Flaming Gorge

We left our motel in Rock Springs, WY on Friday morning and headed to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, where we have a campsite reserved for the next 5 nights. It's a government campground in Ashley National Forest called Buckboard Crossing. The surrounding landscape is  an arid desert but it has some trees, shade shelters over the picnic tables, a view of the 91-mile-long lake, electricity and showers--and it's cheap, due to our Golden Age card that gets us in free to National Parks and big discounts on government campgrounds. We have a raft/fishing trip scheduled for Aug. 25 down the Green River below the dam that creates this monster lake, but we decided to just park in the area for awhile and soak up the peace and quiet and work on our respective books.

Before turning off onto the scenic byway that leads to the Recreation Area, we stop for gas at a truck stop called Cruel Jack's--very apt, says Carol [--I'm an abused husband, says Jack]. The gas was $2.50, the highest we've paid so far on this trip. Most places it's been under $2.00.

The scenic byway fulfills the promise of its name. Lots of stops for photos. The landscape changes with the changing elevations, from arid sagebrush-covered hills, now blooming yellow, to steep, cool wooded mountains, to bare red rock cliffs. This scenery is one big reason why we love the American West so much! We drive down the east side of the lake, catching glimpses of it here and there. We're looking for the Dutch John Resort, where we will meet our guides for the rafting adventure on the 25th. We find it easily and reward ourselves with an ice cream cone. Yum.

Blooming sagebrush.

Driving on, we finally come to the big dam that creates the lake and stop for a photo op. Impressive structure.

Flaming Gorge Dam from lakeside.

Then we drive across the dam and start up the west side of the lake, where our campground is, called Buckboard Crossing. It's next to a marina that also has an RV campground, much more crowded and noisy than our quiet National Forest campground. After exploring the place, we're very happy with our decision to stay here for a few days.

Before we descend to lake level, we stop for a picture of Jack with the Flaming Gorge in the background.

Carol snaps a picture of the multicolored sandstone for which the Flaming Gorge is named.

We see mule deer ambling through the campground with their babies in tow. And this morning (Sunday) we wake up to see a small group of cows grazing next to our van. We've seen lots of signs telling us this is "Open Range" so I guess this proves it! 

Range grazing cattle pass through our campsite.

A newer RoadTrek -- the owners were kind enough to give Carol a tour. Kingsize bed, granite countertop, lots of storage -- this is the deluxe model!

Our RoadTrek and Campsite.

Beautiful spot. Jack and I are both working on our respective books and taking walks. We had a campfire last night. Very relaxing...

Wide Open Spaces!

After our pleasant night at the Pioneer Village campground, we headed off toward Wyoming. However, when we got back onto I-80 and came to the town of Kearney, NE, we were amazed to drive under a GIANT covered archway that spanned the whole interstate highway! We took the next exit and drove back to see what that was all about.

Kearney Archway Museum sits across I-80

It was the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, memorializing the contributions of Nebraska and the Platte River to western expansion. This was impressive. A sculpture garden and maze surrounds the building and inside the arch is an interactive museum depicting the history of this part of the west. It's a beautiful log and stone structure. We watched an informative movie about the early pioneers of the area--many things were quite different from what we had thought! We looked around inside and outside for awhile. From the outside, a bridge goes across the Platte River to a public bike trail. Nearby is an earth mound which we walked over to scrutinize more closely. It's an authentic Pawnee lodge built not too long ago by a group of Pawnee. The inside is much more impressive than the outside. It's huge, very nice and cool despite the 90+ temps outside, and can house 15 or 20 people, with bed structures all along the circular wall. Neat!

Carol with giant buffalo sculpture

Inside the archway

 Pawnee lodge

Back on the road after spending a couple hours on this sidebar. Continuing our policy of frequent stops to walk around, we learned that Nebraska had commissioned 10 sculptures for some of their rest stops across the state in a big competition back in the 1970s, for America's Bicentennial. They turned out to be controversial because they're all very modern and abstract, and none of the 10 winners of the competition were from Nebraska, or even from the Midwest. Some are big granite carvings, that you can climb on, supposedly representing some aspect of Nebraska. We liked the metal floating wind sculpture.

