Fritz LOVES the old west. He has more old west movies than Netflix and is fascinated by everything about it. So it should be no surprise that Dodge City and Coffeyville, KS were on our route to Arkansas...

Our trip from Lamar, CO to Dodge City was fairly uneventful, as I recall. We stayed in a WalMart parking lot for a few nights, and it was one of the nicer parking-lot stays we've had! We had an open field to one side and parking lot on the other. It was level and quiet and, best of all, free! After resting up from the drive the night we arrived, we headed to the Boot Hill museum. It was originally a 'potter's field', so to speak: a place to bury those of ill repute or no means for a 'proper' burial in the Fort Dodge cemetery. While all the (known) bodies have since been exhumed and moved, the museum has recreated the tombstones originally found there. Some were quite amusing; some tragic. Much of the original 'boot hill' (so named because many of the occupants were summarily dispatched to the 'hill' still wearing their boots!) was cut down many years ago and parceled off. The museum has faithfully recreated many of the original town buildings, inside and out, using some of the original parts and pieces. It was a fascinating place, and we wore out before we finished the tour.  Here's some of what we saw:

Fritz was delighted to learn more about the heroes and villains of the late 1800's plains, and fancied himself a part of the history!

After lunch and a nap, Fritz returned to go check out the Gunfighter's Wax Museum while I poked around in an antique shop.

The City of Dodge City has a colorful history, the face of which was forever changed with the advent of the railroad. The city displays an old steam engine that once plied the tracks carrying buffalo hides and meat out, and living necessities in.
 
We stopped at Coffeyville, KS the next day, and enjoyed two nights in their delightful city park. The intervening day was spent at The Defenders' Museum. A seemingly odd name, but it was here that the Dalton Gang made a daring attempt to rob two banks simultaneously, and the townspeople decided they would not succeed. A local general store handed out rifles and ammunition, and the armed locals shot it out with the Dalton Gang....and won. Rather than memorialize the 'bad guys', the museum commemorates the brave townsfolk that put a stop to the pillaging of the local farmers (there being no FDIC in those days, if the bad guys got your money, there was no replacing it!). There is a whole wall that shows a picture taken by someone shortly after the gang members were killed, laying out the bodies up against a fence. So many townsfolk came to take 'souvenirs', none of the bodies had boots or guns, and some even had pieces of their clothing cut off. After watching a TV rerun on the story of Coffeyville and looking at many artifacts, we headed back to the motorhome to rest up for the final leg of our eastward journey.

We arrived in Arkansas the next day and it's been great seeing Tracy, Mike and all the kids! Tracy is very anxious for Maddox to make his arrival! In the meantime, we're ever on alert for that 
'it's time!' call.

Unfortunately, we are having a very difficult time finding an affordable long-term RV space. The place we stayed last time has really gone downhill, another place won't return our calls, and the place we're in for the short term costs $200/WEEK! We checked out two or three other places further away today; none of them work for various reasons. Tomorrow we're headed to just over the border in Missouri to check another. 

Next time I write, I should be introducing the newest member of the family. In the meantime, know we're enjoying reconnecting with kids and grandkids and helping out however we can.

Til the next time.....

In the past week, we've gone from "Devil's Orchard" to "Garden of the gods". Now THAT's quite a trip, don't you think?

When I last wrote, we had left Craters of the Moon and spent a quiet night in a lovely RV Park in SE Idaho. We misread the map and instead of traveling along Bear Lake (which is on our 'to-do-next-time' list), we ambled out through the SW corner of Wyoming into Utah. Our route took us past Flaming Gorge reservoir, which was a disappointment in that we never could get a good look at the water, but the scenery along this windy-twisty high mountain 2-lane road was phenomenal! If I shared all the pictures I'd taken, there'd be little room left for words! Here's one though, just so you get an idea. There is even a bit of the lake in there:

It was a long day's drive, and we pulled into a pleasant rest area outside Dinosaur National Park to spend the next couple of nights. The following morning, we headed up to the visitor center and got the list of hiking trails, then drove up to the museum(?). Oh.My.Gosh!!! They had built a building using a rock face as one wall that contains HUNDREDS (thousands?) of dinosaur bones!! It was astounding!

