A Sad Turn of Events

Tuesday, June 9

After another night at Lake Shabbana, we took at 20 mile ride south and west of the state park.  Today was a little muggier but the ride was great – mostly rolling hills.   After a great lunch and visit with Beth’s Uncle Dewey and Aunt Kathy in DeKalb, IL we headed for Wisconsin.   We received a call that afternoon that Ted’s Dad was being taken to the hospital and Ted’s brother would keep us informed.  We proceeded to Yellowstone Lake SP in Wisconsin.  We were well out of cell phone range, but planned to be back in Monroe, WI the next morning.

Joe in his garden

Wednesday-Saturday (June 10-13)

By 9:30 the next morning the news was not good and we turned around to head back to Eldon, MO.  Unfortunately, he passed away within a few hours before we could make the 9 hour drive from Wisconsin.  Thankfully we had visited with him as we passed through Eldon the week before.  He had led a very full life at the age of 91, with many family and friends attending his funeral service on Saturday morning.  All of his grandsons were pallbearers, including both of our sons, Jim from Seattle and Ben from Albuquerque.  The family had the opportunity to gather several times to share stories from his life.

Sunday,  June 14

We have decided that it was time to return to our vacation plans.  Leaving the Jefferson City/Eldon area, we are camped at Wakonda State Park south of La Grange, Mo.   Our plan is to resume riding in the mornings while slowly making our way north and east through Iowa and back into Wisconsin. 

To Chicago and beyond

Chicago skyline from Lake Shore Dr bike path

6/5 - Friday... Our 30 mile ride turned into 37, due to some re-routing and construction.  We took the hybrid tandem (fat-tire) bike because 12 of the miles were on a rails-to-trail.   We should have taken the road bike as the trail was well packed limestone.   Today we encountered the heat and humidity expected in the Midwest, making for a little more difficult ride.

After riding, we drove into Chicago (Hinsdale, actually) to visit and stay with Joel and Sandy Pundmann.  Joel went to Rolla with Ted and was the best man in our wedding many, many years ago.  While we have stayed in touch, we haven’t seen them for probably 25 plus years, so it was good to catch up. 

6/6 - Saturday – Joel, Ted and Beth headed into downtown Chicago to ride Lake Shore Drive and see some of the Chicago highlights.  Lake Shore Drive is beautiful with fantastic views of the city.  It goes by Navy Pier, Shedd Aquarium and the Institute of Art museum.  It is a well-used bike path, with charity runs, a half-marathon, and many sightseers walking, on bikes and Segways sharing the path so it was very slow and go.  We then biked to Buckingham Fountain and back to where we had parked the RV. 

The "Bean" at Millennium Park 

Parking in Chicago is a challenge, especially for a large vehicle.   Thanks to a Kenny Chesney concert, we could not park in the lot in the Millennium park lot that Joel had scouted out earlier in the week.  We found a pay lot just off Michigan Ave a few blocks away.  The sign said oversize vehicles and trucks were $30/day, but there was no attendant in the lot and the self-pay system defaulted to $20 with no option to change anything.  When we returned to the RV, there was a $75 parking ticket stuck on the windshield.  An attendant was in the lot and said we should have paid for 2 spaces.  Needless to say, that was a sour note.  Joel, let us know how the protest works out.   Otherwise, we’ll most likely never be back in Chicago with the RV anyway… sue me!

We left the RV where it was and walked down Michigan Ave.   The art museum had outfitted the lions out front with Blackhawk hockey helmets… they are in the Stanley Cup finals.   And of course we had to have a Chicago hotdog, Garrett's "Chicago mix" popcorn (cheese flavored mixed with caramel popcorn) and see “The Bean”.

6/7 – Sunday… After stocking up on groceries and buying a new tire for the road tandem we left the Chicago area and moved about 60 miles west to Shabbona Lake State Park.   Today has been cloudy and rainy so no riding.   Played some board games and Ted took some time to do some bicycle maintenance.    Hoping to get a ride in tomorrow.

