This was our summer of The Great American West, which I guess is a pretty much obligatory road trip for any American family. We took advantage of the Embreys being in Denver, a good place to start. We also stopped in to see Aunt Leona, Uncle Larry in Flagstaff near the Grand Canyon. I wanted to take more time for this trip than Barb so we settled on a compromise, with Allie and I going out a week early.
In planning for this trip, I got in touch by email with Leona and Larry’s son, Stewart Aitchison, for recommendations. I don’t give Stewart many mentions in this site and we have hardly interacted over the years other than annual holiday greetings, but he has quite a distinguished track record. He’s based in Flagstaff, Arizona and affiliated with the Museum of Northern Arizona where he taught and led expeditions, but mostly he led expeditions for National Geographic and Lindblad for many years. He has more than 20 books of his writing and photography (here’s one, and here are many), of which I think we may have one but I’m not sure where. Stewart gave me good ideas for the Utah and Arizona portions of the journey, which I incorporated into our itinerary. We didn’t end up taking every suggestion, but I’d say we did most of them and I appreciated having them.
We also got some ideas from Allie’s 4th grade teacher, Deb DeVoe, who visited the Grand Canyon the year before, and we got some detailed directions from Uncle Larry to his house in Flagstaff. As Larry indicates, Stewart would be working in Scotland during the time we were in Arizona so we weren’t able to see him or Ann.
Also in preparation, I went to AAA and asked their help mapping out a driving plan. In these good old days a human being would sit down with you and map out a route. A few days later, AAA would send some maps with your suggested route highlighted. That level of service succumbed to Google Maps a few years later. This is probably my last set of AAA maps with the routes marked in them.
Saturday, August 6
Allie and I flew to Denver in the afternoon on United points, rented a car from Dollar and drove to the Embreys’ house in Highlands Ranch.
We had dinner with everyone and recapped our plans for the trip. We would be with Betsy and the girls the next day, then on Wednesday Allie and I planned to drive to Mount Rushmore, staying two nights and returning Friday. I thought we’d just get a motel in the area when Joe mentioned the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was starting that weekend and we might want to get reservations. I had never heard of Sturgis and had no idea the rally drew 500,000 people to that little corner of South Dakota. I checked online and was able to snag a room for one night only at a Super 8 motel in Hill City, near Mount Rushmore. I figured we’d get a room somewhere in Wyoming on the way back if need be for the next night. Thanks, Joe!
Sunday, August 7
Joe and I played golf while Allie hung out with Betsy and the girls. I think our game was at the Highlands Ranch course, but it’s possible we drove to a different course. I remember one time heading to the mountains for a round at a true mountain course (but I’m not sure which one). I wanted to see if the ball really went further at higher altitudes. It did, but mostly I just remember feeling queasy from altitude sickness.
Monday, August 8
My itinerary says that Allie and I took a day to tour around Denver, but I don’t remember doing that with her and have no specific photos. So maybe we did movies or something with Betsy, Sara and Kristen. Or maybe this is the day Joe and I drove up to the mountains for some golf.
Tuesday, August 9
Betsy and I took Allie, Kristen and Sara on an outing to see the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. I first heard about Red Rocks from U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” video which played constantly on MTV in the 1980s. Since then, its reputation had grown as an iconic concert venue. I didn’t realize the site was open even when there was no concert until Betsy assured me it would be a good outing.
We first went through their visitor center and Hall of Fame exhibit where the girls got to play on an electronic drum set. Then we wandered for a time in the famous open-air concert venue. The girls got to crawl around on the rocks in the back of the stage. It was a cool sight to see, but it would be another 13 years before I finally saw a concert there.
Later that day, we watched Kristen’s soccer practice. She was a very active soccer player at that point. Allie expressed her opinion of spending time watching soccer practice.
Wednesday, August 10
Allie and I set out for Mount Rushmore, about 7 hours away. Our plan was to visit the Crazy Horse Memorial first, then save Mount Rushmore for the next day.
Here is the AAA version of the drive up to Mount Rushmore, from Fort Collins, Colorado northward. The little dotted lines indicate a more scenic route.
We started at a reasonable hour, got through the Denver rush hour traffic and drove north on I-25. I expected some nicer scenery but the views were mostly flat, brown prairie, especially once we got past Fort Collins. There was a long stretch of not very much north of Laramie, Wyoming. I quickly got a sense of what a large, sparse country it is out west.
