2017 Adler San Diego Roadtrip

Starting mileage: 9111 Starting time: 8:00 am Ending mileage: 7410 Ending time: 2:00 pm Travel mileage:  299 Travel time: 6:00 hours Home again, home again. Day 32 route

Starting mileage: 8541 Starting time: 8:00 am Ending mileage: 9111 Ending time: 6:00 pm Travel mileage:  470 Travel time: 10:00 hours Travel day. First significant rain since we left home over a month ago. Day 31 route

Starting mileage: 7847 Starting time: 8:00 am Ending mileage: 8541 Ending time: 6:30 pm Travel mileage:  694 Travel time: 10:30 hours A lot warmer when we got up this morning, 54 degrees vs freezing yesterday morning. As we got to the Missouri River along the eastern edge of South Dakota, we started to see maple trees with fall foliage that we are familiar with. The land we could see along the highway became predominantly agricultural, with mainly corn and wheat or oats - hard to tell which at 80 mph. I think part of the mystery about the gas mileage higher at higher elevation has to do with the gas not having ethanol. When we were in Wall, SD, we had to double-take that regular gas was $2.75 while premium gas was $2.45. It turns out the more expensive "regular" gas was without ethanol while the "premium" gas had no ethanol. A long day of driving today, only stopping for food and bathroom breaks. Day 30 route

Starting mileage:  7501 Starting time: 8:30 am Ending mileage: 7847 Ending time: 6:30 pm Travel mileage:  346 Travel time: 10:00 hours This morning when we got in the car it was 32 degrees and there was frost on the windshield. We went back to Mt. Rushmore in the morning to see it in the sunshine and to take some more photos. After leaving the Black Hills, the terrain was mostly rolling prairie for the next 300 miles. Although it appeared to be mostly for cattle grazing, we did see fields of sunflower, corn, sorghum, oats, hay and something bright green that we couldn't identify. Our first stop was the world-famous Wall Drug Store in Wall SD, just outside of the Badlands NP. There are signs for hundreds of miles around advertising Wall Drug. It is a huge place, with shops for jewelry, rocks, western gear, souvenirs and a huge cafe with the world's largest collection of western art. We had 5 cent cups of coffee, something they are famous for, and I had a piece of cherr

Starting mileage:  7148 Starting time: 8:30 am Ending mileage: 7501 Ending time: 5:30 pm Travel mileage:  353 Travel time: 9:00 hours Leaving Fort Collins, it is just a short way up I-25 to Wyoming and rolling prairie that we would be traveling through most of the day. There were electronic signs warning of 50+ mph winds and our car was certainly being blown around. A wind farm on one side of the road had all the turbines spinning but the wind farm on the other side didn't have any turbines turning, strange. The wind must often be very strong as most houses had tree windbreaks planted on the west side of the house and cattle were huddled behind wooden shelters along the road. There are also functioning old-fashioned windmills that pump water for the cattle on the range and occasional pump-jacks slowly bringing up crude oil. We passed incredibly long trains of coal (bad coal!) cars loaded to the top.  I suspect the little town of Lusk, WY is a speed trap. The speed on the ma

Starting mileage:  6769 Starting time: 8:30 am Ending mileage: 7148 Ending time: 6:30 pm Travel mileage:  379 Travel time: 10:00 hours Speaking with the desk clerk at breakfast, he suggested taking route 285 up through Leadville as a scenic route. He said that he and his wife came out to hike in Ouray 4 years ago and liked it so much they both quit their jobs in Connecticut and were fortunate to find jobs in Ouray. We followed his suggestion and it was truly a spectacular drive north through the Rocky Mountains. For lunch we stopped at the Silver Dollar Saloon in Leadville which has been operating there since 1879. It was opened by a mining businessman who at the time was the wealthiest man in Colorado. He would help fund minors and in return got a share of the profits which were huge. He paid $25,000 to build an opera house in Leadville because he thought it important for civilized society and many notable people visited there. We went to the National Mining Museum and Hall

Starting mileage:  6444 Starting time: 8:00 am Ending mileage: 6769 Ending time: 6:00 pm Travel mileage:  325 Travel time: 10:00 hours Our trip up from Gallup was through more desert-like terrain, just scrub brush and mountains in the distance. Every once and a while we would see large buttes like in the photo below. There were also areas with white salt deposits on the ground - I tasted it which was only slightly salty, probably something other than sodium chloride but fortunately, not toxic! We also saw a herd of horses with different colors and patterns, possibly wild horses. We were going to get tickets at the Colorado Visitor Center  to tour the cliff houses at Mesa Verde but they were already sold out. We were told that the schools are out in Utah this week for educational travel and many families had come over to visit Mesa Verde. Oh well, next time. Mesa Verde isn't as "verde" (green) as it used to be. Since 1989 there have been a number of very large fore

