Travelogue: The Fiscal Round Up

I originally said that we spent about $3000.  I could say that with some authority because every time we got gas or ate or paid for a hotel, I made sure we wrote it down. Actually, Jeff did most of the record keeping there, and I'm confident he got everything.  I've adjusted a little to take into account for the full tank of gas we got the night before, and the food I bought to take with us, as well as the souvenirs we got after we got home.

Here's the breakdown.

Hotels:  $1206.41, average $100.51/day, 39% of total. 
I've already gone into detail about the hotels.

Food: $897.07, $69.01/day, 29% of total.
I wanted us to eat as often as possible at places that we don't have here in Michigan, and for the most part we were successful. I packed a cooler for us the first morning, and we ended up eating a lot of (surprisingly decent!) gas station sandwiches.  We didn't eat at a lot of high end places, but many of them were utterly delicious!  See:  Fat Willy's, Shorty's, The Giggling Grizzly, Stanley Baking Company, Pond's, The Irma Hotel, Highway 21 Diner, Wicked Spud, and Corona Village, to name a few.

Gas: $539.56, $41.50/day, 17% of total.
The most expensive gas we saw was $4.29.  The most expensive we got was $4.26--both in Stanley, ID.  The cheapest gas we saw was $3.11. The cheapest we got was $3.26--both in the middle of Nebraska.  (Note:  our car has a digital gas gauge, which tells you how many miles you have left in the tank. We loved going down hills and "gaining" miles!)

Entry Fees: $265.00, $20.38/day, 8% of total.
The Badlands, Fort Bridger, Cody Rodeo, Yellowstone, Stanley Hotel, Craters of the Moon, Mt. Rushmore, Rocky Mountain Park, and Colorado Rockies baseball game (this could also have gone under "souvenirs") .

Souvenirs:   $175.41, $13.49/day, 6% of total.
Sarah got a couple t-shirts, a necklace, and a dreamcatcher. Lauren got a necklace, a ranger hat, a dreamcatcher, and all her Junior Ranger patches/badges (I'm not sure if I counted her fleece from Yellowstone in this, since I think Grandpapa picked up the tab there). Jeff got a t-shirt and I got (of course!) my photo album.

Miscellaneous:  $38.40, average $2.95/day, 1% of total.
This was all tolls and parking in Denver.  Don't think we could have done any cheaper.



The exact total ended up being $3121.58, average $240.12/day.  All told, I think we did amazingly well financially. Taking into account everything we saw and did,  I figure we spent much less than one dollar per memory.  When I was originally thinking about the trip, I thought it would run at least four grand. I give full marks to Jeff for his diligence in finding hotels, because that's the place that we could have really racked up the costs.  It was the biggest family trip we've done, and it was fabulous.

Travelogue: Rocky Mountain National Park

 When it came to planning the Colorado leg of the trip, I had heard a lot about Rocky Mountain National Park, and really wanted to go, in spite of not really knowing much about it. It's a beautiful place, but if we'd had the time (and stamina!) to do some real hiking, I think we would have enjoyed it even more. If we want to go back there next time we go out west, I'll need to do some training first.

 Lauren got to do another Junior Ranger program; this one was one of the easiest but also one of the best, I thought.  I admit, I was dubious at first, when I saw the ranger reading the kids "Where the Wild Things Are."  Seriously:  huh?

Taking the ranger oath.

But then they all went out for a nature walk and I heard him talking about the wild things all around them and also calling the kids wild things, so it made more sense.  On their walk, they used four of their senses to explore the world in the park. At the end, the ranger made a point of mentioning the sense they didn't use:  taste, of course.

Beaver pelt.

 We also drove around a bit and enjoyed the views, but didn't get out and do much, aside from the girls climbing around on some of the rocks.

 

Travelogue: Colorado

We didn't have a lot planned for Colorado.  Frankly, I stopped thinking after "Idaho."  We had tickets for the Colorado Rockies game, and we'd already done Rocky Mountain National Park & the Stanley Hotel, but other than that, we didn't have anything planned.  The baseball game was fun, even though the Rockies lost big to the Dodgers. While we were there, we realized that their mascot is a cartoon-ified triceratops.  "Hey!  Colorado!  Dinosaurs!"

We decided to go to the Florissant Fossil Beds the next day, and realized we'd also head past the Air Force Academy as well as Garden of the Gods, which I had heard a lot about.

