RealImaginaryWest 2024 Day 1—We’re Finally Back

It’s been a while since I kept a trip journal, but here we go again! I enjoy writing these, but the past few years have been…crazy…to say the least. We have still taken the trips, but we have both been so emotionally exhausted from COVID and losing Becky’s mom that I haven’t kept a journal. I have also had some health problems that have dampened my energy quite a bit. So rather than focusing energy on sharing our trips, we’ve focused on just decompressing and living more in the moment.

So this trip breaks some new ground for us by way of old ground.

Last year we finally made it to Texas outside of the Panhandle along Old Historic Route 66, and obscure reaches between Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Lubbock. I got my first taste of Texas barbecue—consider me hooked! And who knew the TexMex would also be great? We also had plans to camp at Big Bend National Park way out in West Texas, but we nixed it because it was May, and that’s the start of the tropical stormy rainy season. We will be returning to a hopefully dryer Texas to see more of Austin and the Hill Country to the West on the way to Big Bend, which will be our 44th U.S. national park.

In October 2021 we finally made it to the I-10 corridor to see Saguaro, White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks. We won’t visit those national parks this time, but we will see more sights along the I-10 corridor in Southern New Mexico and Arizona before heading up to Sedona and Las Vegas.

Finally, we will work our way up to one of our favorite campgrounds in our favorite national parks—Devils Garden Campground at Arches National Park in Southern Utah. I haven’t made a final decision on whether we’ll keep all 4 nights of our reservation or if we’ll give the first night back so we can spend a day working through Zion National Park and maybe stopping at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

From Arches we will cross the Rockies in Colorado in fall 😬 where hopefully there will be no snow…as we spend a night with Becky’s sister and brother-in-law in Denver before spending a night either in Missouri or Iowa on the way home.

We got our start late yesterday, about 7:25pm Eastern Time. Our goal was to make it to a rest area around Effingham, Illinois for the night. Thankfully we did so around 1:15am Central Time. Why did we opt to spend a few hours sleeping in our car over sleeping in a hotel? Well, on the first night of our trips, we really only sleep and get right back on the road at sunrise…and hotels are astronomically expensive right now. So why spend $100, give or take, on a bed for a few hours when you can spend $0 and not have to unpack?

Speaking of cars, we aren’t in one of our little hatchbacks. We typically rent a larger sedan with a trunk—it gives us more room for our stuff, it gives more cover for our stuff with the trunk, and it puts the 6-7,000 miles of our trips on their car instead of ours for a pretty reasonable price. However, we had a terrible rental car experience for our trip last fall—that’s a whole other story about mechanical and customer service issues—but it has left us a bit traumatized after YEARS of great experiences. For this trip we have a basic but comfortable 2025 Nissan Altima. So far it has been mechanically sound, thank goodness, and it’s getting the great fuel economy we love. I swear they’ve shrunk the trunk though…our stuff just doesn’t fit as well as I remember…which is odd to me.

So that’s the start of our journey…next we’re on to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home in Mansfield, Missouri. Whats funny is we started our very first #RealImaginaryWest road trip with Laura…how fitting we start this trip, almost 10 years later with her.

RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 5—A Grand Geyser Tour of Yellowstone National Park

Getting Started

We both woke up for our own reasons around 5am this morning. (You can probably guess what they were.) My pad was deflated again, so I did something about that when Becky got up. Sadly for me, I was too warm in the cold, and sweat so much that I think it saved me an earlier trip to the restroom. Sadly for Becky, she did not stay comfortably warm despite her best efforts. Becky tried to catch some more Zs while I tried to catch up on my writing since I knew it was unlikely I’d fall asleep again.

Norris Geyser Basin

At 6am we were both awake and I asked Becky if she was up for getting out early to beat the crowds. She said OK, so by 6:30 we were on our way to Norris Geyser Basin. The entire drive was foggy and mysterious, mainly because of the cold morning air and all of the hot steamy water in the park. We couldn’t see very far ahead of us in Gibbon Meadows and the entire Norris area was shrouded in fog.

Norris Geyser Basin is one of the most popular attractions in the park, and it has extremely limited parking (as do most things in Yellowstone). We definitely made the right move coming early, since we snagged the very closest parking space to the trail into the geysers while the lot was still mostly empty.

