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Continental Divide

2021-08-13 – The Oregon Trail caravan … Day 16 – Traveling from Lander, WY to Fort Bridger, WY

We move on again, just like the wagons on the Oregon Trail…

We traveled across many miles of Wyoming landscape…

We are driving through “South Pass”. This is where most of the emigrants passed through the Rocky Mountains. The “pass” is about 35miles wide, and it crosses the Continental Divide at about 7,412 feet elevation, the lowest pass in this area of the Rockies…

So it’s all downhill from here…

The terrain changes continuously…

The terrain changes continuously…

The terrain changes continuously…

We crossed the Big Sandy River…

And we crossed the Little Sandy River…

And the terrain continues to change…

We stopped for lunch at Little America. There are hundreds of billboards on each direction of the freeway advertizing this place. Wall Drug, it isn’t. But it is a large gas station, a motel, and a restaurant…

We made a slight detour to the town of Granger to see the old stagecoach station and Pony Express station…

The stage station is in pretty good shape…

The Pony Express station not so much…

We continued on. The terrain is still changing…

We arrived at the RV Park.

Next to the RV Park is Fort Bridger State Historic Site

Again, I’m not a big fan of forts, but this did have some interesting things… The first schoolhouse in Wyoming!

The small building on the end is the first schoolhouse…

I particularly enjoyed the whitewashed hand cut limestone walls…

These stone buildings are original to the the mid 1800s…

The wooden buildings are not original… Wood is such a terrible building material…

We enjoyed seeing the bear trap…

This is the guardhouse, complete with an office and the jail cells…

The main building is now the museum…

Here is a detail of the limestone walls…

What I WAS interested was the roadside cabins… This is a restored example of typical roadside cabins that were all along the Lincoln Highway, offering motorists a place to spend the night…

The Lincoln Highway is one of the earliest transcontinental highway routes for automobiles across the United States of America. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, the Lincoln Highway ran coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City west to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, originally through 13 states.

The first officially recorded length of the entire Lincoln Highway in 1913 was 3,389 miles. Over the years, the road was improved and numerous realignments were made, and by 1924 the highway had been shortened to 3,142 miles.

The name of the Lincoln Highway was changed in 1926, as it became part of U.S. Route 30 from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. We on the Oregon Trail caravan have been following the route of US 30 for most of our trip…

Note that each cabin had a carport. Not only did this give you a parking space, but there were no common walls between rooms…

Note that this is not a “motel”. The first motel was the Motel Inn (originally known as the Milestone Mo-Tel), located in San Luis Obispo, California, was the first motel in the world. It opened on December 12, 1925, and closed in 1991. The building is now the administrative building of the Apple Farm Inn hotel next door. I lived just down the street from the Motel Inn whilst I was a college student in San Luis Obispo…

We returned to the Villa and happy hours ensued.

An enjoyable time was had by all…

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2021-08-09 & 10 – The Oregon Trail caravan … Days 12 and 13 – Evansville and Casper, WY

Short stories today. I woke up Monday with a sore throat; Lynda has had a cold since Saturday. We stayed in all day…

We did manage to get outside and walk a bit around the RV park, but it is constantly hot and dusty and windy…

We were feeling well enough to get out about 4:00 and join the club at a very good steak house nearby. After a few Old Fashioneds at the bar, and an appetizer of steak tartare, we joined the others for prime rib and cheesecake…

We returned to the Villa and turned in early…

Tuesday we felt a bit better (or at least Lynda did…) We headed out at 10:00 am to see the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper…

It is located on a bluff adjacent to the Overland Trails – the trails used by the emigrants to Oregon, the 49ers going to California, and the Mormons going to the Great Salt Lake valley…

Before we had left the campground this morning our leaders asked that the ladies wear their Oregon Trail bonnets and dresses… As you might guess, we are non-participants in activities such as this…

We walked toward the museum building…

The building itself reflects a lot of imagery…

The blue wall segments represent the continuous westward trek by the pioneers and the emigrants, always up hill. Missouri is at about 2,000′ elevation, and the continental Divide is at roughly 7,000′ where the trails crossed it…

The stone wall is all native sandstone, and the green wall represents the sagebrush that was the emigrants constant companion on the prairie.

The arch portal, of course, represents the hoops and canvas of the covered wagons…

Inside we watch a short film about the emigrants. The lifesize displays added to the realism of the film…

Some of the Mormon emigrants could not afford oxen or mules, so they carried their possessions for 1,500 miles using handcarts. Lynda gave it a try!