That was a lot for one day;  too much, really.

Sarah loved going through the Air Force Academy's visitor center, though she was peeved when she realized that if she did join the Air Force (something she's said she has no interest in), she wouldn't be able to fly for them because of her glasses.  She happily got a t-shirt, though.  Unfortunately, we decided that we couldn't spare an extra half hour or so to get to the chapel and walk around it. I've heard it's really amazing, and it's one of the places that I wish we'd taken time for.

Then we headed down to Garden of the Gods, and Lauren started on another Junior Ranger program.  This one wasn't as detailed as the one at Yellowstone, but it still took her a few hours to finish, including the ranger presentation about rattlesnakes.  For the record, their gift shop was the one where I had the hardest time keeping my wallet put away.  I almost got a bear keychain, and I really liked a lot of the earrings they had.  When we finally got to drive around the park, it was HOT again, and the kids didn't get out of the car.  This is another one of those places that I'd like to spend a whole day.  I'd especially like to see the formations at different times of day, to see how the light is different.

I was really irritated at all the people climbing on the formations.

Finally, we headed down to the Fossil Beds.  Jeff & I both thought  "Fossils = Dinosaurs."  Not so much. It was all plant and bug fossils, which are also cool, but not what we expected. The remains of the petrified redwoods were pretty awesome--it does look like wood instead of stone. Lauren & I got caught outside just as a HUGE storm hit. She was running back to the visitor center when a huge thunder boomed, and she freaked right out. That made it the most memorable of all her Junior Ranger programs.

If we'd planned things out more in advance, we probably would have gotten a different hotel, rather than going back up to Denver. But we already had the room, so we were trying to find a place for dinner, "What about that place we saw last night by the stadium, The Giggling Grizzly?"  To be honest, I'd taken a picture of the sign just because it was another bear, but it looked like a decent place. When we first walked in, "Shipping up to Boston" by Drop Kick Murphys was playing on the radio, so I felt like we'd made the right choice immediately. When the waitress came and told us that burgers started at $1.50 because it was Wednesday, I KNEW we'd made the right choice.  When I went in the bathroom, the walls were papered in old Pabst ads, but there was also this:

I kind of love this, although I don't think it would exactly work at Salem.

While we were eating, we kept seeing people on bikes wearing Where's Waldo gear. There were other bikers, too, and we couldn't figure out what was going on. As we were leaving, I told Lauren she should ask someone what the deal was, so she found the nearest guy and learned that they always have a bike parade on Wednesday nights. What a cool town! 

Travelogue: Yellowstone

Is anyone getting burned out on hearing about our vacation?  I'm getting a little burned out on talking about it, and I haven't even hit the rodeo, or Denver, or the rest of Colorado.  I think I'm going to try to cram the rest of the vacation into two or three more posts.  I actually have other stuff to talk about!

Yellowstone was really great, even if we did practically run through it. I remember going to Old Faithful when I was a kid, and being distinctly unimpressed. I mentioned it to my mom a couple years ago. and she remarked that we were all exhausted from a long day's drive; no one was really thrilled to be there.  I also saw Yellowstone in the winter via snowmobile one year, which was really cool.  That's where I stupidly stopped way too close to a bison to get a picture of it and got reamed out (deservedly so) by my stepmom.

This year, we got into the park early. I did not remember seeing any waterfalls in Yellowstone (though I can't imagine we would pass them up), so that was a big priority for me.  They don't disappoint. 

Soooooo many photo opportunities!  I ended up with 38 pages in the album--most places got one page.  Yellowstone has four. 

The wildlife was prevalent, too. We saw about 40 bison over the course of the day, including some babies.  I didn't get any good pictures of the calves, because they were quite a ways off from the road, and it was toward the end of the day and Jeff had no intention of stopping. 

My favorite picture of the whole trip is "my" bear. There were a TON of cars parked along the sides of the road, so we weren't going anywhere right away, so I decided to get out and see what I could get.  There were a lot of people much closer than I was, and I only took three pics ("c'mon, quit eating whatever's on the ground, pick up your head so I can see you, ok, got it!") before I scampered back to the car.  We managed to make our way out, just as we saw an extremely irritated looking ranger driving in with his lights flashing.

Yellowstone was Lauren's first ranger badge, and she put a lot of work into it.  There was a whole booklet of questions, and we were lucky enough to catch a ranger talk (about bears, no less!)