Steamboat Geyser

My first thought when we arrived was to check on Steamboat Geyser, the park’s and the world’s most powerful, topping over 350 feet during major eruptions that can last for days. Norris is almost a full thousand feet higher in elevation, so there was ice on the boardwalk leading to Steamboat. I hadn’t considered what this actually meant until we got close enough to the geyser to hear it bellowing water and steam! Sure enough, Steamboat began a major eruption at 10:23pm last night that was still going on this morning!!! People who stayed at Norris Campground a mile away last night said they could hear it when it blew! Even though it wasn’t hitting 300 feet when we saw it, it was still pushing water up exceptionally high and in exceptional volume. What a treat!

A large geyser erupting with hot water and huge plume of steam.
Yellowstone National Park’s Steamboat Geyser, the world’s largest, during a major eruption that began the night before.

A huge plume of steam rises from a geyser.
Steamboat bellows an enormous amount of steam during a major eruption.

Continue reading RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 5—A Grand Geyser Tour of Yellowstone National Park

RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 4—Our Return to Yellowstone

Waking In Wyoming

Bridgegate

Last night was not my best sleep. The white noise from the river running was wonderful when I was awake, but too loud and too much like howling wind, so I woke up after only short bursts of slumber. I wish I’d put in my earplugs, I think they would have helped. To top it off, my pad deflated, which just made the bad situation with my back worse.

While the humidity was not much indication, this was our first night at altitude, as Ayres Natural Bridge sits at about 5,000 feet. Usually it’s pretty dry here, but the forecast dew point was actually close to our overnight low. Thankfully, though, dew wasn’t too bad a problem as our tent was dry on top. Since we’re now rather high, it’s time for the peeing to begin, as we have to drink ample water to stay hydrated.

So now you know what motivated me to get up at 6am. After this, I thought about the park gate—didn’t it say they lock the gate between certain hours? Sure enough, the checkin slip says the gate is *locked* from 8pm to 8am—and my notes indicated we needed to leave by 7am! So does that mean we’re stuck here until 8??? Since I didn’t feel a bit like trying to get more sleep and I didn’t know if I should wake Becky up, I needed to investi-gate!

Investi-gate

I didn’t want to leave Becky without the car or wake her up, so I decided just to hoof my way to the gate and determine the situation before proceeding. I guess my attempts to get into better shape before we left paid off, since I had hardly any trouble at all hiking the 1/2 mile or so uphill at 5,000 feet to the gate. Turns out it’s electric, and a car parked in front will trigger it—so we can leave anytime we want—fantastic! Now to go get back to Becky and start packing up camp.

By the way it was a beautiful morning, even though a bit overcast. The clouds and the colored light of the rising sun really made the mountain in the distance to the Southeast look dramatic! My hike also caused me to cross paths with several creatures, including a big black beetle and several rabbits.

Breaking Camp

By the time I returned, Becky was already astir and ready to help break camp. We got everything put together by 7am, but I had to take advantage of the much brighter light to get some photos and video before we left…which didn’t happen until about 7:20 or so.

Pit Stop In Casper

We stopped just inside Casper for gas, mostly so I could clean the windshield and of course, pee again. I really picked the wrong gas station though…an older gentleman stood outside the restroom…and there was a handwritten “OUT OF ORDER” sign on the men’s room door. He sheepishly went into the women’s room, and then came out saying something about the flapper on the toilet…oh man. I walk in, see the cover off of the toilet tank and decide I’ll figure it out, and tried to close the door. Seriously??? The door was not properly hung, so I couldn’t close it! I didn’t have the time to monkey with it, so I closed it as much as possible and hoped for the best. I did have to make sure the flapper in the tank didn’t get hung up on the lever pulling it open, but otherwise everything went fine after that.

I ran back outside to work on the windshield and apologized to Becky for picking the worst possible gas station. I guess it was clean…but they really need a handyman to get things in proper order. Becky came back a couple of country songs later (the pickup truck song really got me working faster) and we got back on the road.

