Week 5- Devil's Tower and Colorado

Week 3 brought the crew to visit both sides of family.  Week 4 saw Bub make a cameo on the the blog for our time in South Dakota, and maybe a recurring guest for Wandering Around the World.  He plans on wandering off to Australia in February and maybe we can extend our reign on the world.  Up next, Devil's Tower right over the South Dakota/Wyoming line and then heading south to Colorado for the week.  

Quick Time Line of the Week 5's Festivities  

Tuesday Afternoon, September 6, Day 29- Tuesday evening, September 13th, Day 36

-Devil's Tower- Eastern Wyoming

-Drive south in the eastern part of Wyoming to Colorado

-Oil Change for the truck and a wash for both the truck and camper in Wheatland, Wyoming

-Drive through Boulder, Colorado to the outskirts of Denver

-24th Birthday in Denver

-Granby Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park in central Colorado

-Drive to Vail with a stop for Chinese food and then a drive through the town. 

We made it from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the western part of South Dakota and eastern part of Wyoming.  The plan from there?  Make a U from eastern Wyoming, go south to Colorado, west to Utah and then north through Utah, Wyoming, and Montana almost all the way to Canada- and then Seattle.  But that is 100% subject to change on a daily basis.  Just a general outline for the next few weeks.   

We started by going into Wyoming to the Devil's Tower.  It is a huge rock coming straight out of the ground in the middle of nowhere.  By huge, I mean like about a thousand feet tall that you could see from about 25 miles away.  We did about a mile hike around the base that was very easy and saw a few people climbing to the top- but with some serious climbing gear.  The story comes after the visit to Devil's Tower.  

First glimpse 

On the way there, we knew we didn't have much gas but didn't realize it until it would have been an inconvenience to turn around.  We visited Devil's Tower and hoped that magically, after leaving the vehicle by itself for over an hour and going for a short hike, the gas problem would be solved.  We came back to find that we were still in the same predicament.  We pull out of the park and we come to a fork in the road.  Left/North was the closest gas station- about 9 miles.  We were about positive we could make it there.  See the thing is, we were going south, but the nearest gas station was about 22 miles away.  We were going to be extremely lucky to get 15 miles on the rest of the tank.  From there do we

A)  Go to nearest gas station- this one being about 15 minutes north.  It would end up being a 30 minute detour because we were headed south to Colorado.

B) Ask around to see if anyone in the parking lots had any gas at all.

C) Sling it around.  Take a right and go south.  Be easy on the gas, put the truck in neutral going downhill, and hope for the best.  All we need is 22 miles.

I tracked the route on my iPhone while Allen was driving.  It started out… ok we have 19 miles left….. 18….. 17.  

About 10 minutes later going down a hill- COME ON NEUTRAL!!!!! WHHHHHHEEEEWWWWW!!!!
Okay 9.7……. 9.5………. 9.4 miles left. 

About 15 minutes later- Allen: (Shaking his head) That's all she's got.  I'm scared to push the gas, I'm afraid nothing will happen.

       

So we ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere.  Who comes to the rescue? AAA.  They got my location and within 45 minutes after hanging up the phone, someone was there with a couple gallons of gas.  So by the time we would have gone north to get gas, past the entrance to Devil's Tower to where we ran out of gas it would have taken - oh wait a sec, 45 minutes.  So not only did we run out of gas and not lose time from taking the smart route, but I got like 8 or 9 dollars worth of gas for having Triple-A.  I don't use it very often, but it sure is useful when you need it.  Okay lesson learned, hopefully..... 

Not Good

On the side of the road with nothing in the tank

       

After the slight mishap, we headed south through the very eastern part of Wyoming, or where there is nothing but grasslands around.  We went 40 miles at a time without going past exits and gas stops.  Day 29 took us to Lewis Park in Wheatland, you know the park beside my house.  I like to swing really high.  If you didn't get that joke, watch this video.  They ask his kid what is favorite part is.  He heard what is your favorite park.   

