3762 Miles with Herbie

Who is Herbie? That would be my truck, as in "Herbie the Wonder Truck"--no relation to an insect car of movie fame. After the number of long trips we have made together it only seems natural for him (it is a truck after all) to have a name.

Anyways, what follows is the story of my recent travels. First, be warned that it's long. Second, there are photos linked in albums hosted on kodakgallery.com--just click the link and then click on the photo to start each album. There is only one shot that I appear in and that is in a reflection--the only people in the shots are random people. There are also links to most of the places I visited for further reading.

The trip by the numbers:

• # of miles driven: 3762
• Trip Time: 12 days, 9 hours
• Highest altitude: 11,300 ft. (Eiesenhower Tunnel on I-70)
• Best/Worst Mileage: 26.8/21.3 miles per gallon
• Most expensive gas: $2.669 (Eagle, CO)
• # of National Parks: 5
• Hottest Temperature: 107 degrees Farenheit (Moab, UT)
• Hotel nights: 5
• Photos taken: 473 (not all are shown in the albums)

The trip out:

I left on Friday morning, July 8th headed towards Independence, MO. I strongly recommend not going to a concert the night before leaving on a road trip--it made the next day feel really long. The concert (Weezer) was however worth seeing. There ain't much to see in between Sheboygan and Independence, MO (just East of Kansas City) except a whole lot of farms.

Saturday I visited the Truman Presidential Library and Museum (Pictures)in Independence. It was very nice with a lot of good exhibits on WWII on the home front and his life. There was also a replica of the Oval Office as he occupied it along with the original "The Buck Stops Here Sign"--a replica of this now resides on my desk... He may have not gotten as much done as he would have liked, but he was a darn good president.

I also visited the Eisenhower Historical site (Pictures) in Abeliene, KS. I only visited the library as it was free, but it is a nice visit. I had to pay homage to the President responsible for the one of the most practical things enacted by a President--the freeway system. Most of my trip was spent driving on the Eisenhower Interstate system.

The rest of Kansas sucked. At the end I have a list of reasons why Nebraska is better than Kansas. When I got to my hotel in Denver, the receptionist asked where I had been that day and was very apologetic when I said I had come through Kansas.

Sunday found me a little apprehensive as I would be crossing the Rockies on my own for the first time. It wasn't bad at all. The altitude did hit me, but wasn't too bad. I made my first of two stops at Vail Pass (Pictures) on my way through. Oddly enough, you cross the Continental Divide in the Eisenhower Tunnel rather than at a pass. The drive was pretty, especially Glenwood Canyon (sorry, no pictures) and I arrived happily in Ouray that afternoon.

Ouray, CO:

This was one of the stated purposes of the trip--to visit Adam. Adam is working as a waiter at a restaurant/hotel here that is the highest-rated on the Western Slope. I did not eat there. As part of his job, he is provided housing in a condo with two roomates (both interns at the hotel in hotel and restaurant mgmt from Oklahoma State). It was a very nice condo and came complete with furniture. Both his roomates were good guys that I spent time hanging out with while I was there.

Honestly, I didn't do much of anything while there. It was the lounging portion of the trip. I did visit one of John Wayne's favorite restaurants in Ridgway (just north of Ouray)--True Grit. The food was expensive no matter where you ate around there so I ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches when I didn't eat out.

The town itself is nestled into a little valley at 7,706ft with tall mountains on all sides (Pictures) and the town runs right up to the steep slopes of the mountain sides. I did go hiking on one occasion on a popular trail to an overlook of the town. It was one of the least well-marked trails that I have ever hiked. The trail is all switchbacks cutting across washes. I found my own route up the multitude of linked "trails" to the top. This was great. Coming down however, I misplaced the route back down. No map would have helped or GPS unit as it was too tight of quarters to make sense of on a map. Luckily it was easy to know that town was always downhill. So I found a deer trail and headed down, mostly on all fours (like a crab walk) or on my butt. I ended up in a guy's backyard who seemed amused, but not suprised that I was there. Amazingly I was only a couple of 100 yds from the trailhead.

I also ventured from Ouray to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (Pictures) just outside Montrose. This was my favorite of the 5 parks and I am planning to return to see more of it. This is the newest of the National Parks and certainly worthy of the designation. The Black Canyon is 54 miles long and, in its middle segment (the national park) is a steep, rock-walled gorge ranging from 1,700 feet deep to 2,700 feet deep and narrows to about 1,000 feet across (top of the canyon). I visited the South Rim drive which has a bunch of good overlooks into the canyon. On the second trip (with Adam this time), we went down to the canyon bottom via the access road and hiked a distance along the river. There are trails down to the canyon bottom but they are all about a mile long with a 1,600 ft drop which didn't appeal to me on this trip. While Adam and I were out there, we visited Gunnison and drove through the Blue Mesa Resevoir area which is very scenic.

I stayed at Adam's from Sunday through Friday and got caught up on lounging. Friday morning I left for Cortez, CO via Telluride and Lizard Head Pass. After driving through Telluride, I can see why the property values are so high. It is amazingly beautiful with steep, wooded mountainsides leading to snow-capped mountain peaks. Lizard Head Pass is equally beautiful as it opens into a prarie at over 10,000 feet.

