Road Trip – BOOTS on the TRAIL

Saratoga & Ibex Springs (Death Valley National Park) 12-Nov-2021

2021-11-122021-12-12Posted in California, Other Adventures, U.S. National Parks & MonumentsTagged Death Valley National Park, Ibex Springs California, Road Trip, Saratoga Spring California2 Comments

We had one more day of 4×4 available to us, so we decided to make Adventure #5 a visit to Saratoga Spring and Ibex Spring at the south end of Death Valley National Park. This proved to be a day of minimal hiking and much off-road driving. We could have gotten to Saratoga with a 2WD car but a high-clearance 4×4 was a definite plus for the short, but lumpy, ride out to Ibex.

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Saline Valley (Death Valley National Park) 10-Nov-2021

2021-11-102021-11-17Posted in California, Other Adventures, U.S. National Parks & MonumentsTagged Death Valley National Park, Road Trip, Saline Valley California3 Comments

When we were tossing around possible adventures for our time in Death Valley National Park, Wayne and Diane mentioned that they’d always wanted to see Saline Valley, which is about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Furnace Creek. I had been there once before in the mid-1980s; The LovedOne had never been there. Saline Valley is one of the most remote and hard to reach places in the park. While you can make it there and back in a 2WD vehicle (bring extra tires!), a high-clearance 4×4 increases your chances of not spending many unplanned hours stuck in the desert. Since we had access to a 4×4, why not go for a visit?

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Lighthouse Peak ~ Palo Duro Canyon (Texas) 16-May-2017

2017-05-162017-06-02Posted in Hiking, TexasTagged Canyon Texas, Day Hiking, Grand Canyon National Park, Hiking, Lighthouse Peak Texas, ME2 backpacks, Palo Duro State Park Texas, Road Trip, Texas

Palo Duro Canyon State Park Texas

Palo Duro Canyon is located in the West Texas Panhandle just east of Canyon and south of Amarillo. It’s the second-largest canyon in the United States – roughly 120 miles long, with an average width of 6 miles, and a depth of between 820 and 1,000 feet. It’s been called “The Grand Canyon of Texas” both for its size and for its dramatic geological features, including the multicolored layers of rock and steep mesa walls similar to those in the (real) Grand Canyon. Despite all this grandness, we’d never heard of it until the LovedOne stumbled upon it during one of her internet rambles. Backpacker magazine then ran a story on it in their March 2017 issue. Looked fascinating. So we made plans for a hiking roadtrip to go see it for ourselves.

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Death Valley Remembered (February 2017)

2017-02-102021-11-17Posted in California, Montage, U.S. National Parks & MonumentsTagged Aguereberry Point California, California, Charcoal Kilns, Darwin Falls California, Death Valley National Park, Ghost Rider sculpture, Road Trip, Telescope Peak, Wildrose Canyon

“…the first impression remains a just one. Despite variety, most of the surface of Death Valley is dead … a land of jagged salt pillars, crackling and tortured crusts of mud, sunburnt gravel bars the color of rust, rocks and boulders of metallic blue naked even of lichen.” ~ Edward Abbey

“No place is ever as bad as they tell you it’s going to be.” ~ Chuck Thompson

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U.S. Route 20 Across the U.S.: Days 9 & 10 (October 2016)

2016-10-312019-10-19Posted in Other AdventuresTagged Bend Oregon, Boise Idaho, Ketchum Idaho, Newport Oregon, Oregon Badlands Wilderness, Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), Road Trip, Three Sisters Wilderness, U.S. Route 20

Ketchum, Idaho to Bend, Oregon (~470 miles)

We got an early start from Ketchum and had US20 pretty much all to ourselves as we went west toward its merge with I-84 at Mountain Home, Idaho. US20 departs from I-84 from time to time between Mountain Home and Ontario, Oregon but we just stayed with I-84 through Boise, Idaho to Ontario. Boise has become an increasingly interesting place to visit but not so much so early on a Sunday morning, so we skipped it this time. After Boise, we crossed the Snake River after almost exactly 3,000 miles of driving and were home again in Oregon! We picked-up US20 in Ontario, went through Vale (where the rain started up again), along the Malheur River to Drinkwater Pass, and then on to Burns, Oregon. We’ve been to Burns numerous times over the years but have never warmed to it. It’s at the intersection of two major U.S. highways (20 and 395) and is the gateway to a major bird watching wildlife area, but seems uninterested in offering much more than one good hotel, one decent sit-down restaurant (the redoubtable Pine Room – good steaks!), one coffee shop, and [now] one brew pub (but no bookstore). All but fast food was closed on Sunday anyway, so we settled for Subway. The long stretch of US20 between Burns and Bend has few services and no towns of any size, making it the most remote leg of our entire journey. But traffic was light, speed limits pushed by all, and we were in Bend in time for a coffee at Thump, a stroll around the touristy downtown, and, later, a dinner at Brickhouse (good but possibly over-priced). Bend is certainly no longer the dusty little town on the edge of Oregon’s eastern desert that I first visited back when dinosaurs walked the earth.

