Settle in as this post will be a bit longer than usual as we had a really busy summer. It may take a bit to fully load all the videos. (As always, be sure to click on the pictures as many have explanatory captions when opened up.) We flew to Los Angeles from Grenada and spent a couple weeks visiting with Theresa’s family and friends and the “we must be getting old” obligatory doctor’s appointments. John even went to a great LAPD reunion with his last assignment, 77th. We then borrowed a car from the folks and drove to Michigan to visit John’s family. Along the way, we stopped at several national and state parks, starting with the Petrified Forest in Arizona. The petroglyphs here are between 600 and 2000 years old and the stone trees are more than 200 million years old, slowly being exposed as the ground around them is washed away.
Our next stop was Monument Valley, also in Arizona. We arrived on one of the very rare rainy days and so had it mostly to ourselves. We were the first car allowed in after the rain as they close the dirt road due to steep inclines, ruts/mud and they require 4-wheel drive on such days (thank you Acura!) We’ve both wanted to come here since we were kids (John Wayne movies and all) and it was magnificent! Well worth the long drive through the Navajo reservation. And yes, John took that top photo on an iPhone, it’s not a professional shot.
At this point, we discovered a GPS guided tour that we highly recommend for all the national parks and many other places of interest. It is very informative and we learned SO much and were led to many spots that aren’t on the park maps. http://www.guidealong.com We used it for all of the parks.
Being the desert, there are some quirky places along the way… But our next stop was the 34 mile long drive through the Island in the Sky portion of Canyonlands National Park, Utah. Essentially a drive around a very high plateau carved out by the Green and Colorado rivers in the center of several other parks, it has magnificent views and endless geology and short hikes. Many of the views equal the Grand Canyon.
Arches National Park is close to Canyonlands so we stayed in Moab. The arches here are all formed by erosion and the fragmenting of stone below, as opposed to running water, which is much more common. The history of uranium mining in the area is fascinating and we managed to have dinner in what was the home of the “uranium king”, Charlie Steen. He literally went from abject poverty in the depression to being one of the richest people in the world, thanks to discovering a massive uranium deposit in 1950, before losing most of his fortune by the end of his life. His philanthropy was extraordinary and he left quite a legacy in the area.
From Arches we drove to Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. In 1909, the first bones were discovered and by the 1930’s the nearly complete skeletons of all the big dinosaurs in the largest museums in America were dug up here. You’ve seen them in the lobbies of the Smithsonian, Los Angeles Natural History Museum, Carnegie, etc. They came from a single massive slab/cliff that was once the bottom of a sharp bend in the nearby Colorado river. During several floods, many dinosaurs drowned and were washed to this point where they got stuck in successive layers of mud. Over the millennia, they fossilized and were eventually pushed up into the incredible single slab we see today. What we see now was once about five times bigger due to all the past excavations. 1500 bones from about 100 individual dinosaurs are visible now but many more rest in the layers just a few feet underneath. There are also many trails to hike that lead to other, smaller bone beds within the park.
We relaxed for a month in Ada, Michigan, enjoying many walks in the woods, a couple of corn mazes and a Lainey Wilson concert. John also dealt with the new and exciting medical condition of atrial fibrillation before we continued our grand adventure with stops at the Corn Palace and Mount Rushmore, both in South Dakota. The first Corn Palace was built in 1892 to prove that S. Dakota had a climate suitable for agriculture and the present building, a multi-purpose arena, was completed in 1921. Every year local college students cover the outside with corn and other grain murals. It’s a rather extraordinary find in this remote small town. Mount Rushmore speaks for itself. Sort of a pilgrimage place for Americans that everyone should visit at least once.
Custer State Park, also in South Dakota, has 1500 wild buffalo that normally roam freely and make driving challenging. We were there just after the annual roundup so getting around was much easier. We were so taken with the place, we stayed at the State Game Lodge that served as President Calvin Coolidge’s summer White House in 1927 and hosted President Eisenhower in 1953. Elk and bison were served in the dining room and we explored the park for two days, enjoying the prairie dog colonies, elk, wild donkeys and pronghorn antelope that are seen everywhere.
Yellowstone was our next stop and over several days we were able to see it all, thanks to the late season, snowfall and government shutdown. The only place we found a lot of people was at Old Faithful and we’re pretty sure that was nothing like summer crowds. We actually had many boardwalks entirely to ourselves and no traffic at all. The cold weather was a shock but it made the steam vents more dramatic. On the initial drive into the park we saw two grizzly bears! We were told they are gorging on moths living under the rocks and fallen wood, thus the digging.
Our final stop was Grand Teton Nation Park in Wyoming. We stayed in Jackson (aka Jackson Hole) and enjoyed the window shopping as the town is very high-end and artsy. And those elk antler arches are impressive! There is one at each corner of the central park and elsewhere in town. The National Elk Refuge is also here but not many elk had come down from the mountains yet.
And finally, the day after we left LA to drive to Michigan, Tess’ parents had a black bear in the backyard!
