We’ve driven past the signs for Cahokia Mounds in Southwestern Illinois lots of times on our travels to and from Tucson, Arizona.
The Cahokia Mounds are BIG! At the top of this one you can see a person.
“The remains of the most sophisticated prehistoric native civilization north of Mexico are preserved at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Within the 2,200-acre tract, located a few miles west of Collinsville, Illinois, lie the archaeological remnants of the central section of the ancient settlement that is today known as Cahokia.“
I’d done some reading about the site and was intrigued but not enough to make a side trip there since I perceived it as just some nondescript hills. Then in early 2022 I read that they had added an Augmented Reality (AR) Application to enhance a visit to the mounds. That seemed like fun so we made plans to spend time there as a side trip to a few days in St. Louis, MO.
The Cahokia Mounds Augmented Reality app costs $4.99. It’s available for iPhone and Android.
The app lets you see the mounds as they looked 1,000 years ago, including the people, structures and artifacts. On a windy day in early May, Cindy and I spent a morning “augmenting reality” with the help of my iPhone and some shared earbuds.
Scanning a code and then pointing your phone reveals a image of what that area looked like when Cahokia was active.The augmented reality scenes are populated with people and sounds.The biggest mound, Monks Mound size was calculated in 1988 as about 100 feet high, 955 feet long including the access ramp at the southern end, and 775 feet wide.
The reading I’ve done suggests that the mounds were a gathering place for the native tribes in the midwest from about 800 to 1400. It took us a couple hours to tour the multiple mounds and fields in the complex.
The Cahokia Mounds entry sign in on Collinsville Road, Collinsville, Illinois, USA
…the USA map on the back of our trailer had a lack of states visited in the northeast part of the US.
With five years of travel we saw that we neglected the northeast USA
So we planned a trip for mid-September 2021 that’d take us from Chicago to Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York also adding the cities of Montreal and Quebec, Canada since we’d be going that way.
Our route included stops in Montreal and Quebec City, Canada
Since Covid 19 is a concern, we had to have a negative Covid 19 test to cross the US/Canada border. We got out tests near home and headed to Port Huron, Michigan to wait for our results. Luckily the results came in a day and we passed through the border without a hitch and traveled the 520 miles to Montreal.
Side streets near Montreal’s Place Jacques Cartier are picturesque.Montreal’s Notre-Dame de Bon Secoirs Chapel “sailors church” has little boats hanging from the ceiling.
Then on to Quebec City…
Old Quebec City squareQuebec City’s weather wasn’t the best during parts of our September visit, so we spent a rainy day at a Mayan exhibit at the Musee de la CivilisationSome fall color at Parc national des Îles-de-Boucherville.Umbrella street in Quebec City.
We left Canada at the Derby Line Port of Entry, Derby Line, Vermont crossing and were back in the USA. Cindy was disappointed that the border guard didn’t extend a “welcome back” greeting!
Our first stops in the US included…
The Flume in Franconia Notch State Park, Franconia, New HampshireWe use Harvest Hosts for some stays, this one was a set-in-the-woods yoga studio. While you don’t pay a Harvest Host, you do purchase their goods so we did a 9 am yoga class before breaking camp.
We tour boated on Squam Lake in Holderness, New Hampshire. This is the lake where On Golden Pond was filmed. At one point the guide was showing us an eagles nest and the eagle swooped in right on cue.
Making our way down the coast toward we saw…
We toured the Mayflower II a ship similar to what the Pilgrims came in.Plymouth Rock was protected by a guard but there were still footprints in the sand.Massasoit, Great Sachem of the Wampanoags.
While chatting with some other campers we learned about a whale watching boat they were going on. We checked it out and were able to get tickets also. The boat took off from Provincetown which was great because we wanted to visit this town also.
Whale watching off the Provincetown, Massachusetts coast.Provincetown’s main street is lined with quaint shops and restaurants.Since we have bikes with us, we like to find places to ride, about 30 miles from Plymouth the Shining Sea Bikeway winds along the Vineyard Sound shorelines.
Making our way to Newport, Rhode Island we set up the trailer at Fisherman’s Memorial State Park. Newport is famous for its Cliff Walk with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the estates of Guilded Age barons on the other. You can’t see much of the mansions from the walk but several are open for tours, we did the Vanderbilt’s Breakers and The Elms.
