First, we stopped at the Fire Museum of Texas in Beaumont, Texas, because it has this:

That is the world’s third largest fire hydrant (it’s 24 feet tall).

We continued on I-10 to Louisiana!

We then visited the Frog Capital of the World, Rayne, La.

We had dinner at Prejean’s in Lafayette before heading down to our Days Inn in New Iberia. We have some exciting things planned for the next few days, but we may not have internet until after the weekend… so don’t worry if you don’t hear from us. We’ll be back!

Here are our mountain friends from last night in the sunlight:

Here’s the view from a trail we took near the park lodge:

Here we are by the sign that we saw driving in last night:

Here are Mule Ears Peaks (one of my favorites of the day):

Here is Santa Elena Canyon:

We saw some horses cooling off in the muddy water there:

We even walked up to get a closer view of the canyon (and as I mentioned, it was hot hot hot, so this was quite an achievement):

We also saw this totally cute lizard:

… and some desert on our way out of the park:

Driving out towards Marathon, Texas, we saw some vultures perched on some posts along the road:

We’re back in Fort Stockton tonight at the charming Days Inn where we spent the night last week. (Seriously, it’s a really nice Days Inn.) We are going to sleep in air conditioning, take hot showers in the morning, and enjoy this free wireless internet!! We continue our journey east tomorrow!

The weird thing about these is that they are in front of a big shopping mall. Specifically, they reside directly outside the Saks Fifth Avenue in said mall. There’s no sign or anything, so I don’t know how they came to be at San Antonio’s North Star Mall, but… that’s where they are. Still, pretty awesome!

Note the conspicuously absent spurs!!

Then we got on I-10 and headed west. We don’t really have a specific itinerary for anything, but we have some vague ideas about going out to Big Bend. It’s a long drive, but fortunately there are interesting diversions along the way, such as this:

Yep. That would be “Stonehenge II.” It’s in Hunt, Texas, or Kerrville, Texas, depending whom you ask. Basically, this one dude decided to put a big rock in this other dude’s field, and it became a little friendly joke, and then they decided to build a stonehenge. I can’t really explain it more clearly than that. Dude #2 (Al Sheppard) conceptualized the project and commissioned dude #1 (Doug Hill) to design and construct it.

This stonehenge has a couple of differences from the original. First of all, it’s made of concrete and steel. Also, it’s about 2/3 the size, and it is not oriented to the sun. But perhaps most importantly, Stonehenge II includes these:

Why are there Easter Island-looking heads at Stonehenge II in Hunt/Kerrville, Texas, you ask? Stonehenge II’s sign answers:

The Easter Island statuary, for Al, was a natural partner for Stonehenge II. He had visited Easter Island and now thought the mystery of the construction of those magnificent statues was a complement to the mystery of Stonehenge.

Can’t argue with that!

Incidentally, some of you may remember we also took a trip to Foamhenge in Virginia a couple of years ago (pre-blog)… so this didn’t seem as random to us as maybe it should.

After thoroughly enjoying the hengey goodness, we continued west. Do you guys remember when we went to California and saw a bazillion windmills in Techachapi (AWESOME COINCIDENCE: that post is from ONE YEAR AGO TODAY!!!)? Well, today we saw this:

That is a single blade from one of the large energy windmills rolling down the interstate on a big ol’ truck. We’ve seen this a couple of times before but haven’t been speedy enough to get a snapshot. The ginormousness of this doesn’t totally convey, I think. They are HUGE! And kind of freaky!! Way to be, energy windmill blades!

We also pulled off for a scenic overlook near Junction, Texas.

Sooooo, we did walk along this very obvious path so we could enjoy the view, but I must admit we didn’t stay long. I think the trespassing issue applied only to what looked like some private property on the side of the sign we didn’t walk down, but we are in Texas and we thought we better not push our luck lest shots are fired. We did get to see this, though!

I love a good succulent. I did totally get attacked by a cactus, though, I guess because we (possibly) trespassed.

Moving on to Junction, we paused to enjoy the deer antler tree:

I don’t know if this is just for Christmas or what, but it looks like they’re set up for holiday-style celebrations year-round:

Right next to the antler tree, we enjoyed this charming tribute to (we assume) the local high school football team:

Outside of Ozona, Texas, we had a wild turkey encounter!