Nebraska Wind Sculpture.

Nebraskan Gateway Sculpture

We didn't quite make it to Wyoming that day due to all these side trips. We decided to stay in a Walmart not too far from the Wyoming border. These Walmarts are turning out to be some of our favorite camping spots on this trip. We're much more comfortable staying at them this time than on past trips, for some reason. We always ask permission and ask where they'd like us to park, which is always on the far outskirts of the parking lot. We can run our generator without bothering anyone, and our new battery works a lot better than the old one did, so we can keep our lights and fan on all night without running out of juice. It 's nice having the store right there for picking up whatever we need, and best of all the price is right!! Other RVers (and truckers) are always there too, spending the night.

Next morning we finally made it to Wyoming. Yay! We got our first glimpse of the Rockies, always a cool feature of these cross-country drives, and our first sighting of pronghorn antelopes. We stopped at a rest stop between Cheyenne and Laramie--Wyoming has the greatest rest stops! This one is next to a park dedicated to the old Lincoln Highway (did you know we had a coast-to-coast highway in 1913?!). It has a lovely visitor center and an impressive, giant statue of Lincoln outside, commemorating the highest point on the old highway--we're at about 8,000 ft. Happy to be here.

Photo just before entering the rest stop pavilion. 

Lincoln Sculpture in background, RoadTrek in foreground. (Another older couple in a RoadTrek parked next to us. They were on their way from AZ to Cape Cod, MA. They love their RoadTrek too.)

View of the Lincoln Sculpture from inside.

Carol gazing at the wide open spaces.

A full-sized stuffed grizzly bear. A 15.4 inch footprint is part of this display.

and two stuffed pronghorn antelope. Male lying down and female standing.

Can you believe this animal can hit 60 mph?

Even a newborn can outrun a human.

We love what this poster has to say.

Jack got into a little bit of trouble, but we made our getaway...

Carol just got some more book editing work and needed to install some software on her new computer in order to do it, so we decided to look for a motel for a night. We enjoyed watching the Olympics on TV and the motel was reasonable and comfortable, so we decided to stay yet another night. We're in the town of Rock Springs and currently getting ready to head to Utah to a campground on the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, as we await our rafting trip down the Green River in a few days.

Computer Crash, Wind Mills, and Pioneer Village

It's a real disaster when your computer dies during the first month of a four-month road trip. Carol's laptop had failed to power up on the day of our last blog, but Jack was finally able to get it going. But the next morning it was DOA. (This on top of our Verizon JetPack MiFi device dying just a week before--what's going on with our technology?!?) Fortunately, the Best Buy Geek Squad was nearby. They assessed the dead laptop and said it was surely dead, but they could get the data off the hard drive. (Whew, since Carol had not been overly conscientious about  backing up her work every day--she's been editing some technical books on this trip and had work in progress.)

We looked at the laptops offered by Best Buy and selected another Dell Inspiron laptop, the same type that died, because Carol is used to it and hates to change ANYTHING on her computer, ever. We bought the computer and arranged for the Geek Squad to get all the data off the broken laptop's hard drive and put it on the new one. It would be ready for pick up the next morning. BTW, we were in West Des Moines, a very clean and tidy city, from what we saw of it. We found a nearby Walmart Supercenter to stay overnight at (several other RVs were also spending the night in their parking lot). We had some time to kill, so decided to see the new Star Trek movie. We've been Star Trek aficionados since the days of the old TV show and have seen all the movies, so really wanted to see this one on the big screen. Enjoyed it. Very action-packed. The mall where the movie theater was located was GIGANTIC. We're not used to city malls anymore--we were a couple of rubes walking around with our jaws hanging open.

