Homeward Bound

Finding our way in and out of large cities was not always an easy task but we had purchased a Garmin GPS device before we started out and it proved almost indispensable in places like Washington D.C. and Baltimore. It had to be watched closely on the open road because it had a tendency to take the shortest route to whatever destination you entered, whether the road was paved or not! Anyway, it successfully guided us in and out of many large cities and I made a decision to read the instruction more carefully before our next journey

When we left Washington D.C., we took I-70 west to Hagerstown, Maryland and decided to make a side trip to the little town of Smithsburg to visit one of my high school classmates. I had made several unsuccessful attempts to call Nita on the drive from Washington D.C. so we were not sure whether we would find her at home. We drove up to her home on John Kline Road and knocked on the door, but no one answered. I was about to leave a note on the door when one of her neighbors walked by and, because I wasn’t even sure I was at the right house, I asked her if she knew the person living here. The neighbor was hesitant to answer, but when I mentioned Nita she pointed to the side of the house and said, “she’s right there.” I looked around the side of the house about the same time Nita poked her head out of the shed where she had been working.

We spent a couple of hours with Nita reminiscing about our teenage years but I left there totally perplexed! I remembered Nita as being my girlfriend in high school but, like the Judas of biblical times, she denied me three times! What the hell? I guess I wasn’t as memorable as I thought. Although many of our memories were the same, many were not! I was beginning to wonder if I ever knew this girl at all. In the end, we had a very nice visit with Nita and she was just as charming as she was in high school. She had not lost any of her humor and we had a few laughs before it was time to say goodbye.

Our next target was the city of Keokuk, Iowa where my grandfather was born. Anyone who has read my other blogs knows the sad story of Charles F. Henderson and his wife Clara (Gustafson) Henderson. Keokuk is where that story took place and I wanted to see where they lived on the corner of 12th and Johnson Streets. Since I had visited the location several times on Google Earth, we drove directly to it. It was only one block off the main route through town. After taking a few photos, we continued our journey on US-61 until it connected with US-218. We followed US-218 to Iowa state highway 22 and took that in a westerly direction to the town of Wellman, where my sister, Sandra, Lives.

We stayed the night and next day & night at Sandra’s home and visited with her and my other sister Lily who lives nearby in Keota. I was having trouble with one of my camera lenses and went into Iowa City the next morning to purchase a new lens. Coming out of the camera shop I saw an interesting character sitting on his Harley on the other side of the street. I spontaneously took his picture and he gave me a thumbs up so I walked across to talk with him. He called himself “Iowa Blackie” and had written a book of poetry about his life and travels. He offered the book for “the cost of publishing plus whatever else was fair.” He said publishing cost him $10 so I gave him $20 for a copy but after reading parts of it I see that I should have given him much more, and I will. I have only read about a third of it so far, but it is a very interesting account of his life growing up in the small town of New Hampton, IA in the 1950’s and his penchant for living the life of a Hobo and riding the rails, all set to rough metric prose. I left Iowa Blackie with a promise to send him the photo I had taken.

A trip to Iowa would not be complete without a visit to Amish Country and the Amish Backroads. It is a strange lifestyle they have chosen and they seem out of place riding in horse drawn buggies driving them down main highways, but if nothing else they provide a glimpse into the past when life was a lot more quiet and simple. We visited one of their cheese factories where I found a very good cheddar that we stocked up on before we left.

Before we left Wellman, my niece La Dena and her husband Kevin along with their two boys (or should I say young men) Kyle and Ryan came by from their home in Iowa City. That was very nice of them all to take time out of their busy schedules to visit with us. They all transplanted to Iowa from San Diego several years ago and like it very much. At a family reunion a couple of years ago they told me that IOWA stands for “Idiots Out Wandering Around.” I don’t believe that, I met some pretty nice folks in Iowa. Iowa Blackie is a good example.

Leaving my sister’s home in Wellman, we dropped down to take state highway 22 west to Madison County and the famous covered bridges. Again, I had plotted a route with the use of Google Earth that would allow us to see all the remaining bridges in the least amount of time. Many of them were on minor roads, several of which were not paved, and it would have been a mistake to try to find them all without a plan of attack. The birthplace of John Wayne is very near one of the bridges and we drove by for a photo or two.

