One for the boys

I am beginning to lose the plot. First we wondered why the locals were having a bank holiday with schools and factories closed on a Thursday only to discover some days later that it had been a weekend. Then we have been happily bimbling around unaware that we had entered a new time zone or even that central mountain time existed. Still, who cares if one is going senile as long as one is having fun.


Gateway Arch - St Louis
This is big, there are people in a "tram" up there.



After leaving the Ohio river we headed for the Mississippi and St Louis, fancying a bit of city life and culture. One of the most interesting and spectacular features is an arch called Gateway to the West. It appears in countless photos and in them looks – well – there. Actually it is most impressive and is the highest man-made sculpture/memorial/object in America at 630 feet. One can go up it in a “tram” and peer out of the windows at the top for a considerable fee – we didn’t. Underground beneath it is the (free) Museum of Westward Expansion. It is well worth a visit and has a particularly good section on the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803 – 1806. If you haven’t read about these two, then I urge you to do so.

Cathedral Basilica St Louis - this is THE most amazing RC church.
It is covered in mosaics and is awe-inspiring (presumably the point).
All this in the photo is gold; the whole thing must have cost millions.
If I had been in charge I would have put a bit less up and given a bit more loot to the poor and starving.

Leroy Pierson - the house band

Our other spot of culture in St Louis was food and drink in a live music bar near the Soulard district. We chose “BBs Blues, Jazz and Soup Bar” for no other reason than it was close to where we could park and we stumbled across it. The music was great and featured the relatively unknown Voodoo Blues Band who were jolly good. They were not improved by being joined by the mainline, or is it headline, of the evening – Roland Johnson. He was a rather pleased-with-himself black man who spent more time talking than singing. I think in the less polite atmosphere of a Brit equivalent place, he may have been heckled. The Nav (who knows about these things) thought he reminded her of Tom Jones. The food could be described as Glasgow/Cajun fusion with deep fried ravioli amongst other delights. Almost next door to BBs was an establishment called The Angry Beaver but the Nav wouldn’t let me go in there. Despite this, the evening was perfected by the discovery of a new source of free overnight parking – Sam’s Club. They are especially good as they are not open all night and so are peaceful.

Successfully navigated us
to the Berlin Wall

After the fleshpots of  St Louis, we girded  our loins for the allegedly boring trip across the prairie. Actually, we loved it. On the map, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, we saw “Winston Churchill memorial”; we had to go and have a look. We were expecting a smallish statue or something similar (a plaque, perhaps) but no! There was a statue but also a large and detailed museum, the National W-C Museum, no less. (Actually I have to presume it was detailed  [the entrance was] as we didn’t go in. I tried The English bit, The Veteran bit, The-I’ve-been-decorated-by-the-Queen bit but none of them worked, they wanted a fortune from us both and NO discounts.) The reason this was in Fulton was that it is the home to Westminster College, a prestigious private establishment. It was here, that Winnie made his Iron Curtain speech in 1948. Several others then used the location to make similar iconic Iron Curtain speeches. Regan spoke there when then Iron curtain came down and Gorby has been there a couple of times. To commemorate this, there is a large chunk of the wall, artfully sculpted by Edwina Sandys, his daughter-in-law. Perhaps most surprising about this surprising place was St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury - a genuine Chris Wren building! Now I know he isn’t famous for doing a lot of his finest work in the USA so we were interested to see this in such an obscure place. It was burnt in the Great Fire of London, reconstructed by Wren, flattened by the Jerries and then shipped and re-rebuilt in Fulton, Missouri! It’s not everyday one comes across such a thing. Although it was a weekend, we received a few raised eyebrows as we had parked in the quad for our picnic. Well, it was the only bit of shade around.

Giant grain hoppers on the Great Plains (note the huge truck underneath it)

We tottered on westwards and our next interesting place was the Tall Grass Prairie National Conserve. According to the rangers there (unarmed!) it is the only remaining original grassland left in the states. We were driven around in an air-conditioned converted school bus by Mad Eric Peterson – a ranger. It became pretty obvious that he didn’t know too much about his grasses (or his flowers, birds, butterflies either) and became a bit flustered by the fact that there were two ranchers in our group who did know such things. He was enthusiastic and a reasonable bullshitter and gave us something to snigger at on a hot day. A first for us was Buffalo – or Bison if one is being pedantic. These were wild, in that they weren’t tethered or collared and, according to Eric, they were pure blood in that they didn’t have any cross-breeding with cattle in them. (I thinks one would have to be a pretty desperate cow to have-it-away with a North American Bison; they are huge.

Oh! Ranger.

