Driving Trip in the Western United States

For 30 days beginning June 23, 2005, I embarked on a driving trip across 10 different states in the western part of the United States. In total, I covered 7,355 miles, reached an elevation of 12,183 feet, experienced the hottest day on record in Las Vegas (117 degrees), visited 28 National Parks/Monuments and had an awesome experience.

What follows is my daily travelogue with accompanying pictures.

West - Day One - June 23, 2005

Having flown back from Ireland only two days earlier, I knew it was ambitious to try to depart San Francisco on Thursday but I managed to get out the door by 3:15 pm and still hit tremendous traffic almost to Sacramento. I drove 221 miles in total to Reno this first day and with the remnants of jet lag still hovering, was glad to reach my destination and get a good night's sleep.

West - Day Two - June 24, 2005

I woke up to a beautifully clear blue sky to embark on the big drive across Nevada. I decided to take Route 50, the "loneliest road in America". It is a lovely two lane highway with more scenery than I expected - beautiful vistas with mountains in the distances and many turns in the road. The temperature hovered in the low 80's so fairly comfortable. Towns were few and far between (Fallon, Austin, Eureka, Ely) so I made sure my gas tank never drifted too low. Over the course of the day, I listened to my first 'book on tape' - "Good Grief" by Lolly Winston. It is an interesting story that finds the humorous side of the grief experienced by the loss of a loved one. It takes place in San Jose and has some local observations that those who live in Northern California will enjoy.



Towards the late afternoon, I arrived at the Great Basin National Park, one of the least visited parks in the U.S. It is a spectacular desert area at the base of Wheeler Peak. I drove the scenic drive up over 10,000 feet with the late afternoon sun cascading longer shadows across the road. Since I missed the last tour of Lehman Caves, I purchased a ticket for the first tour the next morning at 9 am. Driving into Baker, NV, I arrived at my destination for the evening - the quaint Silverjack Motel. After driving 412 miles over the course of 7 hours, I was glad to stop for the night.

West - Day Three - June 25, 2005

It was another beautiful morning waking up in the desert. After a quick breakfast, I headed back up to Great Basin NP to take the tour of Lehman Caves. Having recently been to Carlsbad Caverns, I found this cave to be much smaller which made the experience more intimate. We saw beautiful cave formations - the standard stalactites, stalagmites, and soda straws - but also found two formations that are rarer in caves - shields and helictites. They don't know how shields are formed since they haven't found any that are still growing to be able to observe what is happening. They were fairly large and look just like a shield.

I finally departed to start the drive across Utah at 10:30 am PDT which rapidly became 11:30 am MDT when I crossed the border. I followed Route 50 through Delta and Salina before veering south on Route 24 towards Capitol Reef National Park. Again, the scenery was more remarkable than I expected it to be so there was always something interesting to look at and lots of twists and turns, not just straight highway (especially since I was not on the interstate). The weather today was more noteworthy....there were major storms in the area and they could be seen over great distances. I managed to avoid most of them until I approached Capitol Reef NP. I could see the major lightning strikes ahead in the distance and while I never ended up right in the middle of the storm, I could see the after effects as I drove through - lots of branches on the road, etc.


Capitol Reef is a giant fold in the earth that goes for more than 100 miles. It's hard to appreciate this from the ground but the aerial pictures in the visitor center were impressive. The colors here were dramatic - more so than even over in Arches and Canyonlands. It was a bit of a challenge to drive while wanting to look out the side windows constantly. The scenery was even more dramatic with the stormy skies above. Interestingly, the storms moved to the north so I didn't have to deal with rain while taking pictures.

From here, I worked my way continuing east on Route 24 to where it meets Route 70 and took that briefly to the turnoff to Moab. Having just been in Moab last fall for the bike trip I did, it was a familiar and comfortable place to reach. I didn't arrive until 7:30 pm so a long day of driving but with interesting stops along the way. And I began working through my second 'book on tape' - Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat". Drove a total of 419 miles this day. Somehow, I drove around the storms but they reached Moab as I was eating dinner at a restaurant in town - big claps of thunder and when I left, rushing water in the streets.

West - Day Four - June 26, 2005

It was a glorious morning in Moab so I couldn't resist driving up to Arches NP. I had wanted to drive out to the end of the park drive on my previous trip but wasn't able to so took advantage of being there this time. I began a brief hike out at the end of the drive to Tunnel Arch but couldn't resist going farther....

...to Landscape Arch. Spectacular views. However, as a result, I didn't really hit the road until almost 1 pm.

The next stop was Colorado National Monument, a gorgeous view driving along the plateau bery high up with thunderstorms sparking all around.