A New Route To Yellowstone (For Us)

Now the usual road to Yellowstone for a lot of people from the East is to cross South Dakota and most of Wyoming on I-90, and then to take either US-16 from Buffalo or US-14 from Rochester. We did that route with US-16 on our first trip back in 2015, passing through Ten Sleep Canyon and Cody. Since we were coming through Casper farther south this time, we would continue to follow US-20 and pass through Cody again. This would give us an opportunity to see some new parts of Wyoming.

I-25 between Douglas and Casper mostly follows the North Platte River, with mountains off in the distance, mostly to the south. After we diverged to stay on US-20, the road basically passes through barren lands without much of a view of anything but grass, sagebrush, and an occasional oil or gas well until you get to Shoshoni.

Hells Half Acre

Our first stop, Hells Half Acre, breaks up this drive. This rugged canyon actually sprawls 320 acres, and appears to have at some point had a building there, but all that’s left now is the foundation.

A multilayered jagged rock wall in a canyon with mountains in the distance against a blue sky
Hells Half Acre on US-20/26 west of Casper, Wyoming

Continue reading RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 4—Our Return to Yellowstone

RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 3—Nebraska’s Bridges To Buttes Highway & Beyond

Waking Up On the Niobrara

Turning In By Moonlight

I forgot to mention in last night’s post that I finished packing up by moonlight. The campground at Smith Falls so far as I could tell lacked artificial lighting, so my eyes were able to adjust very well. It’s incredible that a 3/4-full moon could light the night up so well, and for the most part we modern humans have no idea how well our eyes adjust to it because of all the artificial light we surround ourselves with. The funny thing about it is that orange or yellow light from a fire doesn’t prevent your eyes adjusting to the moonlight. Had it not been for me sitting there in just firelight, I don’t think I would have realized how bright the moonlight was.

Getting Started

Anyway, I think I may have actually slept reasonably last night. And my mattress stayed inflated all night too! On last year’s trip I realized it was losing air when we camped at Yosemite. I found a tiny little hole on the bottom and patched it up earlier this season. After two weekend camping trips since, I wondered if a leak might still be present because it seemed to still lose air, albeit more slowly. Perhaps that was not the case.

I stirred around 5:30am, about an hour before sunrise. The moon was gone but the sun had alrighty begun to intrude with first light. The entire campground was quiet with the exception of the tranquil flow of the Niobrara River.

Becky awoke around 6:15. We witnessed some brilliant red colors this morning—I should have thought about that saying, “Red sky in morning, roadtripper take warning,” or something like that. We certainly ran into some weather today…but I get ahead of myself.

What’s With the Humidity?

The first weather we noticed last night was the humidity. Smith Falls State Park is just west of the 100th Meridian, which is about where the altitude of the Great Plains increases and in turn the climate becomes more arid. In general, you can grow crops without relying heavily on irrigation east of the 100th Meridian, but not west of it. We’ve noticed in years past that the air is generally much dryer overall than it was tonight. It felt positively clammy well before sunset—more like an Ohio summer.

When we woke up this morning, our tent was soaked from the dew. We’d left the rainfly open last night to get airflow since it was rather warm. I made the mistake of leaving my sandals out in the open and they were terribly wet. Once we bit the bullet and got down to business, we made short work of packing the bedding and tent, leaving the campground around 7:30am.

Real Food For Breakfast!

Our original plan included a full day of stops at a few more places in Nebraska before heading into Wyoming for the night. One of these was Toadstool Geological Park, which sounded wonderful, but required a 13-mile drive down a gravel road. Maybe we’ll try that in the future during a more normal dry year when the road is less likely to be flood damaged like we saw in the campground in Smith Falls State Park.

Since we’d dropped Toadstool, that freed up plenty of time for us to get real food for breakfast! We headed into Valentine and ate a full breakfast at the Bunkhouse Restaurant in the center of town. The service was great, and the food was good diner fare that hit the spot for us.

The Bryan Bridge

After breakfast we headed south of town a mile or two to check out the Bryan Bridge, which used to carry US-20 across the Niobrara River. On the opposite side of the new US-20 bridge sits an old railroad trestle that now carries bicycles instead of trains.

The entire area around Valentine has incredibly beautiful terrain! The hills around town are lovely, and the Niobrara River seems like a wonderfully quiet place to canoe or kayak through them.

