The End

It has come to an end...we have finally arrived home to the Valley of the Sun!

Our plans changed during our trip and resulted in us missing some of the locations we had hoped to visit, mainly Las Vegas. We were also unable to visit the Mormon Temple as promised (sorry Mom).
The last leg of the trip consisted mainly of getting home before Wednesday (the day I return to work), we did still see alot driving from Yellowstone down through a wee bit of Montana, Idaho, Utah and then Arizona.

Idaho Falls is great little town filled with a bunch of hipsters, at least where we stopped and had lunch. The place was called "the Frosty Gator"- why? We don't know. They did have a nice selection of micro brews and some yummy Cornish game hen. Couldn't spend too much time there, we had to get to Salt Lake that evening if we were to make it home in time.

Salt Lake City is pretty hip too. We saw more tattoos then anticipated and the bar life is coming alive since they repealed the old drink laws. Did not do much other than dinner at PF Changs. We did drive by theTemple and looked int to touring, but learned that you must have "your Sunday best" or rent clothes from the church, but time was our real enemy. It was going to take us about 12+ hours to get home from there and I did not want to drive at night.

We stopped in Kanab, UT for lunch and had the best Southwestern food I have had in a long time. There is a little restaurant in the middle of town called "Nedras" we highly recommend if you ever get a chance to be there. Also in this little town was an old movie set museum; apparently the y have filmed a slew of movies and TV shows in this part of Utah. "True Grit" and "The Outlaw Josey Wales" were some marquee titles.

The rest of the trip was mainly hard driving. We pasted the time by listening to a few of Hemingway's short stories (good stories if you don't mind the lead characters dying). Once we rolled into AZ it was nice and sunny, not too hot as of yet but the temp was getting higher. Our route took us through the reservation and was suppose to bring us in the eastern side of Flagstaff, but his quickly changed. About 50 or so miles outside of Flagstaff we were notified the road ahead was closed due to the big fire burning mad on the mountain around Flag. I stopped at a trading post and was told we would have to back track up the road and then drive west to the Grand Canyon and come into Flagstaff from that direction. This was a good 2 1/2 hours out of our way (we did not want to add any more driving time to our now 9 hours for the day). Learning this, we needed gas to ensure a safe non stop. At the gas station there were a couple of nice native American women inside talking about a back road that would bypass the road closure and bring you in to Flagstaff from the north, this short cut would only take about 45 min, but is was all unmaintained ranch roads. As we were talking an Indian kid comes in and says " You guys taking about the dirt road, because I am going that way and you can follow me?" Not only had heard him, a few other people you had stopped because of the road closure heard him too. By the time we left, there was a convoy of 12 vehicles following the is kid over hill and dale thought the dusty trail...what nice guy. The road was not too rough, but it was dusty. Before too long we were back on the highway (white man's road) and rolling through Flagstaff. The drive from Flag to home was the longest stretch of diving I have done all trip, but well worth it. We rolled up to our house around 9:30 and could not of been happier.

All in all we drove 3300 miles, visited 8 states, 7 national forests, 3 or more National Parks and created uncountable memories over 12 days. The best part of the trip was spending it with my new wife. We thought this type of adventure should show us the true strength and color of our relationship. I am here to tell you now that we will be just fine and if the future is brighter for us, we gotta wear shades! Tracey is my best friend and I could not be more happy with the love we share.

Thanks for following and I hope you enjoyed reading these as much as I have writing them.

Yellowstone And More

Well we when I last posted I mentioned we would be heading to Devil's Tower and the mighty Yellowstone; they were both awesome. We were able to leave directly from Deadwood instead of Rapid City as first planned.

