In December my partner and I started to plan a trip to Vancouver Island to visit his mom’s sisters. His mom passed away last year and covid meant that the usual family gatherings, particularly for the older folks, were not possible. We originally planned to fly out for a couple of weeks to see family and maybe have an impromptu memorial and return home. But circumstances evolved and suddenly we had the opportunity to make this a bigger trip. A road trip.
So here we are on day five of our cross continent trek and we have just arrived in Utah. The first major stop on a trip that will take us to a dozen of the most famous national parks in the US and Canada. Our trip will take us through the US mid west, the plains, and the deserts before taking us through California and north up to British Columbia, the Canadian Rockies and Prairies.
I’m sharing a selection of photos with you that are a combination of my partner’s and mine. The good ones are all his.
We left Toronto bright and early May 5 with the car packed to the gills with camping equipment. The US border guard seemed overly concerned that I had a job that would allow me to take “so much time off” but eventually he let us in and away we went to our first stop in Illinois west of Chicago. The town of Peru didn’t have a lot to offer but the tavern we had dinner at did a fine fried chicken spread. Good comfort food on a rainy night.
Friday we continued on I-80 west through Iowa and into Nebraska. These states are not generally on anybody’s radar in terms of tourism but I love prairie vistas. We were making good time so we stopped in Lincoln and visited the very fine state capitol (at least the outside of it). We also visited the sunken garden down the street and caught the tulip display just at the tail end of tulip season.
We spent that night in Grand Island which is handsome prairie town with some cool Art Deco buildings. We dined at a local brewery called the Kinkaider located in an old theatre.
The following morning we decided to eschew the interstate and jumped on the Lincoln Highway instead. The highway took us through a collection of towns, some relatively prosperous others ramshackle. For those not aware of the highway, it was the first cross-country highway in the US. Completed in 1913, it runs from NYC to San Francisco, though it resembles little of the original.
Saturday night was our first camping night of the trip. We arrived at Jackson Lake State Park in eastern Colorado just as the temperature was peaking at 32C and red alert wind storm began. We were a big concerned a severe thunderstorm would hit but we managed to set up the tent anyway. We also cooked our pasta dinner in 80km/h winds which likely gave comic relief to our neighbours hiding in their vehicles. By the time we finished dinner the temperature had fallen to 12C. No question of a campfire that night so we went to bed at 8:00 with the wind still howling. We woke up to find the world still intact though a brisk 7C.
Yesterday’s drive through Colorado started in the high plains of the state park (4400 ft altitude) and brought us through Denver and over the continental divide to the drier western part of the state. A word about I-70, this highway is a must see through the Rockies. After leaving Denver and crossing a 10,000 ft pass you descend the other side and meet up with the Colorado River. In a stunning feat of engineering (but by today’s standards is an ecological catastrophe) a 4 lane freeway competes for real estate with a hundred million year old river. It’s cool to drive through the canyon but you can’t help but wonder what it looked like before humans altered the landscape.
sedativegunk 