Injuns - not what you want to see when
struggling westwards across the great plains

Nav's eye view

Grain and 14% efficient wind turbines

It was in Kansas that I became a VND – very naughty driver. In a fit of enthusiasm I neatly reversed over our camper’s steps. They were buckled into some interesting shapes and were completely buggered. Since then we have been carting around the wreckage in the back of the truck in the hope that we can get them fixed when we arrive at my sister’s in Big Horn.  

It was also in Kansas that we saw a red-faced man in a South African t-shirt peddling like crazy against the wind on our in-the-middle-of -nowhere road. Sometime later we saw a couple of others, one of whom was flying a Scottish flag. We stopped a very sweet and seemingly un-smelly Polish girl who told us that they were an international group biking from Peking to London in time for the Olympics. (I don’t mean to imply that Polish girls are smelly far from it – all those that I have met have smelt lovely. It’s just that it was very hot, they were working very hard and they didn’t appear to be carrying much water – or any other luggage for that matter.) A very red-nosed Lithuanian cyclist a bit later told me that they did this every four years so, anyone mad enough to want to set out from London en-route to Rio in four years time look up www.bicycle.pl or .lt (Bobby ??)

High Plains

Further on (a lot further) on the same road, we found a blind hippy hiker striding along the side of the road, bandana round his head, white stick tapping away and the occasional vast cattle lorry rocketing past. He was completely on his own and miles from anywhere. Where did he stay? How did he know when he had got there? What did he think of the scenery? Why? Sadly we couldn’t easily stop without causing a horrid pile-up and probably killing the poor chap so we never got the chance to ask him.

You know what they say... big nose....

Why-aye Twerp
No, that's a pistol in my pocket.

......... Sherlock

I thought he lived in Ireland



Vogel Canyon

Our last Great Plains experience was a couple of nights camped in the remote Comanche National Grassland above Vogel Canyon. It was hot (100+) and windy but lovely.  The canyon had a couple of dependable springs in it and in the old days, used to be a refuge for those on the Santa Fe Trail and before them, the Plains Indians. It was sad to see that the Indian rock art had been badly defaced by poor quality graffiti – American version of the UK Kevin Luvs Karen – Leroy loves burgers? From above the canyon we could see the Rocky Mountains in Colorado for the first time. They were 90 miles away and we could see the snow on top – very exciting!

We had stopped, as is our wont, at the rangers office in La Junta and they were as helpful as ever. National Grasslands are run by the same department as National Forests and have the same “can-do” attitude. Outside the office we met a nice woman called Cindy Smith who was there to study rock layers or strata (I can’t remember exactly what the term is – not geologists or fossily-ists). She kindly asked us back to her place in Canon City Colorado if we were passing – to “freshen-up” and maybe “take a shower”. Although she didn’t seem to be gagging whilst talking to us, or holding her nose, we have now developed a bit of a complex. Anyhow, we didn’t go through Canon City so we couldn’t take her up on her very kind offer. We did have a shower, though, and we have freshened-up – several times in fact in our own camper’s palatial bathroom suite.

It was in Kansas that I couldn’t resist a peek at the map for any interesting local names. The Nav doesn’t like me doing this and says that I have a one track mind and even called me a deviant! All these are real and in the order I found them: Peculiar, Zook, Radium, Antonio, Bazaar, Skiddy, Kip, Spivey, Climax (what?), Beaver, Gas, Gaylord, Pauline, Neutral, Pratt and Hooker!

Enough of Kansas, with its hot windy plains and blind hikers, we were off to the mountains. Although we had sort-of researched where we wanted to go and learnt that there were spectacular peaks and passes, I wasn’t totally prepared for the altitude. The truck wasn’t prepared either; we both wheezed and spluttered our way up to about 10,000 feet for our first night. In fact, the Nissan couldn’t really cope on some of the steeper bits with the aircon on. We have both got used to it now and are leaping around like mountain goats (some of which I’ve seen). The Nav didn’t seem to be quite so affected by the altitude which was good news, if slightly irritating. Now, as you know, I don’t like using the word but the Colorado Rocky Mountains are awesome. There are something like 43 peaks over 14,000 feet and wonderful roads and tracks through them.

Swallowtail Pike National Forest Co

Old mine Gold Camp - Cripple Creek Co

We have camped in some beautiful, out-of –the-way spots which normal or sane campers would never find. One just have to persevere and keep a curious mind to see what is round the next corner. I will, at some stage post a list of the coordinated of some of the best places we have stayed but be warned, many of them are not for the faint-hearted. The best things about our truck are its high ground clearance, high departure angle and good tyres (BF Goodrich AT). The 4x4 has been useful as has the low-range for creeping up steep rocks. 