Carol's new Dell Laptop with i7 Intel processor, 12 GB RAM and 512 GB solid state drive. 

VERY FAST

Next morning we were up early and headed over to Best Buy, since Carol was chomping at the bit to get her new computer and make sure she hadn't lost any work due to the crash. We're impressed with this Best Buy. Both the salespeople and the Geek Squadders were knowledgeable and very helpful. We got a crash course on the new computer and verified that all the data from the other computer was there--yay! Then they let us sit there in the carrel for awhile and download a bunch of software that we needed using their fast connection. Life is good again.

Had lunch at a Whole Foods and got back on the road. We continued our plan of stopping at a rest stop every hour or so, to rest and walk a little. One of the Iowa rest stops was spectacular! Iowa has lots of windmills located in the middle of the corn and soybean fields, and this rest stop was apparently sponsored by the company that's installing the windmills. One of the windmill propeller blades was installed vertically so you could finally see how big these things really are. (BIG!!) The whole place had an energy theme, with beautiful color tiled walls displaying windmills in operation and lots of informative panels. Neat place! Plus you could see the real windmills operating from the rest stop parking lot.

A 145 ft long windmill propeller blade.

Carol at base of windmill propeller blade. Mind you, this is NOT the windmill body but just one of the 3 propeller blades stuck in the ground! The whole windmill is over 400 ft tall.

Nice description of windmills.

This rest area has some very cool tile work. This one shows the interior of the windmill electric generator. Note the technician inside near the hub. Not sure how he gets up there...

There are three tiled walls showing surrounding windmills.
An interesting note quotes a study which concluded there is enough wind power on the plains from Texas to North Dakota to provide 16 times the electrical power needs of the entire United States.

We crossed over into Nebraska and drove through Omaha (it was Sunday so not much traffic). We decided to stop at a motel with a good internet connection on the west side of Omaha, to download some more software (we're trying not to use up all our Verizon MiFi bandwidth) and let Carol play with the new computer some more, clean up the old stuff that doesn't need to be on there, etc. Had a comfortable quiet night at the Super8 and got to watch some of the Olympics for the first time.

Monday we got back on the road for real, heading for one of the stops that we'd planned, Harold Warp's Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska. Reading reviews of the place, we weren't sure what to expect, as most of the current reviews mention how rundown the place has gotten. Harold Warp was a successful businessman in the area, a son of pioneer parents. Back in the 1950s he started collecting all sorts of Americana that displayed technological progress from pioneer days till the present (the present being around 1980s, since it doesn't look like much has been added since then). This is an astounding collection of stuff, housed in 20+ buildings surrounded a tree-shaded grassy "village" square. He has an original Pony Express building, a pioneer sod house, an 1890s church (which still hold services every Sunday during the summer season), train station with steam train in it, an old merry-do-round, general store fully stocked, etc. etc. Plus massive buildings holding all kinds of vehicles from the earliest wagons to jets.

Conestoga Pioneer Wagon - outside view

Conestoga Wagon - inside view

A really old steam engine locomotive

Pioneer sod house. Very cool temperature inside on this hot day.

1884 Church still has church service every Sunday during the summer season.

The oldest Merry-go-Round.

Carol with multi-colored animals.

In another building he has kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms from all eras, from pioneer days to modern with authentic furniture (modern again being about 1980). Just about anything you can think of, Mr. Warp collected one (or more) of--musical instruments, glassware, printing presses, boats, sewing machines, refrigerators--anything you want to see the history of, you can probably find an example of it here! We only managed to see about a third of the collection, if that.

The 1830 kitchen display.

We stayed at the adjoining campground. The place is rundown. The original campground bathhouse is locked up and says "closed for renovation" and campers are told to use two old motel rooms adjoining the campground for a bathroom. (Actually it was nice to take a bath instead of a shower.) Their visitor numbers are way down and apparently the heirs of Mr. Warp don't want to spend their money to upgrade the place. So who knows how long it will stay open. It's definitely worth seeing though!! Mindblowing...