6/8 - Monday … It rained most of the night, but clear blue skies by 9AM.  We had planned a 35 mile route through the farm country around the Shabbona area.  We hit a couple of unplanned dirt roads, but in most cases the dirt roads were in better shape than some of the highways.  We are near Dekalb, IL, which is clearly in the heart of corn country.  Dekalb seed corn was founded in 1912.  So spending most of our 35 mile ride in corn fields was no big surprise… and having a constant wind wasn’t much of a surprise either since most corn fields had several wind turbines.  It was a great ride even with a little wind.

Looking up inside "The Bean"

A Hectic Ramble Toward Chicago

Our plan is to be in Chicago by Friday, June 5th, so have had to "ramble" at a pretty quick pace these first few days putting 1350 miles on the RV in 5 days.

June 2, (Tuesday) - Check the box on two more states!

We had a great morning ride that checked off two states we haven't biked in yet; Oklahoma and Arkansas.  We camped at Natural Falls State Park, OK which is only 6 miles from the Arkansas state line.  We mapped out a loop from the campground that swung through Siloam Springs, AR which is home to John Brown University.  It was a small, but very pretty campus.  It was 28.5 miles on great rural roads with little traffic, mild temperatures and relatively low humidity.

Back at the state park we took a short hike to the falls and the lake (fishing hole!).  The falls are the 2nd highest in Oklahoma at 77 feet.  This must be our trip for seeing things that are ranked number 2.

Then it was on to Eldon, MO for a short visit with Ted's Dad.   We parked for the night in Beth's brother, Curt's driveway in Wardsville.  They are in Florida for vacation.  Thanks, Curt.

June 3 (Wednesday) - Hannibal, MO...

Hannibal turned out to be a bust.   It is a good example of a mid-America small town historic main street that is dying.   Antique (read junk) shops, many closed and for sale, lined main street.  The Mark Twain museum is a collection of small homes named after the Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn fictional town with little history of Samuel Clemans' boyhood.    A lot of hype for a very mediocre attraction,   Do they even require kids to read Mark Twain anymore?

The other notable Hannibal childhood resident, Molly Brown (Titanic fame) has a museum that we did not visit.   She is less celebrated.  

We walked Main Street and moved on to Siloam Springs State Park in Illinois.   This is the second Siloam Springs we have visited.  The first was on our ride within Arkansas on Tuesday.  We continue to be impressed with the Illinois state park system.  We stayed in a couple on our cross country trip two years ago.  This one is nice as well.

June 4 (Thursday) - Less than a week to our first flat tire.
We rode out of Siloam Springs SP and hit a gravel road which had been covered in a fresh new layer of 1" crushed rock on the road.  It was a lot like riding on marbles.   Less than 5 miles into the ride, within sight of the payment, we blew out the front tube and tire.   Luckily the folded dollar bill in the tire trick held and we finished the 25 mile ride with no further problems.  On our ride across the country 2 years ago, we went nearly 6 weeks and more than 2500 miles without a flat!

The roads were hilly but relatively car free.    Illinois has an abundance of rural paved roads that make for great riding.  Today the humidity was up and the small gnats and flies were annoying so it was much better to keep moving.  

We have moved locations again and are now staying in Jubilee College State park just outside of Peoria, IL.  Another very nice IL state park and convenient to the Rock Island Rail-to-Trail.  We'll be doing a 30 mile loop with about 12 miles on the trail.  The Rock Island was the first Illinois state owned rail-to-trail path.

Jubilee College was a frontier college active from 1840 to 1862.  It was one of the earliest educational enterprises in Illinois.  The actual college site is on the National Register of Historic Places.

