The End

So, now we are back home. We had a relaxing time in Lebanon (not The Lebanon) with Kristas mother, her husband and their new dog. It was nice to spend a day away from the car again before the final leg home. The drive through Kansas to Illinois was fine, I maintain that Kansas is not as boring as Oklahoma. Funny thing, probably a half dozen of the towns we drove past in Kansas were childhood homes of astronauts. I suspect that once you gain enough momentum as a child to break out of the heart of Kansas it's difficult to stop you and you end up breaking gravity too.

There were a lot of roadside attractions listed on signs by the interstate. We didn't stop at any of them, I'm a little sad now though that we drove right past Prairie Dog Town. I doubt we'll be travelling back that way, I'll never get to see that live six-legged steer.

We had to drive through St Louis to get to Lebanon. It was a little stressful. We hit the city during rush hour, there was a lot of road construction and the dog was desperate to go potty (did I mention that she had diarrhea?) I was terrified that she was going to drop a runny mess in the car but there was nowhere to stop. We made it to a McDonalds parking area just in time, she let go right next to the car.

After our day of rest it was time to get home. Let me just tell you that without any doubt the drive from St Louis to Milwaukee is the most boring 300 miles we have done all trip. It's flat and uninteresting the entire way. We clicked over 5,000 miles just as we re-entered Wisconsin.



We managed a little shy of 27 miles per gallon (for English readers the gallon here is a little smaller) which I suppose is pretty good. We had been keeping up a pretty good speed through most of the country.

Max altitude we reached was a little over nine and a half thousand feet somewhere in Wyoming, though I forget where exactly. Lowest was about 300 feet somewhere in Illinois.

Highest temp was saw was 96F somewhere on the road in Utah, lowest was about 36F in Wyoming and was the same time we saw snow. Those are day time temps.

I think we went to 10 different states, though we possibly didn't even stop the car rolling in Idaho.

It rained only a couple of days, once on our way to the Badlands and then again in Arizona.

Would we do it again? Yes, probably though not exactly the same way. It'd be nice to leave the Midwest by aeroplane and rent a car somewhere else.

We definitely will go back to Yellowstone sometime, I think we barely scratched the surface of things to see there. We'd like to go back to Colorado Springs also, we saw just enough there to pique my interest. We wouldn't stay again at the Clarion Hotel there on Bijou Rd though. I've heard good things about Santa Fe but we weren't there long enough to become interested. The Grand Canyon, I think I would go back there only if I had enough money to do some activities, maybe a helicopter ride, or an ATV trek, or a mule ride down the canyon, otherwise it's just standing and looking at a big hole.

My favourite driving day, it was probably the first half of the drive from Jackson Hole to Beaver. It was just a fun drive through lots of small towns, there were a couple of high passes and the road was almost empty. The drive from Beaver to the Grand Canyon was good too, mostly through desert on mostly empty roads. Finally the drive through Sedona and Jerome in Arizona on route 89A, I'd very much like to ride that on my motorcycle.

The car was fine. As I said before it was a little underpowered going over those huge hills, but we wouldn't have to worry about that here in Wisconsin. Would I buy one? No, I don't think I would. It was a Subaru so it does have all-wheel drive that would be useful here in the winter. Other than the AWD though it does seem to be a little overpriced.

And that really is about the end of this blog. Laundreary to be done today and then back to work tomorrow. Thanks for following along,
Gareth and Krista

Days Nine, Ten and Eleven...

... being Santa Fe, Colorado Springs and Salinas.




Day nine we set out from Tucson, as I said before this is the back end of the trip. Our only real plan for this leg has been to hit St Louis to see the mother-in-law. First stop was Santa Fe in New Mexico. It was an intermittently pretty drive with some very, very pretty skies. Santa Fe seemed to be a nice city, we'd heard good things. I suspect we will go back there sometime, it apparently is quite historic.

We had dinner at an Olive Garden restaurant in town that had laughably poor service. This was more of a problem, they made us miss the premier episode of Heroes Season Two. Ahh well, turns out we can watch it online tonight.





We hit the road early in the morning heading for Colorado Springs. This road we got to see more trees than we have in a while. It was still pretty hilly, up and down. This town really went out of it's way for us to not have fun. First there were roadworks that held us up in town and made us get lost since our exit was closed from the Highway. We did find the hotel, checked in and headed immediately back out to head up Pikes Peak.

This was our second frustration. We arrived at the entrance to Pikes Peak highway at 5.05, the gate closed at 5pm. Grrr! Not too worry, we went to have some dinner in nearby Manitou Springs and found an awesome Moroccan restaurant, we both enjoyed it but Krista seemed to be reliving some earlier period in her life (she spent a few months in Morocco about 15 years ago).

This area of Colorado seems to be very hippy. There were places where you could have pictures taken of your aura, you know the kind of thing. I think we would go back there.