Back on Route 50, I then headed to Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP, an amazingly deep canyon resulting from uplift and erosion of volcanic ash way back when. The sound of the raging river at the bottom was louder than one would expect. Who knew this was there. At this point, it was 5 pm and I had planned to reach Colorado Springs by the end of the day. Given that it was 5 hours away, I changed my plans and drove to Salida (2 hours away) where I stayed for the night.

Drove a total of 375 miles today including going up over the Continental Divide at 11, 312 feet.

West - Day Five - June 27, 2005

The first portion of my journey ended today when I reached Denver to meet Libby, Noah, Justin and Katie. It took about 3 hours to drive to Denver from Salida so I arrived in plenty of time to meet them at the airport. After packing up the car (everything fit!), we headed north to Cheyenne, a fairly easy drive on the interstate though lots of traffic. I'm looking forward to getting back onto the secondary roads tomorrow.

We arrived at our hotel with plenty of time to eat dinner....

...and take a dip in the pool and relax and unwind. After driving another 295 miles today, my car has now logged a total of 1,723 miles since leaving San Francisco.

West - Day Six - June 28, 2005

We took our time this morning to hit the road after shopping for supplies and gas. Heading north up I-25 from Cheyenne, we turned off onto Route 26 East, north on Route 85, and east on Route 20. We decided it would be fun to drive into Nebraska and then head north from there via Route 71 through Hot Springs. The scenery was captivating for everyone in the car. Nebraska was lots of green prairie grass on rolling landscape. Reminded me of Ireland but with only one or two shades of green rather than the 40 shades we saw driving around over there. As we headed north, mounds of rocks and then hills and plateaus began to appear. We could see forever in all directions - big storms off to the west, blue sky to the east. We seemed to be right in between with pretty windy conditions at one point kicking up the dust in dramatic fashion. Finally, we crossed into South Dakota and entered Wind Cave National Park. By this time, it was around 5 pm so the sun was starting to dip lower in the sky. There weren't many cars on the road so we were able to stop multiple times to see the prairie dogs popping out of their holes and barking at us...Noah (8) won the prize for first spotting them but once he did, they seemed to be everywhere (see above).

Libby spotted the first bison and from there, we saw several at different spots through the park.

Along the way, we were also visited by prong-horns and mule deer on the side of the road.

From Wind Cave, it was a longer drive up to Keystone where we stayed for the night than we thought so we were all tired and hungry by the time we got there. Along the drive, we got our first glimpse of Mt. Rushmore and were eagerly awaiting the next day to see it in the morning sunlight. Drove a total of 297 miles this day.

West - Day Seven - June 29, 2005

We awoke to cloudy, rainy skies this morning. We got an early start since we needed to drive all the way to Jewel Cave (about 50 miles on windy roads) to get there by 9:30 am for our cave tour. It was a good choice to be in the cave as it seemed to get rainier and rainier the farther west we went. The cave tour was awesome - very different from past cave experiences though. It's the third longest cave as of now at over 132 miles long. We mostly saw boxwork formations which are rarer and even a strip of "bacon", but few of the traditional stalactities and stalagmites. The kids did great walking up and down all the steps and standing in the pitch dark when they turned the lights out.

After the tour, we went on a short hike near the visitor's center and then..

..headed to Crazy Horse Memorial. This carving is on private property so had much more of a commercial feel. They only unveiled the face back in 1998 and have a lot of work to go. Timing for completion will depend on weather and funding. From there, we went to the hotel and settled in, went for dinner, and crashed. We were all exhausted.

West - Day Eight - June 30, 2005

Today, we slept in a bit and then got going to Badlands National Park. It's about an hour and a half drive east from Keystone. We decided to take the back roads again (Route 44) and saw virtually no one on the road. We got there by noon and spent the next four hours doing several different short hikes. The scenery was breathtaking. The landscape was open (no shade), dry and very hot so we had a long day before we knew it. It was also a day of kids "bugging" each other a bit more though Noah was definitely the good role model and therefore got to go in the pool back at the hotel while the others tried to fall asleep. I must admit that I was really tired that night so it was catching up to me. I hoped the next day would be a new day!

West - Day Nine - July 1, 2005

Well, overnight, I developed a head cold so it was a tough night and I was tired this morning. We called Mom in the hospital (hip replacement surgery) to say hi. All went well and she was moved to rehabilitation on Saturday. Today, we headed back to Wind Cave to do a cave tour. We were able to get in right away which was perfect. This cave has 95% of the boxwork formations known in the world. The kids were a little antsier today but managed not to touch any formations. We've been doing the junior ranger programs at each park and as of the end of this day, they each had 4 badges (Jewel Cave, Badlands, Wind Cave and Mt Rushmore) which they proudly wore on their shirts.

