10,000 miles

11 National Parks: Arches, Badlands, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Mammoth Cave, Petrified Forest, Saguaro, Yellowstone

6 National Monuments: Colorado, Devil’s Tower, Dinosaur, Fort Union, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Vermillion Cliffs

4 National Forests: Dixie, UT, Manti-La Sal, UT, Bighorn, WY, White River, CO

2 National Recreation Areas: Flaming Gorge, Glen Canyon

2 National Historic Sites: James A Garfield, Minuteman Missile

One National Historic Trail: Santa Fe Trail

One National River: New River Gorge

4 National Scenic Byways: Turquoise Trail, Sandia Crest, Historic Route 66, Utah’s scenic byway 12

4 State Parks: Dead Horse Point, UT, Lake Erie, NY, Buffalo Bill, WY, Fool’s Hollow Lake, AZ

We saw many different kinds of rock on our trip, and I’ve been trying to make sense of it all. In particular, the area known as the Colorado Plateau has a beautiful display of layered rock strata, all organized from oldest to youngest. The Colorado Plateau covers an area of 130,000 square miles in western Colorado, southeastern Utah, northwestern New Mexico, and northern Arizona.

Ancient Precambrian (greater than 570 million years old) rocks are visible only in the deepest canyons, such as the Grand Canyon. They are mostly metamorphic rocks formed deep in the earth.

During the Paleozoic Era (570-245 million years ago, mya), the region was periodically covered by ocean. Thick layers of sediments were laid down on the shallow ocean floor. When the seas retreated, silt from streams and sand was deposited or older layers were removed by erosion.

During the Mesozoic Era (245-66 million years ago, the age of the dinosaurs), terrestrial deposits from sand dunes and volcanic ash dominate the rock layers, but there are also sediments from short-lived bodies of water.

About 20 million years ago, movement of tectonic plates caused the elevation of region by more than a mile, forming the Colorado plateau. Starting around 6 million years ago, the Colorado River began to carve the Grand Canyon, exposing the multicolored rock layers.

The various parks have rocks from different eras:

Grand Canyon: 1840 mya-270mya, you won’t find dinosaur fossils here, as the rocks are too old.

Zion: 270mya-120 mya

Capitol Reef:   290mya-65mya

Dinosaur: 2320mya-present (at least that’s what they claimed)

You may notice that the youngest rocks in the Grand Canyon are the oldest rocks at Zion. The Colorado Plateau forms the Grand Staircase, with a gradient of rocks of different ages. Oldest rocks are exposed in the south, younger rocks to the north.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Geophys/Grandstair.html

Dan got to drive the mini-Winnie around town. Except for taking down a couple of small branches, the town, vehicle, and passengers survived unscathed.

It was a long, quiet, drive home. We stopped at Ashley’s ice cream in Hamden, CT (a favorite of ours). For the perfect ending to our road trip, the last hour was spent in stop and go rush hour traffic on 128.

We visited the New River Gorge Bridge, the longest steel arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere. It was the longest in the world when it was completed in 1977, but it has since been surpassed by 3 bridges in China. On this trip we also saw the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, which was the highest arch bridge in the world when it was completed in 1959.

We hiked to Long Point in a misty drizzle for gorgeous views of the bridge and gorge. Bridge Day is next weekend, so we just missed it. For this event, the bridge is closed and people parachute off it. They used to also have bungee jumping for Bridge Day, but there were too many fatalities to keep that going.

After 2 hours of looking for a coffee shop, we broke our “local coffee only” streak and stopped at Starbucks. The first time in 2 months!

Our stop tonight is at Zack and Linda Bowen’s house. Dan grew up with Zack in Vestal, NY. Zack gave us a tour of his mini-Winnie. He is a big fan of RVs.

Poor James had to get up at 4:00 am to catch an early flight back to Ottawa. Dan, Rosalind, and Rachel cleaned up the Airbnb and repacked the car. We delivered Rachel to the airport and returned the rental van. As it turned out, Rachel’s flight back was also cancelled. She finally arrived home at 12:30 am, and she is never flying American Airlines again.

Roz and Dan are back on the road! We drove to the historic Glen Ferris Inn, est. 1839. It is on the shore of the Kanawha River, which was overflowing its banks due to 4” of recent rain. The dining room was closed, so we ate at the only open restaurant within 30 miles: Gino’s Pizza.