This brings us though to the final annoyance in Colorado Springs. The hotel we booked was supposed to have wireless internet, as have all the hotels we booked along the way. This was when we relax in the evening we can plan out the route for the following day and book the next hotel. Well, the Clarion Suites on Bijou Road in Colorado Springs didn't have wireless internet working, even the walk up internet station wasn't working until 10pm. This was tiresome. We did get everything booked but it took much longer than it should have done.

The hotel did offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee, they had a certificate in our room pledging that we would not be charged for the room if we weren't satisfied. We tried to claim on that in the morning but the manager was a Dick (literally, his name was Richard Wall). He agreed that we had a grievance and that the pledge of not being charged applied to us, however all he would do was give us $25 off the stay, this despite me making him read the pledge out loud to me several times. We were kind of upset but have been laughing about it all day.

Now we are in Salina, Kansas. I would say that the drive across Kansas is slightly better than the one we did years ago across Oklahoma. It's a little hillier, this makes it possible to see at least some of the surrounding area. Nothing worth photographing though.

Tomorrow we head for St Louis. I seemed to have gained a day along the way somehow, I'm not sure when or where. I thought we were getting to St Louis on Friday but I guess not. Maybe we'll stay there an extra night.

My current reckoning has the car showing just over 5,000 miles for the trip by the time we are back in Milwaukee.

Day Eight

Really nothing to report today, we are sticking around in Tucson until tomorrow. I saw the inside of a car today for brief moment when I got the cooler but that's it. We've just hung around the house. Krista's other brother came over to visit and here we have been, just chilling in the yard, enjoying the weather and winding down a little.

At this time we are as far from home as we will get. Tomorrow starts the long drive home. I think we are heading for Santa Fe tomorrow, somewhere in the Rockies the day after. Then we'll basically be back in the Midwest. The journey will be almost over. As far as we can tell there isn't really much to see in Kansas, but we'll need to stop there overnight. Then probably a night in St Louis area to see the mother-in-law and finally home. I wish we had more time, there has to be a better way to get home than driving across Kansas, but since the car has to be back on Saturday, and we have to be back at work on the Monday we pretty much have to take the most direct route.

Day Seven - Grand Canyon

OK, well what can I say about the Grand Canyon? Probably nothing much, it is truly an awe inspiring sight. Words and pictures in no way do justice to the size of it. Even the numbers, 300(?) miles long, up to 18 miles wide, up to a mile deep, none of this really means anything. Even standing at the top it's hard to really grasp it's size. Sadly, as with everything else this trip, we didn't have much time to look. We got up early in the morning to drive around a little and use some of the observation points. I guess we spent about 2 hours looking at the place. I would have loved to have the time and money to take a helicopter trip, or a donkey ride, or an ATV excursion but this trip it was not to be. So after taking some pictures and admiring the view we headed back to the hotel to check out and get on our way.

Krista has two brothers, one sister, one brother-in-law, one sister-in-law, three nieces and one nephew living in Arizona. One brother is in Prescott and the rest in Tucson. We called the Prescott brother and arranged to meet for lunch on the way to Tucson. He gave us directions to come in through Sedona and along route 89A to get to him, instructions were that this would be mountainous grades and lots of curves. Man, he was not kidding, this was the absolute craziest road I have ever driven on. It wound up and down the mountain. A one point it was pouring with rain, so that we were down to 20mph, thankfully it cleared before we reached the twistiest part of the drive. The valley coming in to Sedona is beautiful, lush and green and tons of camping. We didn't stop for picures because we were running behind and there weren't many pull offs. Take a look on google maps for Jerome, AZ and look at the roads to the east and west, what the map doesn't show is the elevation changes. Wow!

Prescott was wet, it started to pour with rain again. We followed brother through the city, some of the intersections were feet deep in water. It was hard to follow. Lunch was good, I had a nice burger and Krista ate a quarter of an enormous salad.

Lunch done we headed on towards Tucson, about a further 3 hours. The drive was pretty much uneventful other than a little rain here and there. Nothing like the torrential downpours from earlier. GPS on the cell phone navigated us directly to Wendy and Genes house and here we are.

Day Six - Utah and Arizona

Wow, well it's getting kind of hard to remember what day it is anymore and with all the time changes it's getting difficult to know what time it is. Then I have to try and remember what we did yesterday to get this written. I think this is what happened.

We woke up still in Beaver, the aim for today was to reach the Grand Canyon. We took about 20 miles on the Interstate and then headed off on local roads through Utah and then Arizona. It was another beautiful drive, up and down mountains, through passes and across deserts. Utah is kind of a green desert, there are a fair amount of trees but still the land doesn't look especially fertile.

We drove through a bunch more national forest, we should have been writing down the names as we went through but of course we forgot. Interestingly, all of the national forests have welcome signs and they all note "Land of Many Uses", not sure why, but they do.