Like the sunflowers in South Dakota, Iowa is one large field of corn. Miles and miles of corn, all dried and ready for harvest with some already harvested. I learned that there is a task called de-silking that is performed on the crop each year. It involves pulling the corn silk from alternate rows of corn to prevent some kind of cross-pollination. It is a dirty job usually accomplished with the help of local teenagers anxious to make money for the summer. According to those who have done it, it is a job plagued by spiders, snakes, and rats! I could not think of a worse environment if I tried.

From Madison County, we took US-169 south to US-34 and headed west to the aforementioned “Hillsdale” cemetery near Glenwood, IA, where many of my Cooper ancestors are buried. It was one of those Coopers, Isaac, who moved from Glenwood, Iowa and founded the town of Glenwood Springs in Colorado. It was also Isaac’s daughter, Alice Cooper, who sculpted the statue of Sacajawea for the 1905 Centennial Exposition of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

It was early evening by the time we left the cemetery and since I had traveled across Nebraska on two other occasions, I decided to drive through the night on I-80 until we reached Denver, CO and the connection to I-25, which would take us to Colorado Springs and Pike’s Peak. We arrived early in the morning and were third in line to enter the park. The city of Colorado Springs owns Pike’s Peak and was charging $40 to enter therein. We were insulted but paid the fee anyway and waited until opening time at 7:30 a.m.

Shortly before opening time the park ranger informed us that “Audi” was filming a demonstration of their “driverless” car on the mountain and there would be a half hour delay. He let us in and said we could wait at the seven-mile marker near the lake until Audi was finished. We stopped at the lake but shortly thereafter saw many emergency vehicles racing up the mountain. We soon discovered that the filming helicopter had crashed on the road and the mountain would be closed for the rest of the day. They refunded our money at the gate and we headed south on state highway 118 to Canon City and the Royal Gorge nearby.

I thought the Royal Gorge would just be a drive-by with a few photos, but when we got there it was more like an amusement park! $25 per person to get in and walk (or drive) across the bridge that is 1,053 feet above the river below. We were there for about three hours walking the bridge and riding the tramway to the bottom of the canyon. Pike’s Peak and now the Royal Gorge, it seemed like Colorado was bent on turning all our national treasures into amusement parks. Thank you Colorado, are the Rocky Mountains next? I should mention that during our trip to the Grand Canyon a couple of years ago, we purchased a park pass that is usable at all the National Parks. Since we are senior citizens, the pass is good for the rest of our lifetimes. We did not pay at any National Parks on this trip!

We stayed on US-50 out of the Royal Gorge Park and traveled through Salida and Gunnison before reaching Montrose and a connection to US-550 that took us to Durango, Colorado. We stopped for lunch at the “Country Bounty” restaurant in Salida. It was a restaurant that stood out for cleanliness, service, and food, a combination rare in our travels. If we missed the fall colors in Vermont and New Hampshire, we certainly did not miss it on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. It was all yellows and greens, but the variations and contrasts were stunning and the trip from Canon City through Montrose and on to Durango was another one of those stop and go affairs we had not experienced since leaving the Shoshone National Forest outside of Yellowstone! There was a new vista around every curve and quaint mountain villages nestled in box canyons that rivaled those of the Alpines in Europe. I am glad we did not miss this. The town of Ouray was especially beautiful and I think Gail wants to move there to retire.

We stayed in Durango just long enough to see the “Narrow Gauge Railroad” that hauled tourists between Silverton and Durango for a small fee. It was an “All Day” trip on a route that approximated what we had just driven. I wondered why anyone would build a railroad that required special trains and cars and could not be serviced by other lines. I asked several people, but no one had an answer.

We left Durango on US-160 and followed it until it connected with Colorado 41 and Utah 162, following that route to US-163 through Monument Valley where the Duke (John Wayne) made many of his western movies. US-163 connected to US-160 and US-89 and that led us all the way to I-40 and the much familiar sights of Flagstaff, Arizona. We continued on I-40 to Kingman, Arizona where we spent the night before attempting the final run to Riverside, CA, and home.

There is one last place deserving honorable mention, and it is a place where we always stop on our way to or from Vegas, Oklahoma, or any other trip that takes us through Barstow. That place is the Del Taco at the Lenwood Road off-ramp about 5.6 miles before the junction of the I-15 with I-40 if you are headed east.

Well, that’s it. That was our vacation. As usual we took far too much luggage, ate too much, and took over a thousand photos. Gail and I have been to many places in the world, but this is the first time we toured our own country. We saw a lot but there is still a lot to be seen and we hope to do this again before long, taking a more southern route next time.