Nice! Turkeys are jittery and really fast, so it’s hard to take a decent picture of them. We got really lucky with this little flock. Thanks, wild turkeys!

Ozona is the county seat of Crockett County, and they have a pretty awesome Davy Crockett memorial:

Please note the inscription:

Thanks for the awesome advice, Davy Crockett memorial!

After Ozona, it was all sunsets and big sky as we headed west:

We’re now in the quite lovely Days Inn in Fort Stockton, Texas, and looking forward to seeing where the journey takes us tomorrow! GET U SOME!!

Woo hoo! Six states to go…

Anyway, before we knew it, we had arrived at our first destination… the Creation Museum! I don’t think I can really articulate our experience there, so I’m just going to let the pictures speak for themselves (mostly) and you can draw your own conclusions. Okay?

First of all, there’s an outdoor garden/nature trail that leads to a petting zoo that includes a zebra-donkey hybrid. You can see here that he or she is obviously planning a grand (albeit very slow) escape…

We didn’t spend too much time outside since it was pretty cold and windy and cloudy and blah, and anyway, the main part of the museum is inside. There’s a large walk-through exhibit that depicts the early events in Genesis in 3D, often animatronic detail. Here’s our first protaganist, Adam:

Way to be strategically placed, sheep. Anyway, as with most situations, the Garden of Eden exhibit is all fun and innocent games until you add in a vegetarian raptor:

And then here are some dinosaurs boarding Noah’s Ark:

Unlike the Eden photos above, that particular ark photo is actually from a diorama-style smaller exhibit, and I reluctantly admit that those particular dinosaurs are not animatronic. In fact, I think they are action figures that are available for sale in the Creation Museum gift shop.

Aaaaaanyway, after we left the museum, we thought another Great Flood was coming because there was crazy heavy rain combined with some serious wind gusts. We made it through though and continued on our way through Louisville, Kentucky! We made a random (and very brief) stop to see this:

It’s the world’s oldest ornamental water tower; it hasn’t pumped any water in a century, but it’s now an art museum! We actually didn’t plan that stop — we just stumbled upon it, which is of course the most rewarding way to enjoy the road! But we didn’t just stumble upon this:

Yep. That’s exactly what you think it is. And if you ever visit the Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, and wish to pay your respects to Colonel Sanders, enter the cemetery on the Grinstead side and simply follow the yellow line.

But… if this all seems morbid to you, don’t worry. Much like Elvis, the Colonel lives on:

We spied the Colonel alive and well, waiting for the bus in downtown Louisville. No, we did not accost him and demand the secret recipe for fried chicken eternal life.

We made it to our Super 8 in Okawville, Illinois, just barely in time to catch LOST. Tomorrow the plan involves conquering Oklahoma!

Now, this may come as a surprise to you (as it did to me), but Kentucky is actually kind of hard to reach from Washington, D.C. There just aren’t enough roads in the right places. We had to head north and west for a bit, and now we’re near Columbus, Ohio. The cool part about this, though, is that we got to visit FIVE states today! We headed NW from DC (1) into Maryland (2), then up slightly to Pennsylvania (3), then west through that tiny part of West Virginia (4), then continued into Ohio (5). That’s a pretty good total, even for us.

Our route through Maryland took us right through Sideling Hill. We actually passed through there before, but we didn’t have the time or inclination at that point to stop… but today was a whole different story. The visitor’s center was still open, so we decided to check it out. And guess what? IT WAS AWESOME!!!

In case you forgot:

The Sideling Hill road cut is a 340-foot deep road cut where Interstate 68 cuts through Sideling Hill, about 6 miles west of Hancock in Washington County, Maryland. It is notable as an impressive man-made mountain pass, visible from miles away and is considered one of the best rock exposures in Maryland and the entire northeastern United States. Almost 810 feet of strata in a tightly folded syncline are exposed in this road cut. Although other exposures may surpass Sideling Hill in either thickness of exposed strata or in quality of geologic structure, few can equal its combination of both.

Thanks again, Wikipedia!

