Seeing the West before its all gone...

Borrowing from Kevin Kostner in Dances with Wolves my heading of Seeing the West before its all gone...If you've forgotten you may need to re watch the movie...He said it he wanted to get out there and see the west...and he did...as did Susan Pickerill and I just a few days ago...We left Sept 6 working our way north through the windmills and headed west on 24...To Decatur Ill. picking up interstates on up to I 80 taking it across Iowa to I 35 going NW to I 90.  We then stopped our first overnight in Mitchell SD.  Next morning we took and hour to visit the Corn Palace there.  It is interesting as they use a lot of corn shucks corn cobs and corn and also wheat to decorate the palace each year.
Mid morning we headed for the Bad Lands National park. The Bad Lands were well named...They lo  wok like not a great place for man or beast...

Then we headed for Yellowstone Park in Wyoming..But on the way we visited Deadwood where Wild Bill got shot in the back while playing cards there..And then passed through Cody Wyoming and passing through some extremely picturesque mountains....Of course also taking in Mt. Rushmore as we passed by...It was a little anti climatic maybe because I have seen so many picture of the Presidents carved out there...

So glad to see they had not added Obama as was once suggested..It is a huge work of art for sure..they are very life like and glad to have seen it.....

Moving on through the east entrance into Yellowstone we enjoyed the drive to our cabin for 3 nights...Yellowstone has a lot of great things to take in for sure..The hot water springs the geysers like old faithful of course can't be beat...I think its every 90 minutes she throws water about 100 plus feet into the air..give or take a few minutes sometimes...Our cabin was OK but for 270 a night maybe not so OK...
But the one thing that I surely did not like was the solitude afforded you there...they say its to get you to relax and out of the busy world.  But having no internet an phone service is to me a crock of you know what...The thought of getting snake bit or having a heart attack or bad accident of getting lost and not being able to call 911 is just plane crazy for my way of thinking...I think doing without TV was fine but not the phone service..I just don't buy it being good...

   After Yellowstone we headed south to the Grand Teton Mountains Park...It was foggy and rainy and we could not see them at all so we headed on down to Jackson Hole for lunch..

My favorite Park was Zion in South West Utah. It is not large but for breath taking scenery it tops them all...From there we headed to the Grand Canyon North rim...

And for our absolute worst overnight stay..It was Jacobs Lake Arizona...only town close to the north rim so we booked it...They did have a nice restaurant with good food but CabinA was probably an original from when it opened 75 years ago...And the mattress I am sure was original when they opened up 75 years ago....I wrote a review for them and it was not good..I did say the food was good.
The views from the North Rim were great we were advised to visit Cape Royal and it was gorgeous...

All I know is it sure is a lot of centuries of erosion for the Colorado river to have made such a impressive beautiful place...

On our way to Bryce Canyon Park our next stop we came upon the boyhood home of Butch Cassidy...He lived there in a small log cabin with parents from 14 to 18.  He then left and went out an made some "real money" robbing banks and trains...Crime did not pay in the end as he was killed in a shoot out in Bolivia..

Bryce Canyon was equally nice and our last National Park...From there we headed out on I70 east to return home...we passed by Denver Colorado which is very congested..  The next day making in into Kansas.  Was my first time in Colorado and Kansas...

We overnighted near Abilene meeting up with the Robin an Valeri Kratzer friends we had met on a River Cruise of Germany...Small world as the first night at dinner we find that Robin had ionce built a silo for a Doctor in Lafayette..I could not believe it as it was the McFadden silo on Wyandotte Road just a couple mile away.  I had watched the silo go up...
The next day we visited the Eisenhower museum and Presidential Library in Abilene...Big sign says "WE LIKE IKE"....we all liked Ike after he kicked Hitler in the ass and then came home to be our President.

We dodged tumble weed the rest of the way across Kansas into Missouri and Illinois onto I 74 and home...It was a great trip we traveled 4606 miles in the Chevy Colorado...A week at home and the engine light came on...With GM strike no parts so I drove a loaner for 2 weeks...Thanking the Lord that this did not happen on the trip...It could have been a not so good great trip...