Newport Cliff WalkThis portrait of Elizabeth Drexel Lehr hides a sad story. On her wedding night Elizabeth’s new husband Harry Lehr said “I do not love you, I can never love you. … Your money is your only asset in my eyes.”
Next stop Glastonbury, Connecticut and another Harvest Hosts stay.
One of the best places we stayed was a Harvest Hosts, Rose’s Berry Farm, our campsite was between a pond and a planted hillside.On our way to the Berry Farm we stoopped in Mystic, Connecticut for a slice at the Julia Roberts movie-famous Mystic Pizza.
We made our way into New York for a stay near Cooperstown, New York and of course a visit to Cooperstown & Baseball Hall of Fame
Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams in the background.
As we traveled back west to home we enjoyed stops at…
Letchworth State Park, “the Grand Canyon of the East” no less, the Genesee River roars through the gorge over three major waterfalls.At the Haymarket Brewery Harvest Hosts in Bridgeman, Michigan we had VERY quiet neighbors.MISSION ACCOMPLISHED…our USA map with the northeast states filled in.
After a winter stay in Tucson, Arizona we wanted to visit relatives and places in the Pacific Northwest again. Leaving Tucson in April, 2021, one of our first stops was Quartzite, Arizona. Since it was mid-April Quartzite was pretty quiet, many of the shops were on reduced hours. We found a place in the desert a bit north of town and set up for an overnight there.
There were few other campers in the area we chose, a bonus…cell phone reception is outstanding, four bars!
We moved on to Palm Springs to explore some of the mid century modern architecture. Both and Modernism Week and Desert X were happening while we were there.
Palm Desert is loaded with mid century homes.Desert X car/artwork installation.
A drive of 300 miles got us to Three Rivers, California and the southern access to Sequoia National Park and the Giant Tree Grove, General Sherman tree and the Scenic Highway.
Named after Civil War general William Tecumsah Sherman, General Sherman is thought to be the largest single stem tree by sheer volume. Believed to be between 2,300 and 2,700 years old, it’s 275-feet tall and has a trunk diameter of 25-feet. Yep, sequoias are big trees.
Friends of ours had a home on Bass Lake, California and they kindly invited us to stay with them and tour Yosemite National Park which is about an hour from Bass Lake.
Nuff saidOur friends suggested bike riding around Yosemite.Yosemite is beautiful.
From there we headed to the Pacific Ocean coast north of San Francisco. Originally we had planned on visiting San Francisco, but Covid 19 had us preferring to avoid big cities. Mackerricher State Park was our stopping point, from there we visited Glass Beach which I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
Glass Beach used to be a garbage dump, it was active from 1906 to 1967 at several places in the area. After cleanups all that’s left are small pieces of beach glass.We wandered around historic Mendicino, California.
Traveling north on California Highway 1 and US 101 we stopped at Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park in Florence, Oregon. One of the first things to do once we hit the coast is get a tide pool chart. We visited tide pools at Heceta Head Lighthouse then lunched at Luna Sea Fish House in Yahats.
Heceta Head Lighthouse tide poolin’Luna Sea Fish House in Yahats, Oregon.We had some noisy lunch companions in Newport, Oregon.
Continuing north we made it to Nehalem Bay State Park for another multi-day stop. There’s a lot to do in the area…
Iconic Cannon Beach draws watchers and photographers at sunset.Photo opportunity at Tillamook Creamery.Sleepy Monk Coffee in Cannon Beach, OregonLewis and Clark wintered near Astoria, Oregon at Fort Clatsop
As we turned east, a wonderful stop was Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, several people had advised us to visit there, so we did.
Cycling by Lake Coeur d’Alene on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes.Coeur d’Alene Artwalk
Arriving at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, North Dakota I was assured by the ranger that we’d see wild life. Well that was an understatement, within five minutes we encountered bison grazing by the side of the road.
Like a safari, at Theodore Roosevelt National Park you see the animals right from your car.Bison at Theodore Roosevelt National Park wander through the campground.
Almost home, our last night out was a Harvest Hosts, Zymurgy Brewing Co., in Menomonie, Wisconsin. This was out last night out. When we got home to Illinois, we’d covered 5, 167 miles in the five weeks since we started out in Tucson.
The Harvest Hosts Zymurgy Brewing Company in Menomonie, Wisconsin in an old gas station.
