Today is an adventure! We are driving over the Rocky Mountains. We are starting at Green River, UT, at 4,000′ elevation.
But first, here are the three oldest grandchildren, ready for school picture day: George X, almost 7, Ian, 8, and Roisin, 9…
We are heading east on the 70… We are traveling across barren Eastern Utah, into Western Colorado.
Once into western Colorado the terrain gets much more interesting…
We stopped at a little town called Rifle, CO, where we had a little lunch. We enjoyed walking the 100 year old downtown…
We continued on. The 70 winds along the Colorado River. We are slowly climbing, but not too rapidly.
The first of several tunnels we went through…
We crested the Vail Pass at 10,666′, then we dropped down to about 9,000′, then we climbed up again to the west entrance of the Eisenhower-Johnson Tunnel. The elevation here is 11,158. These tunnels are the highest tunnels in the USA.After exiting the tunnel we dropped down to about 7,000′; this is where we turned off for a short drive to the campground: 7 miles long, and another 1,500′ elevation rise.
After an uneventful night we headed out. From Arizona, back into Nevada, then up the 15 into Utah…
Utah has magnificent geological formations. We took a few photos, but we are on a tight schedule, so we did not stop often or spend too much time being touristy…
We stopped in a little town called Hurricane, UT, to stretch our legs again…These next photos are the amazing mountains all through Utah…We soon headed east on the 70. More great mountains!
We continued East…
We arrived in Green River, Utah, and checked into the RV park. It was still hot…
We had been to Green River before, in 2018, on the Southwest Adventure Caravan. We had arrived from the south, and we spent hours at the Historic Museum telling the story of John Wesley Powell. Powell left from here on the Green River, which joins the Colorado River a few miles south of here. He continued on and explored the Colorado through the Grand Canyon…
We are not heading south – we did that in 2018. Tomorrow we continue East. We will drive over the Rocky Mountains, continue through Colorado, Kansas, and into Missouri. In Kansas City we will tour a Frank Lloyd Wright building. We continue east through Missouri and into Illinois to Springfield, where we will see more Frank Lloyd Wright, and all things Abraham Lincoln. Finally we will head south to meet up with the caravan in northern Arkansas…
Another travel day. We went only about 150 miles, but there were many interesting stops along the way…
But first, we enjoyed the Nebraska scenery…
We were told by our caravan manual to stop off and see The Golden Spike. Well, the only golden spike that I knew of was at Promontory Point, Utah, where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads completed the transcontinental railroad. So we had no idea what to expect here. Our GPS took us on a wild goose chase around and through several residential neighborhoods until we finally arrived near the railroad tracks. We figured we were getting close. Then we saw the tower:
We figured this was probably worth a stop. We had no idea!
This is The Bailey Classification Yard! We learned a little history:
During the construction of the transcontinental railroad, North Platte was platted as a railroad town by Union Pacific’s Chief Engineer Grenville Dodge. It was chosen because of its close proximity to good water and its distance from Grand Island, Nebraska. In 1866 the first train rolled through what was known at the time as “Hell on Wheels” town. General Dodge quickly moved to construct major shop facilities and winter quarters and by 1867, main line operations began. Just two years later on May 10th, East met West at Promontory Summit in Utah, 690 miles east Sacramento and 1,087 miles west of Omaha. The railroad crossed two-thirds of the continent over some of the most difficult terrain on earth. It was called, “The Work of Giants” and it was the end of the frontier, as we knew it.
Today Bailey Yard, named for former Union Pacific president Edd H. Bailey, is the world’s largest train classification yard in the world. Over 3,000 cars are classified (or sorted) to make sure the cargo reaches its final destination. The yard is eight miles long, 1 1/2 miles wide, and at its widest point contains 320 sets or railroad tracks. The yard is located in the midst of key east-west and north-south corridors, on the busiest freight rail line in America, making it a critical component of Union Pacific’s rail network.