Starting mileage:  6166 Starting time: 7:30 am Ending mileage: 6444 Ending time: 6:00 pm Travel mileage:  278 Travel time: 9:30 hours First stop was backtracking about 20 miles north to the Sunset Crater national monument. In geological time this is a very recent volcanic cone, formed about 1000 years ago. As there were Native Americans living around the eruption at the time, there are oral histories of the event. At the visitor center there is information about the history and geology. There are chunks of lava with the remnants of corn embedded which archaeologists believe was from ears of corn being placed near the lava flow as offerings. One can no longer climb up the crater summit but there are trails that go over the lava flows and smaller volcanic cones. Next was the Winslow Meteor Crater. I had been here and the Petrified Forest with my grandparents about 55 years ago when Route 66 was still the main travel route while the Interstate highway system was being constructed. N

Starting mileage:  5831 Starting time: 8:30 am Ending mileage: 6166 Ending time: 5:00 pm Travel mileage:  335 Travel time: 8:30 hours It was only about 1 1/2 hours from Kanab to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Just after we entered the park, there was a herd of bison in the meadow and two right in the middle of the road. As we got closer, they wandered off to the side. Carmen took a photo out of the car window and the bison started to come closer to the car so we took off. The lodge and seasonal facilities had closed on Monday so it was pretty quiet and we didn't have any trouble parking. Some of the viewpoint stops we made didn't have a lot of extra parking and it could have been very busy during the main season. We are fortunate to be able to visit off-season. Our first stop at the Grand Canyon was the Bright Angel Point, a slender point that sticks out between two side canyons. In some ways, the north rim of the Grand Canyon is more spectacular than the south ri

Starting mileage:  5707 Starting time: 8:30 am Ending mileage: 5831 Ending time: 6:00 pm Travel mileage:  124 Travel time: 9:30 hours From the hotel we headed up to the Kolob Canyons in the northern part of Zion. We were surprised to see the speed limit of 80mph which almost seemed too much for our aging Subaru Forester. When we arrived at the Kolob Canyons visitor center, the temperature was only 33 degrees although we found out later that we should have been thankful as it was only 14 degrees at Bryce Canyon this morning - Bryce isn't that far away although considerably higher. The Kolob Canyon area is not nearly as popular as the Zion Canyon and we had a quiet drive up to a viewpoint, seeing amazing red cliffs and gorges in the early morning sunlight. From there we headed down to the south entrance which is supposed to be a 45 minute drive but due to the construction near the entrance, it took us an additional 45 minutes to go the last mile. We were fortunate that

Starting mileage:  5259 Starting time: 10:00 am Ending mileage: 5707 Ending time: 6:30 pm Travel mileage:  448 Travel time: 8:30 hours (lost an hour going to Mountain time) Today was mostly a traveling day, getting close to the entrance of Zion park. It is pretty much all desert and rocky mountains all the way from San Diego to St. George. At the border of California and Nevada, we passed the Ivanpah solar power facility  which uses over 300,000 mirrors to focus the sun on towers to generate steam which then runs a turbine generating electricity. It is quite impressive to see, with part of the tower shining very brightly and a haze around the towers - if you click the link, you can see the photos and a description of its mixed success. Unrelated to this are several very large photovoltaic power facilities as Nevada is trying to foster alternative energy production. Although the terrain was generally similar as we approached the Nevada - Arizona border, there were signs of water

Spending more time with the girls. Shopping, building Ikea furniture and hanging things up. On Saturday, we all went up to Julian, CA. Julian was the largest gold producing area of southern California from 1869 to 1890. The buildings along the main street have been restored to what they would have looked like during the gold mining era although the actual shops have mostly things for tourists. It is an exceptionally popular place for people from San Diego to visit due to its quaint character and cooler temperatures. We couldn't believe all the cars and we drove all over town trying to find a parking space until we finally found one of the last spots in the paid parking lot. We had lunch at Carmen's Garden and had a great view of people and traffic moving through town. There was some kind of exotic car tour and we watched at least 20 Porsche, 6 Lamborgini and 6 racing Audi go by. We also saw 3 fire trucks go by which wasn't a good sign as it was very dry. Along the sidew

Starting mileage:  4420 Starting time: 9:00 am Ending mileage: 4748 Ending time: 8:00 pm Travel mileage:  328 Travel time: 11:00 hours It was about a two hour drive to the Joshua Tree visitor center which had a good display of the geology, history and culture of the park. All of the NP visitor centers we've visited have been very good. Part of the route was retracing our route from Big Bear Lake on Monday but we made a sharp turn to the east just before getting to the San Bernardino mountains. I should have done more research in advance of our visit as I didn't realize that the geology was actually more interesting than the Joshua Trees and other vegetation. When we were traveling on our way out through Arizona, we went through two passes that had very strange geology with huge smooth boulders all over, many balancing precariously on others. This turns out to be one of the main features of Joshua Tree NP as you may be able to see in the photos below. Of course there are