Why Rapid City you ask? This goes back to the beginning of the whole trip planning for my Dad and his group. Back in January he asked me to reserve him an RV for him and his buddies (sleeping 6); so I arranged for a huge 39ft 2007 full package. He was pleased with my planning other than I was to pick it up on Monday instead of Saturday..Oops. Well I got them hotel rooms for those first two days and the then picked up the RV on Monday. Well let's just say they (he) did not realize the extras necessary to enjoy an RV, i.e. food, drinks and the social skills to cope with RV life. My Dad never stayed in the RV, he immediately got a hotel room in Sturgis. His buddies stayed Mon-Wed and then could not take it any longer. It did not help the satellite service was out. Long story short…I was able to take the RV back Thursday morning and Pop has learned a $2000 lesson about RVs.

…Back the road: Tracey (and I) was really stoked to see Devil's Tower, mainly because of Richard Dreyfus and his sculpture work in Close Encounters (he did not do it justice). When we rolled up to the park's entrance I could not help myself from asking if the "Devil was here?" The Ranger did not have an answer for me (he was not there, quite the opposite). What an awesome sight, almost surreal. Legend says it was created by a giant bear that chased small Indian girls up a hill and magically grew out of the ground to save them. The deep vertical ridges around the sides were created by the bear's claws as he tried to climb it.

By the time we were done it was apparent that we would not make it all the way to Yellowstone, so lodging was going to be needed at some point in Wyoming. We drove across one of the widest states with a goal of Cody, WY. I did not have cell phone service, which would also eliminate in internet, so we were blind until we got there. We did stop for a bite to eat in a town called Ten Sleep. To our surprise we were treated to one of the best freshly made Mojitos. It was great; the bartender muddled her fresh fixins (the mint was picked from across the street at the church). Very delicious.

We arrived in Cody around 8pm…Allow me to digress for a moment: The sun in this part of the country does not set fully until almost 10pm. You would think this would be cool, but it's not. It messes with your head and does not explain the need for daylight savings time or even time zones for that matter…Anyways we get into Cody and NEED a place to shower and sleep after a hefty 10+ hour day of driving. The town was sold out! Keep in mind there are only 450,000 people in the whole state of Wyoming and the all were in Cody this evening. Not a single hotel, motel or B & B available. We were able to locate a room in Powell, WY which is 20 miles out of our direction towards Yellowstone. The hotel was called "Best Choice"…it was not; more suitable name would be "Very Last Choice". The rooms reeked, the beds were small lumpy and had hairs on the sheets in the tub. YUCK! We got extra bed sheets and Lysol from the store. Tracey did not want to sleep in this room, neither did I but I was not going to sleep in the Tahoe. We realized we needed to force sleep upon ourselves, quickest path was a number of stiff drinks. Morning came not a moment too soon and we were off to Yellowstone. We ate the original Irma Hotel built by the one and only Bill Cody (in Cody..Go figure). Good breakfast and beautiful original Cherry wood bar…Drive On!

Yellowstone, well there is a reason it's a National Park, it's unbelievably beautiful! That' all I got to say about that.

Really, it is nice. We originally were going to stay in the Old Faithful Inn, but we changed the date and lost our room at the Inn. They had a quaint little cabin outside the Inn next to Old Faithful for real cheap, but it did not have a private bathroom or shower (they were built in the 20s and apparently didn't need those luxuries back then. Remember that we had just spent a night in the worst hotel ever and needed a hot disinfecting shower along with a good bed, the cute cabin was out and I was in hot pursuit for a better room. Let us not forget that this is Saturday the beginning of summer and that everyone wants to enjoy Yellowstone too. I managed to get us a room at the historic Lake Hotel located believe it or not on Lake Yellowstone. Very old, classy and similar to the hotel in the Shining, creepy. We toured the park and saw mud holes and bears, did a little (very little) hiking, had lunch and then were able to check into our room around 3 or 4. Little secret about hotel rooms at Yellowstone: No frickin TV, internet or cell phone service (damn Sierra Club)! So we napped.

I will say that our dinner was amazing, a little late (9:30), but at least we saw the sun set during dinner. I am not kidding; the sun did not disappear until 10pm.