Bailey Yard has 17 receiving and 16 departure tracks handling 14,000 rail cars every 24 hours. The railroad cars are sorted daily in the yard’s eastward and westward yards, nicknamed “hump” yards. Using a mound cresting 34 feet for eastbound trains and 20 feet for those heading west, the hump yards allow four cars a minute to roll gently into any of 114 “bowl” tracks. Here they become part of trains headed for destinations in the East, West and Gulf Coasts of America, as well as the Canadian and Mexican borders. An average of 139 trains per day are comprised of raw and finished goods, such as automobiles, coal, grain, corn, sugar, chemicals, and steel along with consumer goods, including electronics, apparel and other retail products.
To keep America moving forward, the train operations and repair shops at Bailey Yard are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The fueling and service center processes more than 8,500 locomotives each month, using technology like overhead cranes and elevated work bays to maintain fluid operations.
All train movement throughout Bailey Yard is handled through the on-site command center with the latest computerized control systems. The Bailey Yard command center is tied to the Harriman Dispatching Center in Omaha, which controls hundreds of intercity trains daily throughout the company’s 23-state rail system. The Bailey Yard has over 2,500 employees, working 24 hours per day…
So we stopped to take a look… More trains than you can keep track of!
At the observation deck atop the tower we could see the operations, including the hump yards, as the incoming trains are broken up and re-combined into the various outgoing trains.
It was a fascinating opportunity to see how trains really work! We loved it!
We could even see some of our friends parked next to us down below…
So after this exhilarating tour we headed off to the Lincoln County Historical Museum. It was similar to other small county museums…
This one had a rare two story log cabin…
This barbershop was built in 1900…
Typical mercantile building you would see on Main Street in the 1890s…
Then we walked the 1/2 mile to see Scout’s Rest Ranch…
Scout’s Rest Ranch was Buffalo Bill’s retreat and retirement home. He lived here when not traveling with his Wild West shows, and then again after the shows were over…
William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917) was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Le Claire, Iowa Territory (now the state of Iowa), but he lived for several years in his father’s hometown in modern-day Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, before the family returned to the Midwest and settled in the Kansas Territory (now the state of Nebraska).
Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven, after his father’s death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 15. During the American Civil War, he served the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout for the US Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872.
One of the most famous and well-known figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill’s legend began to spread when he was only 23. Shortly thereafter he started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1883, taking his large company on tours in the United States and, beginning in 1887, in Great Britain and continental Europe.
This is his house at the Scout’s Rest Ranch. It was built in the late 1880s. It is considered to be in the “Second Empire” style, with elements of Italianate and Eastlake detailing. In my opinion, it is a big mess… Look at the shutters. Why were shutters added to the windows? Either to keep the Indians out (not applicable here) or to keep the sun off and to insulate against the cold in winter. Look at these shutters: The cannot do either: they don’t even cover the entire window if they were to be closed… I hate phony stuff like this!
Inside the decoration is “authentic Victorian”… I hate Victorian interiors! It hurts my eyes! That wallpaper is abominable!
The outbuildings were interesting…
The Ice House:
The Spring House: (It would also make a good wine cellar…)
The Cob House: Corn cobs were stored here to burn in the stoves in the house…
Lakes are always nice:
So we set off again, heading west to Ogallala…
We arrived at the RV Park and we were soon set up…
We had our last GAM.
This afternoon as we crossed over to the western-most counties of Nebraska we moved from Central time to Mountain time. But our phones, watches, and the truck GPS have a hard time handling the change. So our clocks have been flipping back and forth between the two zones; we never know what time it is…
We started out today by leaving the RV Park at 7:50. We headed out to buy fuel. However, the phone app that told us where it was was wrong, so we had to back track. On our way we were stopped by a train crossing.
We sat there for over 20 minutes… While some people might be annoyed while a freight train moved back and forth for 20 minutes, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The train was off-loading cars into a freight yard. It would pull forward, a worker threw a switch, the train backed up a bit, the worker disconnected a car or two, and the train would stop. The loose car(s) would continue to roll onto the siding.