Northwest Nebraska

Not far west of Valentine, the terrain becomes less rugged with more rolling hills and fewer trees. The aridity west of the 100th Meridian certainly becomes apparent. We drove about two hours through another handful of very quiet tiny little towns.

As we approached Chadron the terrain changes again. Along with rolling hills, rocky buttes began to impose themselves on the horizon. Chadron was a bit larger than Valentine and even had Walmart. Here we turned south to visit Chadron State Park.

Chadron State Park

The buttes only became bigger and more concentrated as we approached the park. This area reminds me very much of the drive between the Badlands and Black Hills on Highway 44 in South Dakota and Wyoming. We pulled into the park office, paid the $8 out-of-state day-use fee, and headed up the park’s scenic drive.

I wanted to see the Blackhills Scenic Overlook, but the narrow high-crested gravel road made us rethink this. We instead continued on the scenic drive past a picnic shelter with a nice retro playground near the horse pasture. We didn’t stay long here since we hoped to get to our campground for the night a bit earlier than originally planned, and we still had one more stop…

Horses graze in light-green grass meadow with grass-covered peaks in the background. Evergreen trees dot the meadow and the peaks.
Horses grazing in a pasture at Chadron State Park in Northwest Nebraska

Continue reading RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 3—Nebraska’s Bridges To Buttes Highway & Beyond

RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 2—Nebraska’s Outlaw Trail

Seven Hours, No Stops!

We made it…this far! Once we got out of Greater Cleveland, traffic was a breeze, even around Chicago. Incredibly, Becky made the entire 7-hour drive without even a single stop! This got us to our hotel in the Quad Cities last night at 11:30pm local time. Checkin at the LaQuinta Inn Moline Airport was a breeze, and we settled into bed maybe a minute or two past midnight.

Iowa

‘Tis the Season

I haven’t had the best time sleeping lately…it seems 4 or 5 hours is about all I get most nights. I set an alarm for 6:15 with the hopes we could grab a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby and get on the road. My sinuses had other ideas—every year they let me know when August arrives. This morning they reminded me, which made it difficult to exist let alone get up. Becky was feeling it too.

“The World’s Largest Truckstop”

We finally got out the door and back on the road at 7:30am. The Iowa 80 Truck Stop just west of Davenport was our first refueling stop of the trip. It bills itself as “The World’s Largest Truckstop”, with about half a dozen fast food franchises, a ton of retail, a buffet restaurant, plenty of American automotive memorabilia, and of course gas and diesel.

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Interstates…

Normally we just follow I-80 all the way across Iowa. This time I wanted to try a different route farther north. US-20 runs from coast to coast—Massachusetts to Oregon—and it passes maybe 50 miles north of I-80 through Central Iowa before running across Nebraska within a few miles of the South Dakota border. Today we’ll head up I-380 to join US-20 until Sioux City, where we’ll diverge on the Outlaw Trail Scenic Byway to follow the Missouri River more closely.

The Great Plains: #NotFlat #NotBoring

I can’t say this enough, but I don’t understand why people repeat over and over again that the Great Plains are flat. I mean, I realize it’s not exactly mountainous (except it actually is in the High Plains!), but most of it has rolling hills. Eastern Iowa is especially pretty where farmers sow their crops to follow the terrain. We usually go through in July. August offers larger and more mature plants, including tasseled corn, but everything is still a wonderful green. When we passed through last September, things definitely appeared less verdant.

Splat 🙁

The weather was mostly cloudy at first. We even hit some rain between Cedar Falls and Fort Dodge. We also hit some gigantic bugs with yellow innards. Yuck. (Turns out these were actually monarch butterflies! Now I feel guilty too! Those poor things have it tough enough!)

Driving Across Iowa on US-20

We found the drive across Iowa on US-20 very pleasant compared to I-80. Traffic is nearly nonexistent past Fort Dodge, and the route is more scenic in the Western part of the state. The only drawback we discovered was the total lack of rest areas…but there were adequate numbers of gas stations all the way up to Sioux City.

Nebraska

At Sioux City we crossed the Missouri River and the state line into Nebraska. After stopping for fuel we diverged from US-20 to begin our journey along Highway 12—the Outlaw Highway—which follows the Missouri River and the state line with South Dakota.

