Day 17 & 18 - 5 & 6 Sep, Yellowstone to Home

Well, after 18 days of travel, seeing marvelous sights, meeting wonderful people, taking hundreds of photos, sleeping in motels and eating restaurant meals, it was time to turn the car, Minnie (Pearl) as she is now known, north and west and head home. So, as we have been saying, "Days 17 and 18: At Sea". For the most part, we traveled under cloudy skies and cool temperatures. Quite a change from the sunny, hot weather to which we had become accustomed.
On Wed, we traveled 862 km to Ritzville, WA. Ahhh, Washington state, sounds almost like home. That left only 547 km for the last day of our adventure to our final destination, Surrey, BC, Canada, where we arrived at 2 in the afternoon. Surrey welcomed us with nice weather, sunny and mild, much nicer than the weather we left 18 days ago.
There is one interesting and ironic note to close this epic tale. After 10,500 kms. of driving on high speed Interstates, US and state highways, not to mention park roads without incident, just outside of Seattle on the I-5, a truck tire threw a stone and gave our car it’s first deep scratch and shallow dent. We were only two hours from home. How ironic.

Day 16 - 4 Sep, Yellowstone National Park

Today was an interesting day and our final day doing the "tourist thing". It was also fascinating to see all the things that we have read about and seen on TV and movies about Yellowstone. I won’t try to describe our day in a linear fashion as I had been wont to do on previous days; there is just too much that we saw and too many details to try to keep straight. So I shall just hit a few of the highlights and let the pictures say the rest, saving thousands of words and considerable time and space.
Yellowstone has much more than geysers, in fact, the park is divided up into five distinct areas, or countries. We only visited one, Geyser Country, the home of Old Faithful and literally thousands of other geysers, hot springs and mud pots. One must stay on the marked trails and boardwalks. The "thermal features" are at or even above boiling temperature. Some of the ground is a mere crust floating on boiling water and falling through would be very serious indeed..
Most of the park lies in the state of Wyoming, but it also lies partly in Idaho in the south west and Montana in the north and west. Besides lying in three states, the continental divide runs through the park, so that while most of the park drains east, the south west corner of the park is west of the divide, draining west to the Pacific Ocean.
Doug found the barren ground, hot steaming pools and high spouting geysers created kind of a extraterrestrial feeling. This could have been the moon or Venus or Mars. The geysers don’t shoot up all the time. Much of the time they are quite calm except for frequent eruptions of steam bubbles. However, while you are looking at one, another may erupt somewhere else around you.
Of course, the star of the show is Old Faithful. It erupts on average, every 92 minutes, but can range from 51 to 120 minutes. The predicted time of the next eruption is posted in several places around the area. We went to watch about 10 minutes before the predicted time and sat with a hundred or so people to wait; and wait we did.. At around the predicted time, it appeared to be shooting some water out of the steaming vent. Then it went quiet again. After about another quarter of an hour, it started to shoot and spray in spits and starts and then it suddenly roared to life. For several minutes, thousands of litres of boiling water and steam shot more than 100 feet into the air. The power is amazing. Just as quickly as it started, it was over with just a steady cloud of steam rising from the vent.
Within sight of Old Faithful sits the Old Faithful Lodge. There we found a very good cafeteria where we lunched on Buffalo meat loaf. Mmmmm, very tasty. We also bought some souvenirs there and a beautiful book of photography which we got signed by the author.
By this time, we had had a pretty full day and it was time to head back to town. It is 30 miles from Old Faithful to West Yellowstone following two lane park roads through forest that is not too unlike Banff or Jasper. There is a lot of wild life in the park and we got to see quite a bit of it including several bison and elk. One bison, a large bull was walking along the shoulder of the road as we drove by him. He looked awfully big right beside the car.
At another point, we saw a number of female elk with a couple of calves in a large open field. A big bull was approaching from the far side and as we watched, he tossed his head with its huge rack back and bellowed out to the females. They ignored him. Hmmmm.
Back to the hotel then found a restaurant for supper. Enjoyed some nice pizza and had enough left over for lunch the next day on the highway to Spokane, WA. It was a very good day, but ended quite cool and rainy.