On the Road - 2015

We are off for a 2 month RVing and biking journey.  We both closed up shop on work at the end of May, packed up the RV.... First stop was Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Known as the "Grand Canyon of Texas" it is just south of Amarillo and is the second largest canyon in the US. We arrived in time to hike from the bottom where our campground was located to the top and back.   Then this morning did a 13 mile tour along the paved loop by bike.  There has been plenty of rain in the southwest this spring and Palo Duro Canyon received it's share.  The road was closed in one section, but we tried to power the bike through the mud.  We didn't get far before the mud gummed up the tires.

After another short hike we headed back to the RV to clean up and get on the road for the long windy drive to eastern Oklahoma and Natural Falls State Park near the Arkansas boarder.

Palo Duro is nice but the comparison to the Grand Canyon may be a Texas exaggeration. What was surprising is several trails are dedicated to mountain biking and closed to horses.  But in general, the park is very accessible to all kinds of recreation.

Long distance "selfie" ... 

Oops... only set the timer for 2 seconds!

Of all the dirt roads in the middle of nowhere...

Saturday - July 12 

Camped on the side of the road 30 miles from
any gas station

We are going to start with the weirdest thing that has every happened in all of camping experiences in the RV.   How is it that we started out camping here on a panoramic mesa 30 miles northwest of Taos, NM (or any other place with a gas station) and ended up in the Taos Walmart parking lot?

We had had a busy day starting off with mountain biking and then a visit to the Great Sand Dunes National Park near Alamosa, CO.  Our plan was to camp in the mountains between Tres Piedres and Tierra Amarilla, NM.  But, by my mistake, we were running low on gas (diesel) in the RV when we got to Tres Piedres.

We had passed some signs for BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land coming into Tres Piedres, so we turned around and went back to a gravel road that had a sign that said that camping was allowed in the area.  We only drove about half a mile off the highway and found a dirt road off the gravel road leading to an old abandoned ranch house and corral.  We could see that a single truck had been down the road in the last  few days, but not much other sign of traffic.  It was already after 6 PM so we wiggled the RV into the closest thing to a level spot next to the road, almost blocking the dirt driveway and proceeded to make camp.  I was a little worried about getting the RV too far from the gravel road with the storms coming.  The RV is not much of an off-road machine.

There is not a functioning gas station within
30 miles of where we are camped... at party central

All went well... we grilled vegetables and pork loin for dinner as the storm approached.  Luckily the storm turned south and we only got a few sprinkles.  Beth and Nicholas set up a game of Catan and Nicholas whipped us again!... It was 10 PM, but we thought we would get in another game since this was to be our last night before heading into Albuquerque.  Beth looked up and saw headlights coming down the road, the first we had seen all night... not just 1 set, but 2, 3, 4, .... 5, 6 sets of head lights.  Then they turned right in front of the RV, barely clearing our front bumper and headed down the dirt driveway, one right after another.

Now it is Saturday night, but how is it that within a county with a population density of 1.4 people per square mile, 3 miles from the nearest thing called a town with a post office, we end up parking where the locals come to party on Saturday night???

Now this is northern New Mexico, where there are still a number of folks that think if you don't have relatives back to the conquistadors with direct ties to a Spanish land grant, that you are an interloper.  It was clear that with 6 cars and who knows how many per car, we were clearly out numbered... And discretion clearly being the better part of valor, we pulled chocks and headed to Taos.  And at 11PM, where better to camp than the Taos Walmart parking lot! ... and we weren't the first to be camping there either.  At least 5 other vehicles had spots staked out, but we were pretty sure they were just there for a place to park over night.

Mountain biking on a logging road.

Otherwise, this had been a really nice day.  From our camping spot in the BLM land south of Buena Vista we dropped the mountain bikes.  We first followed some cow paths near our camp site, then riding overland  in the pine meadow until we were back to the dirt road heading into the mountains.  We followed the dirt road until we found a logging road heading higher up the mountain and followed it for a while.  Nothing too difficult for a novice mountain biker or a tandem that doesn't make tight turns of any kind, but it was good to be out on the mountain on a beautiful day.  We headed back to camp for a shower and some lunch, then on down the road.