Ponca State Park

Our first stop, Ponca State Park, preserves a section of the River that still looks much the way it did back in the time of Lewis & Clark. We stopped to enjoy the view at the Three State Overlook, where you can see South Dakota and Iowa while standing in Nebraska. This is one of the few places where the Missouri River hasn’t been dammed, straightened, or bypassed with a canal to better facilitate shipping (and flooding). The overcast sky and humidity weren’t the most comfortable, but it was exciting to ponder the beginning of Lewis & Clark’s adventure across the continent, as well as their return through this stretch of river two years later.

Continue reading RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 2—Nebraska’s Outlaw Trail

RealImaginaryWest 2019 Day 1 – Seven Hours Until Sleep!

So the Cuyahoga County Fair is this week…that’s only relevant because I got caught in far worse rush hour traffic on my way to pick Becky up from work this afternoon. That along with being about 30 minutes behind schedule getting out of the house got us on the road about an hour later than I’d hoped. Traffic on the Ohio Turnpike was slow too at first, thanks to construction.

In spite of all that, we should be able to get into our hotel room at the LaQuinta Inn next to the Moline Airport before midnight Central time. I suppose every hour we’re behind means less pain getting around Chicago…I hope!

Also, I don’t think we forgot anything. I always have that feeling whenever we head out on one of these trips…I probably have problems hahaha! Anyway, we seemed a little more put together this week despite the hectic last month that we had. There were a ton of problems with our car, so we spent a lot of time shopping to buy another one, as well as working on repairs to the old one. We got something I think we’re both happy with, but it really set us back on a lot of work we’d have put in preparing for this trip.

Last year we got a late start and I was way way more stressed out in the process than I was today. This morning we actually had most of the car packed before I drove Becky to work. We haven’t been able to do that in a while! This year it feels like we have a completely different car, even though we still rented a Nissan Altima. I think we’ve had a 2016 for our trips the last couple of years, so we got really used to them. This time we have a 2019 and besides a major redesign of the interior, they’ve loaded this car with a ton of safety features neither of us have ever dealt with before.

I had to dig through the owners manual to understand how the intelligent cruise control system works. It automatically slows you down when you come up behind someone going slower than your cruise setting. That may be a great feature in heavy traffic, but when you could easily change lanes to get around someone it’s kind of annoying. We figured out how to decrease the distance where it starts to slow down, and Becky figured out how to turn off and on some of the other sometimes annoying safety features. At least it has a sunroof…that should be fun.

We have to make a fuel stop before we arrive at our motel in the Quad Cities tonight Hopefully we can get a fair amount of sleep and find some food that gets us going early enough tomorrow. We’re trying a new route across Iowa and Nebraska this year—rather than taking Interstate 80 the entire way, we’re diverging north from Iowa City to take US-20 across. I’m not expecting anything vastly different from the Iowa section than we’d see on I-80, but our route across Nebraska should offer something new! US-20 and Nebraska Highway 12 form the Outlaw Trail Scenic Byway and the Bridges-to-Buttes Scenic Byway, where we’ll follow the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers tomorrow, and pass through the buttes of Northern Nebraska on Sunday.

RealImaginaryWest 2018 Day 1—Our Adventure to (fill in the blank)!

So here it is September 7 and here we go on our RealImaginaryWest 2018 road trip! This year we have worked out maybe 4 itineraries for this trip because of high hopes, unrealized dreams, revelations, and most of all—wildfires.

Itinerary 1 would have been a victorious and likely crowd-free return to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, as well as revisiting our favorite park from last year’s trip, Arches. This plan was born mostly out of necessity and practicality, as we only have 17 days this year. I looked into an even more glorious return for us to Yosemite National Park, but scrubbed the idea when I realized it was seriously untenable to fit all the stuff I really wanted to do nearby. I looked at possibly revisiting the Pacific Northwest so we could get more time in at Mt. Rainier and what have you, but concluded it was probably best to set our sights a little lower. We had invited a couple of adventurous young friends to come with us, and so I thought we should keep things simple.