Lewis Park was a park in the town of Wheatland that was free to stay at, but donations were accepted.  I put 10 dollars in the next morning on the way out, just to get good karma.  Going across the country and the last thing we need is bad luck.  Here Harry, throw the salt over your right shoulder.

Day 30, only 4 weeks on the road and the truck already needed an oil change.  We found an auto place that would do it and then walked to a Taco John's for lunch.  We had seen a few Taco John's between our time in South Dakota and Wyoming.   Come to find out, they are a western fast food chain- S.D., Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.  It was like a Taco Bell except that their main ingredient wasn't dog food.  Don't ever look at a soft taco from Taco Bell, you won't even drive into their parking lot again it's so scary.    

Some days we see all kinds of cool places and landscapes.  Some days are pretty much traveling days- this being one of them.  We made it in Colorado at night, on the outskirts of Boulder.  We stayed at a county fairground with electrical hookups- the 2nd day in a row we were staying at a public place.  They are usually cheaper than private campground, but more expensive than the "free" casino parking lots.  Wait a minute, they are never free.  Either your gambling losses contribute to the cost, or you get paid to sleep in one of them.  I have been on both ends of the spectrum.  Sleeping in a hot camper after winning money isn't all that bad.  Sleeping in a stuffy camper with two other dudes after losing money is not fun.  

We drove through Boulder and stopped by a Sports Authority.  They were having a "this is last year's stuff and we want to get rid of it before this year's stuff comes in sale".  We all added a jacket to our all-too-crucial arsenal of warm clothes.  I got a Colorado toboggan or whatever my family in Michigan who make fun of me for saying toboggan call it- a hat.  We drove around Denver to a campground right off the interstate, but tucked back in the woods.  The people who worked there claimed that Chief Hosa Campground was the oldest one in the United States.  Who knows if that was actually true, but it sounded good.  We hiked around for a few minutes near the campground before heading to a local sports bar to watch the start to the NFL Season- Saints vs Packers.  My cousin Jack was at the game- must be nice.  Packers ended up winning on a goal line stand 42-34.

We woke up on Day 32 to…… My 24th birthday.  I have been around for almost a quarter of a century.  Now that is just mind-blowing.  This post is some weeks after my actual birthday- but thanks to everyone who in some way said Happy Birthday and for those who didn't, hopefully it was because you forgot or didn't know it was my birthday.  I am awful at remembering birthdays so I take no offense to anyone reading this who didn't.  Somehow, over the past week, between 3 people taking hundreds of pictures of everything we see, we didn't get any pictures of each other.  Here are a few good ones of me.

My mom let me sleep in a box

ha ha ha

We planned to get a hotel and after a couple tries, found a place that best suited the 3 of us.  We really didn't have any plans, and decided to roam the streets for a few hours before complimentary happy hour back at our hotel.    Denver altogether is an awesome city, easily one of my favorite in the United States.  It is clean and nice- but doesn't have a huge city feel to it.  People are friendly and Denver seems to have things figured out.  Mountains all around, nice summers, not as cold as you think winters, the list goes on.  In my opinion, a running with Chicago for best city so far.

Who is that Guy?

Broncos Rally

Gotta love the American Bandana 

The 24th birthday was spent how most people in their 20s spend their birthdays- a late night out on the town.  I'm not going to go into details of the night, not much good can come out of that.  However, we did meet quite a few interesting people out on the streets roaming around.  One group of 2 guys and a girl in their mid-20s were doing a road trip around the US…. but they were hitchhiking and making money on the road.  They were playing music and dancing and the girl claimed that she made enough on the streets and doing odd jobs to keep the trip going.  We even offered them a ride the next day to where we were headed that night- but that didn't pan out at all.  We played hackey-sack on the street with two other guys nearby who had moved out to Denver a year or two ago from Ohio and then watched a couple of guys drop a few beats on the streets.  I was recording.....