We kept waiting for one of the guys at the top to try to
sand surf down this gigantic dune on his "sand board"

We headed for Great Sand Dunes National Park about 20 miles northwest of Alamosa, CO.  It is really unusual to see 700 foot high sand dunes at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains at the eastern edge of a huge mountain valley (about 40 miles across the valley in places).  You can go to the National Park Service website if you really want to hear the theories of how they formed.  Needless to say they are a long way from any ocean beach at 8000' in elevation and very impressive.


Sunday, July 13 - Back Home
After our short night in the Taos Walmart parking lot, we drove a short way out of Taos on highway 518, also known as the "high road to Taos" and a favorite for cycling toward Santa Fe.  Beth and I hopped on the tandem and road over the first pass (1600' of climbing in the first 10 miles) to the junction of highway 75 and then Nicholas hopped on his single to ride on to Chimayo.  The ride from Penasco to Truchas is 20 miles of steep hills with 2000' of climbing.  I had forgotten how tough this ride can be.  At least the last 10 miles from Truchas to Chimayo is a screaming down hill with good road and a lot of fun.

After we packed up the bikes, we headed to Santa Fe to find somewhere that Nicholas could watch the end of the World Cup finals between Argentina and Germany.  We ended up at the 2nd Street Pub.  The place was packed with people watching the finals. Nicholas had to stand along the wall to see the game and was a little disappointed when Germany won in overtime, but at least he got to see the finale.

Then it was back in the RV for the short 50 mile drive back to Corrales and home.  While we didn't get to do a lot of what we had planned or hoped to do this summer, but we still had some good times, got in some nice rides, saw some new sights and checked off a couple of more state capitals.

Moose, Mountain Goats, Mt Evans and Motor Campgrounds

Wednesday, July 9
We took it pretty easy on Wednesday, mostly hanging around the RV park.  We did drop the dirt road tandem and the mountain bike for a very short ride, but almost everything around Grand Lake was a big climb and we were saving our legs for Thursday.  So we had a marathon round of Catan (our favorite board game) with Nicholas getting back into his previous form of being the most frequent winner.

Thursday, July 10.... Mt Evans climb

There's a moose among us!

We were up early to make the 2 hour drive to Mt. Evans, but as I was going out to unhook the water and power, a neighbor in the campground excitedly told me there was a bull moose just 2 campsites over from us.  Seeing a bull moose has been on Beth's list of things to see for a while, so I ran back inside to get her.  The people with the campsite with the best view could have charged $10 a head and I don't think anybody would have blinked, but they were very nice and let us come take a closeup look at "Bullwinkle" in real life... that is quite a set of antlers he has!

Nicholas after climbing Mt Evans
(the RV is the white dot along the road at the left edge
of the picture... Beth is waving!)

The drive to Mt Evans took us through Winter Park ski area and then over the mountains to Idaho Springs on I-70.  The actual race up Mt Evans is July 19 and starts in Idaho Springs (elevation 7800'), so there were plenty of bikes out riding the 28+ miles.  We chose to ride from Echo Lake which is the mid-point of the total race climb.  From this point, you have 14.4 miles and 3500' of climbing to reach the summit at 14,100 ft above sea level.  I figured that since Nicholas has only been riding with us a few days and this is the highest altitude ride in the country, I would cut him slack.  I didn't need to worry about Nicholas... he was off and of out sight most of the time after the first mile.  He reached the summit in just a little over 1.5 hours, so roughly 10 mph up the climb.  He did get passed by a couple of local racers, so he got a little perspective as to how fast some people can make that climb.  But I am really impressed at how fast he climbs with very little saddle time, even at these high altitude.  Oh to be young and in great shape!