If you go into the visitor’s center, you can walk across this little pedestrian bridge over the highway to look at Sideling Hill. The bridge has a tall chain link fence around it (I guess to prevent people from jumping off and landing on the highway below), but the fence has “camera ports” in it so you and your camera can both get a nice view of the mountain pass:

Then there’s a little walkway on the side so you can get a closer look:

You can see some white stripes running down the sides of the cut. We thought they were just part of the rocks at first, but they turned out to be ice! Today was one of those weird temperature days that’s very chilly in the shade but quite warm in the sun, so the shaded sides of Sideling Hill had frozen “seep.” Want a closer look? So did we!

Thanks, Sideling Hill!

We also saw some interesting/weird little rainbow patches in an otherwise very clear sky in Pennsylvania this afternoon:

So, that’s it for today. We’re tucked in for the night at the Days Inn in Grove City, Ohio (which is clean but, I have to admit, pretty busted. The last person who stayed here apparently had a fight with the bathroom wall!). Check back tomorrow for another update!

There are many, many cliff dwellings within the park, but only a handful are actually open to the public. To see most of the major sites, you have to buy a ticket for a ranger-guided tour at the visitors center. We were able to get tickets to two different sites: Cliff Palace and Balcony House. Cliff Palace was first!

Cliff Palace is really interesting and beautiful. We had a great guide who was very passionate and informative. No one knows for sure what exactly went on in the cliff dwellings or why they were abandoned, but they think that Cliff Palace was probably used primarily for ceremonial activities due to the very large number of kivas (rooms used for religious rituals) in the site.

In order to get in and out of these sites, the Ancestral Puebloans apparently just scaled the cliffs with their bare hands. We didn’t have to do that, but we did have to climb a series of ladders and the like to get in and out of Cliff Palace. It was a mere preview of things to come!

Our next tour was at Balcony House. To get in there, we had to climb this 32-foot ladder:

Eek. It wasn’t too scary, though, as long as we followed our guide’s advice to look straight ahead (never look down!) while climbing. Anyway, this site was a residence for two families. At Cliff Palace, you stand around at an overlook of the site before taking the tour; not so with Balcony House (to see the whole site, you have to go to another trail), so it’s quite a bit more difficult to photograph, but we did our best!

Getting out of Balcony House was quite a thing. The guide (accurately) called it the “Indiana Jones exit.” First we had to crawl through a narrow tunnel:

(That’s not Brian, by the way; that’s just some bloke. Sorry, British guy we secretly photographed!)

After that, we had to climb more ladders and then scale this rock thing where you have to place your feet in toeholds and hold on to metal chains on the side so you don’t fall off the cliff (!!):

The fear and the high altitude just made the whole thing more intense, but we both survived!

After we recovered from that adventure, we went to Spruce Tree House, which is one of the few sites in the park where you can take a self-guided tour:

(To reach this one, by the way, we just had to walk down a paved trail… no ladders or rock scaling required.)

At Spruce Tree House, there is a reconstructed kiva with a roof and everything that you may climb into, which was very interesting:

We had a lovely meal at the Metate Room Restaurant inside the park and then left Mesa Verde and drove back through Cortez while enjoying this beautiful sunset:

Then we headed back into Utah — normally I would have a photo of the Utah welcome sign for you here, but it was so dark by the time we reached it that I couldn’t get a decent picture, but it looked just like this one:

Now we’re at the charming Days Inn in Moab, Utah, and we’re ready to enjoy one more national park before we have to start the journey back to DC. Check back tomorrow!

Initially we thought we would travel more on 66, but things just didn’t happen that way.

Anyway, we made a quick stop at Sunset Crater National Monument on our way out of town. It’s a very interesting park where a volcano erupted as recently as the 13th century. Apparently there used to be a trail up to the actual crater, but it sustained significant damage from hikers and had to be closed. You can still take a short trail around the base of the crater, though:

While we were there, a ranger pointed out that we could see a snowstorm happening on the mountains in the distance:

We didn’t have any snow, but we did run into some very dark clouds and some rain as we drove through Arizona. We saw some really pretty scenery!