The Nav in Clear Creek

The Driver 11,000 feet up the Rockies

View from our camp - Beaver City

VERY cold mountain stream

Some Rocky Mountain experiences haven’t been quite as remote as we would have liked. On our way up the Colorado valley towards the Rocky Mountain National Park, we had heard of a remote hot spring which issues into a sort of natural bath at the bottom of a cliff absolutely next to the river. Yes, we will give that a go, we thought. After a mildly strenuous couple of miles. We found the spring, clambered down the cliff and found it occupied by a “young couple”, complete with radio, beer and fags (I grudgingly admit it could have been us some years ago). Anyhow, they were irritating and, as I didn’t have any swimmers with me and I wouldn’t want to expose my shreddies to anyone, we decided to wait as they may have been about to leave.  What should then come bobbing down the river, but a hen-party of girl river guides. They were in kayaks and were pretty pissed. They disembarked and all piled into the hot springs. They were all very jolly and were perfectly nice but they just wouldn’t go – even when I told them to bugger-off: “oh bugger-orf, ha ha ha – don’t you just love that accent?” When they started reading wilderness poems and screeching about the call of the wild, the Nav and I decided to leave.

Hen party in hot spring Colorado river

This set-back was more than compensated for by our next camp. We climbed miles up very bumpy tracks through the Arapaho National Forest to Junco Lake and spent 3 nights up there. It is a trail head for a system of hiking or riding trails and during the day there were a few others up there. By teatime, however, they would all be gone leaving us alone in the most beautiful place. Having said that, we weren’t quite alone on our first night. We came back from a little stroll around the lake to find a pickup parked right next to us! An old bearded man in maroon and orange kit appeared and asked if we wouldn’t mind if he stayed there. When I introduced myself he replied that he used to be called Andy as well until 28 years ago when he became a Buddhist monk and was now called Lhasa-do Katman-dahli (or something similar, I didn’t quite catch it). He was 78 and had just one very horrid tooth in his mouth (he showed us) and a dawg called Katie. He was walking the high trails and after we had said goodnight etc, he dragged out a couple of foam pads and some blankets and kipped on the ground. It was -6c when we got up in the morning and must have been colder during the night but he seemed to have survived. The other two nights we were totally alone – it was great and we walked up to Lake Columbine at over 11,000 feet for a picnic.

Clear Creek Reservoir, Colorado Rockies

If in Colorado for anything other than the skiing, one has to go to the Rocky Mountain National Park. Although not the absolute highest by a few feet, it is the most spectacular part of the area and is dominated by Long’s Peak at about 14,400 feet.  If you do go, then I recommend you concentrate on the Western side of the park as it is much less touristy and busy. On our second day there, we gave up on our plan to walk around a series of high ponds as the huge car park at Bear Lake was heaving with hundreds of cars and mainly revolting people and their even more revolting children.

The whole of this part of the Rockies has been severely hit by a ghastly pest called the Mountain Pine Beetle. It lays its eggs under the bark of any of the species of coniferous trees and when they hatch they eat the living sub-layer and that’s it – curtains. There is nothing that can been feasibly done about it – individual trees can be sprayed with insecticide but you can’t do that to billions of trees from Canada to Mexico. In the badly hit parts of the Colorado Rockies, at least two thirds of the trees were dead. In the very long term forests seem to recover; in the last 500 years there have been several such attacks. Another problem in the mountains is something called Sudden Aspen Decline which is killing off the beautiful Aspen trees. It seems that the forestry service isn’t too sure exactly what it is or how to control it. Exacerbated by all f these dead trees, there are several bad forest fires rage through Colorado at the moment. The worst one (worst in CO history) is burning in the North of the State and has destroyed hundreds of homes . We could see the smoke from about 90 miles away after we had crossed into Wyoming. It was started by lightning.

 Lulu City - Rocky Mtns National Park

Colorado valley looking south from near source

Cactus Vogel Canyon

From Wilkerson Pass

Wyoming (and staying with my big sister there) has been a bit of a long term goal for us so we were excited to be entering the Cowboy State. Obligingly, the man at the information centre was wearing a cowboy hat – a white one so he must have been a goody. He had a display featuring the Pronghorn or “antelope”. They are the 2^nd fastest land animal and there are the same number of them in Wyoming as people; about half a million. Certainly in the countryside we have seen more Pronghorns than people. Actually, it’s very unusual to find anything in America which they admit to being the second anything; everything is normally described as the biggest/best/largest/oldest etc.

One for the grandmas

I’ve been badgered by the two people who follow this to write it more often, so with that in mind, I shall stop rabbiting on now and try to get this off in the post in the next couple of days. We are In South Dakota at the moment, camped under a hill in the Black Hills called Fanny Peak (no photo). We are going to spend a few days in the area en-route to Sheridan so I will let you know if anything interesting happens here next time.
(actually didn't manage to get on internet so am now in Wyo - Ind Day 4 July)

Something went wrong with the photos - I hope they work.