We were glad to have something to stop for at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. We checked out the Ft. Laramie National Historic Site for about half-an-hour and learned a tiny bit about this frontier army post. Mostly we learned we were glad we were not in the frontier army or a fur trapper in the 1800’s. It was a pretty rugged spot in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t help that we were pretty much the only ones there.
We then found a little diner (the Fort Laramie American Grill & Restaurant, still #1 of 3 restaurants in Fort Laramie) where we had a pretty good lunch. I had a burger and Allie liked their mac and cheese, as I recall. I also remember being the only customers. There are just not a lot of people that find a reason to be in Wyoming.
We drove a few more hours to the Crazy Horse Memorial in the late afternoon. The parking lot at the visitor center had an impressive array of motorcycles, our first real encounter with the Sturgis crowd.
We only had an hour or so before the visitor center closed so we spent most of our time there. The hugely ambitious monument, started in 1948, is at once admirable and problematic. I can understand the desire for a monument to pay tribute to Native Americans of the region and the continent, particularly in proximity to Mount Rushmore. But I also wonder about the environmental and cultural impacts of the monument — is it really the best way? There is evidently resentment among some Native Americans (justifiably so, I think) that the carving and particularly this visitor center are more of a money-grabbing tourist gimmick than a legitimate memorial.
Tourist gimmick or not, there are some things to see in the visitor center…and you can’t really get to the actual carving anyway.
On the visitor center deck there is a large scale model of the complete design. You can see if it has taken half a century to just finish the face, it will take centuries more to finish the entire design. It’s staggeringly ambitious. Is it the best use of a sacred mountain and so much effort and expense? I find it hard to say yes. But it will be interesting to track its progress over the coming decades. How many projects are undertaken on this scale?
After the visitor center closed, we headed into the nearby town of Sturgis to see what was going on with this festival. We drove carefully around the thousands of very fancy bikes and bikers already assembled. This was as alien a culture as I’d ever encountered, and I’d been around the world several times already. We didn’t stay long but I guess we must have gotten a bite to eat somewhere.
After dinner we headed to our hotel in Hill City, a few miles away. I belatedly realized we had failed one of our assignments to take a Kids Post picture from the journey so we stopped roadside in the gloaming to take shots of Allie we could later send to the Washington Post. We didn’t end up using these, but vowed to take more at Mount Rushmore. We considered staying for the laser light show on the memorial but we were tired and decided to head on to the motel.
We stayed that night at the Hill City Super 8 Motel. When we checked in we noticed quite a few Teddy Bears in the lobby but didn’t think too much about it.
Thursday, August 11
In the morning, we met Jackie Miley, the desk clerk and collector of the Teddy bears. Jackie was excited to see Allie — she didn’t see too many young girls, especially during Sturgis week. Jackie was eager to show Allie her full collection and led us to a couple of rooms off the lobby packed with thousands of bears of all sorts and sizes. This was already a huge collection (started just five years before in 2000) but evidently Jackie has gone on to collect many thousands more, set up a standalone museum (Teddy Bear Town) and earned the Guinness World Record for Teddy bear collections (check out the video!). And we knew her when…
After we got home and got our photos, Allie (and Barb, I’m pretty sure) decided to send Jackie a bear to add to her collection. We sent photos and a bear, and Jackie wrote back this nice note. Her dedication, attention to detail and just plain niceness help explain why she deserves a spot in Guinness Book of World Records. Maybe someday we will check out Allie’s contribution among Jackie’s collection (look around bear #4080).
We made our way to Mount Rushmore, this time taking care of the Kids Post business right at the start.
Mount Rushmore was a bucket list item of mine. Barb had been there as a youth on a family drive with Fred, Louise and Betsy, so it was no longer a priority with her. I have to say it was somewhat anticlimactic seeing the monument in person. It’s a self-congratulatory shrine to America filled with a lot of other people checking it off their bucket lists. There’s not much to do other than jostle for a good photo angle.
The newly scrubbed visitor’s center offered a good film and background on building the monument. There’s also a pretty good restaurant where we had lunch after we finished our touring.
We headed to the Grand View Terrace and walked the Presidential Trail for some closer views of the carvings.