We also stopped at the Paint Pots, which I did remember as being pretty cool.  The thing I noticed most on this trip was the number of footprints that were off the boardwalk. A ranger told us that she had to tell people to stay on the boardwalk at least a few times a day.  Their excuse is usually that they want to get a picture.  Ahem. 

Our last big stop was Old Faithful, where Lauren finished her booklet while we were waiting for it to go off. 

It was probably the most packed day we had, even though there were a lot of things we missed, too. It's high on the priority list for a return visit.

Travelogue: Craters of the Moon

I think this is the last of the Idaho posts. Tomorrow:  Yellowstone!

I've been to Craters of the Moon several times, and it was pretty high on the list of stops.  It also had the virtue of being right along the road we were traveling on, unlike ISU.

Lunar Ranger getting sworn in.

Conversation as we're passing Idaho Falls:
Jeff:  Are you sure you don't want the kids to see where you went to college?
Me:  Of course I want them to see it. But I'm not willing to drive an hour out of our way to go down and see a few buildings, most of which will look totally different from when I was there,  then back another hour.  It's another one of those "next time" stops.

It was also another one of those unusually hot days. We were glad of the awning for the kids' ranger talk, and when we drove around, we didn't get of the car much. Lauren was more interested than Sarah; she especially wanted to walk up the Inferno Cone, and didn't understand when I told her that it was MUCH higher than it looked.

Seriously, I remember being 13-ish and walking up it, thinking it didn't look too far from the ground.  Then you get to what you thought was the top and realizing there's still another hill to climb that wasn't previously visible. Then you go through all that yet again, and by the time you do get to the top, you're exhausted. Yes, there's
a nice view, but it wasn't spectacular to my eyes. 

So we didn't do that. We also didn't go into any of the caves, which was a bigger disappointment to me, but it was another thing we just didn't have time for.

But before we got to Craters of the Moon, we had lunch in Arco, at Pickle's Place (home of the Atomic Burger!).  Why the Atomic Burger?  There's a nuclear test facility nearby, of course. 

Before we left, Jeff asked me what kind of food Idaho was known for.  (He knew better than to bring up potatoes more than once.) Detroit has great Middle Eastern food, Polish food, and of course cherries and Coney dogs.  What about Idaho? 

Um.  "Don't say Rocky Mountain Oysters, because I'm not eating that!"  OK, then.  I honestly couldn't think of any local/regional specialties until I saw "finger steaks" on the menu at Pickles.  "Ooo, we have to get that!"  Finger steaks are like chicken fingers, but with steak instead of chicken. Easy, right?  But I never see them around here. The ones at Pickle's were good but not amazing, and I'll probably make my own version sometime later this year.

Travelogue: Before the Ranch

On our way between Stanley and the Diamond D, we made two stops. I'd never been to either place before, which is why this post doesn't get a "home again" title.

The first place was the Yankee Fork Dredge.  Although the dredge was around, along with the resulting ponds, when we were in Idaho, you couldn't tour it. 

That said, one summer weekend when I was 15-ish, I went camping with my friend Deena and her mom (Karen--the cook at the ranch the first year we went and the nicest lady ever), stepdad (Harry) & grandma. We went fishing in the dredge ponds, ducking whenever we saw a truck go by, because we only had one fishing license among us, and caught a good 30 or 40 fish.  Her mom cooked those fish for dinner, and it was one of the best meals I'd ever had. Her grandma found a puffball mushroom and blithely ate a piece, while we freaked out and waited for her to keel over dead. She was fine, of course. Karen & Harry slept in the camper, but the rest of us were in sleeping bags under the stars.  Until it started to downpour sometime after midnight, that is.  Deena didn't budge, but her grandma & I ran for the truck to get out of the rain. We all had a damn good time.

So the dredge was fun, although we didn't take the tour itself.  The guide was hanging around outside, so we talked with him for about 20 minutes.

Custer is a ghost town from a mining boom town in the 1800's.  We'd never gone, because it's after the road forks on the way to the Diamond D and I think it's improved substantially in the past few years. The museum has a lot of artifacts. We walked around for about half an hour, but could have spent much longer. There are several buildings that we didn't walk down to, partly because it was getting hot and partly because I was antsy to get up to the ranch itself. 

Travelogue: Home Again, Part 3

I've already talked about our trek over Loon Creek Summit.  Staying at the Diamond D wasn't in our budget, which is why we decided to drive in and back out the same day.