We’ve traveled back and forth to Tucson several times with the trailer, we finally added a side trip to southern Utah in October 2020. We’re self-contained when we travel with our trailer, so during Covid-19 we isolate on the road and activities are outside with masks on!
Traffic in and out of Arches National Park can be terrible, so we rose early to get to the park with the added benefit of seeing sunrise on the sandstone.
We rose early to get to the park with the added benefit of seeing sunrise on the sandstone at Arches National Park.This couple was having wedding photos taken with an arch as the backdrop.
Moab has a lively restaurant scene. We’d eaten home cooked meals for a week by the time we reached Moab so we jumped at the chance to have someone else cook and serve us at the outside patios.
The Moab restaurant line-up we visited three nights in a row, hitting each!Moab traffic jams near Arches National Park are legendary.4-wheel vehicles are abundant on downtown Moab streets
While Moab’s known for mountain biking, we took a bike ride on the Moab Canyon Pathway, 9 miles one way with a 509 ft climb out, then a speedy coast back.
Bike riding on the Moab Canyon Pathway.We attended a star viewing at Dead Horse Point State Park, the Milky Way was visible! Photo credit: Bettymaya Foott
About a half hour drive out of Moab, Dead Horse Point State Park is a peninsula of rock atop sheer sandstone cliffs. Legend has it that Dead Horse Point State Park’s name derives from wild horse round ups that penned horses in the canyon. One time, for some unknown reason, horses were left corralled on the waterless point where they died of thirst within view of the Colorado River, 2,000 feet below. (I hope that’s just a legend.)
Canyon Lands National Park is a bit past Dead Horse Point, it’s a huge park of colorful canyons, mesas, buttes, spires and more.
Covid-19 era photos at the Grand View Point Overlook at Canyon Lands National Park.
Our next stop was Capitol Reef National Park, after the vastness and busyness of Arches and Canyonlands, Capitol Reef was a lot less crowded and smaller. We attempted a bike ride up the Scenic Drive but after the third seven degree hill we called it turn around time.
Biking the Scenic Drive at Capitol Reef is a hilly challenge, we went about 4 miles before turning back.
Early settlers established the town Fruita along the Fremont River in a beautiful valley inside what’s now Capitol Reef. A few buildings and several producing orchards remain
The Gifford House store and museum in Fruita sells wonderful personal-size locally-baked pies, we savored them on two days!Day two pie done!
Our next park was Bryce Canyon National Park which is really otherworldly. The main hike is the Queen’s Garden Trail which takes you from the top to the bottom of the hoodoos in the Bryce Amphitheater.
The Bryce Amphitheater from above.An archway on the Queen’s Garden Trail at Bryce Canyon.
Our final National Park stop was Zion National Park. Auto access to the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive is restricted, shuttle bus tickets are required to reach trails. Of course we didn’t have tickets, so we biked the drive.
We parked our car in town just outside the park entrance and rode into the park, the Scenic Drive was six-ish medium-ly uphill miles to the end of the road and the famous Narrows. There was a steady stream of people going to and coming from the river start of the Narrows.
The bike back was a sweet downhill with stops at the lodge and Emerald Pools. Exiting the park we were hoping to eat at the first place we hit, the Canyon Brewery but the wait was insane. We came back the next night and were introduced to french fries with Chimichurri Sauce an Argentinian sauce/marinade made with chopped parsley and tangy from vinegar and lime juice.
Watching the action at the start of the Narrows.Fries with Chimichurri Sauce were fab!
Just outside of Zion, there’s a ghost town… Grafton Ghost Town was first settled in 1859. Settlers struggled with devastating floods and native Americans protecting their lands from the intruders. The town was abandoned gradually in the first half of the 20th century. In 1997 a partnership was organized to protect, preserve and restore the Grafton Townsite.
What would have been our final day at Zion found temperatures projected to dropping below freezing and high winds, so we decided to hit the road for the warmth of Arizona before that started. Loved Utah though!
We got to add Utah and Kansas stickers to the back of our trailer.
Cindy had read the book Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline and was intrigued by the story of New York City orphans being loaded on trains west to be adopted. The Kline book wasn’t very complementary about the situation. Between 1854 and 1929 an estimated 250,000 orphaned, abandoned and homeless children were placed in new homes. Before we toured the complex we learned from a docent that the Kline book wasn’t historically accurate and sensationalized the situation. In real life the orphans were watched over by placement agents who screened prospective adoptee homes and did follow up visits. That’s not to say that the orphans were all happy about the situation. The museum has letters and histories of both successful and not successful placements.
