowly up the mountain road and was thankful it was middle of the night and no other cars were there to compete for passage.  We saw scores more deer and even encountered two donkeys on the road at one point.  Jessie was tired and decided to go to sleep, and I assured her I’d wake her up if I needed her help to turn around should this gamble go the wrong way.

After what seemed like forever I finally found the first tunnel.  This was the shortest, the 12 foot 4 inch one.  I maneuvered to get a straight shot into the hole and stopped just as the nose was about to enter.  I climbed the ladder and peered over the air conditioning unit, trying to gauge its relative height and see if I could safely proceed.  Even though I felt like I didn’t have any definitive evidence of any kind, I decided to chance it and go on.

Very slowly I drove into the tunnel and I listened for the possibility of anything on the roof hitting rock.  No sound.  I continued.  No sound.  Then I was safely out.

I continued, confident that I’d passed through the lowest of the tunnels and that I’d be fine the rest of the way.  The road got even windier, the switchback turns very tight indeed, but eventually I stopped climbing and began to descend on the other side of whatever mountain this was.  I had to remain alert, though, because the going down was just as steep as the going up and I didn’t want to lose my brakes.  I got through it and just before 2am I was on real highways again, just miles from our new KOA destination.

One feature of this night was the moon was quite full and bright.  This provided me a nice reward for the last hour’s scary trip, because I actually drove past Mt. Rushmore on the way to the resort.  In the moonlight the faces of the presidents were visible and it was a pretty sight.  A nice way to see the monument for the first time.

I pulled into KOA at 2:00 and parked.  As expected the office was closed so I locked up and laid down and slept.  In the morning I’ll register and get us our site.

From about the time I was in preschool through third grade my family lived in Fort Collins, Colorado.  Since our route though Colorado towards Mount Rushmore went right through Ft Collins, I wanted to show the girls where I lived during these young years.

First we drove past the church where I went to preschool.  Then we went by my old elementary school.  The building looked so small!  The building looked exactly as I remembered it, except that what used to be seem large is now obviously designed for very small people.  We drove past the swimming pool I would play in during the summer, the SCCA, a place I had totally forgotten about.

We drove the route I used to walk to and from school and the distance was a lot shorter than I remember.  But the neighborhood didn’t seem to have changed at all.  I showed Jessie and Sarah Michael where my friend Kyle lived, and where the neighbor Lola lived.

Then we got to our old house at 205 Darmouth Trail. The house is just as I remember, though I’m sure the shutters are a different color, and the trees are now much larger.

Less than a block away from our old house was the park where I would play as a boy.  I showed SM the lake I used to fish in, the creek I used to pull crawdads from, I even remembered one of the trees that stood beside the creek.  I walked up the hill I used to sled down and took in the view, the park is so beautiful.  Sarah Michael played on the playground, and she and I went on the swings together.  It was a lot of fun.

We were so lucky to live in such a cute little neighborhood with a wonderful park practically across the street.

This morning we left Moab for Colorado, but we stopped along the way at Arches National Park.

Arches is beautiful.  It is similar to Monument Valley, but different enough to make it worth the visit.  One difference is that since Arches is a National Park visitors have much more access to the rocks.  At Monument Valley we weren’t allowed to go off the beaten path, but at Arches we could park the car then walk up close and climb on the rocks.  Certainly this could be at someone’s peril, as there are plenty of dangerous places to go, but that’s part of the fun.

Arches is also inexpensive to visit, $10 for our carload.

Arches is also in Moab, which appears to be a paradise for anyone with desires for Jeeping, mountain biking or river rafting.  It is a beautiful area.

Oh, another difference betwen Arches National Park and Monument Valley is that while Monument Valley is viewed from a dusty dirt road, Arches is nicely paved.

There are, of course, arches.

We stopped at Double Arch and walked over to climb into it.

As we walked on the trail, Sarah Michael noticed that her voice echoed off the rock walls, this amused her.  So we make loud noises to hear them come back to us, I’m not sure the foreign tourists appreciated this.

Climbing on the rocks isn’t especially difficult, but you must pay attention.  It is steepish but there are plenty of bits to put your toes and fingers onto.  The last bit of the climb to get up into the smaller archway was the most difficult so I basically held Sarah Michael up as she found footholds to use.  It was fun, though, and made me wish for more time in Arches so we could explore and climb more.

Alas we didn’t visit very much of the park, it was already 11am and we knew we had a long drive ahead to get us to our next campground in Longmont, Colorado.

So off we went.  Southern Utah is really something, I look forward to returning to see more.

Have you ever noticed that Utah license plates don’t say “Utah”, instead they say “Utah!”?  I’m starting to see why, there is some amazing stuff to see here and we haven’t even gone off the highway yet.

After going through Mexican Hat, UT which is named for a rock formation that looks sombrero-ish, the red rock whose dust we’ve been breathing for the last few hours is gone and the geology has been replaced by something entirely different.

Then you’ll go up a canyon and then down into another that looks different again.  The topology, geology, geography or whatever is constantly changing and is good fun to look at.  The rocks some in some pretty neat shapes too, and right next to the highway!

We passed a lot we wished we could have seen, Needles, Natural Bridges, Valley of the Gods.  Plus I see all kinds of roads with Jeeping potential.  We are definitely coming back.

We decided to bail on Four Corners, we’ll save that for a future visit when we can see southwest Colorado and a time when Sarah Michael finds all this stuff more interesting.

We were about to drop down a steep grade on the highway when we were stopped by the Highway Patrol.  They were closing north-bound traffic while they let south-bound traffic use our lane on the grade to get past a slow-moving wide load.  We only had to wait about ten minutes but we were sure curious what the fuss was about.  I don’t know what that truck was hauling, but it was enormous.

About 30 minutes south of Moab we drove up on Wilson Arch and stopped to have a closer look.  How can stuff this amazing be so accessible?

You can climb right up into the hole in the rock, which we did. It is so beautiful!

We finally arrived into Moab at 7:30 and got into our RV park.  This is a beauitful area, I’m sad we can’t spend more time here this trip, but knowing we’ll come back and we have so much to look forward to is quite a comfort.