Winding Down

I had one stop to make in Nebraska before I made my way to Colorado where I planned to visit several sites and towns. Agate Fossil Beds National Monument was located in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, about halfway between Wind Cave in SD and the Colorado border so it made a good stopping point.

The bones here were discovered in the early 1900s and are dated as old as 19 – 20 million years ago. They’re mammal bones, not dinosaur bones, as dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. The story of why they died off is heartbreaking: as the climate changed and became more arid, the availability of food diminished causing the animals to travel farther and farther from their watering holes to get food. Eventually, the distance was too great and they weren’t able to get to the food sources, leaving them to die at their also-diminishing water holes. There were many species at the site and the Moropus, a distant relative of the horse, was one that caught my eye.

I stayed at a Harvest Host in Scottsbluff that night, Papa Moon’s Cidery. I had the Peach & Spruce and would have it again in a New York minute. It was delicious! I continued on my way the next day hoping to camp at the county fairgrounds in Longmont, CO. Unluckily, they wouldn’t let me because I don’t have an external electrical plug on the outside of the van, classifying me as a car camper. The guy did say I could go buy one and slap it on the outside of the van without wiring it…in other words, it doesn’t have to be legit, it just has to look legit!

I checked into a couple other campgrounds, but it was hot, damn hot, and after seeking validation from my sister Linda, I got a hotel room. I checked out Longmont, another small town with a few blocks of shops, restaurants, cafes and bars, then headed to the hotel where I would jump into the pool as soon as possible.

I continued on the next day, headed for the 10th Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company for the night before going to Glenwood Springs and the Hanging Lake hike. The distillery was named for the 10th Mountain Division of the army who trained in the mountains of Colorado to fight in WWII on skis. The division still exists but now trains in Watertown, NY (a town I rolled through on my way to the Adirondacks). I enjoyed a conversation with the thirty-something bar manager that ranged in topics from the distillery’s namesake, to archeology and paleontology, to science fiction, to music. It’s always nice when other patrons are present, but it was a pretty lively conversation with just the two of us.

A highlight of my journey west to the Colorado National Monument was a hike to Hanging Lake, 10 miles east of Glenwood Springs. The website explanation had a very serious tone as far as the challenge the hike posed and while I thought it sounded a little alarmist, I took it seriously enough to bring my walking stick. Sure enough, it kicked my butt. It’s only 1.2 miles but with 1100 feet of elevation gain. The lake sits on land that juts out from the canyon wall with it’s water source coming out of a hole in the wall…intriguing! About a quarter of the way down I wondered to myself, “if I discovered I’d left my phone at the top, would I have enough energy to go back to get it?” Yes, I thought, no problem. About half way down I wondered again. Ok, sure, but I’d be pretty unhappy about it. I was feeling the hike and relieved I hadn’t left anything up top.

I got settled into my campsite at the Saddlehorn campground where I planned to stay three nights. I got up in time to see the sunrise the next morning, hopped on my bike for an early ride before it really heated up and then spent the afternoon trying to stay cool. By dinnertime I knew I wasn’t staying a third night, so I got up early on my last day to take a couple of short hikes, packed up and beelined it for the community center in Fruita where I could take a shower for five bucks. It was a fabulous community center, one feature being that it was attached to the library and senior center.

My next stop was the Dinosaur National Monument which is located in both Colorado and Utah, with the Utah side having more exhibits and the actual river bed and bones discovered in 1909. This was even more engaging than the mammal fossils I’d seen in Nebraska. The Quarry Exhibit Hall had been built around the now-vertical river bed which contains more than 1500 bones 149 million years old; I bought a $1 guide with a visual of the wall and the names of many of the bones. There were lots of femurs, ulnas, scapulas, and vertebra. One of the 14 complete skulls (an allosaurus) found is on display in a case while two others remain in the Quarry face. So many times on this trip I’d wished I’d been a geologist; this visit made me wish I’d studied dinosaurs! The process for dating what we see as well as theorizing about what happened fascinates me.

It was still painfully hot so I decided against camping at the Green River Campground at the Monument and headed on to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area where there were plenty of campsites. It was strange, though, as there were a number of campers but I saw just a couple of them outside their rigs. I couldn’t wait to get refreshed in the reservoir and was surprised that I was the only one in the water. I had a relaxed evening and got up the next morning ready to keep moving north after a video workout and another swim in the reservoir.