Advertisement for the Orphan Train.An Orphan Train visits a town.A typical train car as would have been used for an Orphan Train. The Orphan Train Complex Museum in Concordia, KansasScattered around Concordia, Kansas are statues of the children who rode the orphan train.
The Jumbo Rocks Campground in Joshua Tree National Park
Back in 2016 we visited Joshua Tree National Park for a day. It’s another world, a prehistoric one and no part of it is more prehistoric-looking than its Jumbo Rocks Campground, you literally expect to see Fred Flintstone emerge from around the rocks. We vowed to someday camp there.
So in spring 2019 we headed there with our trailer with a two-night reservation for the Jumbo Rocks Campground, the thing about this campground is that it has no water or electricity for campers. Our trailer has fresh, grey and black water tanks and a single battery for camping without hookups. We figured we‘d last the two nights.
The jumbo rocks dwarf our trailer.
We climbed the jumbo rocks, sat in our private courtyard for dinner, and hiked to the Wall Street Mill that processed gold beginning in the late 1800s.
The Cholla Gardens look soft and fuzzy but they’re not!
The Wall Street Mill
At the end of two days, we didn’t want to leave Joshua Tree so we moved to another campground in the park for another night, adding water and charging the trailer’s battery a bit while we drove there. We knew we were pushing it with the battery, and sure enough we were out of electricity when we woke up after night three. So it was time to leave Joshua Tree. We never did see Fred.
Battery indicator reading EMPTY after three nights with no plug-in power.
Eastbound from Joshua Tree put us on Historic Route 66, this stretch is in Amboy, CA.
We visited the Everglades from every angle – the west side Gulf Coast Visitor Center and its Thousand Islands and marshes, the upper east with the fantastic Shark Valley plains and the lower east’s Flamingo Visitor Center and hurricane-ravaged bays.
Leaving the Everglades behind, we tangled with the vast urban-osity of Miami/Fort Lauderdale.
Someone said that this area is getting 10,000 new residents regularly and I guess they all brought at least two cars, but somehow they left their rules of the road book where they came from.
U-turn? There’s no notice necessary for that!
In the turn lane? Why waste your blinker, everybody knows what happening.
Red light at night? If no one’s crossing my path, why stop?
So we tolerate it because once you hit the beach all is forgiven!
They’re just fantastic!!! One evening we visited the Hollywood Broadwalk just after a huge rainstorm, Bars were drying the seats, a rainbow hovered over the Atlantic, and everybody was out strolling again. A bar buddy at Bunny & Reads Toucan Hideway hearing we were hungry, told us about the Taco Beach Shack close by. We went, It was Two for Tuesday Tacos, and with cool guy Martini and a drummer performing.
Hollywood Beach after a rainstorm.
Martini “Hit me up on Instagram” performing at the Taco Beach Shack.
The day before we visited Miami and Haulover Beach with its sweet warm water and hot sun, plus the deco hotels of South Beach. Next, delicious lunch and great conversation with our Uruguay waiter at a stainless steel diner.
Stainless steel diner in Miami’s South Beach
Miami deco hotel
And then there’s Ft Lauderdale… we walked by the Elbo Room Bar seen in Connie Stevens’ first movie Where The Boys Are, and took the fantastic Carrie B sightseeing cruise through Ft. Lauderdale’s canals, gawking at gazillionaires houses and boats.
Rich person’s house on the canal in Ft. Lauderdale.
On the Carrie B we got chased by a thunderstorm front, disembarking just before the rain dumped big time.
Apparently you haven’t really made it unless your yacht is more than 300 feet long.
OK, maybe the city planners won’t program traffic lights to allow cars to actually move a while here, or haven’t realized that traffic circles don’t need stop lights. But wow they do have the beaches down!
Who would have thought that there’s a place to camp with our trailer only 15 miles from New Orleans’s Bourbon Street? Bayou Segnette State Park is across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. From there, we found the best way to get to the French Quarter was to catch the ferry in Algiers and cross the Mississippi on it. It drops you right off at Canal Street and costs $2 (bring exact change).
As soon as we got off the ferry we saw a Mardi Gras parade, huge floats riding past, beads and other stuff getting thrown off to the crowd (no flashing required).