Fascinating!
The train finally pulled away, and we crossed over; we quickly found the truck stop, where we refilled the diesel and the DEF. And we were off!
We traveled south, and then we jogged west at Salt Lake City. The freeways on the 15 and 215 in SLC were some of the worst roads we have seen on this trip, and we have seen MANY bad roads. Finally we came to the shores of the Great Salt Lake.
I’m not sure we ever saw any clear water in the lake – only the salt flats…
We passed this huge plant of some kind. We could not figure why this “smoke stack” was so large, but it was a fascinating thing to see…
There a Mosque, too…
And on we drove. Salt everywhere…
And a salt processing plant…
We stopped to stretch our legs at Delle. Nothing here except a small gas station and a very large gravel parking area with outhouses…
We continued west. Salt…
A we neared the Nevada border we noticed that cars stopped along the road had been driving onto the salt… Weird!
Then it dawned on me…
This is the Bonneville Salt Flats!
The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. The area is a remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville and is the largest of many salt flats located west of the Great Salt Lake. The property is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is known for land speed records at the “Bonneville Speedway”. Access to the flats is open to the public.
Motorcar racing has taken place at the salt flats since 1914. Racing takes place at part of the Bonneville Salt Flats known as the Bonneville Speedway. There are five major land speed events that take place at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Bonneville “Speed Week” takes place mid-August followed by “World of Speed” in September and the “World Finals” take place early October.
Just west of the salt flats we went through Wendover, Utah. We crossed the border and entered West Wendover, Nevada…
We stopped… where else? At a casino parking lot…
We enjoyed a nice lunch and a short nap… Then we headed south. The road looked like this for 110 miles!
And then we arrived at the “booming” town of Ely, NV, and we easily found the KOA campground…
We settled in, walked our required 30 minutes, enjoyed Happy Hours and dinner…
We wanted to beat the traffic entering Yellowstone, so we pulled out at 6:45 am. We headed from the RV Park in Montana, into Wyoming, and through the Roosevelt Arch…
The early morning drive through Yellowstone was beautiful, but, other than the elk that was standing in the Roosevelt Arch, which delayed our drive for a few minutes, we saw no wildlife…
That isn’t to say that there was no excitement today… Back in Burbank our two older grandchildren boarded the big yellow school bus for the first time… They are heading to Beach Camp! We expect them to return tired, sandy, and sunburned (just a little…).
So we continued through the park. Believe it or not, this is the fastest route from Gardiner, MT to California…
We came upon some geothermal activity. This was bigger than any similar sulfur-smelling steam venting we had seen in all our time here…
But we continued on, traveling south, then heading west, exiting the park at the west entrance…
It took about one hour to travel the park. As we left we saw the lines of cars trying to get into the park. This line of traffic is still 3-4 miles from the park entrance…
So we passed on out of Wyoming, back into Montana, and on through to Idaho.
Somewhere in Idaho we stopped to stretch our legs and eat a snack. We pulled off an anonymous offramp and parked between the Potato Growers of Idaho Association and a FedEx Distribution center…
Back on the freeway we continued south…
We ate lunch at a nice rest stop somewhere in southern Idaho…
We passed over into Utah, and on the Tremonton, where we found a very nice RV Resort…
Aspen Grove RV Resort, Tremonton, Utah. Large sites, concrete pads, full hook-ups. Come back in 5 years – they have planted a tree at each site – in five years we won’t be able to use our satellite TV…
There was another Airstream in the park – pulled by a Porsche Cayenne… We had an interesting chat about tow-vehicles, hithes, and Airstreams in general…
Another interesting feature of the RV Park is that several sites have Electric Vehicle charging stations…!
For our 47th wedding anniversary dinner we selected the finest restaurant in Tremonton… It is a diner at the bowling alley…
We tried to have a toast, but this being Utah, there was no wine…
After a fairly unremarkable dinner we returned to the Villa…
We are Parkers! Every caravan assigns various duties as needed throughout the caravan. In the past we have been parkers, de-parkers, singers, and Grace-sayer…
Today we are parkers. That means we need to leave extra early , arriving extra early at the next RV park, so that we can assign campsites to the various caravaners before they arrive and help them find their sites when they do arrive…
We left at 7:00 am. Today will be the longest travel time on the caravan… 290 miles!