Day 15 - 3 Sep, Salt Lake City, UT to West Yellowstone, MT: 496 km

Slept in a little and almost missed the free continental breakfast. We managed to get a bagel and doughnut before a big biker type grabbed everything else. Then we caught the shuttle to Temple Square to see the LDS complex.
The first thing I wanted to see was the Family History Library or genealogy building. It is quite impressive with three floors of research facilities. The volunteers there were most helpful and friendly, explaining everything to us. The greatest asset of course are the millions of micro-fiche and microfilm files which fill quite a large area. There are also many computer terminals for public use and several librarians and genealogists ready and eager to assist. Doug would love to get back here for a week or so to work on his tree.
The Family History Library and the Museum of Church History and Art are located on the west side of West Temple Street. The main part of the complex is on the east side of the street. After our visit to the Family History Library we went to the Temple Square where we were directed to the start of the free guided tour. Two well trained volunteers took us through the tabernacle and the North Visitors Center. Along the way we were given a very informative history of the Church buildings and the Church itself and the Mormon faith. The Tabernacle has amazing acoustics but we did not hear the world famous choir. We were also impressed with the beauty of the lawns and gardens.
After our tour of Temple Square, we called for the shuttle back to the hotel to packed up the car for the trip to our final destination, Yellowstone National Park.
The drive was pretty well uneventful but for several changes of weather. It was too hot to have the roof open, which was just as well because we could see rain and lightening in the distance and we did run into a couple of hard showers. We pulled into West Yellowstone, a small and busy tourist town just outside the park.. Found a Comfort Inn on the far side of town and checked in for the night. Then we went for a walk and found a restaurant, the Old Town Cafe, had some supper and a beer. Walked back to our hotel in the warm muggy evening air. Tomorrow, the geysers.

Day 14 - 2 Sep, Cameron AZ to Salt Lake City, UT; 810 km

Today was a travel day after a great 2 night stay at Cameron and a full day at the Grand Canyon. Had another excellent breakfast at the Cameron Hotel and on our way to Utah under sunny skies at about 9 AM. The scenery was pretty much typical Arizona desert with scrub growth on the red sand and always, high red mesas not too far away. Eventually, we started to climb for quite a distance, winding up in the Kaibab National Forest. At the 6700 ft. summit, we were presented with a wide vista of the desert we had left behind us. Even after the wonders of the Grand Canyon, this was a marvelous view.
We crossed the state line into Utah right at noon. Still sunny and quite warm, about 90°. The Interstate wasn’t too far away and that took us right into Salt Lake City at 7 PM where we found an EconoLodge not far from the Temple Square. They also operate a free shuttle to the square every hour during the day. After checking in, we found a nice, and very busy Mexican restaurant called the Red Iguana. The meal was delicious.
Off to bed. There should be lots to see tomorrow.