At Wind Cave, the park ranger even took their picture and posted it on their website (http://www.nps.gov/wica/pphtml/forkids.html). Noah is eight, Justin is six and Katie is three.
From Wind Cave, we drove through Custer State Park and came upon all kinds of weather - sun, rain, hail, fog, thunder. This was the first time the kids have seen hail which was about the size of large peas. We were planning to do a hike up to a firetower for the view but when we got there, the combination of thunder nearby and a bison walking right towards our car (see above) kept us in the car. We had a grand time watching the bison up close with no one else around.
In the late afternoon, we visited Mt. Rushmore, saw the movie, took some pictures, lost and then found (phew!) Katie's pig. A long day which I was feeling with my cold so they dropped me back at the hotel to rest a bit while they ate dinner.

West - Day Ten - July 2, 2005

We tried to get an early start to drive up route 385 and across 14 to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. It's an amazing formation that stands out dramatically relative to everything else in the area.

We hiked the 1.3 mile trail that circles around the base, working on the junior ranger program which involved looking for wildlife. All three kids earned their junior ranger badge here. There were quite a few climbers up on the rock as they had just opened it for climging on July 1st. From there, we drove the straight shot on I-90 west to Sheriden (300 miles in total) and stayed at the Motel 6 after finding a dinner of pancakes at the Country Kitchen.

West - Day Eleven - July 3, 2005

Another big day of driving - 340 miles. We left Sheriden and worked our way along Rte 14 and 14A to Lovell and then up 310 to Bridger, MT, down 72, across 308 to 212 and the Bear Tooth Scenic Highway. Unfortunately, we didn't check for road closures ahead of time (lesson learned) and found that it was closed for construction. So, we backtracked to 72 and took it down to Cody, WY and then followed 14 west into the east entrance of Yellowstone. This route was also under construction, typically closed every night from 8 pm to 8 am but was open since it was the holiday weekend. In any event, we worked our way to Grant Village and checked in for the night. Our lodge was right on Yellowstone Lake. The skies were clear, the lake was still and the surroundings were peaceful. After dinner by the lake, we got back to our room early enough to play a game of the National Parks memory game which everyone enjoyed.

West - Day Twelve - July 4, 2005

This was our day to focus on Grand Teton National Park so we drove down to Jenny Lake for a boat ride across the lake and a 2 mile hike up to Inspiration Point. Everyone (including Katie) hiked the entire 2 miles and took turns using the hiking sticks. Awesome views from the trail as well as in the valley looking up at the mountains with clear blue skies beyond. It was clear after the hike that the smartest thing we could do was go to the hotel at Jackson Lake and chill out. We ordered "take out" from the restaurant and watched a Pokemon dvd while we ate! Later in the evening, we drove down to Jackson (a good 45 minute drive each way) to watch their fireworks for the 4th of July. Launched from the side of Snow King mountain, they were great and lasted a full half hour til 10:30 pm. Justin's favorite firework was the multi-colored ring. Katie woke up enough to see about 10 minutes worth of fireworks. A late night for Libby and me but well worth it.

West - Day Thirteen - July 5, 2005

The late night progressed into a late start in the morning. We didn't actually leave Jackson Lake until after noon. After sleeping in, we went to breakfast which took forever, shopped a bit, took some pictures and basically couldn't get motivated or organized to leave...we needed that. Once we got on the road, we headed up to Canyon Lodge in Yellowstone, our hotel for the night. We stopped to hike at the mud pots in West Thumb - amazing blues and oranges, smelly sulfur, hot vapors rising and bubbling water everywhere. Along the drive, we spotted several types of wildlife including elk, bison, pronghorns, geese, a bald eagle and more. The kids were getting to be good at spotting the animals as we drove along.
After an early dinner at the lodge, we drove out to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We stopped at many of the lookouts, did a couple of walks, spotted another bald eagle here and had a good long time to watch it relatively up close. It was spectacular in the later afternoon/early evening sunlight. And the crowds were gone though the bugs were out in force. Another late evening which manifested itself in a Katie meltdown. So, while I played the memory game with Noah and Justin, Katie had to go right to bed (she was not happy about this!).