The next day we checked out and drove down the road to watch Old Faithful blow. We arrived just before and only had to wait 15 min or so. Very interesting display of nature, glad I saw it. Everyone needs to visit Yellowstone, do it for a longer period of time then we did, it has so much to see and offer and I regret not being able to see more, but I must be back for work by Wednesday morning and we have a whole bunch of driving to do and recovery before then.

I will post this for now and hope to do a final synapse of our experience later. I just realized that maybe I am reporting our adventures for the benefit of my own ego and that no one may be following these updates, oh well I enjoy recalling the memories.

The Rally and Deadwood

Our trip is becoming a long one; enjoyable, but long nonetheless. I haven't done as many blog updates as I had hoped; we've been just too busy and having too much fun. I will try and do run down of the high and low lights of our trip so far.




We arrived in Deadwood Saturday during a constant drizzle all the way from Denver. The rain made the trip a bit treacherous on the back roads of Wyoming and South Dakota. The scenery popped with color; all the different shades of green were quite beautiful and new to the two of us desert dwellers. I never imagined how beautiful the mountains could be and how historical. Throughout the twisting turns of the mountain roads there were small cabins that were built long long ago. You could only imagine the rough and lonely lives those people lived back when they were inhabited.



Our hotel was the Hickok Hotel and Casino (casinos are huge in South Dakota- I did not know that). Located in the middle of Deadwood on the corners of Main and Deadwood to be exact, we had an unbelievable room with corner windows looking up and down Main Street. The room had a big comfy bed an electric fireplace, also a whirlpool tub (quite classy). The hotel even left us a chilled bottle of champagne; they knew it was our honeymoon.

Our first night, despite how tired we were, was spent bouncing along Main Street to all the bars and casino hotels lining the street. From one to the other I would guess there are about 20 different places to lose money or catch a buzz. We visited Kevin Costner's Hotel Casino (The Midnight Star). Inside here he has all the costumes he wore in each of his movies. We were seated in one the restaurants, above us was his outfit from The Postman, we promptly left (did not want to risk a meal as bad as the movie). We moved on found better restaurant, ate dinner, drank wine and hopped more bars. We probably should have gone to bed earlier (this was reoccurring problem), tomorrow we were to meet up with my Dad and his buddies for the start of the Cushman National Rally in Sturgis.



THE RALLY-

Let me first say this turned out to be more fun then as first thought. We were the youngsters and this was our group’s first rally, so we were confused with protocol. It turns out about 600+ people showed up for this event from all over. The organizers had different group activates planned for us during the week. Our first group activity was Sunday evening: Trip to MT Rushmore. This should be cool we thought, it was mainly because it was almost snowing. It rained the whole time we were there. The bus trip was long and crowded. When we arrived it was raining heavy, you could barely see the mountain through the clouds and mist. We arrived at about 7:00 and were told that were not to be back at our buses until 9:45! This was not anticipated; it may have been alright if the weather was not so bad. Our choices were to wait in the cafe (which was nice) or buy a poncho and suffer the cold. One cool thing about the National Parks we learned was that they encourage exchange students from all over the world to come and work at the park in some capacity for the summer. There were a lot of really nice kids from China, Russia, Columbia and I am sure other places working there. How cool is that for them? Back to Rushmore...I got us ponchos and we tried to go and get some pictures. We had both worn our “Father Figures” t-shirts that Mr. Reardon gave us to wear throughout our trip (they want photos from all around to show)...so, we thought how appropriate: our founding fathers and the Father Figures! We braved the elements and got some okay-ish pictures, the only thing was how the carved images looked. Don't get me wrong, it is a beautiful and majestic and “proud to be an American” experience looking the man made marvel; however, when it rains like it was doing, the Presidents do not look their best. Washington looks as if he is crying, Jefferson looks as if he has a bad runny nose, and Roosevelt and Lincoln just look cold. We wish the weather was better.