Seeing the carved visages in person, the much larger landslide of rock shavings underneath, and the milling throngs of pasty white American pilgrims, I began to think of the whole enterprise as much a desecration of nature as a tribute to our nation. I don’t think either Rushmore or Crazy Horse (not to mention the Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain in Georgia) are models to praise or repeat.
Allie may have had a different opinion. She wrote this postcard to Barb at home.
After a few hours at the monument and lunch at the visitor’s center, we headed to nearby Custer State Park for a redemptive dose of natural beauty…from the windshield of our car. We opted for the Wildlife Loop Road and were rewarded with some dramatic sightings of bison and more than a few Sturgis bikers. We wondered about the wisdom of encountering a roadside bison herd from a motorbike.
By mid-afternoon we’d had our fill and decided it was time to head back toward Denver. I wasn’t sure if we would make it all the way back to Betsy’s (about 6.5 hours) but felt sure we could get a motel somewhere along the way if needed.
Driving across the flatlands of Wyoming under clear skies, we saw a thunderhead develop on the western horizon. It looked like a single white anvil with a dark scrub of rain underneath it, way off in the distance. As we drove, I had the memory of being on the water in Florida with Dad, playing tag with thundershowers. On the water, you’d always want to steer clear of the rain. When you’re on a highway, though, you have no choice — you just have to hope that you and the thundercloud don’t arrive at the same spot at the same time.
On this occasion, we lost. After nearly an hour of watching the cloud meander across the sky, getting closer and darker, we ran smack into the heavy rain shower which also included sleet and small hailstones. We had to pull over and wait it out, but were rewarded with a double rainbow from horizon-to-horizon. The photos don’t do it justice.
With our car rinsed off, we headed onward. Around 8pm, I started to get weary and we both got hungry so I started looking for a place to stop for the night…but we were in a long stretch of nothing. Around 9pm we got to the outskirts of Cheyenne and pulled into several motels only to find them full. After several fruitless exits and at least 3-4 motels, we finally found a Marriott willing to give us their last available spot, a smoking room (the hotel was pretty old then and seems to be gone altogether now). It was after 10pm before we finally found a bite to eat and collapsed in the horribly stinky room. Allie could hardly stand it and we had to call for a box fan to try to at least move the stale air around. It had been a long day and memorable night with Dad on the road.
Friday, August 12
We got out of the stinkbag hotel as quickly as we could in the morning and had a little time to kill on our way back to Betsy’s, so we took a scenic route through the mountains and foothills. I think we cut over toward Estes Park then went south through Boulder and Golden. We found a nice place to stop by a rushing stream with some good boulders for Allie to climb on, brightening her mood considerably.
Saturday, August 13
I played another round of golf with Joe in the morning, then Allie and I went to the Denver airport to pick up Barb. I’m not sure what else we did that day other than get back to Betsy’s and visit with everyone.
Sunday, August 14
I think Joe and I snuck in one more round of golf in the morning. In the afternoon, we were spectators at one of Kristen’s soccer games. The whole family came out to cheer her on…well, some more than others.
Monday, August 15
Let the road trip begin! We set out westward from Denver, driving 6 hours or so to Moab, Utah via the scenic route laid out by AAA. Interestingly, I can’t plot it on Google Maps at the moment because some of the roads we went on are closed in the winter. Sometimes old paper maps are the better way to go.
We set out on Route 285 through Fairplay and Buena Vista. The driving was much slower than Interstate 70 but prettier and much less crowded. The high Colorado plateau had lots of meadows and more farmland than I expected. We crossed the continental divide at Independence Pass (at 12,095 feet) where we stopped for some photos.
We headed onward to the resort town of Aspen where we wandered for a bit and had some lunch. We weren’t greatly impressed by Aspen but I’m sure it’s a very different scene in the winter with snow.
We stayed on Route 82 back to I-70 at Glenwood Springs. The terrain around Grand Junction was impressive with mesas and buttes carved by the confluence of the Colorado and Gunnison rivers. I recall stopping for bathrooms and a snack at a big McDonalds with great views. America!
We pulled into Moab, Utah in the late afternoon, found our Holiday Inn Express and sought out dinner somewhere. Moab itself didn’t make much of an impression on me, mostly just a strip of motels and chain restaurants. But it did the job as a gateway to Arches, Canyonlands, and I’m sure a lot of other more active pursuits in eastern Utah.
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