This morning we head for Wyoming--one of our favorite states!

Surprise Visit and Quest for Internet

Today, after the predicted torrential rains all last night, we pulled up stakes (figuratively) and drove across the Mississippi into Iowa again, heading west. Some of the campsites were more affected by all the rain than others--ours was not so bad and we had been alerted to the wet forecast, so fortunately we'd put everything away last night.

We had also been alerted to the fact that we would be driving right past our friend, and former Oriskanite, Nathan Cox's place of employment in Coralville, IA, a suburb of Iowa City, where he and his wife Ann live. (We were alerted by his mom, Ninette Cox, who is a faithful blog reader.) Nathan is assistant manager at West Music in Coralville, so we found the address and put it into our GPS. Sure enough it was easy to find and it was good to see Nathan's smiling face again. He looks great--very fit and healthy! He gave us an informative tour of the store.

The West Music store is much, much larger than it appears in this photo.

Calling West Music a "music store" is a vast understatement, sort of like calling New York City a sleepy little town. It's a very impressive and sizable company. This place is huge, and is only one of multiple stores, although we gathered that it's their flagship. We were stunned at the quantity and quality of seemingly EVERY kind of musical instrument imaginable. A whole roomful of Steinway pianos! A whole roomful of fabulous guitars! Walls full of wind instruments, violins, violas, cellos... yes, and even banjos! Ukeleles! Drums! They give lessons in every kind of musical instrument, do repairs, do custom instrument design, and even have an acoustically excellent performance room in the store that will seat 100. Nathan seems to really like his work and we know the company appreciates him and his expertise. (We remember when Nathan and his brother Jonathan were devoted "band kids" during high school.) It was a treat getting to visit and see him in his element! Thanks for the suggestion, Ninette.

Nathan gave us a nice tour,

starting with the numerous (some costing $100,000 plus) Steinway pianos.

And let's not forget Nathan's cubby hole full of $6,000 cellos and much more,

Another perk to the Coralville stop was Hurt's Donuts right across the street from West Music. What an assortment! We ended up with a giant cinnamon roll and a standard glazed. Yum. The coffee was good too.

Then, back on the road, enjoying the Big Sky, roiling cloudy skyscape, and endless huge farms of corn and soybeans, one after another. The farms all look very prosperous, with lovely older houses in good repair, surrounded by barns and other outbuildings. They all appear to be about a half mile away from each other--about the distance we think people should live from each other for optimum mental health!

Iowa has plenty of rest stops and we  noticed on the signs that they offer Wifi and free dump stations for RVers. Jack has been in search of a good free Wifi connection to do some operating system upgrades to our four Apple devices, so we stopped at a rest stop. However, the connection speed wasn't good enough to do what he wanted to do. We think the state offers the Wifi so as to help keep people from driving and texting--the connection is certainly good enough for texting if not internet surfing. We drove on to a Pilot station and found a great internet connection in their parking lot, and the gas is still under $2!

Perhaps Iowa's way of keeping people from killing themselves texting while driving?

We're now staying at a KOA so Carol can do some laundry...

Buffalo Bill and Lock Adventure

Had another good night’s sleep Wednesday night at the Fisherman’s Corner campground. We got up, did some billpaying and book writing, and then headed off for a little sightseeing. Our first destination was the boyhood home of Buffalo Bill Cody, across the Mississippi in Iowa. After crossing the bridge, we took the scenic drive along the river and went through the little village of LeClaire, which is getting ready to celebrate a 3-day festival called “Tug Fest.” It’s a quaint little town and fortunately we were early enough in the day to avoid the Tug Fest crowds, although their riverfront road is blocked off for booths and some carnival rides. We didn’t have a clue about Tug Fest but were later informed that it’s a 3-day festival celebrating a tug-of-war ACROSS THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER! Yes, tug of war teams from LeClaire, IA and their rivals across the river in Port Byron, IL compete by pulling on a 2700-foot, 680-pound rope stretched all the way across the Mississippi! Sounds like something to see, but since they’re calling for 30,000 to 40,000 people to descend on this place to see it, we think it’s a good thing we’re leaving tomorrow morning. We’re still allergic to crowds.

