Drive East – Fourth Stop: Higginsville, Missouri

Saturday, October 22

We got up fairly early for us and got our day started with a quick morning walk around our remote and dilapidated campground.  We heard, and then saw, a cool owl on our walk. I’d never seen a real live owl in the wild before.

We had a quick breakfast, got the van ready to roll and then were on our way.

We stopped quickly for gas at a station that looked like no one had used it in four years, jumped back on to State Route 24 and pushed on toward …

… the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Kansas.

To say that I had been waiting to see the World’s Largest Ball of Twine is probably an overstatement. But I had been talking about it since I started talking about this trip.

The ball of twine has grown in magnitude in my mind since then (ha ha), and so to finally almost be there to see one of them was truly an inspiration for the (otherwise unremarkable) day.

Here’s a quick background: If you check out Wikipedia for “World’s Largest Ball of Twine”, you will find out that there are actually FOUR largest balls of twine. Who knew?

And, you might also question how on earth there can be FOUR largest balls of twine. “Largest” means just that – the largest. The only one.

Now, I can’t purport to explain exactly how this happened or even who made the decision to allow four, but the balls of twine are described like this:

1.     Largest sisal twine ball built by one person (Darwin, Minnesota)

2.     Largest sisal twine ball built by a community (Cawker City, Kansas)

3.     Heaviest ball of twine ever built (Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin)

4.     Largest twine ball every built (Branson, Missouri) 

Apparently, the Branson, Missouri one is certified by the Guinness Book of World Records and is owned by Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

Woo hoo.

But in the end, it’s just a big ball of twine. Sitting there. Static. Doing nothing. It’s just not that exciting.  Take a look.

OK, maybe a little exciting since they had decorated it for Halloween. But take a look around Cawker City …

 

… not much there! I think I might have to kill someone if I lived there. There doesn’t seem to be much to do in this small town in the middle-most state in our union.

N.B. – Auggie and I did follow for a short way the little “ball of twine” tour that was marked on the sidewalk. It was a sleeper.  :-( 

After that short and soul-numbing stop, we got back on the (long and barren) road.

 It was Saturday – College Football day! I had missed lots of football so far this year, so I was happy to find a game to listen to. And what a game it was to spice up our drive – the “Sunflower Showdown.” Kansas State Wildcats from Manhattan, KS v. Kansas University Jayhawks from Lawrence, KS.

I’m exaggerating when I say the game “spiced up” our drive – there really wasn’t much of a contest. Kansas State beat Kansas University by a healthy score of 59-21, just as we were pulling into Manhattan, Kansas to fill up the gas tank. (The game had been played in Lawrence, so we didn’t get stuck in game traffic. But there were several cars in Manhattan waving purple banners and tooting their horns to celebrate the win.)

Besides seeing five wild turkeys on the road and an exceptionally large amount of raccoon roadkill, there was not much else to report from the day.

I cheered again when we crossed the border between Kansas and Missouri. Not far across the border into Missouri, we found a campsite just off the interstate in Higginsville, Missouri and spent the night. We'd covered more than 325 miles that day and were ready for some food and some sleep.  

Drive East – Third Stop: Middle of Nowhere, Kansas

Friday, October 21

Colorado is really wide. And very flat on the eastern side of the state.

Once you get past Denver, there really isn’t much there. Vast, brown fields with not much around. At that point, you’ve got the Rockies behind you and you are headed toward the Great Plains and Kansas. It sure was boring.

The odometer stood at 28,325 when we pushed off from Boulder, and I was ready to get home now. Flat, boring surroundings was incentive to go, go, go.

And so we did.

Hot spots along the way were some more ethanol distilleries, windmills and small oil rigs. 

I cheered when we finally crossed over the Kansas border several hours later. And we looked for the World’s Largest Easel in Goodland, Kansas just after the border. But we didn’t see it. Perhaps I was looking for it closer to Route 70 and it was farther off the road, actually inside the town. I don’t know how you can miss an 80-foot-tall easel with Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” on it, but I did. 

And I certainly wasn’t going to turn around to go find it. We were headed home! Apparently I’ll have to go back to western Kansas another time to see that.

