Homeward Bound

Congratulations if you've made it this far. Here you will find our final entry that is immediately related to our trip. We will, of course, continue to post other boring highlights and whatnot, but this will be our last park write-up.

Crater Lake was beautiful. We only spent a day in the park, but we had a schedule to keep since we wanted to be in CO on the weekend. We didn't quite realize that the drive was nearly 1,600 miles so we had a good amount of driving to do in two days. This meant we wanted to get a jump on it and maybe cut some mileage out. We left that park and headed to Klamath Falls, OR. The following day we started heading east in a BIG way. Let me tell you about eastern Oregon. It's boring. Luckily, we had Nevada to look forward to next. Also boring. And incredibly hot because even though I had my a/c replaced before the trip, the cabin blower motor (the fan which blows air inside the car) decided to stop working on our way to Crater Lake. So, Nevada was really, really hot. At least the speed limit was back up to 75 (in OR it was posted at 55. I even went into a gas station and asked. One sign said "Speed 55" so even that wasn't clear) so, yeah, it went by a little faster. Rachel drove for a while, too, which was nice. I passed time by holding water bottles out the window and changing their notes by drinking water and repeating. It was boring.

Nevada. It was pretty easy to see where the road was headed.

Looking back to what we just crossed.

The cool thing, though, was that we drove through two more "new" states: Nevada and Utah. We decided to spend the night at a hostel in Salt Lake City. We got there at eleven (our ten - we were losing time driving back across the country) so it was pretty quiet, but there were some really new-looking commuter rail platforms and the city itself looked to be pretty clean. The hostel itself was nice enough, and we got on the road early the next morning.

We dropped down south to Provo, got on six and headed into the mountains after passing through a wind farm. Many miles later, we picked up Route 70 and started counting down the miles to Grand Junction. Today was hot again and we figured out that with the a/c on and the windows cracked just a bit, we could draw the air through the vents and into the cabin. We basked in the feeble wisps of cold air. Too bad it took us three states to figure it out. We welcomed ourselves to Colorful Colorado by getting an ice cream. With higher blood sugars we continued our eastward trek through the Rocky Mountains. 

Right around Glenwood Springs Stella's look-alike caught up with us. We followed her for a while, but doing 70 in a 55 around all the twisty mountain roads was becoming a bit much for my nerves, so I moved into the slow lane and Stella's sibling left us in the dust. We left the interstate in Dillon so we could drive on 6 and Rachel could see Keystone (where I worked in the Spring of 2010). There wasn't much snow on the mountains, which surprised me, but at nearly 12,000' the air was still pretty chilly. And breezy. 

Trig and The Turtle are here, too.

Looking back to Arapaho Basin.

With only about an hour and a half until our destination, we headed to Ben and Kirsten's house. Note to anyone driving on 70: don't head west on a Friday evening. There is construction at Idaho springs and traffic was backed up almost all the way to Denver (about 25 miles). on Sunday it's the reverse. Thankfully, today was Friday and, although traffic was moving slower than 65, we were still moving.

Six thirty found us parked in the driveway at Ben and Kirsten's. Here, we happily ate delicious pizza, drank some beer, and talked. A lot. At one point on the trip I mentioned to Rachel that we knew we were old because the two cereals we had were Honey Bunches of Oats and something else with "bran" as the first ingredient. Tonight just carved it deeper in stone; we sat around the table and talked for hours. Eventually, with heavy eyelids, we settled onto the pullout and succumbed to sleep. It was lovely. 

Saturday we rolled out of bed and went into Boulder. Our first stop was brunch, where we all ate way too much delicious food. If there ever was a time when we should have spent hours talking (and digesting) it was then, but instead we promptly got up and walked around downtown. We spent a good chunk of the morning in a kitchen store, in addition to a few local arts-y ones. 