One of the more interesting tidbits of the radical changes the emigrants brought to this region is in addition to all the other self-inflicted damage that I have reported on – loss of food and habitat for Indians, Pony Express ended by the transcontinental telegraph, wagon trains ended by the railroad, small towns ended by the Interstate Highways…

As the 350,000 emigrants passed through here on the trails small settlements sprang up to service the needs of the emigrants. When the trains ended the wagon travel, the rails took a different route again, this time to be more convenient to the coal deposits of southern Wyoming. These settlements slowly vanished…

Outside the Museum is a reproduction of a typical Pony Express station. There is a small stable and a small office for the station master. The station master lived here alone; and he was alone – he was visited by only four Pony Express riders per week. Otherwise he was free to fend for himself. When the Pony Express ended, most of these stations were retrofitted to be relay stations for the telegraph… Adaptive Reuse!

We returned to the Villa. I took a nap… Then we had a modest Happy Hours. We walked around the RV park in the evening…

An enjoyable time was had by all

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2021-05-28 – Springtime in the Rockies caravan… Estes Park, CO – Day 2 – Rocky Mountain National Park

Today we enter Rocky Mountain National Park.

Rocky Mountain National Park is located approximately 76 mi northwest of Denver in north-central Colorado, within the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The eastern and western slopes of the Continental Divide run directly through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the park’s northwestern region.[6] The main features of the park include mountains, alpine lakes and a wide variety of wildlife within various climates and environments, from wooded forests to mountain tundra.

The Rocky Mountain National Park Act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson on January 26, 1915, establishing the park boundaries and protecting the area for future generations.[3] The Civilian Conservation Corps built the main automobile route, Trail Ridge Road, in the 1930s.  In 1976, UNESCO designated the park as one of the first World Biosphere Reserves. In 2018, more than 4.5 million recreational visitors entered the park.  The park is one of the most visited in the National Park System, ranking as the third most visited national park in 2015.  In 2019, the park saw record attendance yet again with 4,678,804 visitors, a 44% increase since 2012.

The park has a total of five visitor centers, with park headquarters located at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center—a National Historic Landmark designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West. National Forest lands surround the park on all sides.

Today is the beginning of the summer season in the park. To control the crowds you must make a reservation to enter the park. We had procured a 9:00 am entrance time to go to Bear Lake, an alpine lake with a lovely walking/hiking path around it. We waited in three lines of cars for over 1/2 hour before we finally arrived at the entrance station.

Once in the park we again saw these magnificent mountain peaks…

Once at Bear Lake we had friends take our picture… While the temperatures were in the mid-60s, the wind was freezing…

The lake is mostly frozen over. The path around the lake is mostly snow, slush, and ice, with rare patches of dirt, mud, and rocks.

This is what the path looked like most of the way around the lake:

After completing the Bear Lake loop we drove a short way to Sprague Lake; this is Glacier Creek, which feeds into the lake.:

Spraugue Lake is named after Abner Sprague, one of the original settlers in the Estes Park area. Sprague built a homestead in Moraine Park in 1874 that eventually grew into a hunting and fishing lodge and dude ranch. He dammed the creek to create the lake so his guests could enjoy fishing and boating. The lodge operated from 1910 to 1940, preceding the actual National Park.

We enjoyed watching the ducks dive for food…

The lake offered great views all around. It was an easy 3/4 mile, with no ice and snow underfoot…

We don’t know what animal hatched out of these eggs… Maybe Elk? Moose?

After our time in the Park it was time for lunch! Bird and Jim’s serves “Colorado Cuisine”. Local ingredients, and creative recipes. We enjoyed a Smoked Pheasant Chowder and Short Rib Sliders…

After lunch came a nap; then we had our first GAM – a “Get Acquainted Meeting”. We will have five of these, giving us all an opportunity to get to know each other even better…

After the GAM we walked around the pond, and returned to the Villa.

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

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2021-05-26 – Springtime in the Rockies caravan…Traveling to Estes Park, CO

This is our last day on the road for awhile… We are headed to Estes Park where we meet up with the rest of the caravaners…

More meadows. Somewhere east of Rock Springs we crossed the Continental Divide, at about 6,500′ elevation… Wyoming is beautiful, except when it’s not… We stopped to stretch our legs overlooking this giant grassland…

We turned south in Laramie, and soon crossed over into Colorado. Again, we almost got a picture of the sign…

More mountain meadows…

We continued to Fort Collins, then headed into the mountains. The road to Estes Park is like this for about 35 miles…

We arrived at the Elk Meadows RV Resort and found another 25 Airstreams… We have driven over 1,150 miles in 4 days…

We setup the Villa; we even were finally able to put out the slide…! We are here for 5 nights. We received our caravan book and drivers manual and met several of our new friends. We already know 5-6 couples that we had previously met on prior caravans.

We shared Happy Hours with new neighbors, and an enjoyable time was had by all…

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