Maybe the stress of the road was what did it, but going into the ranch felt downright anticlimactic.  Really, that was the one place I had to go to, no matter how difficult I thought it was going to be. And it hasn't changed much since the last time I was there. Yet I still felt kind of disconnected from it. It was also another one of those super hot days, so that didn't help.

When we pulled in, the cook came out to greet us and looked surprised when I started asking for people by name. Sadly, Kara and Dana were both away from the main ranch area, and Linda was taking a nap.  So we sat down to eat the sandwiches we'd brought. When Linda came out, one of the kids asked me, "Who's that?"  As I started to say, "Grandma Garvan's best friend in the whole world," I started to tear up.  By the time I got over to give her a hug, I couldn't say much of anything for a few minutes.

Click to embiggen.

Eventually, we sat chatting on the back porch, and I saw a bird flying over the mountains closest to us. Linda said that she thought it was a golden eagle, and I put my new toy to the test again. I got two pictures, and it's hard to see, but if you zoom way in, that sure looks like a bald eagle to me. Another animal I hadn't ever seen in Idaho (although I have seen one in Michigan). 

It was still really hot, and this time the kids did have their bathing suits, so they jumped into the (ICY COLD) pool.  They had some fun splashing around, but then I wanted to walk around  I particularly wanted to find the chapel that Linda built some years ago, and she gave me directions to get there.

Loon Creek

We walked through the corral and down past Loon Creek. I started heading up the hill on the other side, while Jeff & the girls stayed down to play in the cool water.  Linda had told me not to go all the way up to the lake, but I missed the path opposite the gazebo, and before I knew it, the lake was in front of me.

View from the lake.

So I'd gone too far, and I was getting tired, and I hadn't really told the rest of the family exactly where I was going. I didn't want to go all the way back down to the creek, though--I knew I'd never go back up the hill once I was all the way back down.  As I was about halfway down, I saw a little path and thought, "Aha, I bet that's it," and followed it. Sure enough, there it was.

The Little Chapel in the Wilderness

It isn't very big, but blessedly cool inside and beautifully simple. The stained glass is really lovely.  Its story is wonderful--in fact, Jen's whole blog about winter caretaking up there was beautiful and fascinating.  It really opens up a whole new world, and her photography is absolutely stunning.

By this time, we were getting tired, so we went back to the lodge to talk with Linda some more.  The kids were getting tired and antsy, but just as we were getting ready to leave, one of the ranch hands  asked if we wanted to go pan for gold for a little bit. Regretfully, I knew we didn't have time--add it to the list of things we have to look forward to!

Did I have a good time there?  Yes, absolutely!  Do I wish I'd had more time?  You bet!  And if the road wasn't such a bear, or if we had a different car, it might not have been so exhausting for all of us.  I'm very glad we went, but I don't know if we'll make that part of the trip again the next time we're in Idaho. 

Travelogue: Home Again, Part 2

We headed north from Ketchum, and when we got to Galena Summit, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Thank God THAT still looks right, I thought.

Never mind that the overlook itself looked totally different. There was a rock wall, and plaques I had never seen before, along with a binocular viewer. The little building with maps on the outside wall was gone.  But the view . . . ah, the view. 

Even that tree on the left is the same.

Heading down into Stanley was also almost entirely unchanged in 35 years.  There were a few more houses, but it was still mostly cows and sagebrush, with mountains along the sides.

The view from the chapel was also just the same as when my Dad & Sharon got married there in 1984, though I don't remember the stained glass panels. To be honest, Stanely HAS changed a little. It's more touristy now, with kind of a hippie cowboy vibe and not a lot of honky tonk left. But it still feels small town, unmarred by big developments. Of course, it still costs $250K if you want to buy a small house in town.


High on my priority list was Redfish Lake. I remembered that there was a good beach where the water wasn't too deep for quite a ways out from the shore, and we found it easily.  The thing to realize here is that we'd been preparing for cold weather before we left. I was actually worried that I'd forgotten to throw our winter coats in the trunk, because I knew it was still getting pretty chilly at night.  Instead, they had a massive heat wave. Seriously, Stanley NEVER gets to 90 degrees!  So that cold water felt pretty good, and we all enjoyed it at least a little. The kids wanted to go get bathing suits on so they could do real swimming, but they had to make do with their shorts.