After a few hours downtown our tour guides took us out of town and we headed up toward the Flat Irons. We stretched our legs getting a fine view of the northern Rockies.  We ate a late dinner and went to bed with plans to wake up early(ish) and head to Rocky Mountain National Park. 

Our initial plan was to hike Estes Cone, a very popular trail leaving from a very popular trailhead (shared with Long's Peak, the northern-most Fourteener). Our plans changed when we saw that there was ZERO parking at the lot and also alongside a mile and a half stretch of road. Instead, we headed to the visitor center and hiked along the ridge from there. While driving (lame, I know) we reached our highest elevation of the trip: 12,200'. 

Yay! We're both really dark.

I wonder what was before the ellipsis, but it's still a cool quote. 

Aw.

Beautiful scenery. I love the Rockies.

I had ordered the parts to fix my car, but due to a vendor overlook they weren't going to arrive on time. However, with one quick email to the company they resolved the issue and would be overnight-ing a package to fix their mistake. We were planning to leave on Monday, but a Wednesday departure was now in the works. Provided the parts came on Tuesday. This left us with a day and a half to kill. Not wanting to overstay our welcome (and wanting to take advantage of where we were) Monday morning found us headed back into RMNP. This time, though, we were planning to do something completely new to me. We were going horseback riding. 

I'll be honest. I wanted to be a cowboy for a long time. What boy doesn't? There are horses, and spurs, and rope throwing, cattle chasing, sleeping under the stars, living off the land. Oh, and a six shooter strapped to your hip and in case that fails there's a lever action carbine close by. Yeah, it's pretty much what dreams are made of.

After hour two I realized it's not at all what dreams are made of. Rachel can tell you all about the horses (room for "other" editor's notes). I can tell you I rode a Fresian. I can tell you she was a big horse (and she farted a lot), not super agile but nice enough. I think Rachel said she was on a draft horse. He was really clumsy. There were just the two of us on the ride with our guide, a high school student from Tennessee. He didn't have us stop to re-apply sunscreen or drink water so when the ride ended at hour four I was happy to have a chance to re-hydrate and assess my sunburn. However, my legs didn't want to function for about five minutes. My cowboy dream slipped down a few rungs.

Although you can't tell, I am on a horse. Of course.

 We scored the last campsite at the closest campground. I think it was the best site of the trip. We were up on a little knoll and were fairly secluded. We had an excellent view, with clear sights of Twin Sisters and Long's Peak. The only disappointment (for one of us) was that it was a little bit of a walk to the bathrooms. We both loved the site, though. Tonight also happened to be a full moon. It was also a full moon when we were in the Badlands, four weeks earlier (it was actually a "Super" moon then).

Long's Peak at sunset, from our site.

Night shot of a mountain.

Tuesday we headed back to the house. We stopped in town to kill some time and filled up on some delicious brick oven pizza. Fresh mozzarella is sooooooooo good. Thankfully, the fan did arrive on time. Note to VW owners: if you go on a road trip, bring a 6mm socket. The smallest size I brought was 8mm, so I was left loosening and tightening the screws with a Leatherman. Not ideal. Thankfully the research I had done was correct and the fan and resistor were the culprit of my problems. We now had blowing air in the cabin!

We also stopped by the grocery store to get bacon, beef, and rolls. These were all grilled on charcoal and were turned into oh-so-tasty burgers. It was nice to be back in the kitchen.

Burgers with bacon, cheese, hot (habanero?) pickles, and yummy curly fries.

We left early on Wednesday and were able to share the excitement of driving through Nebraska. We made it to Iowa. The following morning we found a pretty cool bug on the car.

Bug on the car! Bug on the car!

We hoped to split the drive into two days, but it was too much. We got through Cleveland and decided to call it a night. Google found us a campground just on the shore of Lake Erie. The GPS navigated us to a run-down lot between to condo complexes. We had a good laugh, then cursed Google and drove somewhere else. 

The next morning we made it back to Carrie and Kevin's, having traveled 8,278 miles from here five weeks earlier.