We drove on routes US 20 and US 26 through central Oregon and it was quite scenic.\u00a0 The first stop was the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. It was mostly an opportunity to get out of the car and stretch our legs.\u00a0 There are some fossils in the museum, but not dinosaurs.\u00a0 These fossils are only (ONLY!) from 33-7 million years ago.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n In Twin Falls Idaho are the Shoshone Falls (the Niagara of the West).\u00a0 These falls are very nice and worth the stop.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dinosaur National Monument has two parts, one in Utah and one in Colorado.\u00a0 We only went to the Utah part, as that is where they have a wall of bones.\u00a0 The bones were so numerous that they left them in the hillside, chiseled out enough to be viewable, and built a building over the hill to protect the area.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next few days were spent in Colorado Springs, where the US Air Force Academy is located.\u00a0 Here is the Air Force Academy Chapel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our last day in Colorado Springs we drove around the Garden of the Gods Park.<\/p>\n We spent the night in Denver and hit a Freddy’s again for custard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Drove north from Denver, through Cheyenne Wyoming and into Nebraska.\u00a0 There isn’t much to see in Nebraska, at least not in the western part of the state, and we needed a place to stop to stretch the legs.\u00a0 So we visited Scotts Bluff National Monument.\u00a0 Compared to the Rockies, this is a disappointment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We went to Mt. Rushmore in the morning.\u00a0 We walked the trail that gets you closer to the monument.<\/p>\n We spent the rest of the afternoon on scenic drives.\u00a0 We drove the Needles Highway and the Iron Mountain Road.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We left Rapid City South Dakota in the morning and drove into Wyoming to see the Devil’s Tower. There is an easy 1.3 mile trail around the base of the tower which we hiked.\u00a0\u00a0 This was the best sight on the trip.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rather than have a marathon driving day home, we decided to stop one more night.\u00a0 This time in Spokane, WA.\u00a0 We drove around Spokane to check it out.\u00a0 Nothing too exciting going on here.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We could have driven on a more direct route home, but we discovered for only an hour and a half more driving time we could go through Seattle.\u00a0 We’ve missed some restaurants since we’ve moved.\u00a0 We stopped for lunch at Gordito’s to eat burritos and we stopped at Delfino’s for a Chicago style pizza (frozen to take home).<\/p>\n Road Trip!\u00a0 We have been wanting to go to Mt. Rushmore for a while, and in May our nephew John was graduating from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.\u00a0 We thought we would drive to Colorado and see a few things along the way.\u00a0 Round trip, we drove 3800 miles.\u00a0 We drove through 9 … Continue reading “Colorado\/Mt. Rushmore 2019”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":499,"menu_order":40,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4199","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4199\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/hovorka.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/johnday.jpg\")
<\/a>Spent the night in Meridian Idaho, a suburb of Boise.<\/p>\nDay 2 - May 25, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/8\/19 9:00pm PT<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>Dinner and ice cream was at “Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers” in Vernal Utah.\u00a0 We’ve been to a Freddy’s before and we will hit this chain multiple times again on this trip.\u00a0 Their frozen custard is very rich and yummy.<\/p>\nDay 3 - May 26, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/8\/19 9:00pm PT<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>We drove a little into the park to see the scenery. The pictures never capture the color properly.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>We ended the day in Denver.\u00a0 The drive on I-70 into the Rockies was crazy steep.\u00a0 Our poor little 4 cylinder car complained a lot about climbing the mountain but made it.\u00a0 I’m not sure how tall the Rockies are at I-70, but the tunnel they blasted through the mountain for the road is at 11,000 feet in elevation and there was a lot of snow covered mountain above the tunnel. (we still got 46 mpg on that leg).<\/p>\nDay 4-7 - May 27-30, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/9\/19 4:00pm PT<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/a>John’s in there somewhere<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>John and future wife Meghan<\/p>\n<\/a>From the commissioning ceremony<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>Graduation<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\nDay 8 - May 31, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/9\/19 4:00pm PT<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>We also stopped in at the Olympic Training Center.\u00a0 We saw some athletes training; some gymnasts and some swimmers.<\/p>\n<\/a>Best restaurants in Colorado Springs are Tucanos Brazilian Grill (where they bring lots of grilled meat to your table on skewers), Schnitzel Fritz (good schnitzel and German potato salad), and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop.<\/p>\nDay 9 - June 1, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/9\/19 4:00pm PT<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/a>North from there into South Dakota, we stopped in Hot Springs to see the Mammoth Site.\u00a0 This was pretty cool.\u00a0 This is another area where they left most of the bones in place and built a building around it.\u00a0 These bones aren’t fossilized, they are still bones and very fragile.\u00a0 This site was originally a sink hole.\u00a0 Mammoths went for a drink and fell in.\u00a0 Eventually the sink hole filled with dirt and presto, instant tourist site.\u00a0 OK maybe not instant.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>Spent the night in Rapid City, SD.<\/p>\nDay 10 - June 2, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/10\/19 10:00am PT<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>The model<\/p>\n<\/a>After that we drove to the Crazy Horse Monument.\u00a0 This is not a national park, but a private site.\u00a0 There was some kind of walkathon happening when we were there.\u00a0 We were not allowed to get closer to the monument, and we didn’t want to wait around until 4:30 until the event was over.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>There were a couple of tunnels carved into the hills.\u00a0 Some framed the Mt. Rushmore monument so that you see it perfectly as you drive through the tunnel.\u00a0 The picture did not come out due to bad lighting, but you get the idea.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nDay 11 - Jun 3, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/10\/19 10:00am PT<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>If you zoom in on this picture below, there are a couple of red spots: those are people climbing the tower.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>Some of the chunks that fall off are very large.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>A bunch of prairie dogs have setup camp near the entrance to the park.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>Spent the night in Bozeman Montana.<\/p>\nDay 12 - Jun 4, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/10\/19 10:00am PT<\/pre>\n
Day 13 - Jun 5, 2019\r\nLast updated: 6\/10\/19 10:00am PT<\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nHere’s a map with the path we drove, more or less.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"