Circle the Wagons

In the 1800s, a wagon would have taken 8-10 weeks to travel between Independence, MO and Santa Fe, NM along the Santa Fe Trail. Thankfully, we were able to drive it in four days and see/do lots of fun things along the way!

Altogether, we spent 11 days on this trip - two in Chicago, two visiting my parents, and seven on the road between Illinois and California.

3117 miles

Trail of Tears

Three units in the southeastern part of Colorado were on today's itinerary. In prototypical Saiki-delic fashion, we gobbled down a quick breakfast in the hotel and were on the road by 7:15AM. We arrived in Eads, CO around 9:00AM, just as the ranger was raising the flag and opening up the Visitor and Education Center for Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

360 miles, 6 hours

Summing It All Up

Now that we've been home for two weeks, I thought I'd poll the family for their reviews of our vacation...

What was your favorite national park/monument/historic site?

M: Yellowstone National Park, because of all of the wildlife

R: Arches National Park, for the rock formations and hiking

J: It's too hard to pick!

Me: Yellowstone National Park, awesome thermal features and wildlife

Signs

My collection of entrance signs, 20 National Park Service units visited in all...

June 19

What a Gas!

I thought it would be interesting to chronicle the price of gas across the country this summer...

School of Rock

As we drove west on I-70 from Frisco, we encountered more tunnels and steep downgrades. Beautiful scenery to drive through, although I think I prefer climbing up slowly rather than barreling downhill. When we took our California Zephyr train trip two summers ago, we missed this part (Salt Lake City to Denver via Glenwood Springs) because of track repair. We were re-routed through southern Wyoming on part of the original Transcontinental Railroad that was no longer used for passenger trains, so that still ended up being cool. But seeing all this from the observation car of the train, chugging along right beside the river, would have been even better!

Rocky Mountain High

We woke up this morning to sunny skies, so after breakfast we checked out and headed up towards Rocky Mountain National Park. We drove through Boulder, but didn't have time to stop by and say "hi!" to Mork and Mindy. Na-nu, na-nu!

We wanted to spend our day driving through the park and exploring, so we just passed through Estes Park and went straight to the Beaver Meadows entrance.

History Lessons

A thunderstorm rolled through in the middle of the night, but by the time we got up and going this morning, it was only a light rain. My aunt and uncle took us out for breakfast at a local pancake house -- J must have been hungry, because he downed 2 good-sized pancakes, an egg, bacon, *and* an order of hash browns! From there, the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site was practically around the corner.