Auggie and I made a couple of stops during the 325-mile drive we did that day. We needed to play some fetch, have some lunch, stretch our legs, sniff the prairie and keep ourselves interested. The interesting thing was seeing all this prairie in the autumn. When we had traveled east across the Great Plains at the front end of our trip, it was summer and the crops were thriving. It wasn’t so beautiful in late October once the corn had been harvested. Barren is a good word.

We overnighted in the middle of nowhere, at a horrible little campsite in Hill City, Kansas. And I hadn’t even packed my ruby slippers to brighten the place up! We were the only camper on a small tract of land surrounded by grumpy-looking people who lived in trailer homes. It was not our favorite night on the road.

We took a quick evening walk, had dinner and called it an early night. I got two blog posts written and posted - thank you to whosever WiFi I was using. I was suddenly really fixated on driving home to Maryland, so getting an early start the next morning was A-OK with me. 

Boulder, CO

Wednesday-Friday, Oct 19-21

On Wednesday, Howard decided to work from a mountain for the day.

He made some calls in the morning to take care of important work issues while we decided which day-long hike we wanted to do. We decided on Mount Audobon.

The Mount Audobon trail starts at 10,508 feet and ends at 13,233 feet above sea level. Boulder lies at 5,430 feet above sea level, so we had a hefty upward drive just to get us to the trailhead in the Brainard Lake Recreation Area. We let the car do that hard work, though, so it was all OK.  J

Important: dogs were allowed on the trail. Auggie was more than welcome on this hike. Hooray!

We set out mid-morning, giving the day a chance to warm up a bit. It was a beautiful, clear day, and there was snow on the ground at altitude. The trailhead was covered with snow, which meant that higher up was definitely going to have snow. Auggie, put your snow boots on, dude.

At the parking lot, we got out of the car, bundled up, filled our backpacks with water and snacks and took off on our hike. It was a Wednesday, so there weren’t many people on the trail. We encountered a few, though, who told us that the snow wasn’t too bad higher up. So on we went.

There were some stunning views of the mountain.

Starting at 10,000+ feet, we quickly passed the tree line; the trail was soon just rocks.

At some point, I noticed that I was stumbling on the rocks and not having an easy time keeping my balance. Hmmmm … I haven’t been drinking.

Aha – it’s the altitude, silly girl. 

Auggie’s first hike at altitude had been back in Banff on Sulphur Mountain. That mountain, starting at 5,200 feet above sea level, seemed like a baby hike compared to this one. But my boy is a strong one – he trudged on with us like the trooper that he is.

I say trudged, because that’s what I was doing. Howard is in fine shape, biking, hiking and running at altitude on a constant basis. I, on the other hand, train at sea level and was really feeling the altitude as we continued to climb.

I kept noticing that when I tripped over yet another rock, I could sorta see in slow motion that I was losing my balance. It took me so long to respond to the stumble, though, that I was actually conscious of telling myself to pick up my leg/foot and put it down (fast!) in front of me. Normally the reaction just happens so quickly that you don’t really notice it – the body just does what it needs to do to stay upright. The fact that I was seeing my reactions play out slow-mo in my own head and eyes was a clear indication that I was impacted by altitude.

As we got higher, the wind started picking up, too. Lower down on the mountain, we had opened up zippers and let the heat out that we had generated from hiking. Once the wind started to pick up, though, I closed up my zippers, put my hat and gloves back on and made staying warm my priority.

Howard could have easily kept going to the top, but at a certain point, I was no longer having fun (and I don’t think Auggie was, either). I called it – it was time to turn around.

I was happy to be heading down the mountain. Perhaps I was just imagining it, but Auggie seemed relieved to be going down, too. Bless his dear little doggie heart – he is such a dutiful friend – I am sure he would have kept climbing with us as far as we went. But he had a spring in his step as he headed down the trail, moving through snow drifts with four-legged ease and clambering over rocks with no problem.

I, on the other hand, was concentrating hard on each footstep, thinking through the placement of each foot so that I didn’t turn an ankle in my oxygen-deprived state.

Soon enough, we got down to levels where I could feel my reflexes responding properly again. We stopped for a snack below the tree line, too, which helped to refuel and reset my meters.

I think we probably reached close to 12,000 feet before we turned around, which was pretty high for me and Auggie (probably the highest we’d been all trip).  I was proud that we’d made it so high, even though we weren’t completely acclimated to altitude. Let’s hear it for good hiking training throughout the trip and a good level of overall fitness. Woo hoo! 