Day 13 - 1 Sep., Grand Canyon

Had a good breakfast at the hotel dining room at 08:30 then off to the Grand Canyon in bright sunshine and very warm temperatures. From Cameron, we drove 30 miles to the canyon up Highway 89 to the east entrance to Grand Canyon National Park. From the parking lot just inside the entrance, we walked to the our first view of the Grand Canyon at Desert View. It is difficult to describe the first view of such a marvel. As teens like to say, "It is totally awesome". The scale is beyond anything that any photo can display.
Right on the edge of a point stands The Watchtower.http://scienceviews.com/parks/watchtower.html This amazing structure looks a century or more old but in fact was built between 1930 and 1933. The architect, Mary Coulter, was painstaking in her efforts to build a viewpoint and souvenir shop that would be a part of, rather than a distraction to the landscape.
After our visit to Desert View, we drove to Grand Canyon Village where we parked the car and picked up a free shuttle which ran along the south rim from there to a lookout named Hermit’s Rest, about 8 km distance. There are several stops along the way where we were able to get off for a view of the canyon and re-board the next shuttle, or hike the rim trail to the next viewpoint to re-board.. At one viewpoint called the Abyss, we were looking straight down a sheer face to the canyon floor 3000 feet below.
I won’t pretend to have the linguistics skills to describe the majesty we saw, nor even the photographic skills to show it. I will simply state that Diane and I were awestruck by the beauty and scale of it all.
The other thing that I found was that I was not accustomed to the altitude of the place at between 6,000 to 7,000 feet. Between the heat and the thin air, I had to stop often to catch my breath.
By supper time, we were pretty well tired out from the heat, exercise and thin air and drove back to our hotel in Cameron. After resting up and cleaning up, we enjoyed another fine Mexican-Navaho supper and retired for the night. It had been a very good day.

Day 12 - 31 Aug., Amarillo, TX to Cameron, AZ - 1140 km

Today would be a long day as we hoped to make the Grand Canyon before dark. We bid farewell to Amarillo between 8 and 9 AM under sunny but comfortable skies. Around 10 AM, we crossed into New Mexico. By this time, we were driving through a landscape of semi-desert scrub land and lofty mesas. It came as a rather abrupt change from the prairie land of northern Texas. By 1 PM, we stopped for lunch at Moriarty, NM. Now it was HOT, HOT, HOT again and we drove through several thunder and lightning storms and at time, quite heavy rain, such that the windshield wipers could barely keep up. Most of the place names were in Spanish and we listened to Mexican music and talk on the radio. The state of New Mexico is well named.
Interestingly, much of the highway here follows the legendary Route 66. We had also noticed that ever since Texas, we had seen wild Brown-eyed Susans growing along the side of the road. They were everywhere. We stopped at Gallup, NM for gas, souvenirs and pictures at a Navaho Indian trading post.
We crossed into Arizona at around 5 PM. By now we were in true desert country with high mesas but high mountains on the horizon. We started climbing and gaining altitude. By the time we reached Flagstaff, we were into evergreen forest land at about 7,000 ft elevation.
Somehow, we picked up the wrong road and wound up headed for Page, AZ. Since this would take us to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, we decided to carry on. At one point, we could see a rim of land illuminated brightly by the setting sun We were excited to think it was our first look at the Grand Canyon. Not so; it turned out to be a large mesa with the canyon many miles distant. Darkness was falling quickly and we were pretty much alone on the highway with towns and gas stations few and far between. We were actually in a large Navaho and Hopi Indian reservation. Finally, we came to a gas station at an Indian trading post. After fueling up and getting some information, we decided to turn around and go back several miles to Cameron, where we arrived at about 9 PM, tired and relieved.
Cameron had a large hotel and trading post complex complete with gas station, restaurant and souvenir store. It sure looked good to us. We registered for a 2 day stay because it was the Labour Day weekend so lodging could be scarce. We enjoyed a good meal of Mexican and Navaho cooking at the dining room, then fell into our comfy bed.

Day 11 - 30 Aug., 07, Russellville, AK to Amarillo, TX - 816 km

When you are on a cruise and the ship is at sea with no stops at a port, the itinerary simply states, "at sea". Today was one of those days, at sea.

We left Russelville under cloudy skies, occasional showers and a cool but muggy 80°. Seems funny referring to 80°F. as cool. As we crossed the state line into Oklahoma, we seemed to be coming out onto open plains again from the rolling farming country of Arkansas. Along the way, we saw some wind farms with the wind-mills lined up for a mile or more along the high ridges.