In the French Quarter, our first stop was Tommy O’Hara’s for Hurricanes, then course we had to stop at Café Du Monde for beneigts.
Cindy and her favorite New Orleans t-shirt.
The night parades are fantastic with lit-up floats and burning torches.
People reserve their parade space with ladders topped with seats.
And then there’s the costumes, families, marching groups, random inebriated folk, they’re everywhere.
Bourbon street madness
Finally if you forgot to bring a costume, the body-painting shop has you covered!
Cindy figured out that we could get to Florida via Memphis, TN, Jackson, MS and New Orleans, LA (in time for Mardi Gras, but that’s another story), so we traveled I-57 south rather than the route through Indiana that Chicagoans typically use.
In Memphis, we toured the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, which incorporates the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was assinated as well as the rooming house across the street where the assassin waited. The museum’s exhibits start with stark fact that “When the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, some 539,000 people – 20 percent of the new nation – were held in bondage.”
The timeline of the civil rights struggle from that time through Dr. King’s last hours, and the assassin’s lair across the street is shocking.
“Georgia and many other states celebrated the source of their prosperity by issuing bank notes that showed African American slaves at work.”
“In the 1760s, one enslaved laborer was expected to produce 200 pounds of sugar per year…”
The view the assassin saw of the Lorraine Motel balcony, the spot where Dr. King was shot is marked with a wreath.
In Jackson, MS we toured the home of Medgar Evers, the slain NAACP leader who was assinated in his driveway in June 1963. Ms. Minnie Watson hosted us at the modest family ranch and spoke eloquently of Medgar Evers’ work, and the legacy his assassination had on his family and the country. Despite making no effort at all to cover his crime, his assassin was acquitted of the murder by all-white juries in two trials, and was not brought to justice for more than thirty years.
The Evers family home.
Ms. Minnie Watson in the carport of the Evers family home where the shooting took place.
The Evers family kept their beds on the floor to provide some safety from shootings directed at the home.
A bullet hole remains in the wall of the Evers home.
Also in Jackson, MS we visited the new Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Its narrative is similar to the National Civil Rights Museum.
Systematic programs in Mississippi to decrease black voting rights led to a drop of black registered voters from 66.9% in 1867 to 4.3% in 1955.
Outside of New Orleans the reality of slavery really hits you on a tour of the Whitney Plantation. It’s the only plantation tour seen from the viewpoint of the slaves who were captive there and is based on the Slave Narratives recorded by Works Progress Administration writers in the depression. Slave Narratives was a program to record oral histories from people who were slaves, since this work was done in the 1930s, the people interviewed were children when they were enslaved.
Whitney Plantation was a sugar plantation, sugar cane is perishable, when it was ready for harvest slaves were forced to work from first light to last. Our guide comparing cotton plantations to sugar plantations said, “Cotton will break you, but cane will kill you. The life expectancy of a sugar field worker was ten years.”
Haunting sculptures are placed throughout the Whitney Plantation, this child is on the porch of a typical slave dwelling.
Slave dwelling interior
During the time of slavery, the big house windows were barred for security
Whitney Plantation was a sugar plantation; large kettles were used to boil the sugar cane mash into sugar. Slaves were forced to do the hazardous work of ladling hot mash from kettle to kettle.
We pulled out of our driveway in our red Retro trailer Sunday morning, September 18, 2016 heading for South Dakota’s Badlands and Rocky Mountain National Park. We planned on driving 200-300 miles on travel days and then stay in the best places like the Badlands and Rocky Mountain National Park for several since we had four weeks planned for this trip.
Our first stop was Madison, Wisconsin, 136 miles from our driveway. After that we’d only have 700 miles to go to reach the Badlands in South Dakota.
The three things we wanted to do in his trip were check out bike trails, hike and shoot photos. Madison fit in with its good bike trail system.
From our camp at Lake Farm County Park in Madison, Wisconsin we could get on the Capitol City Trail for an easy ride to the statehouse, the University of Wisconsin and downtown Madison.
From Madison we made our way west through Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota.
A stop at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesien in Wisconsin. Wright grew up in the area and once he had some money he built a compound where he often stayed. Like many of Wright’s buildings, keeping Taliesien from crumbling is a constant project.
Cindy contemplating Frank.
We stayed one night at Goose Island County Park in LaCrosse, Wisconsin on the backwaters of the Mississippi River. Heavy rains gave many in the campground riverside views.