We got caught in a thunderstorm with spectacular lightning displays on the way to Buffalo Bill’s house, but it didn’t last long. The house was a neat restoration/preservation of an 1840s stone farmhouse with a Victorian frame addition. Buffalo Bill only lived here for a few years, from about age 1 to 6. The rooms are decorated with antiques from two periods—the “pioneer” times around 1840 and early Victorian times—sort of like Olde Surber Station, where we live. We were the only ones visiting, and we wandered around ogling all the old stuff. There were also two bison in a field next to the house. And they had the best, cleanest pit toilet we’ve ever had the privilege of using!

Where Buffalo Bill Cody grew up. Can you see the rain?

Some details about the home.

After that, we found some good “homemade” donuts at Casey General Store and headed on down the road toward Lock and Dam #14. This is the same lock and dam we visited the day before from our campground, but we wanted to see it from the Iowa side, which has the actual locks. We were hoping to see some barges get locked through, and we were in luck. A towboat pushing 15 barges was just entering the lock and we got to see and photograph the whole thing. It seems weird that these vessels are called “towboats” and the massive raft of barges is called a “tow” since they’re being pushed, not towed. According to Wikipedia, this stems from steamboat days when the old steamboats would tow wooden barges alongside to earn extra revenue, and the name stuck.

Towboat and barges in the lock 

We learned that Lock and Dam #14 was constructed in the 1930s and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It can only handle a 600-foot tow but today’s towboats can push up to 15 barges lashed together with steel cables, which is about twice as long as the lock can handle. So they have to break the raft of barges apart and do half at a time through the lock—quite the time-consuming ordeal. It took about 2 hours for the whole procedure. “Our” tow belonged to the Bunge company, a huge international ag/food corporation with its own barge fleet. These barges all held corn (we were told by a lock employee), going down river to St. Louis.

The Thomas K Towboat out of St. Louis. 

We met a young towboater named Josh who is working on this tow, and we discussed how most people in this country have no idea what his job is like, or that jobs like his even exist. Yet these boatmen perform a crucial service by transporting grains and lots of other commodities from America’s heartland to markets both domestic and global. Josh works 30 days straight, living on the towboat, and then gets 15 days off. Watching Josh and the other towboaters work this tow through the lock was impressive—it’s physically demanding and dangerous work. Hats off to them, and to the skillful pilot of the towboat, who had to do some serious maneuvering to get both of the barge rafts safely through the lock and then execute an immediate left turn to keep the whole massive thing in the channel. Wow! Talking to a couple of the lock employees, they are obviously proud of the service they perform. One told me that this 15-barge tow carries as much as about 1,000 semi-trucks or 200 railway cars and it’s MUCH more fuel-efficient and cheaper than either of those alternatives. [Jack comment--Finally, here's a way to get the hated 18-wheelers off the interstate highways.]

After watching the tow disappear around the bend, we headed back to our campsite. We had purchased some firewood and tonight was our designated campfire night. Jack finally got the fire going after we sacrificed a roll of paper towels for kindling and we cooked our hot dogs over the fire. Yum. Just the way Jack likes them! (Except Carol only brought Gulden mustard instead of the plain yellow kind he prefers.)

Josh walking the first part of the tow barges.

Josh up close with Lock #14 in the background.
We were not allowed inside the lock area, hence the fence.

Leaving the lock and heading down river.

It’s currently about 11 pm and it’s raining hard. Torrential rains and flashflooding are expected overnight. We’ll see what the morning brings.

Mississippi Sunset

Hot dogs roasting on an open fire.