Then I realized Yellowstone and Grand Teton can get crazy cold at night (like under 20 degrees F!), so we might want to at least have a contingency plan. I had long dreamed of hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and we really have all the gear we need to make that happen—so I put in for a permit. From what I could tell, we had roughly a 30% chance of winning a permit during September, but alas we struck out! I also put in for an even longer shot (like 3%), a permit for North Coyote Buttes, where we could hike to The Wave. That didn’t pan out either, so I was back to no real feature for our trip. I only had a 3-night reservation at Arches, and not much else figured out.

Then I had an epiphany—I realized that we could hit Crater Lake, Redwood, Lassen Volcanic, and possibly Lake Tahoe as well as Great Basin and Arches. None of those parks are super huge, so we could experience quite a bit of each in 1-2 days and continue on. By now our young friends realized they couldn’t get the time off, so we could make any pace we wanted and have only ourselves to care for. Therefore Itinerary 3 was the plan I worked on in earnest…finding all the cool in-between places and charting out the drive times. This would be an awesome trip! I just needed to find a way to adjust our reservation at Arches…

But then the Carr Fire happened. Whiskeytown National Recreation Area had some interesting waterfalls along our route, but it now was engulfed in flames—closing the road between Redwood National Park and Redding, California. As the fire grew, I could see that the glory of Mount Shasta and the many sites of the Upper Sacramento Valley may not be great destinations this summer. 😞 I thought maybe the coast would be clear, but that turned out to be questionable as north winds blew smoke out of Oregon and even British Columbia down into the California coast. A month later the Carr Fire still burns, along with several others in NoCal and Southwest Oregon. Even Crater Lake looked like a bad place to reliably find clean air, blue skies, or great views.

Now we were really back to square one! I really liked the idea of crossing Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada on Interstate 80, but I had no idea where we’d go after that! Checking into smoke maps revealed that smoke had set in all across most of the Northwest. Fires in British Columbia were sending smoke down into Washington, making Mount Rainier and Olympic risky…even Yellowstone and Grand Teton looked like they could be enshrouded in gray. Glacier was always in the back of my mind as a last resort, since it’s low enough it wouldn’t be quite as chilly as Yellowstone. But then Glacier also caught fire!

The only region that looked mostly clear was the Southwest, especially far enough south of US-50. Most of the Sierra Nevada looked good too…air quality reports for Lake Tahoe looked ok, and the Fergusson Fire had died down enough that Yosemite of all places even looked possible.

I started thinking things through and realized that maybe Yosemite could work out after all… if I simplified what we saw and did out in the Sierras, it could seriously work! It’s really just a matter of where the smoke goes and whether we can score a campsite. If Yosemite doesn’t work out, we could head further south to the clear skies of Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks—maybe this was more doable than I thought?

Well, I guess we’ll see! We’ve had a terribly crazy August, with some really unexpected changes happening in rather big parts of our life. (Don’t worry, nobody got hospitalized or died, but some serious curveballs got thrown out way and we’re in the middle of an adjustment right now.) As a result, we struggled to get organized like we usually have, and we got a terribly late start today. Worse yet, I totally forgot our E-ZPass and we had to turn around and get it out of our car back at home. So we didn’t really get started on our trip until about 5:30pm.

For now the plan is to keep the hotel reservation I made at the La Quinta Inn in Moline, Illinois, along the Mississippi River across from Davenport, Iowa. It’s a little over a 7-hour drive to get there. Hopefully we make it OK! Tomorrow we’ll try our best to get an early start to get to Vedauwoo Campground in Medicine Bow National Forest, which is not far off of I-80 just before Laramie, Wyoming. The plan is to go West until the smoke seems to be taking a toll on our blue skies. Hopefully it won’t be too bad at least into Northern Nevada. If the fires and smoke clear in Oregon and NoCal we may head for Crater Lake…otherwise we may head to Lake Tahoe or Yosemite. If the smoke is too much before we get far across Nevada, we will probably just head south into the Colorado Plateau in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Eventually we’ll make our way up toward our reservations at Arches National Park and we’ll head home on I-70 through Colorado.