We met up with my friend Pat (note: Pat & I knew each other in high school, but weren't friends. In fact, we barely tolerated each other. It took college and a mutual friend with terrible taste in music to make us realize what a great team we were.) He took us out to dinner and then said that since I'd never been to Stanley Lake, that was where we should go.

WOW.  Every bit as gorgeous as Redfish, but only about half as many people (that would be 4 at Stanely, and maybe 10 at Redfish, by the way).  The kids again had a really good time playing in the water, and the rest of us just hung out on the shore, laughing our fool heads off trying to explain our particular brand of college stupidity to Jeff.

The real high point, though, was when Jeff told Pat that he was relieved that he was a real person and not just a figment of my imagination, humph.  Ever the smartass, as he was leaving, Pat leaned over and stage whispered, "So can you pay me now, or will you send the check to my agent for this performance?" (I know; I told that story already.  It's worth repeating!)

Next up:  The Diamond D

I love this "toy camera" setting.

Travelogue: Home Again, Part 1

I knew the Wood River Valley wouldn't look like I remembered it. I knew there would be stoplights and new businesses and even (sigh) a McDonald's.  So when I didn't feel "at home." I wasn't really surprised.

The window on the far left is the bathroom I got locked in.

One of the first things we did was look for my old house in Bellevue. I couldn't find it, and we had to call my Dad: "Which street was it again?  Oh, one more down, right."  The house itself looked the same, but there was a privacy fence all around the backyard, which gave it a very different feel from what I remember. We took a quick picture, then took off before they could call the cops that there were suspicious people loitering outside.

The number of stoplights on the two mile stretch between Bellevue & Hailey was a little surprising, since most of the building buildup wasn't right along the road. The McDonald's is on the north end of town, and I was able to pretend it wasn't there at all. One of my main requests on the trip was that we eat at places we didn't have available in Michigan, and we stuck to that pretty well, at least until the last day or two.

At first, I walked right past the Liberty Theater, and had to have it pointed out to me. I told everyone the story about how the last show before they gutted the place to renovate it was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and they didn't care how trashed it got. Yes, I was there. No, I didn't dress up.

We saw the Mint, where my Dad used to work, and the Muleshoe, which my Dad used to own. Neither of them look the same. It was a little surreal--it felt just like a bunch of other small towns we've seen (mountains excepted). When we headed further north the next day, I didn't really feel a big sense of loss, or "wow, I've really missed the place." Mostly, it was just another place.

Travelogue: The Lowlight

I'd like to say that the only downside to the trip was "we just didn't have enough time, but the rest of it was absolutely perfect." but that's not true. Everyone had a different highlight, but we all had the same low point:  the road in to the ranch. 

I have fabulously fond memories of the Diamond D from the time I was about 11. I remembered the road, too.  I remember that first time we drove it in our Country Squire station wagon, and my Dad telling me and my brother to not say a word, and both of us actually doing it (for my five year old brother, that was quite a feat).  I remembered the switchbacks, and how the road would fall away on one side, nerve-wrackingly close to the edge of the car. I remembered how far it still was even after we got down from the summit, and how big some of the rocks were that protruded from the road.

I asked my Dad which part of the road he remembered as being the worst, and he immediately said, "just over the other side of the summit."  Hm. I didn't remember that part specifically.

As we started up the road, it wasn't too bad. Yes, there were some big rocks on the road, and Sarah & Lauren got out to clear a lot of them out of the way.  If we'd been in a truck or SUV, it wouldn't have been such an issue, but in a Cruze, we were pretty low to the ground.  Still, it wasn't too bad. The grade wasn't as steep as in the Bighorn Mountains. We only met one car coming from the opposite direction, and squeezed past them without too much trouble. We got to the summit and took a break to look around.

Then we started down the summit.  Holy . . . well, supply your own expletive, because it was so much worse than I expected. The road wasn't a lot narrower, but there were a lot more rocks to move out of the way, and parts of the road itself were half boulder, and short stretches were incredibly steep. On the way out, there was one part that we were going up so steeply that I couldn't see the road ahead of us over the hood.  If I thought I'd be able to turn around, I think I would have.

It took us three hours to go twenty miles. I know lots of people have done it in an hour or less, including my mom back in the day. I have no idea how that's possible, even in a truck. It was easier going back out, because we had all spent so much time clearing the worst of the rocks out of the way already.  It still took two hours to get out.

I'm glad we went in to the ranch, and now I can cross it off my list. Because I'm not driving that road again.