After gaping at the enormity of the bones, we decided to hike down a short (1.5 mile) path to explore more dinosaur bones protruding from the rock. We DID see some and took pictures. It was exhilarating to get some hiking in and to explore, up close and personal, the graves of thousands of ancient creatures overtaken in a catastrophic moment in time and held hostage there for their discovery by future peoples.

On this trail, we captured sight of another mystery in the rocks. What do you see? According to the Bible, giants walked the earth, and man and dinosaur inhabited the earth at the same time. I see here evidence of that. Of course, the National Parks system, which refuses even to use the time-divider B.C. and A.D., would never acknowledge it.

The next day, we took a drive deeper into the Monument to the cabin of Josie Morris, a pioneer woman who settled far back in the canyons of the Green and Yumpa Rivers to raise cattle and build her home. She was a divorced mother of three in the late 1800's, and lived here until just before her death, at age 90, in 1964. Can you imagine that? Her cabin had dirt floors and the surroundings were idyllic. She used box canyons beyond as a natural corral for the cattle. Fritz was quite impressed with the work she had done on her home.

 We regretfully left Dinosaur for the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It had been our intention to visit Rocky Mountain National Park (at 12,000+ ft.) and Denver, but the forecast was for winter weather. So we aborted that plan and headed southwest, crossing the Continental Divide just west of Vail. Again, we opted for an 'off the beaten path" kind of highway, which turned out to be a stomach-churning climb from 6,000 to over 9,000 ft. in elevation. Again, a narrow, two-lane roadway with little shoulder and less room for error. But my goodness the sights were astounding!!! The aspens were just beginning to turn their lovely golden hue, and the high-mountain meadows that give birth to the Arkansas River were pristine! 

We arrived in Buena Vista, CO earlier than intended and ended up spending three glorious nights in one place, with water and electricity and bathrooms! (Funny how treasured the simple things become!)  Friday, we drove the car over the mountains to meet up with some friends of Fritz's from Denver.  We rendezvoused in Manitou Springs for lunch, then they took us on a tour of the "Garden of the gods". More mouth-dropping beauty!

The cool, overcast day did not dampen our spirits at being in the midst of such beauty!

The next day we decided to give ourselves a reprieve as we had been going, going, going. We drove in to Buena Vista, bought some sandwiches and drove up to an alpine lake called Cottonwood Lake. There we had a leisurely picnic.

Sunday morning, we headed east, destination Dodge City, KS. As we traveled through eastern Colorado, we were struck by its flat terrain and absence of beauty such as we had seen, as though it were the ugly sister of a beautiful girl. Yet beauty can be found even in flat lands. We're still looking, ha! We passed numerous and enormous feed lots that made me pity the poor cattle there almost as much as I pitied my nostrils breathing in the stench! Today, we fought headwinds and a heavy mist to Dodge City, where we are hunkering down until the nice weather returns tomorrow to do some exploring. WalMart parking lot, today you are a bright spot after our night in a dusty truck stop downwind from a feed lot.  Got to take the good with the bad, eh?

The next few days will be spent exploring Dodge City and making our way to our temporary home in Cave Springs, AR. There will be less to report on so my next blog may  not be for a few weeks. In the meantime, know we'll be enjoying hugs and snuggles with grandchildren, some mother/daughter time, and greater opportunities to become better acquainted with our son-in-law.

Til next time somewhere down the road.....!

The past several days have covered the spectrum from "not doing THAT again!" to "not ready to leave".....

After fueling up both diesel and propane in Bend, OR, we traveled through some of the most desolate country I've seen in central Oregon. All I could think about was those brave pioneers and the hardships they endured through this harsh country. And yet, people today call such places 'home'. Hats off to them!

We arrived in Caldwell, ID late in the day, tired and ready to call it a day. We pulled into the WalMart parking lot and set about to disconnect the car. The battery was very dead. We were puzzled by the drained battery, as usual operating procedures were followed. Since, upon restarting the car the radio was on (and wasn't when we connected the car) we determined that the radio had automatically turned on. We've had this problem before and have taken it to the shop, but unless it's happening THEN, they can't troubleshoot it. So Fritz will pull the fuse, if necessary. Lesson learned; we now check the car more frequently.