On the drive back to Boulder, I proclaimed that I wanted a burger and fries. So, after we’d cleaned up, we took off and found a great veggie burger and French fries, which completely satisfied my need for fat after a lot of hard work on the mountain that day. Yummy! Afterwards, we went for tea and dessert, where I found a cupcake and Howard had some cookies to round out our dinner.

I was so tired and slept like a log that night. Zzzzzzzzzz.

On Thursday, Howard went back to work like a responsible person, while Auggie and I took a nice long morning walk along Boulder Creek. I was scheduled to have lunch with my friend Maureen about noon.

Maureen and I know each other from our martial arts training. She lived in DC for a long time, and she and I actually tested for our Black Belts together back in 2001. She moved back to Denver in 2005 to be closer to her family, about the same time that I moved to New York/New Jersey.

Maureen had an appointment in Boulder on Thursday morning, so we met on Pearl Street afterwards and found a restaurant to have lunch. 

It was great to catch up with her, see what she’s been up to and learn how life has been treating her in Colorado. We took a long walk after lunch, did a little window shopping and enjoyed another pretty sunny afternoon in Boulder.

Once Maureen took off to head back to Denver, I went back to the apartment and woke up Auggie from his all-day nap. We went out for a walk to explore Boulder a bit. 

Another gorgeous university town!

Boulder is home to the University of Colorado and the Colorado Buffaloes. (What is it with me and buffaloes lately?)

It’s a huge university from my standards, with more than 30,000 students. It was fun to walk Auggie around campus, dodging bikes and recognizing how young college students are these days. Auggie and I clearly were not hip enough, though – we were not wearing our flannel shirts or riding our skateboards.

[Note to self: must teach dog how to ride a skateboard.]

We ended up taking a longer walk than I had anticipated. By the time we made it back to the apartment, I was pooped and so was Auggie. I took a little rest, fed Auggie and watched him curl up again to take another nap.

I took my computer and headed out to a cute little local café to connect to the Internet and get a bit of personal stuff done.

After that, Howard and I went out to grab some dinner, and then I stayed up way too late watching a movie.

Friday morning arrived, and suddenly it was time to pack up and drive again. This had been our final stop with friends, and it signified the beginning of our final few days on the road. We were going to follow a straight trajectory along Route 70 from Denver back to Maryland. It was time to go home.

We said a big thank you to Howard, I pushed the reluctant Auggie back into his spot in the van …

… and off we went! 

Drive East – Second Stop: Boulder, CO

Tuesday, Oct 18

First thing I did when I woke up Tuesday morning was wonder how cold it had gotten. 

The second thing I did was take a deep breath, begrudgingly peel myself away from Auggie and jump out from under my sleeping bag. 

The third thing I did was put the key in the ignition to see what the temperature was.

Ouch! 24 degrees!

We had experienced 24 degrees back in Utah at Bryce Canyon. Somehow I didn’t remember that 24 degrees felt this cold. And this morning, we also had fog and frost to intensify the cold. Brrrrrr. Winter sets in early in the Rockies!

We made our morning walk a quick one so that I could get back in the van, sit next to the furnace and thaw out. It was really cold!

I didn’t waste any time getting food in me – a nice hot bowl of oatmeal to warm me up. Hot tea and a couple of layers of clothing was slowly starting to get me warmer, too. And when I had finally packed us up and gotten us ready to go, I blasted the car heater as we drove.

We weren’t going too far, though. Only six miles to Steamboat Springs – I wanted to take a walk and poke around. Gratefully, it started to warm up fairly quickly that day, so our walk around the town was nice. Auggie found a nice stream to plop around in, and then we found the ski infrastructure (sans snow!). 

We poked around the main street shops, and then I found a coffee shop where I got a quick coffee and a yummy snack. I filled up the gas tank, and then we got on the road. We were headed to Boulder, and were due there mid-afternoon.

Our drive southeast on Route 40 was beautiful. Another blue sky, more mountains and some more snow to remind us that we were at altitude. 

We were driving through some beautiful country, reminded at regular intervals that the Rockies were all around us. 

And when we dropped out on to Interstate 70 for the final approach toward Denver (before we took a left turn to head north toward Boulder), we saw more gorgeous layers of snow-capped mountain behind snow-capped mountain as we drove. It sure was a pretty drive.

