Tag Archives: national parks

Road Trip 2025 – Day 7 – Heading Home

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We were gone from July 29 to August 4 and I wrote the first blog post about it August 8. I am finally finishing the trip today, September 2, and soon will get back to sheep and weaving posts…hopefully.

Highway stretching out towards desert hills. Blue sky above.

We spent Sunday night at a motel in Green River, Utah. I don’t remember when we got on the road, but this photo was at 8:50 a.m. At this point I don’t remember much about any of the photos I took, but it’s one way I keep myself entertained while being a passenger. Most of these photos were taken in Utah.

Red Rock cliffs with blue sky.

Trinidad is over 1200 miles from Vacaville and we didn’t always take the most direct route. That’s a lot of time in the car. Dan likes the driving part so I am happy to be a passenger. I had taken a dozen magazines and books and a couple of fiber projects to keep myself occupied. I barely looked at any of them. What’s the point of a “road trip” if you don’t experience the road? This scenery is beautiful..

Red rock scenery along highway in Utah.

,,,and vast.

Red rock cliffs along highway in Utah.

We didn’t make many stops so most of these are “drive-by” photos.

Highway in Utah with cement silos along the road.
Sign that says Pony Express National Historic Trail.

We did stop here because this marker was a short distance off the highway. The story of the Pony Express is fascinating but it was only a fragment of our history. The third photo of this blog series back on Day 1 shows one of the stations that were located about every ten miles. That’s a huge undertaking when I think of our drive of over 1200 miles that followed some of the Pony Express route. From the Pony Express National Historic Trail site: “It is hard to believe that young men once rode horses to carry mail from Missouri to California in the unprecedented time of only 10 days. This relay system along the Pony Express National Historic Trail in eight states was the most direct and practical means of east-west communications before the telegraph.”

Utah Salt Flat with salt company.

Driving across the salt flats of Utah.

Utah Salt Flats with mountains in the distance and blue sky.
Highway overpass with art work of cattle and words Battle Mountain.

It seems that this was the last photo I took during the drive. This is 4:30 p.m. Unlike last year’s road trip, we didn’t have vehicle or traffic issues through the whole trip until we got near home. Just west of Sacramento the Causeway (I-80) was narrowing to one west-bound lane for the never ending highway work. We drove in the driveway about 11 p.m.

Map of the western U.S. with green and red marker showing routes from California to Colorado.

The green line is the 2024 road trip and pink is this year.

Road Trip 2025 – Day 3

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I left off in the last post when we arrived at Bryce Canyon and secured the last tent campsite in the park.

After looking over the landscape from the rim that evening Dan studied the park map and planned a hike. We started at the Queen’s Garden Trail, so called because of one of the hoodoos that looks like a statue of Queen Victoria.

We followed the trail down, which gave a different perspective than the view from the rim.

We came across a sign that explained the Hike the Hoodoos Challenge. If you photograph yourself with three of the benchmarks along these trails you get a prize! We found four. The prize is a sticker from the visitor center.

I took over 175 photos on this day and that’s one reason it’s taken me so long to write this post. I try to keep my blog posts to ten photos or fewer and that means a lot of sorting and decisions. I still didn’t meet that goal.

Two perspectives of the same formation (photo above and below).

The Queen’s Garden Trail led to the Peek-A-Boo Trail which connected with the Navajo Loop, part of which is what they have named Wall Street (below).

Its difficult to show how amazing this formation is.

This view is looking back towards the path with the stairs, through that slot and past the tree growing in the slot. There were a lot of people on this part of the trail. Look at what I just learned how to do:

I use Lightroom to edit photos and I was just able to remove all the people from this photo. That’s a great thing for ending up with pleasing photos, but it does make me realize that you can’t believe everything you see in print (or online).

A non-edited photo in which you get a feel for the scale of this place because I did not remove the people. .

View from the top after we finished the hike. You can see some of the trails–along a ridge in the center, and just below center on the left.

We hiked about 7 miles. That was significant because this is the first time Dan has hiked in a year and a half, after a knee injury in 2023. He’s had a new knee for just under four months!

Two other thoughts: 1. We stayed on the trails. I found myself wondering how many other formations there are like that slot canyon called Wall Street. 2. In this photo, what looks like clouds, is smoke, probably from the fire burning at the Grand Canyon. I’ve been following the progress of the fires because my kids’ involvement in wild land fire fighting.

Road Trip 2025 – Day 1

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Except for some of the pandemic years we’ve taken a road trip each year since 2014. That’s when I see a trip to Yellowstone in my blog posts. There were a couple of years more recently where the road trip became a sheep themed trip. That’s different. It’s hard to stop for a hike when you have a trailer load of sheep. So this was planned to be a regular road trip. The major difference is that after last year’s trip the green truck is no longer an option for our travel. It was easy to crawl in the back of the truck for sleeping, but we’d need a tent this year if we were going to camp.

We began the trip on Tuesday, July 29.

View from inside the car with map books for Nevada, Utah, and Colorado visible.

The only part of the trip we had planned was to be in Trinidad, Colorado Friday night and Saturday for the opening of the art show sponsored by Cowgirl Artists of American. Other than that we were going to figure it out as we went along.

High desert with blue sky and white clouds. Sign that says Sand Springs on the left.

We were following Highway 50 and our first stop was along the Pony Express National Historical Trail. The Pony Express operated for only 18 months before being made obsolete in 1861 by the telegraph. But in that time young men traveled on horseback 1800 miles in about ten days. Stations were about 10 miles apart and there are remnants of some of these along the route.

Black lava rock remnants of the old Penny Express station in this area.

This station probably started with two rooms but additional rooms added as the telegraph came in. The site had been completely covered with sand and was rediscovered in 1975.

High desert with green grass in foreground, blue sky with a big white cloud, and a sand dune in the middle.

This site is part of the Sand Mountain Recreation area managed by BLM, featuring 3-1/2 mile long Sand Mountain.

Sand dune with blue sky and white cloud to the side.

This is a popular OHV destination.

Continuing on through Nevada.

High desert with mountains in the background and also clothes so sheer I have seen. Sign that says Petroglyphs.

We stopped at this Petroglyph site…

…and walked the trail to find some of the petroglyphs.

It was late in the day when we drove into Ely, Nevada. This open pit copper mine is west of Ely. We found a place to camp in the mountains just west of town.