Homeward Bound

Day 11: Littlefield, TX to Austin TX. Final Trip Total 3,942 miles.

Katie gets her swim as soon as the pool opens at 8:00am; we grab breakfast at the motel, and then head out back to Austin. Back on roads I know, the day goes pretty fast down through San Angelo and Brady, with assorted wolf impressions coming from the back seat throughout the day. It’s an uneventful day, and we get back home around 4:00pm.

Travel Tip #1: Don’t travel with a vegetarian unless you like Subway.

Despite being mocked before the trip, we used pretty much everything we took: the tool kit didn’t get used, but that would have been indispensable had we have broken down out of cell range. The self-inflating SwissGear mattresses didn’t get used, and we didn’t sleep in the back of the car, so the Coleman Twin-Sized Quickbed wasn’t used either. I did take more camera equipment than I needed – my Nikon 105mm f/2.8G Lens went unused, as did my Nikon 85mm f/1.4D Lens and Nikon SB-800 Speedlight. The Pelican cases (1510 Case & 1610 Case) were fantastic though, amazingly robust. And the Coleman 100 quart cooler worked extremely well for us. And I still haven’t got past the introduction on the SAS Survival Handbook.

The Nissan Armada held up okay – no major mechanical problems, however the hinged window on the back left corner of the vehicle worked loose – it looks like the hinge is no longer attached and is being held loosely in place by the plastic trim. The drivers electric window isn’t working properly – it’s jumped out of its track, so when it closes the glass scrapes against metal and both rubber pieces are inside the car. This is about the 6th time it’s done this – the dealer fixes it, and it usually lasts for about 2 weeks before doing this again – this time it had held up since being repaired last October, until my brother started opening the window every 15 minutes because of his flatulence problem. And the front passengers electric window doesn’t always close when you open it completely, which I also attribute excessive use due to my brothers problem.

Travel Tip #2: Don’t travel with my brother.

What would I take next time? A warm hat and warmer socks/boots for those cold mornings would be extremely useful. And possibly a more detailed map.

Overall a fantastic trip, especially for a 5 year old, who now knows that things she learns about on cartoons are actually real. Another couple of years and the twins will be old enough to come on a trip like this – that’ll be really interesting.

Now I just need to figure out how to convince her indoors that I need to do a road trip to Alaska…

I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

"I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque." – Bugs Bunny.

Day 10: Mesa Verde National Park, CO to Littlefield, TX. Trip Total 3,530 miles.

The tent is packed away for the last time, my brother moisturizes, and we start the long haul back to Texas. The initial plan is to cut down to Albuquerque NM, then try and get as far as Lubbock, TX before nightfall, so the final day won’t be too long. Although shortly after leaving the park, my brother gets excited when he sees a Wal-Mart, and has to stop to buy more $6 t-shirts that apparently cost many times that back in England. Due to the sheer excitement, he then manages to drive 30 miles past the right turn we need to take for Albuquerque before we realize we’ve missed it completely. So instead of lunch in Albuquerque, we end up at a Subway (yet again) in Santa Fe. Fortunately, this subway serves Pizza, and they are actually quite good.

From there we head east towards Clovis, past the grave of Billy the Kid, and the land flattens and is dominated by trains and grain elevators for many miles. More of the same as we enter Texas, and we get to Best Western in a town called Littlefield before dark – possibly the nicest Best Western I’ve ever stayed in. Katie is thrilled, because she gets her bath, and there is a pool for the morning.

I ask for a good place to eat at the front desk (I’m asked what kind of food, my response is “anything but Subway”), and we are directed to a little Mexican Cantina. My brother is happy, because he likes his margaritas and doesn’t get them in the UK, until we try to order and find out they don’t sell alcohol…

Back to the motel, my brother moisturizes again, and we call it a day.

Trapping Bears and the Big Dipper

Day 9: Ridgeway State Park, CO to Mesa Verde National Park, CO. Trip Total 3,028 miles.

Another night survived in a tent without a bear eating us, and for the second night in a row I manage to get my sleeping bag rolled up first try. My brother moisturizes, we manage to get everything into only two of the wheeled bins to get them back down the steep hill to the car, (which is a lot easier than going up) and Katie makes sure her name is clearly visible in the tent pad before we leave.

By lunchtime we are in Cortez, looking for somewhere for lunch that caters to vegetarians and that is not Subway. After driving the length of the town twice, we go to Subway.

After lunch we stop at a Native American gift shop, which apparently welcomes coaches according to the massive sign outside. Katie’s favorite color has now changed from purple to turquoise, so we go in looking for something turquoise for her, expecting to get fleeced. To my surprise, a very happy Katie leaves 10 minutes later with a little turquoise ring for only $4, and a huge grin on her face.