Saturday morning, like Chicago a week or so ago, started with a minor headache.  Luckily, after making the 11 am checkout time, we treated ourselves to cucumber water.  We had a couple of glasses the day before going in and out of the hotel lobby, but didn't expect it to be glorious the morning after a late night.  Really, it was only a huge jug of ice water with cucumber slices in it, but this stuff saves lives.

We left the camper at a campground about 25 minutes away, but didn't stay in it.  There wasn't much to do with the camper in Denver, so we swung by back the campground to get it after checking out of the hotel.  Check out time was 11 am at the campground- but that wasn't happening.  We got a call right before 11 from the campground manager; asking us when we were coming back to get the camper.  That call was not answered and about 11:45, we drove in, quickly hooked up the camper and drove away- making sure not to make eye contact with anyone on the drive past the office.  Usually most campgrounds will give you an hour grace period on checkout time.  About 95% of the time, we use that grace period.  Two words- Tempurpedic Mattresses.

Next stop from Denver- Granby Lake right near Rocky Mountain National Park, about an hour and a half northwest of Denver.  Allen's cousin Parker works on a ranch about 15 minutes from where we were staying on the lake and came to hung out with us both nights.  We got there in the late afternoon after stopping by a Carls Jr. for lunch.  Carls Jr and Hardees are the exact same fast food place, but at some point going from the east coast to the west coast, Hardees are no longer Hardees.  They become Carls Jr.  I'm not sure where this magical line changes the name of the place but it is slightly confusing for the average person.  We stopped one more time at a local store right by our campground on Granby Lake to pick up stuff for dinner plus some homemade cinnamon rolls.  The store was basically a lady's house right off the main road of the campground.  We went into her kitchen and she offered us cinnamon rolls for like $2 apiece.  I had eaten not long ago, but never in my life have I ever been in the position to pass down $2 homemade cinnamon rolls.  

We just sat around on a warm, sunny afternoon and enjoyed the day.  The campground host, Carl, came by to take up money for our campsite that evening and sold us wood for the fire we planned on building.  Carl's wood wouldn't burn at all, and this was after we put a little propane on the fire to get it started.  (That may sound dangerous, but it is way easier than building up a fire.)  Carl also made sure to tell us that quiet time was from 10 pm on.  We made sure to make more than a few references to Carl throughout the night about quiet time and his firewood.

If I haven't mentioned it before- some smaller campgrounds will have hosts who just live in a camper on site but make rounds every so often and they take the money up for each campsite.  Getting out west and being in September when most kids are back in school, many of the campgrounds are very loose on people arriving and leaving.  We may show up to a campsite after the office has closed, but I call ahead and they just say, "The office will be closed so just pull on in, grab a site and then come in and pay in the morning."  I guess the honor system works here.  Imagine if a movie theater allowed people to come in for late movies.  "Yep, just come on in, grab a seat and then pay for the movie afterwards."  Yeah, right.

Parker came over later with a friend from the ranch, Anna.  Anna was from Iceland.  I have the travel bug now and was very intrigued.  "Iceland, hey?"  She told me that there are only about 300,000 people in Iceland, with over half living in the capital of Reykjavik.  So Iceland is about the size of Raleigh, and it's a country.  I asked what language she spoke.  Her response- Icelandish, Finnish, English, some French, and a little bit of Spanish.  Good response Anna.  My response would have been- English, a very limited amount of Spanish, and cuss words in German, Dutch, and Portuguese.

We had a fire going to stay warm, but before heading to sleep, the temperature was near freezing at 34 degrees.  Our site had no electrical hookups   Inside of the camper wasn't too cold.  The only problem?  The Tempurpedic Mattresses.  Memory foam forms to your body and its warmth, but if the mattress is in a room or camper that is fairly cold, then the mattress is really hard.  Your body will warm it up a little, but takes away the heavenliness of the mattress itself.  But if that is the extent to which we have to rough it on the trip, so be it.