We were following one of the Co-leaders… You will see a lot of pictures of his rear-end…
We traveled north across northern Utah, and somewhere (we don’t know where…) we crossed over into Wyoming…
We stopped briefly to stretch our legs and buy some groceries…
We continued north through Wyoming…
We started to see evidence of mountains ahead…
We stopped again in the small town of Pinedale, WY…
Looks like a great place for lunch, but we had no time!
We finally arrived at Jackson, WY, the main town in Jackson Hole. What a touristy mess!
Leaving Jackson, we now viewed the Grand Tetons in all their glory!
We parked the Villa in our assigned site, then showed up for our parking duties…
We had a flagger, to flag in the Airstreamers so that they did not miss the park and have to drive all around the world again to find it… Some of us handed out sandwiches, others gave directions and site numbers, and others kept track of who had arrived and who was still on the road…
After our parking duties were over, we walked about. We are parked right on Jackson Lake. This is the marina, with the Tetons byond…
This is just above the swimming beach, on Jackson Lake.
Our campsite, naturally, is in the trees. No internet, no satellite TV. No TV of any kind…
We had a meeting with the Ranger to explain to us the rules, mostly rules on how not to get eaten by a bear…
We returned to the Villa. No power. Half the park is out…
We had an early dinner and turned in early. (Power came back on at about 9:30…)
This morning, since we had not had a group dinner upon our arrival, we shared a lovely breakfast at the Flaming Gorge Resort…
After breakfast we drove towards Red Canyon. This is beautiful, but we still don’t know anything about Flaming Gorge…
We arrived at Red Canyon, and peered over the rim…
Flaming Gorge Reservoir is the largest reservoir in Wyoming, on the Green River, impounded behind the Flaming Gorge Dam. Construction on the dam began in 1958 and was completed in 1964. The reservoir stores 3,788,900 acre-feet of water when measured at an elevation of 6,040 feet above sea-level (its maximum).
The reservoir is mainly in southwest Wyoming and partially in northeastern Utah. The northern tip of the reservoir is 10 miles southeast of Green River, Wyoming (not to be confused with the town of Green River, Utah), 14 miles southwest of Rock Springs, Wyoming, and the Southern tip is approximately 40 miles north of Vernal, Utah. The lake straddles the Utah-Wyoming border. The nearby town of Dutch John, Utah, was built to serve as a base camp during construction of the dam, and as an administrative site afterwards.
We were spellbound at the views from here… especially since the land (rocks) we were standing on were clearly separated from the “mainland”…
After being amaized by the views from Red Rock Canyon rim, we drove a short distance to the Swett Ranch…
Swett Ranch, southwest of Dutch John, has buildings dating from 1909. A 14.1 acres section of the ranch was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It included nine contributing buildings and three contributing structures.
There were three houses on the ranch. An original log cabin, originally elsewhere, was disassembled and reassembled here on this site. This was the original house, and later it became a bunkhouse for the family’s sons.
This is the second house, added a few years later.
This contained a Kitchen-Living area, a primary bedroom, and a loft for the family’s daughters…
The third house was the family home from the 1940s to the 1960s. While it is quite modern in appearance, it took them until the 1960s to finally add a fully functional bathroom… and even then, they had to walk outside to get to it…
This is the stable; beyond it is the schoolhouse…
Inside the stable…
The Spring House…
The root cellar… It has a long passage, with three doors, which extends into the hill beyond. Being an underground room, it is at a constant 55 degrees – it would make a perfect wine cellar…!