Mesa Verde National Park (Pictures):

Mesa Verde National Park is the most popular National Park as of a recent survey. It is located in extreme Soutwest Colorado about 40 miles from Four Corners. One suprise was the long, driving climb to the top of the mesa--to be repeated at the remaining parks I visited. Once up there it is almost like visiting a museum that is all outside under shelters. There are a lot of ruins and the villages built into the canyon walls are really cool.

I left Mesa Verde and went to Moab, UT with a stop at the Needles Overlook for Canyonlands National Park--very cool to catch at near sunset with a partly cloudy sky. I decided to camp that night in Hal Canyon just north of Moab. This is a box canyon of the Colorado River that is a hub of outdoor activity in the area. It was warm. My site was about 30yds from the bank of the river and had a good amount of tree cover, but the ground was still very warm. It was almost too warm to sleep there. I woke in the morning with my sleeping bag sticking to my legs. In Michigan you use a ground pad to keep the ground from absorbing your body heat, in Utah you use it to keep the ground from cooking you. When I felt the bottom of my sleeping pad in the morning it was uncomfortably warm to the touch. I chose to stay in a hotel the next night.

The first stop of the morning (Saturday) was Canyonlands National Park (Pictures). This is about 30 miles north and west of Moab and was the least busy of the parks I went to. It is, as the name implies, a semi-desert landscape of canyons and mesas. It had some very cool views, but was very arid (9% humidity). The hikes led to some worthwhile views. I also encountered my largest concentration of cheseheads here in the visitors center between the ranger, a family, myself and a biker, the biker was the only one not of WI.

Leaving Canyonlands I headed into Arches National Park (Pictures). This park was a lot busier than Canyonlands and had a more challenging up and down drive. It has to be the most photographed landscape of rocks outside of Mount Rushmore. This was the hottest part of my trip and led to me cutting my visit short as my heat tolerance ran out and I got cranky. The natural arches that the park is named for are cool. This was the only place I went where the park required a permit for short hikes due to the extreme heat.

On Saturday night, there were some really cool thunderstorms in the mountains around Moab that I watched from the hotel parking lot. On Sunday morning I began my drive eastwards through an area of freeway with dust storm warning signs including a speed limit (30 mph) specifically for dust storms. Thankfully it was sunny and clear.

I stopped at the Colorado National Monument (Pictures) in Fruita, CO on the way through. This was the most challenging driving of the trip especially up and down with tight switchbacks and 10mph, 180 degree turns on slopes greater than a 10% grade. The whole trip is a 23-mile rim drive viewing a variety of canyons and landscapes. It is very pretty and was not too busy. Driving that with any more traffic would have been unpleasant.

After leaving here, it was an uneventful drive until 50 mile outside Denver where I encountered the Sunday evening return rush hour for the Denver residents returning home from weekends in the mountains. It took almost 2 hours to go that last 50 miles all in bumper to bumper traffic down a mountain. No fun.

Monday and Tuesday were not all that exciting driving across Nebraska and Iowa back to home. I got home Tuesday night at 7:30pm.

Now for some thoughts from the trip:

Why Nebraska is Better than Kansas:

• Both are flat, but the eastern 1/3 of Kansas is nice rolling hills versus 1/11 of Nebraska.
• Nebraska has trees and humidity the enitre length across.
• The speed limit is 75 in Nebraska versus 70 in Kansas.
• There are more nice rest areas in Nebraska.
• There are more gas stations in Nebraska.
• The temperature is cooler in Nebraska and it's less dusty.

Other Thoughts:

• I don't like heights that much, so driving up switchbacked mountain/mesa roads was definitely more of a "character building" experience than I want on a vacation. It was lots of white-knuckled driving.
• The statement "But it is a dry heat" is BS. Open your oven and stick your head in, its a dry heat too but it is still hot. Hiking in a dry heat burns when you are gulping air after a climb up a large hill. Notice also all the heat related deaths in the Southwest over the last few weeks.
• Why are all of the city signs in Colorado marked with the altitude, not the population of the town? Does the funding get distributed by altitude or is it an ego thing where the mayors compare their town altitudes at conferencese? I have no good idea how big most of the towns in Colorado I visited are.
• The serving sizes on food are too big already, but get even bigger out West. The smallest burger I could order at a restuarant was a 1/2 pounder. The smallest steak was 10 oz. The suprising part was that there are less fat people out there. I was told that calories don't count over 5,000ft. Hmmm.
• I went out West thinking I was in halfway decent shape. I walk 5 miles or so every other day and more on most weekends without trouble. Altitude evens that out quickly. It was almost embarassing to be tired by walking around town initially. After a week at 7,000 feet and above, I felt good, but I was still not to the level I wanted to be. Before I visit out there again I will have to work on my cardio fitness.
• There was a recent study that showed that Kansas is literally flatter than a pancake. This may be true, but think of a pancake enlarged to 400 miles across and the corresponding scale of the divots in it. They are still decent hills in spots.
• The Weather Channel is very biased towards east of the Mississippi especially the Northeast. I tried several time to see a forecast for the area I was in and took at least a half-hour to even see a map overview that showed the area. I gave up after that. Who really cares that it is raining in the Northeast enough to hear about it every five minutes. One more biased news source.
• Lastly, for the record, I did not get sunburned. It was very sunny and I could feel the sun on my skin but I managed to not forget sunscreen and hence no burn, just a light tan.

The trip was a good time and I'm looking forward to repeating it. Next time, however, a second driver would help.