As we moved further south the desert got more sand, there were fewer and fewer trees. We crossed the Colorado river way up at (I think) Glen Canyon, as far as I can gather this eventually becomes the Grand Canyon.

We drove through many, many miles of Navajo Indian reservation in northern Arizona, it was very dusty, dry and kind of dirty looking. I can't imagine trying to scratch out a life there but I guess people have survived for many thousands of years doing just that.

Finally we reached our destination, I forget for sure but I think it was another 9 hour day in the car. I had a chance to run and take a quick glance at the Grand Canyon while Krista fed and walked the dog, then we went on to the Hotel. I will not say anything about the Canyon, I'll try and come up with some words for tomorrow.

Thoughts on travelling

This trip has been somewhat of an eye-opener to me. I knew, I've always known, that the USA is a large country but all these miles have really made me think about the enormous scale of this place, and the emptiness of it.

Like yesterday, we were driving from Jackson Hole to (evenutally) the Grand Canyon, but that was too much for one day. So we basically drove for 9 hours just to get to nowhere. And in that nine hours, if you take out the part that is Salt Lake City we probably only drove past a few thousand homes with maybe 20 thousand people living there. That's like my entire hometown being spread along 500 miles. Wyoming for instance, probably took us 6 hours to drive East to West across the state, the entire state has a population of less than half a million.

It's been a tremendous amount of fun so far. I would recommend this to anyone, anyone who doesn't mind sitting on their butt for a few hours everyday.

Day Five Wyoming, Idaho and Utah

Mostly a driving day, and split into two halves. The first half of the drive was mostly on small state roads, then moved to the Interstate.


The drive out of Jackson Hole was really beautiful, we spent the first 50 miles or so driving alongside a river. Timing was perfect, the leaves on the trees were changing to fall colours. Really, we could have stopped every 100 yards to admire another fantastic view.

Sadly the road left the riverbank and we just carried on the state roads. Probably close to 200 miles on almost empty single carriageway roads. There were towns here and there, usually with populations between 2-600 people. The towns seemed to vary between really poor, all trailers and no stores, to other similar size towns with McDonalds, Starbucks, Hardware stores, Radioshacks. I didn't really get it. I really enjoyed this portion of the drive, though I think Krista would have preferred to be speeding along a little more.

There were several times when driving along these roads where we would have to wait for some roadworks. There'd be several miles of one track road and we'd have to wait for one of the workers to arrive in his "guide car" to take us through the mostly gravel roads. On a couple of these stretches we were following a guy on a motorcycle, I felt bad for him as he slipped and slid around.

For a while the road kept flitting back and forth between Wyoming, Idaho and Utah. It didn't want to decide which state to be in. The google map was a litle confusing as each state used different numbers for the same road.

Somewhere a little north of Salt Lake City (maybe a hundred miles or so) we joined the Interstate Highway. It was weird to be back in all that fast moving traffic. Most of the state road drive we were only able to see two or three other vehicles at any time. Suddenly there were hundreds of them speeding along in each direction.

We had decided that driving all the way through from Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon was an impossibility so after hours hunting across the map we settled on the town of Beaver in Utah as a good place to spend the night. Partly because it was approximately halfway, but also because the name was funny. Nine hours after leaving Jackson Hole we arrived in Beaver, tired but glad to have chosen the Paradise Inn and restaurant.

Day Four - Yellowstone

OK, I'll get to the rest of this post later. It's going to take a while to sort through the photos, there are many!

It turns out that Yellowstone Park is much, much larger than I imagined it to be. I don't think it would be possible to see it all in one day. Especially if you are staying in Jackson Hole and you left the dog in the hotel, thus limiting the time you can spend away from base.

Yellowstone and the Teton National Parks are both absolutely amazing, no question that we are coming back here. We barely made a dent in Yellowstone, we did get to see Old Faithful and the bubbling Mud Paint Pots. All around there are steam vents. It's all so high too, there are some stunning views of ravines (or canyons, or whatever you want to call them). We got to see some wild bison up close. I'll try and write more and sort out some pictures later today.

-----Edit----
OK, so now we are at our next destination, I guess I should put up some pictures from yesterday. Like I said, Yellowstone is absolutely an incredible place. I'm certain that we will be back, does anyone want to babysit our crazy dog for us? :)

Other than seeing more geysers and stuff there are some things that we missed. We didn't see much wildlife, though the bison did make an appearance, we also didn't see the hot springs at the north of the park. They have these little old yellow buses drving around the park, with guides on board. I would love to do that next time.

Last night when we got home from Yellowstone we went into Jackson Hole to try and get some dinner. Everything was booked, well everything in the main downtown area anyhow. We settled on a little chinese restaurant, food was fine, nothing special. I did get some entertainment though... sitting at the table next to us was an English couple obviously on holiday. I was intrigued to listen to them trying to order American Chinese food, and to listen to their comments as the food arrived. It was exactly like my experiences all those years ago when I arrived here.