But unlike most any of our trips previously, our itinerary really depends literally on which way the wind is blowing! 😳 Either way, I’m confident that we’ll have a good time and see some areas we’ve not yet seen. We may also get to spend more time in some places we’d wished we could have stayed in longer. So buckle up…this should be fun! 😃

RealImaginaryWest 2017 Day 3 – Plains, Canyons & Mountains on Route 66

We again covered some serious mileage on Route 66, starting in Stroud, Oklahoma. We followed a good section of the original highway west of Oklahoma City. Next we made a few stops on the Texas Panhandle, including Palo Duro Canyon State Park and the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo. Finally we passed into New Mexico, following the highway’s pre-1937 alignment up to Las Vegas and Santa Fe.

An Early Start from the Skyliner Motel

We were packed up and ready to go at 6:15-6:30am. Vic was up in two seconds to brew coffee for Becky, just like he promised! He has some big plans for this place…more on that when we return.

38-Span Camelback Bridge

We got right back on I-44 and passed through Oklahoma City to I-40. About 15 years ago I traveled here on business. It looks like they added a very large new skyscraper since then.

We exited I-40 at US-281 so we could drive over this 38-span camelback bridge near Geary, Oklahoma. Route 66 passed over it starting in 1933…and it still keeps going on, and on, and on!

Lucille’s Route 66 Gas Station

We got back on I-40 near Hydro, Oklahoma after driving to this historic and well-maintained gas station.

Conoco Tower Station in Shamrock, Texas

Next we entered Texas, and stopped here at the Conoco Tower Station in Shamrock. Unfortunately, very little in Texas seems to be open on Sunday, so we couldn’t do much but admire the old art deco exterior.

The Leaning Tower of Texas

A proprietor purchased and moved this water tower next to his truck stop in Groom, Texas. He purposely had someone drive a tractor into this tower so it would lean about 10 degrees. This set motorists up to stop in…often frantic to warn him that the tower was tipping. He’d reply, “Oh, it’s been that way for years…can I get you anything?” You gotta love gimmicks that get people to stop!

Palo Duro Canyon State Park

Palo Duro Canyon just south of Amarillo comes in as the second longest in the country, second only to the Grand Canyon. We took a detour to come check it out, and the intention was to have lunch here.

Cadillac Ranch

This public art installation of old Cadillacs invites people to “repaint” them. I was careful not to get me or my camera spraypainted!

Late Roadside Lunch

Since we didn’t stop and make lunch in Palo Duro, and since we didn’t see anything resembling a park or a picnic area around Amarillo, we stopped at this rest area to the west on I-40 and cooked up some hamburgers.

Finding the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Office in Las Vegas, New Mexico

No photo on this for now, but we did find the old town plaza in Las Vegas, New Mexico where outside scenes for the TV series Longmire were shot. Las Vegas sat in as Durant, Wyoming. We even found the door, which was still marked for the show.

Santa Fe

The drive to Santa Fe was incredible! The sun set as we drove into town, and we checked out the old town plaza before checking in at the Kings Rest Court Inn. This place was immaculately preserved from 1939, just two years after Route 66 was realigned to connect directly across New Mexico from Santa Rosa to Albuquerque…bypassing Santa Fe entirely. We’ll actually have time to stop and smell the roses before heading west again to the Holbrook, Arizona tomorrow.

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RealImaginaryWest 2017 Day 2 – Giants, Murals & Bridges on Route 66

For our first day on Old Historic Route 66 we began at the Gemini Giant in Wilmington, Illinois. We checked out the Standard Oil gas station in Odell and the Bunyan Giant in Atlanta before stopping on the Illinois side of the Chain of Rocks Bridge in the St. Louis area. Next we drove across the Mississippi River on the McKinley Bridge and followed I-44 out of the city. We then ate lunch at The FourWay in Cuba and stopped at the Red Rocker and the Devils Elbow Bridge before proceeding into Oklahoma. We finished the day in Stroud, Oklahoma with dinner at the Rock Cafe before checking into the Skyliner Motel. Purely for the sake of time we drove mostly on I-55 and I-44…but we’re already sold on coming back for the full Route 66 experience!

Waking in Wilmington

Last night we checked into Van Duyne’s Motel in Wilmington, Illinois to begin our Route 66 adventure to the Southwest United States. As I mentioned in the previous post, there were aspects of our room that made it a no-go for travelers with particular tastes. But the room was clean, the bed was comfortable enough and the shower was good and hot when we got up at 5:15am.