West- Day Fourteen - July 6, 2005

This was a big day for wildlife. We started by driving from Canyon Lodge to Mammoth Hot Springs. Along the way, as I was driving, a large animal was looming in the distance on the road. I pulled to a stop, along with many cars behind me as we watched a very large bison charging down the middle of the street. It ran right past Katie's window and was definitely one of our most noteworthy wildlife experiences. We've seen lots of bison throughout Yellowstone but all the other ones have been lazily grazing on the side of the road or in the meadows. This one was really moving. Onwards to Tower Falls (above),

we had heard that this was the area where we might spot a bear. Well, twice along the way, we came upon the traffic jams that usually signal wildlife and found that everyone had stopped to watch a bear but each time it had meandered off right before we got there. Ugh! After hiking at the falls, we stopped at the Petrified Tree. On the way out, we came upon our third traffic jam. But this time, we actually saw the black bear lounging in the shade under a tree. A beautiful creature.
Back in Mammoth, we had a picnic lunch and went to the ranger program on bears at 2 pm so the kids could get their ranger badges. The program at Yellowstone is very long and comprehensive with lots of work to get done so Noah was so excited when he finished that we rushed in to get his badge right then and there (it is a patch with a wolf claw on it - really cool). Justin and Katie still had work to do. We did a quick walk on the boardwalks at the hot springs ...
... and then focused on driving down to Old Faithful where we were staying for the night to make our 5:30 dinner reservation at the Old Faithful Inn. We got there with 15 minutes to spare!

After dinner, we watched Old Faithful erupt...it's not as "faithful" as it used to be but still puts on a good show. I was amazed at hor built up the area around Old Faithful was. My last visit had been before all the development since the 1988 fires.

West - Day Fifteen - July 7, 2005

Today was our biggest driving day to get from Old Faithful down to Cheyenne - 460 miles. Before we left, we stopped at the ranger station so Justin and Katie could get their junior ranger patches with bear claws on them. In total, they got junior ranger badges/patches at six different parks during the trip. We drove for a solid 9 hours and the kids did great. After a quick dinner at IHOP, we went in the pool and played a game before bed.

Over the course of this leg of the trip with Libby, Noah, Justin and Katie, we visited 7 National Parks/Monuments (Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Devil's Tower, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons) and saw numerous wildlife including charging bison, black bear, bald eagle, pronghorns, elk, prairie dogs and mule deer. A great time was had by all!

West - Day Sixteen - July 8, 2005

We got up early in Cheyenne this morning to pack up and drive to Denver International Airport. We arrived in plenty of time and early enough so they could get seats near each other. Once they went through security, I left and drove to find the Saab dealership in Denver to check on a problem we had with the gearbox as we ended our long drive the night before. We only had it happen once and decided it was probably the heat from the converter we had plugged into the cigarette lighter to use the laptop computer. In any event, I got the names of dealers along the way back to SF in case I continue to have a problem. From there, I drove to Colorado Springs for the night. Arrived early enough to be able to do laundry and generally regroup. It was definitely sad and lonely without a car full of people with me. My head cold was still lingering too which I'm sure was due to the altitude and dry air.

West - Day Seventeen - July 9, 2005

I took it easy in the morning and didn't leave until checkout at noon. First priority was to find a car wash to get the inside vacuumed out and start fresh. Once I did that, I decided to drive up to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, a bit west of Colorado Springs past Pike's Peak. Very interesting location with more fossils dating back 30+ million years ago than anywhere. No dinosaur bones but lots of insects and petrified redwood trees. The skies were very stormy with lightning flashing so I couldn't hike around much but listened to a ranger program while I was there. On the way back towards Colorado Springs, I stopped at the Cog Railway that climbs up Pike's Peak. Unfortunately, with my cold, I didn't think it would be smart to go up to 14,000 feet. People coming down said it was snowing at the top.

From there, I drove down to Pueblo to stay for the night. Again, tried to take it easy a bit. There were wildfires burning just west of Pueblo (the Mason fires) that created dramatic skies with the smoke but didn't impact the city directly.

West - Day Eighteen - July 10, 2005

Again, I took it easy this morning and didn't leave until closer to noon. I drove down I-25 to route 160 west across to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, just designated as a NP last September. As I drove north into the park, sand dunes appeared on the horizon, just in front of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range (including two 14k+ peaks). It's the oddest thing - a beach in the middle of the mountains. The sand is brown (compared to White Sands NM in New Mexico) with a creek running in front of it so it seems to be a big attraction for the locals on the weekends. I hiked part way up the dunes and decided that was enough - at an elevation of over 8,000 feet, I didn't want to push it too much. I stayed at the quaint Great Sand Dunes Lodge just outside the park and had a relaxing evening watching the sun set.

West - Day Nineteen - July 11, 2005

Today, I got up early and hit the road - a big day of driving (393 miles). I ended up driving through the middle of the state to Rocky Mountain NP and beyond to Loveland for the evening. The route took me up Routes 17, 285 and 24 to I-70 briefly, and then up Route 40 to 34 through the park. Much of the drive was up in high elevation and was gorgeous all along the way. Crystal clear blue skies, green mountains with snowcapped peaks, little traffic. In Rocky Mountain NP, the road goes up to an elevation of 12,183 feet through the tundra landscape - spectacular! So much for avoiding Pike's Peak. Along the way, I listened to a book on tape - "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. Interesting commentary on the current state of the world.