Before we left the top of Mt Evans, I had to get a few shots of the mountain goats that were grazing along side the road.  That's another animal that is on Beth's list, but there was no way she was driving the RV up the last 5 miles of twisting, narrow, poorly paved, no guard rail, road to see them.  They had barely let the her in the park with the RV in the first place and had literally measured the RV with a tape measure to make sure it was less than 30' long including the bikes (28', so no  problem).

Nicholas and I rode back down to the park entrance where we met up with Beth for some lunch and on to find a place to camp near Golden, CO.  Beth had called an RV park in Golden, but they didn't take reservations.  You had to call after 7AM to get your name on a list and then they would call you back after 11AM to tell you if you had a spot or not.  Unfortunately (or maybe not), we didn't get a spot there, but we did stumble across, Chief Hosa campground which is run by the City of Denver Parks.  This is the oldest RV campground in the country (or so they claim).  The park was opened to "motor" camping around 1913.  So I guess now we can strike that off the list.... "stay in the oldest RV park in the country".  (I'm not sure that was ever on the list, but we might as well take credit for it.)

We met Beth's sister, Barbara and husband, Jerry, who live in Boulder.  They drove down to meet us for pizza in Golden.  We had some catching up to do since their daughter, Maureen (Mo) is getting married next month and Jerry retired from GM last year and recently took a new job.  We had a good visit and then headed back to the campground.

Friday, July 11... an odd day
We didn't have a plan for Friday, but that isn't unusual for this trip.  We decided to make a run to Walmart and then head to Fairplay, CO, where we would drop the tandem and go for about a 30 mile ride.  When we got to Fairplay, there were thunderstorms all around, so we decided to just drive on toward Buena Vista, CO on highway 285.  We were within 8 miles of Buena Vista, when we hit a giant traffic backup.  I suspected that it was construction, but after sitting for several minutes, not moving and no traffic coming toward us, we decided it was more likely a wreck.  After sitting for quite a while, I hopped on my road bike and set off to find the front of the line.  Unfortunately there had been a fatal accident 3 miles up ahead.  Just as I reached the front of the line, they opened one lane of traffic to start to untangle the giant, Friday afternoon, heading for the mountains traffic jam.  Of course, all the way back I was accosted with questions.  I reported they had just opened up some traffic and their distance to the front of the line.  I felt a little like Paul Revere... The untangle took quite a while with only one lane of traffic open at a time.  Moving 20 cars at a time...

After spending more than 2 1/2 hours tied up in the traffic to go six miles and then hit construction (one lane bridge fix), we decided to find a campground near by.  When we finally got to a forest service campground, the host told us every spot in any campground nearby was fully booked for the weekend. As were we looping the campground to exit, he flagged us down and gave us directions to a BLM land area nearby that has free open camping in pull-offs along the road. We followed his directions and found a great spot just inside the BLM land.  So thanks to the campground host... they are usually a wealth of information and really nice folks.

Back on the road for a while

Saturday, July 5th - Plan X - Nebraska, Wyoming and then into Colorado

Nicholas "channeling" Lincoln at the
Nebraska state capital

It has been a while since our last post.  We turned right from Livingston, MT and made it Custer SD.  We took a day to take in a few of the sights such as Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse mountain sculpture and a dirt road bike ride through Custer State Park.  Then we headed east by south-east to central MO.

We spent a week in the area visiting Ted's mom and dad several times along with our other relatives.  Given our best assessment of the Ted's mom's situation, we decided we would take a meandering trip back to NM with our nephew.  Ted and Nicholas will return to MO in mid-July, or at least that is the current thought.

Without much of a real plan, we left Jefferson City, Mo around 10:30 and headed  west by northwest toward Nebraska. We drove to Lincoln to see the capital.   After a very quick look around (we arrived 4 minutes before closing) we continued west to Grande Island and Hall County Park for the night - a very nice county run park and campground.  Being Saturday of a holiday weekend we were glad to get the last RV spot and have the electricity to run the air conditioner all night since it was hot and muggy.

Sunday, July 6th - Bean "ear"... done swat.