By Muskogee, OK, the sun was coming out again. We had to photograph the "Muskogee" highway sign because Diane loves the song about, "I’m Just An Okie from Muskogee". We also passed signs at Chicotah, OK and Henrietta, OK claiming home township of Carrie Underwood and Troy Aikenhead respectively. We also crossed the Canadian River and North Canadian rivers, which have absolutely no relationship to Canada.. (I just thought I would throw that in as an interesting tidbit.)

At around 5 PM, we crossed the state line into the great state of Texas. By this time the landscape was very flat prairie, not unlike Saskatchewan. Eventually, we pulled into Amarillo where it seemed the big trucks were lined up for miles trying to get into the local truck stops for the night. We hadn’t seen that many transports in one place ever before. Quite a sight!

We pulled up at the Amarillo Airport Plaza Hotel around 7 Pm or so. It wasn’t an expensive place, but must have been very ritzy in it’s day. The lobby was roomy and well decorated, though somewhat faded. Behind the lobby we walked through a large atrium, high ceilinged and with many plants, a nice swimming pool and some quite large and expensive looking chandeliers. Beside that atrium was a large and well appointed night club and casino. For such a place of somewhat faded glory there were seemingly few guests, although the aforementioned bar and casino were very busy

Day 10 - Memphis, TN 29 Aug. ‘07

The focus today was solidly on Elvis Presley and his beautiful home, Graceland. The day started out sunny and hot again, about 95° F. Had a very good continental breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel before walking over to Graceland.
Graceland is a southern mansion set among beautiful lawns and gardens right in the city of Memphis. It is a 2 story home but only the lower floor is open to the public as the second floor was Elvis’ private area where he would go to be by himself. The lower floor is where Elvis entertained his many friends and business associates. Lisa Marie still returns to Graceland on occasion and occupies the second floor at those times. Even today, the whole place is pretty much as it was when "the King" was still alive and we saw it all. At the beginning, we were given an audio device with a pre-recorded tour explaining all the rooms and how Elvis would use them. Outside the mansion stand several other buildings including a stable where there are still horses kept by the Presley family.
Most impressive to me was the Meditation Garden where Elvis would go for quiet meditation and now contains the burial sites of Elvis, his parents and his grandmother.
Besides the Graceland Estate, the tour also included several other exhibits, "Elvis After Dark" (a display of Elvis’ famous jumpsuits); his two jet aircraft, "Lisa Marie" and "Hound Dog II "; Sincerely Elvis (transportation devices he had over the years),. We also saw his large collection of automobiles including the famous Pink Cadillac.
Finally, after a light meal at cool 50's style restaurant called the Chrome Grill, near the Automobile Museum we departed Memphis, driving just 346 Km to Rushville, Arkansas

Day 9, 28 Aug - Dayton to Memphis: 619 km

Today we bid a fond "Farewell" to Jennifer, Jim and Bradley and headed out for Memphis and new adventures. We pulled into Memphis shortly after 4 PM in hot sunshine, about 92 ° F. We found Elvis’s Heartbreak Hotel about half a block from Graceland and checked in. By this time, we had driven a little over 5,000 kilometers so Doug found a Jiffy Lube and got the required oil and filter changes & etc. done. Then we went for a swim in the hotel’s heart shaped swimming pool.
The hotel had a shuttle to the downtown area and Beale Street. This area was inspired after the street by the same name in New Orleans. It is raucous, noisy and wonderful, lined with neon illuminated jazz and blues clubs and restaurants all with music blaring out onto the busy street, thronged with people. The street is closed off to traffic.
We had supper at a typical New Orleans Creole style restaurant, enjoying jambalaya and gumbo and live blues music. After supper, we stopped at Coyote Ugly where the TV show of the same name was taped. They really do have a hundred or more bras hanging from the ceiling above the bar. We also stopped at BB King’s Club where the Chicago blues was live and loud. Diane found it a little too loud and went back out onto the street while Doug enjoyed the atmosphere and a glass of Jack Daniels Tennessee whiskey.
Back to the Heartbreak Hotel on the shuttle at about 10 PM and to bed with two large photos of Elvis looking down at us from the wall above the bed.