In South Dakota we stayed in the town of Mitchell, home to the “World’s Only Corn Palace”. I thought it’d be a rickety building with some murals made out of corn on the outside, but actually it’s a frequently used modern event and exhibition space. The exterior corn murals are changed yearly, probably because the pigeons are hard at work pecking out kernels, but the interior ones are permanent.
There was a Pedal Tractor Pull going on in the Corn Palace the day we were there, kids from many states competed to pedal a weighted pedal tractor the farthest.
Outside the Corn Palace, the local Outcast Car Club was having their annual car show. One participant told us there are more gear heads in Mitchell than anywhere else in South Dakota.
The Outcast Car Club was having a dance that evening, so we joined in and danced to the great cover band Something New.
At the Chamberlain Rest Stop on I-80 in South Dakota, a 50-foot impressive Indian sculpture “Dignity” by Iowa artist Dale Lamphere was unveiled just 10 days before we passed through.
We finally arrived at the Badlands after 7 days touring. The temperature was in low 80s days / 40s at night. The Badlands are surreal, the towering spires eroded out of what was a lake bed some 75 – 35 million years ago. The 40 mile Badlands Loop Road goes right through them, many people drive through making a stop here and there to see a vista or the prairie dog village and then go on their way like the pioneers did, assessing the area as unproductive and a “Badlands”.
I was interested in seeing how light played across the Badlands landscape, so we were out before sunrise and again at sunset shooting photos.
A stop at Wall Drugs for 5 cent coffee and a donut. Why would you eat a donut like this?
We stopped at Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming for a close encounter. Some trees there are wrapped in prayer cloths.
We made our way to Custer, South Dakota for the 51st annual Buffalo Roundup in Custer State Park. The cow pokes slowly herded hundreds of buffalo into pens. They are inoculated and counted before being released back into the park.
The top photos are what a buffalo roundup looks like through a zoom lens, the last is the reality of craning to get a buffalo view past the other thousands of spectators.
While in Custer, we pulled the bikes down and rode the Michelson Bike Trail. The stretch north out of Custer is stunning, through valleys with mountains in the background. We even had views of Crazy Horse Memorial at one point.
Good thing there was a sign on the The Michelson Bike Trail where viewing the Crazy Horse Memorial is possible.
The Michelson Bike Trail near Custer, South Dakota.
We heard there was a Volksmarch at the Crazy Horse Memorial so we laced up and hiked 6.2 miles through woods & mountains right up to the Crazy Horse memorial with a few thousand others.
Volksmarchers on Crazy Horse’s arm.
We decided to go to Mt. Rushmore for the lighting at 8 pm, it was the second to the last one of the year so our timing was good. The lighting ceremony was quite patriotic and moving. It’s a video with narration about Washington (the nation’s birth), Jefferson (nation building), Lincoln (nation in crisis), and Roosevelt (our nation becomes a world power). Following the video, the mountain faces are lit. The master of ceremonies invited all the veterans in the audience to the stage for a flag lowering ceremony. Each gave his or her rank, name and branch.
We also went back to Mt. Rushmore to see it during the day.
Fantastic breakfast at the Waffle Lab on Ft. Collins, Colorado. (Thanks, Nora Cronin, for the recommendation.) The waffles there are made from dough rather than batter, and cooked with Belgian sugar that caramelizes on the outside.
The limit of our westward travel was Estes Park, Colorado. We’d been there before* and revisiting Rocky Mountain National Park was magic.
*(It was June 1972 and I thought Colorado mountains would be warm like Chicago…I shivered in the tent every night.)
This gnarled pine on the Emerald Lake Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park reminded me of a Japanese ink drawing.
The Emerald Lake Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park actually highlights three lakes, Nymph Lake, Dream Lake and Emerald Lake.
Fall is a great time to see the elk in Rocky Mountain National Park. The bulls are gathering and guarding their harems
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The view from the top of Deer Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park looks at the town of Estes Park and Lake Estes.
After Rocky Mountain National Park we visited Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A most amazing place set right in the heart of a metropolis.
Biking at Garden of the Gods is a challenge, the paved loop is not that long, but grades of up to 15% give you a workout.
Sunset at Garden of the Gods.
We pulled back in our driveway in Glen Ellyn, Illinois after 32 days and 3,687 miles in time to watch the third presidential debate of 2016!