The Gemini Giant

At 6:30 I dropped our key in the lockbox and we headed to our first stop, the Gemini Giant right here in Wilmington. We saw him in the dark as we came into town last night, but the early morning light made him much easier to appreciate. He’s one of several statues manufactured by International Fiberglass in Venice, California to attract customers to all sorts of retail businesses across the country.

While the original made for The Paul Bunyan Cafe on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona was designed to hold an axe, so many held exhaust pipes and mufflers to advertise automotive dealers and shops that they became known as “Muffler Men”. The Gemini Giant has invited customers to stop at the Launching Pad diner since 1965. Sadly the restaurant closed in 2010 and still remains for sale today despite efforts to sell and reopen it.

The 30-foot tall Gemini Giant invites customers to the Launching Pad diner in Wilmington, Illinois.
The 30-foot tall Gemini Giant invited customers to the Launching Pad diner in Wilmington, Illinois. The restaurant closed in 2010 and is still in need of a buyer.

Standard Oil Gas Station in Odell

Opened in 1932, the Standard Oil Gas Station in Odell, Illinois used a “house and canopy” design that welcomed customers to feel at home when caring for their automotive needs. The station hasn’t sold gasoline since the 1960s and fell into disuse and disrepair by the the 1970s. Preservation began in the 1990s and included efforts and funding from the Illinois Route 66 Association and the National Park Service. The gas station was restored to its former glory by the early 2000s.

We arrived at 7:30am, way before attendants opened for visitors. There was however a button we pressed that played an interpretive audio recording. Through the window we could see that the interior is as authentically restored as the exterior.

The Standard Oil Gas Station, built in the “house and canopy” style on Route 66 in Odell, Illinois around 1932.
The Standard Oil Gas Station, built in the “house and canopy” style on Route 66 in Odell, Illinois around 1932.

Continue reading RealImaginaryWest 2017 Day 2 – Giants, Murals & Bridges on Route 66

RealImaginaryWest 2017 Day 1 – Our Adventure Begins in Illinois

Our drive on the first night of this trip is a short one for once! We drove from Middleburg Heights, Ohio near Cleveland to Wilmington, Illinois just outside Chicagoland.

Packing Up for 3½ Weeks (😮!)

I know 24 days is only a week longer than our usual road trip. For some reason it feels like we’re leaving for good. It’s weirding me out…

Anyway, I think we managed to pack everything we need except for one thing. When I picked Becky up from work to hit the road, she immediately asked about the clip that holds her phone up on the vent. I totally forgot about it. She almost wanted to go home and get it. I suggested we live without it if we can find one along the way somewhere. This worked for Becky, so we officially got on the road at 3:45pm.

Feeling Less Organized Than I’d Like

I just remembered another thing I sort-of kind-of forgot. I’ve been working out the itinerary for this trip since all the way back in January. I had to make some last-minute tweaks over the last week or two, but I did finish it. It contains the best information we have to keep on time over the next week as we make stops on Route 66. Unfortunately I neglected to print it out… Thankfully I stored it on Dropbox, so I can still get to it. But I really like to have a hard copy handy just in case my electronics fail.

I always experience a great deal of anxiety in the final week or two leading up to a road trip. I felt super confident and calm after we left for our trip to the Black Hills in July. For some reason I feel so much less organized for this trip than I’d have expected. We’ve been planning for months, most every reservation was made back in spring, and I’ve taken good notes. And yet I feel so flat-footed. Maybe I should have made up some mileage charts like I did on the last trip? Maybe the cold and rainy weather has pushed me off of my game?

Our Weather Outlook

Speaking of weather, there’s a lot going on across the country right now! For starters, we’ve had one of the coldest Augusts I can remember in Ohio. The hot and humid “dog days” of summer never came this year. It dropped below 70°F frequently this past month, when temperatures often approach or surpass 90°F. I’m glad we’re heading to the Southwest where temperatures will feel more like summer again!

The good news is that this cold snap across the Eastern United States is also holding temperatures down to a more comfortable range in Oklahoma and Texas. The bad news is that everything west of the Rocky Mountains has been experiencing a heat wave.

Continue reading RealImaginaryWest 2017 Day 1 – Our Adventure Begins in Illinois