I could go on for awhile about our adventures in Deadwood and Sturgis during this rally, but I will just touch on the finer points…

Tracey and I spent a lot of time driving back and forth from the Rally in Sturgis and our hotel in Deadwood. Our trips were required for many reasons…the big need was to get all the scooters checked in for the show. While unpacking from the trailer I managed to throw my back out in very extreme manner. I spent the next 3 days hobbling around like an old man, occasionally dealing with a spasm so severe it would freeze me in my tracks. Tracey did her best to aid me in my despair; I found that alcohol and Advil did the most good.



The Rally was a huge success! We (my Dad) entered 4 scooters in all and all 4 received an award. Two were acknowledged by the local chamber of commerce as a Top 20; this was out of 600 scooters. 3 of 4 received trophies from the Cushman club, 1st, 2nd and 3rd in their class. One (the 1957 Mailster) received honors NEVER accomplished by any other entry in 28yrs…Best in show-Peoples’ Choice, Best in Show-Judges choice…both of these by a first timer rally attendee. How proud we all were and relieved it was all over. My Dad deserved any all accolades; he puts so much of himself into his projects: CONGRATS DAD!



DEADWOOD FUN-

After a short day in Sturgis we went back to Deadwood around 3pm; we stopped in a favorite bar of ours: The Oyster Bay. I guess it too has a lot of history (let me just say…EVERY BAR AND HOTEL AND BUILDING has some sort of history in this town)…this bar specializes in oyster shooters, quite good, made with beer and different levels of hot sauce. There is one on the menu called “The Chernobyl” …this little baby is made with some type of million scoville hot sauce (a jalapeño has about 150 or 500 scoville rating) …well being the good husband I try to be, encouraged (dared) my wife to try one; she did. She immediately hiccupped and begged for crackers, she immediately regretted the challenge.

Later that day or maybe another day, we went to the Franklin hotel to have drinks on the Veranda. It has a beautiful deck looking over the Main Street; we wanted a good seat for the daily gunfight show below. We talked and drank, but mainly people watched. We spied an interesting couple ride up on motorcycle together, the husband (riding in front) had amp attached to the back of his jacket so his wife could navigate from behind (that’s what she said..:). They ended up on the veranda with us and I commented to them how cool their little map thing was. After introductions were learned they were German and were motorcycling around the Black Hills on their holiday. Klaus and Claudia were lots of fun. After cocktail the four of us decided to meet for dinner later. Our dinner was a blast! They were so much fun. The restaurant was amazing too, so good Tracey and I ate there again the next night. The Deadwood Social Club was its name and I highly recommend anything on the menu, especially the Buffalo tenderloins and the Roasted pheasant in Tuaca cream sauce..Mmmmmmm good.

After dinner with “zee germans” we all stumbled down to Saloon NO. 10. Fun times were had late into the evening, too late considering we had an 1880 train ride with the Rally folks at 8am. The train ride sucked! Not just because of our immense hangovers, but the long bus ride there and back had no AC and for once this week it was hot! The train ride was cute, quaint and any other minimal adjectives you could come up with. It was not even a steam train as I could swear it was advertised. We did see some deer (woo hoo!) and some really old mining cabins; beautiful country side continued as it had all week (and trip for that matter).

GAMBILING:

We did very little gambling. Slots only, and we did those very limited; we aren’t what you would call “gamblers”, we just ain’t built for it ($$$). Tracey did manage to win $50 on a single pull and I won $100 bucks after spending a twenty. Tracey bought herself a hoodie with her winnings; I bought a portion of dinner with mine.



Not much to tell about this portion of the trip that I haven’t touched on. Deadwood and Sturgis are great; I would give this portion of our trip 4 out of 5 stars. Our next leg will be Devil’s Tower and the mighty Yellowstone, and then it’s heading south towards home with a stop in Salt Lake to see the Mormon Temple (I promised my Mom we would see it).

I will post now so it doesn’t consume too much of your time to catch up…Bye for now, look for photo uploads on my Facebook page.

DAY 6 - Cushman Rally

Sorry for the lapse, we have been really busy with the Rally and such. I hope to submit a more detailed review of our activities. We are having a blast, except I have hurt my back and I having been walking around like all the other old men at this event (Tracey and I are the youngsters of the group of 700). We have some great pictures and will be posting them later.

