on the road

Travel Day

October 16, 2009

Travel Day — September 7, 2009
We had intended to travel a relatively short distance on Labor Day and camp in the mountains south of Glenwood Springs. A few days before, though, we changed our minds and decided that we wanted to travel a little further and camp near Ouray, Colorado.

Ouray is one of our favorites. A small mountain town, it has escaped most of the commercialization that many Colorado towns have experienced, yet tourism has helped keep it from withering away as has happened to many other old Colorado mining towns. Ouray is situated in a small valley and is surrounded closely by high mountains.

Our trip for the day took us along the foothills through Boulder, but west of Denver, to I70, then across the state to US 50 South out of Grand Junction and then US 550 to Ouray.

I took a few photos at stops along the way, but, unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention to the camera settings and they didn’t turn out. Karen took a few pictures as we were moving down the road and I’ve included three of them below.

Photos:

(click on any of the following photos to view a larger image.)

Along I70 east of Grand Junction

Approaching the San Juan Mountains

Rocky Mountain National Park

House and yard atop a barren hill

Ouray, Colorado

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Commentary and images from the road

image and information from September 7, 2009

This post is being simultaneously published
on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About

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<h4 style=”text-align: right;”>Commentary and images from the road</h4>
<p style=”text-align: right;”>image and information from September 7, 2009</p>

<p style=”text-align: right;”><em>This post is being simultaneously published
on <a title=”Exit78 blog” href=”http://www.exit78.com/weblog” target=”_blank”>Exit78</a> and <a title=”Haw Creek Out ‘n About” href=”http://hawcreekoutdoors.com/blog“>Haw Creek Out ‘n About</a></em>

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Journaling, blogging and traveling — with a new solution

September 22, 2009

On my blogs, I like to share some of what we’ve seen and done while we are traveling. I always seem to get behind and come up short with what I had planned hoped to do.

The same thing goes with my photos, but then, perhaps, that’s part of the problem. I’m doing fairly well this time with the photos. I have 3 1/2 days worth of images to go through. Unfortunately, I’ve not finished with going through the photos from several prior trips.

I have a new solution that I think will work rather well.

Instead of trying to keep up with blogging while we are traveling, I will be journaling and photographing as we go. The journal will be a pocket-sized moleskine notebook, where I will keep both brief notes as well as extended entries. These, along with photographs, will be used to develop blog posts with “Commentary and images from the road.”

I started doing some of that this time, which is what enabled me to finish the trip with most of the images processed. I will pick back up with the travel journal blogs from September 5th.

I am publishing all posts specifically related to our travels on two blogs, Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About. Apart from our travels, these two blogs otherwise have different focuses.

Some of the days of our trip warrant more than one blog post. I will be mixing mostly topical posts with mostly pictorial.

We got back home on Friday and Karen headed out today for a week in Wisconsin where she will be taking care of the grandkids while our daughter goes to New York City with her husband on a business trip.

I get to stay home and go to work.

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This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About

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Traveling to Rocky Mountain National Park

September 5, 2009

From our campsite

Trail from campground to Moraine Park meadows

Elk on the north lateral moraine, west of campground

One of the younger large bull elk

Rocky Mountain National Park — August 31, 2009

Our last day of travel on our way to Rocky Mountain National Park should have been our shortest of the three days. However, the GPS showed us getting to the park at 5:30 P.M., about the same time we stopped each of the first two days.

We were traveling mostly on two-lane highways, missing most of the freeway traffic — and bypassing most of the urban areas along the eastern slope of the Rockies, though I made one change to our route while traveling that had us going straight into Denver until I got it straightened out when we stopped at a big box store — (WalMart).

Unlike the previous day, there was virtually no wind. Unfortunately it was very hazy and we had no chance to see the mountains until we were almost up to them.

This was the worst day, so far, for delays due to road construction.

On the last stretch of road heading into Estes Park, we had to wait for a lead vehicle to guide us through the construction area.

We were the first in line and a long line of traffic built up behind us. We tow a small car behind our small motorhome and I was a little afraid that I would have to pull over to allow faster vehicles to pass on the hills.

It didn’t happen. I was able to maintain the speed limit going up hill and, after 2 minutes, there was only 2 cars behind us — and by the time I pulled over to let the faster vehicles by, there was only one. The other cars must have all turned off — or got hung up behind a slow vehicle.

As we got closer to Estes Park, the haze began to look more and more like smoke. In other years, when we’ve been in the mountains, there were many forest fires in the mountains to the west of us, which isn’t the case this year. We were wondering if it might not be the fires in California.

Our campsite in Estes Park is wonderful. The campground is on top of a lateral moraine — built up from the debris that was pushed to the side by glaciers during ice ages.

A trail next to us goes down into the meadows where the elk feed and breed during the fall of the year. We’ve already been able to see quite a few elk after supper when we took a drive. It wasn’t until we got back that we realized that they were actually quite near to where we’re camped.

We also drove up to Bear Lake. There are a lot of good trails in the area. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some hiking in.

Oh, and the GPS was wrong. I’m not sure what error I made, but we were in the park and set up by the middle of the afternoon.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

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On the road again — in Colorado

August 30, 2009

My anticipated “weekend” away from work is being extended by a planned 3 week vacation.