I had been smelling propane since we fueled up that morning, and while Fritz was tending to the car, I checked the propane tank. Propane was leaking out and all I could thing was KA-BOOM!! Apparently, the guy at the station overfilled it and, with the heat of the day and the higher elevations, it was exhausting the extra fuel. It smelled awful and scared me, but was not the big deal I thought it was.

A fellow-Foretravel owner Fritz had met on the forum came to see us while there, and he and Fritz had a good time swapping stories and trading problems and solutions. I'm delighted he has found this comraderie of like-minded travelers.

We finally settled in for what turned out to be a VERY noisy night. So a WalMart parking lot in a college town is a 'never do this again'!!

The next day we headed to Hagerman, ID and the first RV park we've stayed at since we left home Aug. 28th. It was an absolutely lovely, quiet park in a quaint little town next to the Snake River. We explored the Hagerman Fossil Bed Visitor Center and were disappointed to learn there was nothing to see in the fossil beds themselves. We had a delightful dinner at a local restaurant and a great night's sleep. Refreshed, we left the next morning for Craters of the Moon in SE Idaho.

We had been by here before, on our way back from the 1990 family reunion, but had spent no time exploring. This time, with a nice, $5/night campground (no hookups), we spent time in the Visitor Center and went hiking to explore the many varied landscapes of this lunar-like place. Located on the Great Rift, where some time ago the earth's crust split allowing for enormous volcanic and seismic activity, there are mounds of rock that, as one long-ago preacher observed, appeared as the devil's vomit.

Our campsite

Enormous craters dot the landscape along the Great Rift. Below are some in the distance.
(note the tree growing on the lava dome at the bottom of the crater)




                                                                               

 After hiking up a huge cinder cone (below), we found a determined tree thriving at the top. Fritz, in a moment of admiration, became a tree-hugger!    

                                      

Walking back down the cinder cone

We were amazed that, in this harsh landscape, new life exhibited an indomitable spirit while the skeletons of age-old limber pines littered the landscape, even as others persisted. All in all, it was an other-worldly experience that heightened our amazement of the diverse beauty of our planet.

This evening, we are treating ourselves to showers and laundry in Montpelier, in the SE corner of Idaho. We were welcomed by an afternoon thunderstorm with blankets of rain that soothed my sinuses after so many days in the desert. Tomorrow, we meander through four states, destination Dinosaur National Park.

Thanks for joining us! Til next time somewhere down  the road....

Google is the BEST INVENTION! Thanks to info received in a search on converting pdf to jpg, here is our route map. The northern route is our TO Arkansas, and the southern route is TO Arizona. We've already taken the side trip to Bend, OR so will bypass on our return trip. Thanks for following us!

It's always difficult to say good-by to my mom. You know she's wondering if it will be the last time. Had a great visit with her, my sister, Carol, and her family. 

We left Tuesday morning and pointed south toward Bend, OR, with Fritz fighting fierce and unpredictable head- and side-winds the whole way. We finally arrived at the Fred Meyer in Bend and found a relatively quiet corner of their parking lot. To our delight, it is right next to an irrigation canal off the Deschutes River! What a pleasant place to dry camp! 

We met up with friends, Jim and Anna from Prineville, who graciously gave us a tour of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument areas (those that were open anyway. We discovered they keep reduced hours after Labor Day, and today wasn't one they were open!). Took a hair-raising 4-mile drive up to Paulina Peak which overlooks Paulina Lake. There were also obsidian flows from long-ago volcanoes that oozed out of the surrounding mountains. Otherworldly!

Paulina Lake on the right with Three Sisters in the distance

Paulina Lake to the left, East lake behind and obsidian flows to the right

Anna and Jim at the outflow waterfalls from the lakes

After a delightful lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Bend, we bid our friends farewell, but not for long! We plan to reconnect with them in Arizona.

Next stop Boise, where we'll see more sights and meet new friends.

Well, I am unsuccessful at uploading the route map. I have to figure out how to make it a .jpg file from a pdf. If anyone can tell me how to do that, I'd appreciate it! 

Til next time further down the road.....!