Corn and more corn in the plains of Nebraska

Now that we have our driver back, we were up early to get a cooler start to biking.  As with last summer we planned to start off and have Nicholas follow us after his early morning run.  As we headed out of the park we saw a pair of wild turkeys with 8 to 10 babies.  What a nice way to start the morning.  Then it was nothing but flat, flat, hot, humid riding with only corn and soy bean fields.  We tried to break the monotony with "corny" jokes.  We rode the tandem for almost 40 miles and just before stopping, Beth scored a Nebraska license plate along the side the road!  Then Ted switched to the single and rode another 14 with Nicholas. Nicholas continued on alone for another 16.   Total riding for the day:   Nicholas 30.1, Beth 39.8 and Ted 53 miles.  We can officially check off Nebraska from our list of states where we have ridden the bike... July was NOT the best choice, but it is done.

If you have ever wondered where the Cabela's flagship store and corporate headquarters are located, we can answer that question for you.... Sydney, NE.  Yes, Sydney, NE, population 6800 is the headquarters for outdoor retailing giant, Cabela's, with sales over $2B/year.  Not quite Walmart and Bentonville, AR, but not bad for a little town in the middle of nowhere in western Nebraska.

After riding and lunch, it was back into the RV for the drive to Cheyenne, WY.  We stopped at WYO RV

Beth adds to the license plate collection

park about 12 miles east of Cheyenne for the night.

Monday, July 7th - Another day, another state capital
We got in another early morning 20 mile "out-and-back" ride while Nicholas did his run.  The ride was one we had looked for when we were riding across Kansas last summer.  We rode west toward Cheyenne into a pretty stiff head wind and on the return ride it was clear sailing at 30 mph with the tail wind from the west. That was the wind I had planned on last summer, but never materialized in Kansas.

Then it was on to the state capital in Cheyenne for a quick visit.  Between the trip last summer and this week, we have hit OR, ID, MT, CO, WY and NE.  Nicholas was adding them up the other day to see how many he have left to visit.  I think he has visited 15, so it will take a few more summers to complete that project. He really needs a trip to the east coast...

On the way to Rocky Mt. National Park west of Loveland, CO, we took care of mailing packages (Ted took off with Beth's mom's car keys), propane, groceries and gassing up before we headed into the mountains.  We checked into our campsite at Glacier Basin inside the national park, then decided we would ride back into Estes Park for dinner.  It was only 9 miles back to town, but it meant an 1800' climb back to our campsite.  Amazingly enough the ride back went pretty fast and everybody felt pretty good... the legs are starting to get back into shape!

Tuesday, July 8th - Back in the mountains and cool nights

Nicholas, Ted and Beth at Bear Lake

We had planned to do a quick ride to the end of the Bear Lake road, only 4 miles and about 800' of climbing and then head for the highest continuously paved section of road in the country, Highway 34 from Estes Park to Grand Lake, CO.  However, the mountains were socked in, so we did our short ride and then hiked to Mills Lake.  The clouds broke during our hike and the lake was gorgeous.  Then back to the RV and the drive to Grand Lake over Hwy 34.  The views along this road are spectacular as you ride the ridge of the mountain for about 10 miles at about 12,000'.  Beth and I rode this 2 years ago on the tandem, part of it in a hail storm.  My eyes were pretty well fixed on the road which has quite a few shear drops and no guard rails.  So it was nice to see it again!

We spent the night in an RV park in Grand Lake and plan to hang out here today with a short bike ride to keep the legs loose.  Tomorrow we plan to drive to Mt Evans, just west of Denver where Nicholas and Ted will tackle the highest paved road in North America, 14,265' above sea level.  We'll start at the Mt Evans National Wilderness Area road entrance and ride to the top from there... 14.4 miles and 3554' of climbing. Just like climbing Sandia Crest in ABQ, only 3500' higher from start to finish!

Mills Lake - Rocky Mountain National Park