Then into the Mesa Verde National Park. This is somewhere I’ve wanted to come to for many years, but never quite got round it before. The park is pretty big, and we were pushed for time, but it was well worth the visit, and somewhere I’ll definitely go back to when I have more time.

The landscape:

We actually got to go down into some of the cliff dwellings:

Katie thought she was Dora the Explorer:

Since touring the park took much longer than expected, we decided to camp in the park overnight. More bear warnings as we register at the campsite, then just to reinforce the point, at the entrance to the campsite they park the trailer they use to transport caught bears:

The tent goes up, and Katie sees some kids and asks if she can go play with them. I tell her yes, but only if she stays where we can see her. When she’s offered s’mores, she comes back and asks permission. When the other kids get too close to the road, she stops them and moves them away from the road. I’ve never seen her so well behaved. She comes back as the sun goes down, and surprises me again: she locates the Big Dipper in the night sky. I asked her how on earth she knew about that – it was on a cartoon (either Dora or Franklin, I forget exactly what she said).

We are sitting there under a perfectly clear sky, having just seen a couple of shooting stars, when a very large deer wanders slowly into the middle of the road near the tent, and just stands there in the dark. It stands there for a couple of minutes, until a car comes round the corner. It bolts at full speed, straight towards us, missing my brother by mere feet – they are a lot bigger and more impressive close up.

This is the warmest night we’ve had, so just sat there watching the stars until it was time to sleep. Mesa Verde surprised and impressed all three of us, definately worth another visit.

Forget the map, who needs gas?

Day 8: Routt National Forest, CO to Ridgeway State Park, CO via Aspen, CO. Trip Total 2,819 miles.

My forehead is peeling. My brother says it’s because I didn’t moisturize.

In the middle of the night the wind picked up, the flapping of the tent woke us up. It also woke up something else. I don’t know if it was wolves or coyotes, but it sounded like there were hundreds of them, all around us in all directions, some close, some far away, all howling at the moon. Eventually the wind dies down, as does the howling, and we get back to sleep.

It’s now 3:00am, and Katie is shaking me, and says exactly what you don’t want to hear at 3:00am in a tent – “Daddy, I had an accident in my sleeping bag”. Especially when the tent is on a slight hill, you're both laying on an inflatable mattress, and she’s slightly uphill from you. I get her clean clothes, move her sleeping bag into the “porch” area in the tent, then her, her elephant, and her bear squeeze into my sleeping bag with me. She goes straight off to sleep. I can’t get back to sleep.

I’m up at first light, go find some more firewood and get the fire going, and wait for everyone else to wake up.

After breakfast we pack up camp and a miracle occurs – for the first time ever I manage to get my sleeping bag rolled up tight enough to fit in its bag on the first attempt! I check in with the wife, and instead of saying anything when she picked up the phone, she just simply holds the phone to her computer and plays the dueling banjos from Deliverance. This is what I have to put up with.

While driving through Steamboat (three times) the previous day, nothing jumped out at us as, so we decided to skip the 30-mile drive back to go look around. After my brother has finished moisturizing, we head south towards Aspen.

It’s a scenic drive, and by this point we are both sick with each other’s iPods, so the radio is on. The only decent channel we can find is actually playing good music – Rolling Stones, followed by the Eagles and then Steppenwolf – until my brother points out everything this station has played so far is also on my iPod. Didn’t bother me.

When we left the campsite, we had about 3/8ths of a tank of gas, so started looking for a gas station straight away. We didn’t find one, and soon we lose cell signal again. By the time we are 12 miles away from I-70, the gauge is showing empty and still no cell signal. Driving carefully, we manage to get the car to the Interstate on fumes – to a small town called Wolcott. We don’t see a gas station, so my brother runs into a small restaurant to ask where the nearest gas station is. It’s in the next town west – in Eagle. 12 miles on the Interstate, or 10 on the back road. We take the back road, hoping it’s mostly down hill. The back road runs alongside a river with numerous people white-water rafting down it, but few other cars on the road – if we run out of gas, we’ll be trying to hitch a ride on a raft.

We make it to Eagle, get gas, and a Subway for lunch for the third day in a row.

From there, heading west on I-70 is spectacular. There is a river, train track, and two sides of the interstate winding through a deep valley, crisscrossing, and going through tunnels (which Katie loves).

Once we pull off the interstate, first stop is a Wal-Mart – my brother stocks up on more t-shirts and underwear, and we get a new sleeping bag for Katie, before driving down to Aspen. A couple of hours are spent in Aspen – I unsuccessfully attempt to get an internet connection (laptop problems) while Katie and my brother look around some nice, but somewhat overpriced shops.