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U.S. Route 20 Across the U.S.: Days 7 & 8 (October 2016)

2016-10-292019-10-19Posted in Other AdventuresTagged Casper Wyoming, Cody Wyoming, Ernest Hemingway, Ketchum Idaho, Road Trip, Thermopolis Wyoming, U.S. Route 20, Wind River Range Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park

Chadron, Nebraska to Cody, Wyoming (~400 miles)

The day got off to somewhat of a clear start – just some high, thin clouds – as we went west from Chadron. Just beyond Chadron is Fort Robinson State Park, an historic cavalry fort that we’d visited before but we got to too early to visit this time. After traversing miles of grassland dotted with cows, we crossed the Wyoming border at Van Tassell and joined I-25 at Orin, Wyoming. We could finally see real mountains – the southern end of the Wind River Range – on the far horizon. We took I-25 into Casper, Wyoming, along the route of four trails that fueled the westward expansion: Pony Express, Oregon Trail, California Trail, and Mormon Pioneer Trail. The speed limit on I-25 is 80 miles per hour (not that anyone felt they had to go THAT slow…), so we reached historic downtown Casper in time for a large, amazing breakfast at Sherrie’s Place. We then tried to walk off some of our meal by ambling over to Wind City Books to smell the cellulose. US20 departs from I-25 in Casper and we took it northwest to Shoshoni and then into the Wind River Canyon, where we had to wait out yet another construction delay. Then it was past the largest mineral hot spring in the world at Thermopolis, Wyoming and on toward our hotel in Cody, Wyoming. The weather had started to fail us before Shoshoni and by the time we reached Cody, it was raining again. Cody is the eastern gateway to Yellowstone Park so its downtown is more than a little touristy but we enjoyed a visit to Legends Bookstore and a good dinner (buffalo ravioli, yum!) at Adriano’s before succumbing to classic 1930’s monster movies on cable in our hotel room.

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U.S. Route 20 Across the U.S.: Days 5 & 6 (October 2016)

2016-10-272019-10-19Posted in Other AdventuresTagged Chadron Nebraska, Chadron State College, Charles Mound Illinois, Chicago Illinois, Road Trip, U.S. Route 20, Ulysses S. Grant Historic Home, Williams Iowa

Chicago, Illinois to Williams, Iowa (~320 miles)

The remnants of a Pacific tropical storm had finally reached the Mid-West and we awoke to a driving rain storm – and then spent the morning driving west through it. We weren’t allowed any respite from the rain until we reached the Ulysses S. Grant Home State Historic Site in Galena, Illinois. We stopped there primarily (OK, they had toilets too) to recognize the U.S. President that, despite a scandal-plagued adminstration, had the wisdom to create, in 1872, Yellowstone National Park. We were here years ago to hike the Illinois state highpoint, Charles Mound (1,235 feet), which is northeast of Galena. Then we crossed the Mississippi River into Dubuque, Iowa and stopped for lunch at Caroline’s Restaurant (very good fish tacos), after which we indulged ourselves on bound cellulose at nearby River Lights Books. West of Dubuque US20 is, for all practical purposes, a freeway lined with vast fields of corn and large silos to store it in. We flew along and made it to our hotel in Williams, Iowa (at the intersection of US20 and I-35, “The Crossroads of Iowa”) well before dark. Williams is small (population 344) and the only place to eat was the Boondocks Cafe (which served a marginal, but filling, dinner) across from the hotel. The Boondocks (a cafe, hotel, and gas station) clearly dated to the early days of US20, so we got to experience some of that nostalgia close-up. Unfortunately, a corporate Flying J truck stop had just opened a few blocks away and it seemed to be drawing all the truck traffic away from the Boondocks – so the future of this bit of old US20 may be limited.