Rosalind went to Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum.

Dan, James, and Rachel all survived the race (and performed admirably.) Rosalind met them in Lexington and shared in the team victory jog across the finish line. We toasted the successful completion of the race with bourbon, and everyone scattered for flights or drives home. Dan had post race logistics to take care of, so Rosalind took the kids back to the Airbnb for showers and dinner. Dan arrived a few hours later, hungry and in need of his own shower.

Dan made a big breakfast of bacon, eggs, and buttermilk pancakes to fortify the runners. Fortunately, all of the runners arrived in time to start their leg of the race, but some cut it close! I will post a few photos, but the race is not really part of the road trip, so I won’t go into much detail here.

Rosalind was on her own for a day and a half. She spent today blogging, reading, shopping, and seeing a movie. Also missing the others.

We were up and out at 9:30. Heading to Louisville (“Lou’ville”) we were surprised by a time zone change that zigzagged right through the middle of the state. Who knew? It was good that it was a short drive.

We came here for the Bourbon Chase, a 200 mile relay race from Louisville to Lexington, KY with teams of 12 people and 2 vans. Our expected time was 33 hours. Dan was the captain of the “Petards”, and we were hoping to meet up with his team (which included James and Rachel) for a pre-race dinner. Many flights were delayed and/or cancelled, so now we were just hoping to get everyone to the starting line. James arrived more or less on time, so we met him for lunch. Then Dan picked up one of the vans (teammate Doug had already picked up the other van). We checked into our Airbnb and had a relaxing afternoon while poor Rachel cooled her heels at Washington National airport. Only 4 team members were in town to meet for dinner (Rosalind wasn’t planning to run.) We had great Cuban food at Havana Rumba, and Rachel and most of the other runners finally arrived around midnight.

Not wanting to see what additional annoyances awaited at the hotel, we left early and had a substantial, medium quality, buffet breakfast at Casey Jones’s Old Country Store. We got on the road and drove almost straight through to Mammoth Cave NP since I had booked a 2:00 pm cave tour. We arrived in time to pick up our tickets, get a campsite, eat lunch, and set up the tent. The cave was nice, but there were more than 100 people on our tour, so it was a bit crowded. About halfway through, we moved to the back of the group, and it was more pleasant, with plenty of opportunities to take pictures. Flash photography was not allowed, so we were stuck with the orange lights.

The campground store had no firewood, so we bought BioBricks instead. “Just don’t get them wet,” said the clerk, in spite of the forecast for thunderstorms. They didn’t work very well, but maybe Dan just needs more practice. We also cooked a simple dinner of macaroni and cheese from our supplies. This campground turned out to be one of the noisiest. I guess people weren’t tired out from hiking like they were at some of the other national parks. Or maybe they’re just inconsiderate RVers, I mean campers.

It was another crappy hotel breakfast. This has to stop! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and we’re eating polyester waffles because they are “free” with the room.

We started our day at the William J Clinton Presidential Library. The docent wasn’t the best, but we enjoyed the chronology of his presidency and timeline of world events. They also had a reconstruction of the oval office, an art exhibition, letters to Bill from celebrities, a nice gift shop, and references to evil Republicans and their evil deeds during Clinton’s presidency, pointing out how evil they were. All good fun.

We continued east and stopped at the Tennessee visitor center in Memphis, right over the Mississippi River bridge. Unfortunately, the National Civil Liberties Museum was closed, and Graceland costs $59pp (no free entry with our park pass), so we went to the free Bass Pro Shop & Lodge inside a glass pyramid. Sadly it was not worth the hot and steamy walk to get there. Next we went to the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center-also free!-in Brownsville. They had several interesting exhibits: Tina Turner’s one room schoolhouse (great costumes, memorabilia, and interpretive history about education), the home of blues legend Sleepy John Estes (new to us, however), and a cotton farming display. The lady in the visitor center sent us to Helen’s BBQ, with its homemade smoker located inside the building (cough!). We ate our BBQ platters outside and signed the guestbook at Helen’s request.

The wi-fi at our hotel in Jackson didn’t work at all, the room itself made noise, and the stupid red message light on the phone wouldn’t stop flashing. They got a bad Trip Advisor review from me!