After getting Katie an ice-cream (and my brother moisturizes again), we double back, and then head south again until we hit Ridgeway State Park a couple of hours before sunset. It’s not until we’ve paid and pulled into the parking lot, that we realize the camp site is across a narrow bridge spanning the river, past the big bear warning sign, then half a mile up a very steep incline. They provide big-wheeled bins to haul your stuff up to the campsite, but we are still at almost 7,000 ft and it takes us 3 bin loads to get our gear to the campsite – after getting up there my resting pulse feels about 300. It’s then we realize our 13’ by 17’ tent won’t fit on the 12’ by 12’ raised pad at the site. Moving the big, heavy, metal picnic bench out of the way, we manage to squeeze the tent on the ground in front of the raised pad, with the door opening right next to where the fire is supposed to be - no fire tonight then.

Katie writes her name in giant letters in the empty raised tent pad using the heel of her shoe, we eat, and call it a night.

Who needs a good map anyway?

Day 7: Jackson Hole, WY to Routt National Forest, CO. Trip Total 2,499 miles.

First thing Katie does when she wakes up, is want to go to the pool. The first thing my brother does, is moisturize. I can’t feel what little sunburn I had anymore. It’s not warm, but the pool at the Motel is heated, so we go down there, and my brother gets in and helps her swim while I go hunting for coffee.

Today is another big driving day – over 400 miles – the plan is to head down into Colorado, and camp somewhere near Steamboat Springs. Then the next day we’ll spend the morning in Steamboat before heading on further south.

The drive south through Wyoming is uneventful; we get down to I-80 by lunchtime, and stop at another Subway for lunch. While standing in line, my brother notices two rather large white patches on his t-shirt – it’s moisturizer. He’s basically got two giant forearm prints across his t-shirt from where he folded his arms - he moisturized again before he got out of the car. I’m beginning to get concerned - can you overdose on the stuff?

After lunch, we continue south, and get into Steamboat around 5:00pm, and start looking for a campsite. We drive all the way through the town – no luck. The map we have shows a road at the north end of the town that leads to a couple of campsites, so we double back to try and find it – no luck. So we head south through town again, and stop at the Visitor Information Center. It’s shut, but there is a free guidebook. It lists campsites. We try calling the first one – the lines been disconnected. Looking at the map again, it looks like there are a couple of camp sites about 20 miles south if we keep on this road, so we decide to head south and get to one of those. By the time we find the first one, it’s almost 7:00pm. And the campsite is closed. We drive on, and get to the Rabbit Ears Pass. Looking at our map (I should probably mention the map is over 10 years old and has one page per state, so is somewhat lacking in detail). This means we’ve missed the second campsite, and there is nothing else for another hour or more, so we have to double back. Eventually we spot the missed campsite – we see some RV’s set about a mile back from the road, and a trail (marked for snowmobiles) heading back to it. This campsite has about 20 places, spread over a very large area – we find one of the few remaining empty ones, and pitch the tent, among the worst mosquito’s we’ve endured all trip. This is also the highest camp site, at about 9,500 ft.

There is a hand pump for water that fascinates Katie, so we have to go check that out.

Amazingly, despite being 30 miles from civilization, we actually have a cell signal for once. I check in with She Who Must Be Obeyed, Katie talks to her, and then I check in with my mother, who’s following our progress on a map. I inform her that her other son has just wondered off into the bear infested woods to get firewood, armed with nothing but a small axe. She starts panicking and tells me to go get him straight away.

We get the fire going, eat, and Katie recaps all the things she’s seen for real now, that she learnt about on cartoons – snow, fishing, beavers etc.

This is the first campsite that had made me nervous – part of it is the remoteness, and part is the other people. The previous camp site all had families staying there – this one Katie appears to be the only kid, and I just can’t get the dueling banjo’s from Deliverance out of my head. Some people even have Canoe’s with them. This is the first time on the trip that I would have felt safer bringing a gun with us. My brother feels similar.

Things don’t improve, when right as the sun sets, we hear a bugle being played out of nowhere – as soon as it finishes whoever played it yells something. My brother asks what was yelled – I offered it sounded like “Charge!” to me, and that the cavalry was probably charging up the hill as we speak, while they load the canons and the infantry will appear over the rise on our left flank. Both my brother and me recognized the bugle call, but couldn’t put a name to it. However the Katie claims it the “Last Post”. That sounds right – how on earth does she know that at 5? Upon returning home, we find out it was actually Taps (which is basically the American version – it was the British Army that used Last Post to signal the end of the day). What we didn't figure out is who played it, or why exactly.

Once we are sure the cavalry isn’t coming, it's off to bed to get out of the mosquitos.