Day 8, 27 Aug – Dayton, TN

Temp in the 90’s again, a relatively cool day for Jennifer and family, but still pretty hot to us. There had been thunder and lightening and showers over night so things are starting to green up a little. We played with some of the puppies. Then went to town with Jennifer. We had an interesting day there as Jennifer showed us the Rhea County courthouse, where the famous Scopes trial was held in 1925. This was very interesting on a couple of fronts.
First was the trial itself, which became a landmark called the Monkey Trial, for evolutionists and creationists both. A teacher, John Thomas Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution contrary to the law making it a crime to teach that man evolved from animals instead of being created by God as depicted by the Bible. He was found guilty and fined $100. However, the judge who did not wish to convict Scopes but had no choice, intentionally cause a mistrial and the verdict was later reversed on appeal. The case became famous in North America and abroad and eventually became a stage play and then a movie entitled, Inherit the Wind.
Secondly, is the courthouse itself along with many of the older brick buildings in Dayton today. They were built by ancestors of Jennifer and me, who were Joneses who emigrated from England to the Dayton area in the 1800s. The early Joneses and the Prices in Oswestry were mostly stone and brick masons.
We picked up Bradley as school in Dayton and drove back to Jennifer and Jim's home. We later went to a Mexican restaurant in the near-by town of Athens for some excellent authentic Mexican food. Then back home for more visiting until bed around 1. AM.

Day 7, 26 Aug – Dayton, TN

Up around 7 or so, very warm again sunny and temperatures in the 90s. Jim went out to Hardies and brought back breakfast. Jennifer and Doug spent most of the day working on genealogy and Diane worked on her knitting and played some chess with Bradley. Jennifer has developed a unique form for keeping track of family groups and sources of information that is excellent and Doug will use once we are home again.

In the evening, we went to Jennifer’s parents home in the town of Dayton. It was a birthday party for one of Jennifer’s nephews, Luke, and we got to meet almost all of the family. Edward and Anita and all the sisters and their spouses are warm and friendly and we very much enjoyed meeting all of them.

After the meal prepared by Edward and the party and photos and conversation, we went back to Jennifer and Jim’s and to bed. It was a good day.

Day 6 – Nashville to Dayton, TN – About 300 KM

We were up bright and early this morning for our guided bus tour of Nashville. We had breakfast at our hotel and the bus came to pick us up at 0830. As Nashville is the state capital, we saw the state legislature, courthouse and other sites of historical significance to the great state of Tennessee and of the city. Of course, it was the country music that we were most interested in, so we were thrilled to visit the old Ryman Auditorium, the church of country music, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry. It is still in use today but for a wide range of music and live theatre. We had our photos taken on the stage of the Opry with the old set, the familiar red barn in the background.

Then it was off to the Country Music Hall of Fame. What an amazing place it is, commemorating everybody who was anybody in the country music industry. Visiting there was a great experience.

Then it was off to the downtown area where most of the big country bars are located. We stopped at one of the more famous ones called The Legends Bar where many big stars past and present, such as Allan Jackson, Gretchen Wilson and Randy Travis got their start. We listened to one such, Duncan Houston and bought one of his CDs for only $10. He even autographed it for us. Who knows, maybe one day we will have an early edition of a big time artist!

Then it was back to the hotel to pick up the car and head out to Dayton and Jennifer’s home. By this time, it was quite hot again, so we had the roof closed. We arrived at Jennifer’s home at about 4ish and were warmly greeted. Jennifer’s son Bradley was quite taken with our car and spent several minutes “petting” the roof. We spent some time getting acquainted and Jennifer’s husband, Jim came in and we got acquainted with him. We also saw Jennifer’s dachshund dogs and puppies. They are beautiful.

Jim took us all out to dinner at a Shoney’s Restaurant in a neighbouring community of Athens, which we all enjoyed. Bradley was happy as we had him ride with us with the roof down.