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U.S. Route 20 Across the U.S.: Days 3 & 4 (October 2016)

2016-10-252019-10-19Posted in Other AdventuresTagged Chicago Illinois, Lake Erie, Norwalk Ohio, Road Trip, Seneca Falls New York, Tully New York, U.S. Route 202 Comments

Day 3: Tully, New York to Norwalk, Ohio (~399 miles)

It rained a little overnight but by morning it looked like we’d have another nice day like we’d had in Massachussetts. But patchy clouds had rolled over by the time we got to the Finger Lakes Region, with its properous little hamlets of Auburn, Seneca Falls, and Geneva. West of there, US20 alternated between two- and four-lane road and we made good time to Lancaster, New York, just east of Buffalo, New York. The rolling hills, small towns with their classic old houses, and forests in Fall colors made this a particularly attractive stretch of US20. We had lunch at the Broadway Deli (very good soup and salad!) in Lancaster and then followed US20 – slowly – through Buffalo’s eastern and southern suburbs. Then it was along the shore of Lake Erie (which you can’t see from US20) and into Pennsylvania. We entered Erie, Pennsylvania as its schools were letting out and rush hour was beginning, so we crawled through it, hitting stop light after stop light. We’d gotten through Springfield (MA) and Albany (NY) on the weekend, so this was our first experience with regular, weekday urban traffic on US20. The glacial pace we were forced to assume made us question the practicality of going urban on US20.

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U.S. Route 20 Across the U.S.: Days 1 & 2 (October 2016)

2016-10-232021-10-29Posted in Other AdventuresTagged Berkshires, Hancock Shaker Village MA, Marlborough MA, Pittsfield MA, Road Trip, Tully New York, U.S. Route 20

Day 1: Boston, Massachusetts to Marlborough, Massachusetts (~30 miles)

Our flights on Delta from home to Boston’s Logan Airport were utterly boring; that is, they were perfect. No fellow passengers going crazy over seat-backs or armrests, no smoke in the cabin, no being bounced by weather, no flight delays, no screaming babies, nothing – just take-off, fly, eat small pretzels, land. Ahhh. We’d used some work-life accumulated reward points to take the edge off a one-way Hertz rental, which was waiting for us at the airport. Boston’s aggressive traffic is infamous but, on a Saturday night, it wasn’t too bad (and there was no game at Fenway), so, after a little kerfuffle with I-90, we reached the start of US20 West in Kenmore Square as night fell, tagged it, and then pressed on west.

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U.S. Route 20 Across the U.S.: Start (October 2016)

2016-10-222019-10-19Posted in Other AdventuresTagged Boston MA, Marlborough MA, Road Trip, U.S. Route 20

U.S. Route 20

A few years ago, I read Pete Davies’ book American Road (2002) about Lieutenant Colonel (later General and President) Eisenhower’s 62-day expediton in 1919 to coax 69 military motor vehicles some 3,250 miles from the White House to San Francisco, on the narrow agglomerations of dirt, mud, rock, and sand that laughingly passed for transcontinental “roads” in that bygone era. It was this experience that apparently made him such a strong champion for the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, the enabling legislation for today’s transcontinental system of controlled-access highways (freeways). This book started us thinking that, someday, it would be fun to do our own transcontinental road trip (but in less than 62 days!) [in truth, this whole road trip thing is quintessentially American, and for us traces way, way back to Jerry & Renny Russel’s On the Loose (1967) or possibly Kerouac’s On the Road (1957)].

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Oregon Coast Wilderness Areas 8/9-Jan-2016

2016-01-092021-12-01Posted in Hiking, Oregon Coast, Oregon Wilderness AreasTagged Copper-Salmon Wilderness, Cummins Creek Wilderness, Day Hiking, Drift Creek Wilderness, Florence Oregon, Grassy Knob Wilderness, Hiking, Newport Oregon, Oregon, Oregon Coast, Road Trip, Rock Creek Wilderness, Waldport Oregon

Of the 47 established (plus 3 proposed) federal wilderness areas in Oregon, we’ve hiked in all the better known ones (Mount Hood, Three Sisters, Badger Creek, etc.) but there are some that have thus far escaped the tramp of our boots. Two of the 47 (Oregon Islands and Three Arch Rocks) are closed to public entry (and would require amphibious operations even if they were open). So we decided to plan some trips to hike (even just a little) in those that are hikeable or at least reachable. Seizing on a partial break in January’s usually soggy weather, we headed out to visit the five wilderness areas along Oregon’s coast: Drift Creek, Cummins Creek, Rock Creek, Copper-Salmon, and Grassy Knob. UPDATE: In 2019, the trail-free Devils Staircase Wilderness was added to these.

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