Then we arrived at Four Corners Monument! This is, of course, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah all touch corners. Nice!

With that, we were able to add two more states to our list:

After the rain and clouds today, we caught some truly amazing rainbows, too:

Now we’re at the lovely Days Inn in Cortez, Colo. Tomorrow: cliff dwellings!!

Check out these amber waves of grain:

But when you think of Idaho, you don’t think of grain, do you? Neither do we. So we went to the Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho!

The museum contains the world’s largest potato crisp:

And a huge collection of vintage potato mashers:

We also got to watch a video produced by the Idaho Potato Commission all about how potatoes are grown and harvested and see a lot of old-school harvesting equipment. Then we got to go to the potato gift shop! They have a variety of potato items such as potato-shaped soap, potato-shaped recipe cards, and this:

It’s potato fudge shaped like a baked potato in foil with butter and sour cream! NICE!

We also each received boxes of freeze-dried hashbrowns for visiting the museum — delivered to us in a genuine Idaho potato sack:

We drove through some really beautiful parts of Idaho. Check out this crazy bridge we drove over:

It’s the Hansen Bridge, it goes over the Snake River canyon near Twin Falls, and it is over 400 feet tall!

Eventually we crossed over into Nevada:

Now we’re at a Days Inn in Elko, Nev. Tomorrow’s another driving day!

It was really cold, though. There was even snow on Pearl (and a lot of it had melted off by the time we took the photo):

Anyway, we drove straight into Yellowstone National Park from Cooke City!

We were barely in the park before we saw our first bison:

Hooray! We saw SO many wild bison today. We went to Antelope Island (near Salt Lake City) last spring and saw a ton of bison there — at least we thought so at the time. After that first group today, we saw herds and herds of them everywhere. We saw a lot of calves, too. One of the most interesting bison incidents we observed was when we were on the road from Tower-Roosevelt to Mammoth Hot Springs. We saw a large herd of bison traveling along the road. One of the bison was rolling around in the dirt!

He loved it!! And as soon as he was done, another bison came up for his turn in the dirt bath. I think we saw three or four of them take turns. It was amazing!!

We saw our first waterfall (Undine Falls) early in the day too!

Then we arrived in Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District, which is overrun with the other star animal of our day, elk!

Now, you may remember from our previous Bear Country USA post that it’s breeding season for elk. Therefore, they will kill you. Brian and I watched an entire safety film about elks chasing people down and stabbing their antlers into cars at the Yellowstone General Store this afternoon. So it’s kind of weird that they just live among people in the Mammoth Hot Springs area. Check out this guy here:

Well, he owns all these lady elks:

He was keeping them all between a couple of buildings in Mammoth Hot Springs, and whenever one of them left the circle, he would freak out and go round them up. Meanwhile, park rangers in reflective vests were herding all the visitors around making sure they weren’t in the path of any angry elk. It was crazy. And so are Mammoth Hot Springs themselves!

After we saw that, we drove around on a falls-finding adventure. We went to Tower Fall:

Tower Fall is 132 feet. Check out those volcanic pinnacles!

Then we went down to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which is home to two major waterfalls in the park, Upper & Lower Falls. Upper Falls (109 feet) is pretty easy to see:

But Lower Falls is a little more work. We elected to take a very intense trail down so we could see it. It’s called Uncle Tom’s Trail and it involves this:

It’s 328 steps and 500 feet down (and back up), so it’s a strenuous trail, but the craziest part for me was that the steps are all made out of this metal grate material, and they are built right next to a canyon obviously, so you can see right through the bottom of the steps to where you are clearly about to plummet to your death. I was completely terrified but managed to make it the whole way down so I could enjoy the 308 feet of Lower Falls:

The Statue of Liberty (with the base and everything) is three feet shorter than those falls. Nicely done, Yellowstone Park.

The hike down to Lower Falls took quite a while (in general, it takes a long time to get places in Yellowstone), so we got to catch the sunset on our way out of the park:

Now we’re at the Days Inn in West Yellowstone, Mont., and we’re trying to figure out what all is going to happen tomorrow. I hear there may be a geyser we need to see, but beyond that, I’m not sure what to expect! Brian and I are hoping for a moose.