Mmmm, Buffalo.

Day 6: Yellowstone National Park, WY to Jackson Hole, WY, via Cody, WY and Grand Teton National Park. Trip Total 2,067 miles.

We survive another night in the tent, and are up early in the cold, packing up camp and trying to cram everything back in the car.

I’ve got sunburned arms and forehead, Katie is fine, but my brother is worse. Or at least he's whingeing more. The plan for today is to head out of the east exit of the park and go to Cody (about an hour outside the park), then head back into Yellowstone then out the South entrance and into Grand Teton National Park. Depending on how the day goes, we may camp in the park, or given we’ve now been in a tent for 4 nights straight and Katie really wants a bath, we may make it down to Jackson Hole.

Again, we refuse to stop for buffalo, but just before we get to the park exit, there are a couple of moose grazing by the road.

We stop and take a few pictures, until they run off across the river, then we continue on towards Cody. The mountains get more rugged, and in one valley we drive through there is what looks like a Bofors gun up on a hillside. My brother doesn’t believe me when I tell him that’s most likely used to trigger avalanches in the valley, as is common practice in a number of areas in the Rockies. Either that or it’s just for display. Or hunting buffalo.

The drive to Cody is scenic, crossing a dam, going through a couple of tunnels (Katie loves going through tunnels), through valleys, with the occasional unusual piece of architecture:

Then into the historic town in Cody, whish is basically a bunch of decaying wagons, and a number of period buildings. Some are famous (like a Hole In The Wall Gang hideout), some with bullet holes, which have been relocated there from the surrounding areas to be preserved. Plus the obligatory pile of antlers.

From there we head a little deeper into Cody, and find a Super Wal-Mart. Still no cell phone signal, but they have a Super Wal-Mart. My brother gets excited because he finds some cheap T-Shirts & underwear, and goes off to find some after-sun for the sunburn.

We grab a Subway for lunch, and meet back at the car. The first thing my brother does is address his sunburn – pulling out this big jar of moisturizer. Instantly from the back seat we get “That’s a girls one! It’s got a purple lid and smells nice, so that means it’s for girls!” All illusions of a macho camping trip in bear country fly out the window. Things get worse about half an hour later, as we are driving back towards Yellowstone: My arms are hurting a little, so I decide to use a little moisturizer as a precaution. At the same time, my brother decides to apply a 3rd, or is it 4th, layer of moisturizer to his arms and face. And while this is happening Elton John comes on the radio, and my brother comments this would be a very bad time to be pulled over for speeding.

Moving on rapidly, back into Yellowstone and the buffalo, drive straight through and out the south exit, into the Tetons. The weather is a little too hazy, not a particularly good day for taking photographs of distant mountain ranges, but we make numerous stops anyway. Our first stop somewhat limits our access to the lake:

A bit further south and the road runs along the edge of the lake. It’s still too hazy but we take some pictures anyway.

A little further south and we see a bunch of cars stopped by the road, so we pull over to see if it’s another bear. It’s not:

The cell phone signal finally returns, as we keep heading south, we stop every few miles, trying to get more pictures as we pass through.

Then late in the day, we pull into Jackson Hole, and find a room at the Virginian Inn – a place I stayed on my first visit to Yellowstone seventeen years earlier. It hadn’t changed much, possibly busier due to the fact they were hosting a gun show that weekend.

By this point we are all hungry, and after several days surrounded by big animals I’m desperately craving a mixed game grill, so look for the meatiest looking place to take my veggie brother, who is still moisturizing every 30 minutes. We end up in the Silver Dollar Grill, which doesn’t have a mixed game grill, but I eventually choose the buffalo over the elk. My brother has some kind of fish, and Katie gets adventurous and goes for Mac & Cheese.

After a good dinner, we take a look around town – past the stacks of antlers in the town square, and most of the shops are still open. For a mere $19,500 you can purchase a stuffed grizzly bear. For a much more reasonable $699, you can purchase a stuffed rabbit, wearing a hat and paddling an 18 inch long wooden canoe. For $599 you can get a stuffed hare wearing a Denver Bronco’s football helmet. I am not joking. Perfect for any mantelpiece. And just about every animal (or just their heads) in between is available for a price. My brother questions who on earth would want these in their house. I tend to agree. Unless it’s a giraffe head/neck, that would be kinda entertaining with a high enough ceiling. We go in more tourist-trap shops selling overpriced souvenirs, local artwork and stuffed animals, and eventually head back to the motel, where Katie goes off for half an hour for the bath she’d been asking for all day.

Then after my brother had moisturized again, off to bed, a real bed for the first time in five nights. Wasn’t as comfortable as my sleeping bag.