We got to Boulder about 3 pm. Our friend, Howard, wasn’t able to get out of the office and home till about 3.30, so we happily got out of the van and took a walk from Howard’s house down to Pearl Street, the cool pedestrian shopping and dining street in Boulder. Howard called us when he got home, and we walked back to say hello.

Before the sun got too low, we took off for a hike up Mount Sanitas, which was a short walk from Howard’s apartment. We had a great hike – cloudless blue sky, pretty vistas and an interesting trail.

Once we got home, we chilled and stretched for a bit, and then Howard needed to run out to a meeting for a few hours. I did some shopping and made dinner. After that, it was time to sleep. Good night. 

Drive East - First Stop: Steamboat Springs, CO

Monday, Oct 17

It was a GORGEOUS autumn day – a super day for driving. Utah sent us off with all its autumn splendor. We drove along Route 40 – not a primary road – because we didn’t feel like Interstate driving. Instead, we took the more scenic route, and it was a real treat. So many beautiful golds and oranges against a gorgeous sunny blue sky. Nice day to be on the road.

The first parts of our journey took us through the Wasatch and Uinta National Forests. (We had just been in the Wasatch the previous few days over the weekend.) And then it slowly turned into … not much at all. Lots of big expanse of land, not much civilization. There was a long time between “cities.” And then, when you got to one of those, ahem, “cities” on the map, you had to be careful not to blink before you were through it and out the other side. So different from the east coast!

We were on the road for a few hours, and my gauge of our progress was how close to the Colorado border we were getting. (Western states are really big!) We were getting close to the eastern border of Utah, when suddenly I started seeing signs for Dinosaur National Monument. Hey – that sounded kinda cool. When it came time, we turned off and stopped for a look.

Yes, there were dinosaurs in this part of the world … 149 million years ago. This one is fake ... 

... but these bones here … they are real. 

And yes, they really are 149 million years old!

The signs in the museum and the bones quarry told us the story about how this big flat plain used to be a river bed. There are questions about why so many dinosaur bones ended up in this particularly rich spot for fossils. The leading theory is that there was a long drought, which killed many dinosaurs, many of which died along the river. Once heavy rains returned, additional dinosaurs were killed, while the carcasses of others who had died “upstream” were also transported by the water further downstream. As floodwaters receded, the bones dropped to the bottom of the riverbed, were covered with mud and silt and piled up, waiting to be discovered by humans.

The first human to uncover those dinosaur bones was Earl Douglass in 1909. Douglass was a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.

Take a look at the terrain. Don’t the hills themselves look like dinosaur backs? Is that how Douglass guessed that there were dinosaur bones beneath the surface? 

Here are some more shots of the surrounding scenery and the current river. It’s so broad and open – very easy to see how this was once a massive river.

We made a few phone calls from Dinosaur before getting back on the road. We had gotten on the road early that morning and were making good time. I was in the mood to cover some ground.

We kept driving on Route 40. East! East! East! 


We were headed to Boulder, Colorado, where we would spend a few days with friends. 

Earlier in the day, I had seen the town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, on the map. Something about the name made me want to see it and spend the night there. (Was I really looking for a steamboat???) So I drove us all the way to Steamboat Springs, which was a total of about 335 miles from Salt Lake City, or more than six hours of actual driving, not counting the stop in Dinosaur.

(For most of our trip, Auggie and I had made a point not to drive more than about 250 miles or four hours per day, so we didn’t overdo it. The urge to get east was strong in me now, so apparently that rule no longer applied. I drove us on to Steamboat Springs!)

I had been listening to local radio on the drive and learned that it was going to be a cold night. Steamboat Springs was at altitude, nestled right in the heart of the Colorado Rockies, so we were going to face the brunt of it. Get ready for another cold night, Auggie!

We found our campsite just outside of Steamboat Springs and settled in. The lady running the campsite told us they were closing down in two days’ time, another sign the cold weather was on its way big time. 

Auggie and I took a nice evening walk to shake out the long day of driving from our bones. We were treated to another beautiful sunset and evening sky. Look at those purple mountains with the pretty autumn colors. Wow!

After our walk, we cooked dinner, settled in and turned the furnace on to get ready for the cold. Shame I couldn’t clone Auggie – it sure would have been good to have more dogs to keep me warm!