The Swett family live here from 1909 into the late 1960… living without electricity until the late 1950s… All farm equipment was horse-powered; they never had a gasoline or diesel powered tractor…
The countryside is beautiful here. After the ranch we drove towards Dutch John…
There is a great bridge we drove over…
And then we found the dam…
We returned to the RV Park…
This evening we were treated to a wonderful dinner at the Red Canyon Lodge by Patricio and Essy Donoso, new Airstream friends from Florida.
It is their 45th wedding anniversary today…
This is the finest restaurant in the area… I, of course, brought the wine… They had the audacity of charging $8.00 corkage fee! What are they thinking? I haven’t seen $8.00 corkage since the 1980s…
We had a lovely dinner, and the grounds were lovely in the twilight after dinner…
We returned to the Villa. An enjoyable time was had by all…
Travel day again. We are leaving the Dinosaur National Monument area, and traveling only a short ways north, to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, near the town of Dutch John.
We left just after 9:00, and traveled through the town of Naples, where we topped off our fuel. We continued west a few miles to Vernal, which looked interesting. We stopped and walked the town for about 45 minutes. It clearly has seen better days, but it looks like improvements are on the way…
At Vernal we turned north again and climbed more mountains…
We continued driving north through the mountains…
We arrived at the RV Park and found our spot…
That evening we had happy hours and a GAM to celebrate our arrival…
We returned to the Villa and an enjoyable time was had by all…
Today was our exciting White Water Rafting trip down the Green River, through Split Mountain… but we were not allowed to bring our phones/cameras, so we took no photos…
However, another Airstreamer did have a waterproof camera, so he was kind enough to lend us some of his photos…
We had to be at the Raft Store in Jenson at 8:30, so naturally we were there at 8:00. We waited around and finally enough of us (there were 18 Airstreamers on this excursion…) arrived so that we could be fitted for helmets and Personal Flotation Devices (PFDs – life vests…).
We were all loaded into two vans, along with three rafts and four River Guides. We drove about 45 minutes through some of the most desolate landscapes I have ever seen. We stopped along the way to view some petroglyphs (not to be confused with pictographs…).
Finally, we arrived at the Green River. While one of the River Guides gave us our safety talk, the other three unloaded the rafts, stowed away the equipment and food we would need for lunch, and got everything ready for our departure.
Lynda and I were joined by four other Airstreamers and two river guides into our raft. We had the middle seats… I would have preferred the rear seats, but that didn’t work out…
By the way; I have never done this before. Lynda has, on a Senior trip, with a raft loaded with about fifteen 17 year old boys and girls…
And off we went. The river was very quiet here, so we practiced paddling for a few minutes. Then we headed downstream. We were the lead boat…
We looked something like this. Frankly, I can’t tell if this is our boat or not…
The trip covers nine miles of the river, with four Class 3 rapids, plus lesser rapids in between…
About halfway through the trip we stopped for lunch. We had safely maneuvered three of the Class 3 Rapids; we had been splashed and bumped, and we were generally pretty tired. However, we were all still in the boat!
We landed and came ashore. Most of us quickly shed the cumbersome helmets and PFDs…
We had a chance to relax, drink some water, and chat about our travels…
And then came lunch!
If you hadn’t noticed by now, our river guides were four very strong 20-something young women!
The rest of the trip went off without a hitch, except that at the last Class 3 Rapids, just before our take-out spot, we had wind gales/gusts of 40-50 mph blowing us back up the river! We ran those rapids three times, each time only to be blown back up the river… (the water was flowing at about 20-25 mph…).
Our guides finally pulled us along the shoreline where they could walk in the water and drag us down river against the wind, while we paddled furiously and used our paddles to push off the shore. I don’t know how orthodox or how unusual this is, but it worked.
We finally landed and were able to stand again on dry land. As we rested, we watched the four river guides hoist these rafts onto their shoulders and place them on the trailer. We had a short trip back to the Raft Store, from which we returned to the RV Park…
It was a great trip and I think we would all do it again. It was a little wet, a little bumpy, but it was all in good fun!
Back at the RV park we had happy hours. And an enjoyable time was had by all…
Adventures in the Villa 