We are currently camped at a KOA in La Junta, Colorado. Yesterday, we camped at Sandy Cove Corps of Engineers campground on Canton Lake in Oklahoma.

Tomorrow we will be traveling on for a week in the Rocky Mountain National Park area. We’ll be camped in the park for four days. When we reserved our campsite for the park, there was nothing available for the Labor Day weekend, so we made reservations at the Estes Park KOA. We prefer to have spots reserved for holiday weekends rather than trying to find a campsite when there will likely be a lot of other people camping.

After Labor Day, though, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding a place to camp.

We will be traveling on Labor Day, though…, and will probably be traveling I40, which brings back memories of another Labor Day on I40.

In 2001, we were headed from Steamboat Springs to Estes Park and decided to go by way of Golden to see a quilt exhibit. We didn’t even think about the fact that there would be heavy, heavy traffic heading from the mountains back to the cities.

We ended up in a traffic jam backed up for miles.

Fortunately, this time, we’ll be heading away from the cities, going west.

Here are a few photos from yesterday at Canton Lake:

Canton Lake, Oklahoma, from Sandy Cove
sunflower at Canton Lake, Oklahoma - Sandy Cove Core of Engineers campground and beach
The following “drawing” of boys at play in Lake Canton was rendered from a photograph using Corel Paintshop Pro Photo X2.
A drawing rendered from a photo of boys at play in Lake Canton, Oklahoma
jet ski on Lake Canton in glare of setting sun, Oklahoma

While I will be “off-line” and away fro the internet until Friday, there will continue to be daily posts that have been “pre-published.”

I plan to have more photos to share later in the week.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

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Don’t turn there, fool!

August 20, 2009

Most days, my hours at work go from 11:30 AM to 8 PM.

When I first started in the middle of July, the sun was still up when I left in the evening. Each day, though, it’s been darker and darker when I leave the building.

Image originally uploaded to flickr by Polarimetric

Last night, I left the parking lot around 8:20. It was getting pretty dark by that time.

About a half mile after I turned on highway 64, I came up behind a car that was driving about 40 miles an hour — in a 55 mph speed zone. I knew I wouldn’t be behind him long because I would be getting on the interstate at Exit 78, which was just ahead.

He started hitting his brakes and I realized he was probably in an unfamiliar area looking for something.

His turn signal came on and I realized what he was looking for.

I started flashing my high beams on and off at him.

“Don’t turn there, fool! You really don’t want to turn there!”

He started to turn anyway. He probably thought I was some crazy person, flashing my high beams at him like that.

I pushed down on the horn and held it down and continued to flash my lights, while hitting my brakes to allow him to swing back into my lane — if he got my message.

“DON’T TURN THERE, FOOL! THAT’S THE OFF RAMP! YOU’LL BE GOING THE WRONG WAY!

He was almost all the way across the other lane of traffic when he jerked his wheel back to the right and turned away from the east bound exit from the interstate. After getting back into the correct lane of traffic, he drove just a little bit further and turned at the right point to get to the Exit 78 east bound entrance to the freeway.

The interchange at Exit 78 is rather unusual. When it was originally constructed, there was only an east bound exit and a west bound entrance. The east bound exit went right to the highway, while the west bound entrance had a different access point from the highway and had an overpass.

When a west bound exit and an east bound entrance was added a few years back, they were tied in to the old west bound ramp and overpass.

It can be confusing.

The guy I was following last night was obviously unfamiliar with the area. He probably had gotten off on the previous exit and was following the highway, looking for a way to get back on. He thought he had found it when he saw vehicles at the exit waiting for traffic to clear.

He was wrong… and lucky.

I’ve only turned down one way roads a couple of times that I can remember. Last year, I almost turned on to the west bound off ramp of Exit 78. The “new” on ramp is where the old turn was for a road paralleling the interstate that I sometimes use on my way home.

Have you ever made a turn and went the wrong way on a “one-way?”

day 79

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New Photo Gallery – Crowley’s Ridge State Park

June 24, 2009

crowley1

(Crowley’s Ridge State Park photo gallery.)

For the last night of our May 2009 trip, we stopped in northeast Arkansas at Crowley’s Ridge State Park.

Crowley’s Ridge rises 100 to 200 feet above the river plains of eastern Arkansas. A narrow arc of rolling hills, it extends from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, down to the Mississippi River in southeast Arkansas at Helena.

The ridge was named for a War of 1812 soldier, Benjamin F. Crowley, whose war land grant was the first settlement in the area.

crowley2 The park is located near Paragould in Green County at Benjamin Crowley’s original homesite and is one of the original six Arkansas state parks. Construction by the Civilian Conservation Corps began in 1933.

While our stay was just for one night, we did have the opportunity for a couple of good walks and a few pictures in the evening and the next morning before we left. However, As a result of heavy rain, our evening plans for cooking outside didn’t pan out.

In February 2009, Crowley’s Ridge, along with a wide section of Arkansas, Missouri, and Kentucky, experienced a damaging ice storm. Evidence of the storm can still be seen in the ragged appearance from broken and missing branches of many trees in the park and along hundreds of miles of the route we traveled on May 26 and 27.

Haw Creek Galleries