Two of Dad's scooters got "Top 20 medals" so far and we hope for accolades in the next couple days.

More to come later....

Day 3 - Rocky Mountain high

12+ hours on the road yesterday....my butt is still sleeping regretfully I am not. Early in our day of driving i received the first (of many) phone calls from my Dad. He and his buddies are meeting us (we are meeting them actually) in Sturgis for a Cushman Rally (look up Cushman scooters fro more info)...anyways it seems my Dad was passing his driving time by making status updates with us every 150 miles or so. He had 30 mile lead on us most of the day until he waited for us in Colorado Springs; I guess he just couldn't stand to be apart from me any longer (or he knew we would catch him). We never did figure out why he was so interested in our location; never-the-less, this is why I am up so early, I anticipate a call from him at any moment.

The trip so far is great! Tracey and I have been just like peas and carrots!WE A the first half driving yesterday was spent listening to Jack Kerouac making his way to Denver just as we were, granted he was coming from NJ and hitchhiking in the 40's, but we were are all on the same mission: DENVER. We out his story on hold for awhile so we could listen to Doug Standhope (dirty foul funny Doug...did I mention foul, but less not forget funny). Highly recommend checking out from the Politically Correct world and giving him a listen, just make sure kids and parents are far, far away.

We said we would make the most of our travels by stopping as much as we could, but this proves to be difficult when you are trying not to drive at night and your goal is 8hrs away, not to mention you have a bored father tracking you like your competing in the Cannonball run. We did manage a couple stops in NM, Tracey bought a couple beaded something or anothers, we stop and looked a huge Casino in middle of no where (Route 66 Casino) and did manage to have lunch in Santa Fe. Lunch was not as we hoped it would be...our goal was to it a restaurant/diner I looked up on D,D,D...we settled for sushi from Whole Foods.

We arrived in Denver around 9 local time and with heavy eyes and foggy minds we searched for a Hotel that had both necessities: BAR & RESTAURANT (in that order). Holiday Inn came to our rescue. It was raining steadily by now and the Hotel parking lot was packed full with convention goers. Parking was impossible, so I had to park down the street while Tracey checked in. The hotel was full of 100s of Christian Women Conference attendees (lovely bunch of Republican women folk away from the families). We had 20 mins or less to order a late dinner and apply a heavy layer booze before they closed up shop, I did my best to ease the pain of being away from my beloved Jersey's :). Around midnight (local time) we hit the hay in hopes for another great day of adventure. Small tidbit of info: the weather up here is a little hairy..we saw on the news that there are tornado and flash flood warning around, we just don't know where.

Our leg of the journey today will take us out of Colorado, a short cruise through Wyoming's lower SE corner and into Rapid City, Sturgis and our hotel in Deadwood, SD; estimated driving time 6.5 hrs straight through...probably more ,like 8+ for the grand adventurers, your friends Michael and Tracey

(I have posted some of yesterday's pictures on my facebook page)

DAY 2 - First Leg

My wife has pointed a number of errors in my blog, so we will try this again:

Yetserday was busy an uneventful. We made it the cabin and the beautiful weather of the high country. We got great night sleep with windows open letting in the crisp clean air of the Mogollion Rim.

After a bit of a late start we made it Winslow, AZ and stopped at the Flying J for a buffet breakfast...wish I could say it was healthy, but it is a truck stop and believe it or not I was the skinniest patron by about 100lbs. (except for Tracey).

Our next leg will get us to Santa Fe by lunch time (it seems our trip will be structured around meals). Hopefully we make it deep into Colorado ("that's what she said")....We will be passing the time listening to "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, makes driving easier. Bye for now.

Day 1 - Map of the trip

Here is the map of our complete trip.

Main stopping points will be: Santa Fe, Denver-ish area, Sturgis, Deadwood, Yellowstone, Idaho Falls, Salt Lakey area, Las Vegas and then back home. We won't be back until Tuesday 6/22.