I was disappointed with this stop – the lack of activity wasn’t what I expected based on the website description. The bathroom was functional but dead bugs in the toilet and peppering the toilet paper told me it hadn’t been cleaned for a while. There was no host, or at least no one that behaved like a host, and there was no information other than the rules. There was a building that appeared to be out of use for a long time, although still standing. Antelope Flats was described so differently on the website that I wondered if I ended up on a different timeline. I can’t recommend visiting this site.

My last few days on the road were mostly about getting home. I was road weary and had shifted into “my adventure is coming to a close” mode, but I wasn’t willing to drive more than four or five hours each day so I found campgrounds close to the highway and planned to briefly visit Jackson, WY, Missoula, MT. and Pasco, WA.

The drive to Jackson was marked by signs noting the relevant epoch and the type of fossils that had been found there. It was easy to visualize dinosaurs roaming around or the ocean water covering the land as I drove mile after mile toward my destination. Jackson was a madhouse and I fairly quickly decided I didn’t need to walk around the town itself, I just needed a restaurant. I found one, had spicy peanut noodles, and hit the road again headed to Trail Creek campground. I white-knuckled it the whole way, stressing out as cars backed up behind me as I coaxed the van to keep climbing over the Teton pass at 8500 feet. Yep, I was that driver that everyone is cursing and urging to pull over. I would have pulled over sooner but there was nowhere to do that. Besides, safety first! I was relieved to arrive at the bare bones, heavily wooded campground and grab my $8 spot. I loved listening to the thunder and hearing the rain pinging off the van roof as I settled in the luxuriating coolness, got a good night’s sleep, and carried on to Beavertail Hill Campground about 25 miles outside of Missoula the next day.

It might not have made practical sense to drive into Missoula after getting settled at my campsite as I’d be going through on my way out the next day, but I liked the idea of being there in the late afternoon/evening and was kind of antsy. I’m so glad I did. I wandered around town after getting ice cream at the Big Dipper, recommended by a couple I’d met in Utah who helped me out after I broke my wrist – unfortunately they were out of town; I would have liked to see them – I wandered downtown and got a sense of the place. Then I went to Cara’s park along the river where a band was playing, food trucks and vendors had set up, and the community was gathering. It was a great scene and I envied the people floating down the river. Definitely a place I would like to spend some time in.

Highway 12 from Missoula to Lewiston was scenic but long. I made a couple of stops along the way, the Lolo Pass Visitors’ center that had info about the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Lochsa Historical Ranger Station. At the latter I had a great conversation with the volunteer hosts and a young man who had ridden his bike from Virginia and would carry on to his destination, Astoria, OR. The original ranger station, the ranger’s home and other buildings were on display providing a bit of the history of the place. While highway 12 was gorgeous, it was a tiring drive with the ever-winding, up-and-down two lane road that finally brought me to Lewiston.

After camping at the Lindsay Creek Vineyards I set out for Home. I was a little uneasy about the many wildfires in Oregon and Washington, but I managed to make my way home without incident. I stopped at Sacajawea State Park in Pasco to check out the Confluence Project, a joint project of Maya Lin (the artist who designed the Vietnam Memorial and the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL) and the Walla Walla, Palouse, Palus, Yakama, Wanapum, Cayuse, Nez Perce, and Umatilla tribes. This is one of six installments and along the Columbia River that, like so much of what I’ve seen on this trip, encouraged me to slow down, reflect, and sit with our history, our present, and our future. I tried to take photos of the art installments but they don’t capture the meaning; the website is a good substitute – https://www.confluenceproject.org/river-site/sacajawea-state-park/

I got to my sister’s house around 6 pm and felt grateful and happy to have her waiting for me. The reality of what it means to be home started sinking in and it’s a bit overwhelming. I remember how I suddenly realized about a month before I would launch my trip what I had to do to move out of my condo…it would be much more demanding than I had planned on. The same thing kind of happened with my return – I was just focused on getting back home, and then the particulars started to seep into my mind. I’ve got a lot to do in the coming weeks – wash the van, look for a job, do my taxes, reconnect with friends, and hopefully go on one more camping trip before summer ends! And move back into my condo once the tenants move out. Throughout all of it I’ll be processing and writing about my gap year camper van adventure for many months to come!