First snow sighting, September 10th on the way to Granby Lake

The view from the campground

Fire Night 1

A visitor at breakfast the next morning

The next day, we decided around checkout time to re-up with Carl for 2 more bundles of firewood and another night on Granby Lake.  We headed out to nearby Rocky Mountain National Park for a nice drive through the park.  Some parks you camp in, some parks you hike around in for the day, and others you just drive through.  Rocky Mountain wasn't really a place to hike around or camp because of the massive mountains around.  Plus it was only in the high 40s for the day.  Imagine how cold that translates to at night.  The drive from Granby Lake to Rocky Mountain took us up in elevation about 2 thousand feet in 30 minutes.  The drive was by far one of the coolest on the trip.  I will let the pictures speak for itself.

Is that the Budweiser crown?

Squirrel!

Mule Deer

After the drive around, we picked up stuff from the grocery store to make my mom's famous Cheese dip and tacos.  Good thing for us, this was not dog food from Taco Bell, actual beef.  Parker and Anna joined us for a second night, and brought a friend along, Magi.  Magi was from Poland and was also working at the ranch and was very   We put a dent in the stash of beer we got in Milwaukee and made the fire of all fires to stay warm again.  At least 6 or 7 times, Allen kept putting logs in the fire (A combination of Carl's wood and random stuff laying around the campsite) so that we had to keep moving our chairs back in order to not ignite in flames.  

   

Day 36 proved to be our last in Colorado, as we packed up the campsite in the late morning, told Carl to keep his garbage firewood, and hit the road.  We might have just left before Carl came back, and his firewood did somewhat redeem itself on night two.  We drove to nearby Monarch Lake for about a projected 3 mile easy hike around the lake.  The hike was easy, but after about half a mile, we found a cool spot, set up the hammocks right by the water, and hung out for an hour or two.  As soon as we got there, we figured out that we wanted to fish and possibly go for a swim later.  So we walked back, got the poles and suits and went back to the spot.  Fishing all day was awful.  The lure got stuck in the seaweed or whatever you call plants at the bottom of a lake and that was about it on the fishing end.  The swimming end was just a little bit more of an adrenaline rush.  Know that the lake is formed because of run off from the snow in the mountains, and it can snow any time of year.  Parker told us that fireworks were canceled last summer on the 4th of July because of snow.  So after knowing all of this information and a little convincing by Allen, we decided to swim across this 30 or 40 yard stretch to an island on the lake.  The water didn't seem that bad when you only put your feet in, so it has to be ok to swim in, right?.  After a round of paper-rock-sissors to see who swam first, Bub entered the water.  Obviously, this water was colder than we expected, because it took your breath away as soon as you got in.  Bub almost turned back halfway through, but he remembered to just breathe and made it across.  Your skin literally hurt after getting out of the water on the little island.  What we didn't think through, was going back.  So, we jumped back in about 3 minutes later, and with numb bodies, swam back.  I was so cold at one point that I almost felt warm, kinda scary.  It was awful, but a pretty good feeling once you finished.  I almost felt worn out after the swim, and could definitely feel the adrenaline after finishing.  But hey, just another adventure on the trip.

We drove to Kremmling, Colorado that night before heading even further west to Moab, Utah.  A few miles out the next day, we stopped for Chinese food.  Simply put, I love Chinese food, and it had been over a month since I had it last.  Thinking back, General Tso's chicken should be in the Hall of Fame of food with sweet and sour sauce, salt and vinegar chips and the rest of the crew.  We stopped by Vail on the way to check out the ski town.  We saw some pretty sweet huge houses and could tell where the ski mountains were.  Hard to judge a ski town in the middle of September, but it was a cool town nevertheless.

Some states far from home deserve their own week.  South Dakota took most of week 4, and Colorado took most of week 5.  Colorado was much different than anything we had ever seen, but that's reason why you travel- to see and experience new places.  Colorado was pretty good to us to say the least and will definitely receive another visit before the travels end.    Thanks JHW 3 for making it all possible.   

Miles Traveled- About 5,500

Casinos- 2 wins- 1 loss- 1 tie

For the 5th consecutive week no one has been arrested, shaved, or ran into any trouble, except for a minor inconvenience with running out of gas.