Then it was back to the house and Jennifer got her genealogy files out and started showing us the way she keeps her information organized. At the same time a big rain and electrical storm broke out. That was good news for them as they had had no rain for about 6 weeks, just a steady diet of sun and three digit temperatures, (Fahrenheit)

By this time, it was getting pretty late so it was off to bed to end an exciting day.

Day 5 – Concordia, MS to Nashville, TN – 800 KM

There had been a thunderstorm overnight and it was still misty when we started off. By 1330, we had reached Mt. Vernon, Nebraska and by this time, the temperature was around 100 degrees F., too hot for us to put the roof down on the convertible.

When we got to the outskirts of St. Louis, MI, our map was a little confusing and as Diane was driving at the time, I gave her the directions at a busy interchange. After quite a while, Diane said we had been here before. She had recognized the names of a couple of small towns nearby. Sure enough, we had driven all around the outside of the city, causing us a considerable amount of time and gas. I guess I should drive and leave the navigating to Diane. Soon after, we reached the state line for the bluegrass state of Kentucky. We crossed the Ohio River at Paducah. Now we really felt we had reached the SOUTH.

We arrived in Nashville at about 7 PM and settled into the Day’s Inn on Music Valley Drive. Doug called his cousin, Jennifer and arranged to meet her the following afternoon in Dayton.

Then we went for a walk to see the local sights, and Man, was it hot! The radio was reporting 106 degrees. We felt like we were walking in an oven. It was unbelievable!

We stopped at John A’s for dinner and had catfish. That was a first for us and it was excellent. The country music wasn’t bad either. In Nashville, the singers play for tips and to sell their CDs, usually for $10. They are new acts trying to make it to the big time and that is how they get their start.

After dinner and some music, we walked back to our hotel. By this time it was dark, but still extremely hot and there was quite a bit of lightning in the sky. It was a good day.

DAY 4 - Mitchell, SD to CONCORDIA, Missouri, 781 KM

Today we got underway at 0830. We had a thunderstorm during the night but the morning was cool and cloudy. After a breakfast of nice big waffles at Perkins, we hit the pavement of the I-90 by 0930, headed east.

By noon, it had turned sunny and quite warm by the time we stopped for lunch at Riverside Golf Club, beside the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, Iowa. It is a beautiful spot with the grass and trees of the golf course on the one side and the impressive sky-line of Omaha, Nebraska on the other, just across the river.

We noticed, How could we not?, that the trees seemed to be singing. Our waitress explained that it was katydids, which I have always known as "cicadas". We were later to discover that they were to be our constant companions for the following several days and states, wherever there were trees.

Stopped at Concordia at 1900 and it was still hot outside. We are really beginning to appreciate the air conditioning in the car. By 2100, or for those who don’t quite get the 24 hour clock, 9 PM, it was still hot and muggy outside.

Day 3 - Whitewood, SD to Mitchell, SD, 611 km

Well today was more exciting, but we didn't go the distance that we have on the first two days.

We woke up to cool damp weather, that seems to be normal, I think. Anyway we set of for Mt. Rushmore, stopping en route at a quaint restaurant, a former powder keg formerly used for storing black powder, dynamite and bootleg liquor. Had a nice breakfast there, then on to Mt. Rushmore.

The carvings of the four presidents are truly amazing and I got some pretty good shots of them. I won't post them now because, as usual, I am doing this far too late in the evening.

The whole area around there is full of interesting things to see and do. We hope to be able to return some day.

The nearest town to Mt. Rushmore is Rapid City, a nice looking place, but I hate to admit, Diane & I got lost 3 times trying to get back onto the I-90 east bound. By this time, the sun had come out so we got some serious tanning done driving down the highway.

One interesting note about the Interstates, the speed limit in most places is 75 MPH, or almost 120 km/hr. I love it.

So tomorrow we pick up the I-29 south at Sioux Falls for Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.