The Final Days -- Colorado Springs The trip from Moab to Colorado Springs was to say the least very, very, very long. We started with pancakes at the camp ground and set off to take a scenic drive along the Colorado River. When we turned onto the road there was a sign warning of a bridge being out down the road and it was open for local traffic only. So needless to say we turned around and headed off down another road, only to be stopped for about 30 minutes in road construction. We wanted to make two stops along the way and we thought that being allowed to go 75 mph on the major roads would help make up time lost. As we went down the road toward our first stop, The Black Canyon ... read more
Our whole Western TripThe Echterlings Day 16 Antelope Canyon and Monument valley Today we left Bryce canyon after one last look at areas of the Canyon we didn't get a chance to see the day before. Though we missed true sunrise, an overnight storm was just allowing the sun to break through anyway. We had to include another picture of this wonderful site in today's entry. We had a three hour drive from Bryce to near Page Arizona. There we took a trip with a Navajo Guide into the Lower Antelope Canyon (slit canyons). Included in the fee was not only a tour of the beautiful underground canyon, but also a harrowing bumpy ride in the back of a twenty year old broken down pick-up truck over sand on a non-road with Alea on my lap. ... read more
Day 15 -- Bryce Canyon After about a 2 hour drive from Zion to Bryce National Park, we settled in at Ruby's Campground and hopped on the shuttle into the park. We were running a little late because Chris had to do one last thing before we left the RV - a trait that while possiblely genetic does not make it any less frustrating to the rest of the family. Luckily after lunch in the Bryce Lodge (taco bar) everyone was in a better mood and we got to the corral and got our steeds. This time all four of us were going riding. We all got mules. Alea rode Tanya, Chris rode Tony, Ben rode Chubby and Lisa rode Janya. This was a wonderful ride in terms of what we got to see. We ... read more
Day 13 To Zion, and an unintended adventure This was a day of travel, a little bit of beauty and a fair amount of frustration. We left Salt Lake city and stopped at an IHOP where we (and everyone else) waited over an hour for breakfast. Then we were on on our way south on Rt 15 for about 5 hours. Utah in this region a lot like Wyoming and Idaho - dry prairie with mountains in the distance. No potatos or wheat fields here though - just miles of burned grass and trees - from the recent wild fires less then a week ago. Some of these were up to the road, clearly explaining why Rt. 15 was closed for several days. The beauty was when we visited the northern part of Zion National ... read more
Day 11- Today was a fairly boring day. Most of the day we drove from Grand Tetons to Salt Lake City where we stayed for the night. After we arrived at the campground. We went searching for a Target, a movie theater, and a place to eat. We found a movie theater and a went in to get some tickets for the new Harry Potter movie. After getting the tickets to the 8:50 showing of Harry Potter we went to Red Robin. After eating we stoped at Target and then headed back to the movie theater. We got back at our campground around 11:30. --Ben We learned that a 10% grade is really a lot more severe then 6% grade - atleast to an RV (the Teton pass from Wyoming to Idaho). Idaho was a ... read more
Grand Tetons Day 9 Today we got up at about 6:00 am to get to see animals sadly we did not see anything new. After that we went to our favorite breakfast buffet for a hardy breakfast. Soon we were on the road heading to the Grand Tetons for about 1 hour and then stopped at the visitor center and looked at the museum about Indians. Then we went to the gift shop and Ben bought a how to draw book of animals. Then we went to watch a movie about the grizzly bear. Then we went to the Lodge to work on a couple of Blogs while the rest of my family was working on the Blogs I was working on the Bison that is down below so is Ben's wolf. Soon we were ... read more
Day 8- Today started out on the hunt of a big hot breakfast. We Echterling's can go all day on a good breakfast. We looking at the Lake Lodge which has just ended their hot breakfast and just started the Continental breakfast. Well this is not enough for us Echterling's so we headed to the Lake hotel. At last a hot breakfast and a buffet is even better. With stomachs full we went back to the Lodge to attend church. It was a very nice Mass attended by a fair number of people and presided over by a Monk. He told every one in attendance about their life at the monastery. Ben and I shared a little chuckle when he pulled out a spring water bottle to add the Holy Water to the wine. I ... read more
Day 7 We got up in the morning and made pancakes for breakfast. We then got RoVer disconnected and went to the visitor center and got Alea signed up for the junior ranger program. After we signed Alea up for the program we headed off to the mud volcano. Around the mud volcano there was some smaller steaming sulfur mud pits (pits is a very good name for them because they smelled really really really really really really really bad) and the coolest of these was called The Dragon's Den. This pit had a cave on the side of it that would collect the steam and when the steam was released it made a heavy breathing sound and steam came shooting out of the cave hence the dragon. On our way to Yellowstone Grand Canyon, ... read more
Day 6- Today we had to get up early to get to Yellowstone Park so everyone was tired. We got on the road at about 8:30 a.m and soon had to stop for breakfast at Perkins. If you know the men in RoVer you would know that if there is FREE Internet they would use as much as they can so we were there 2 extra hours. We soon got back on the road.Then we got to be able to be on the road for a good 8 hours . Sometime later we saw a place where a forest fire had been a couple years ago. Soon we got out to go to a water fall that was OK after. Then that Ben and I fell asleep. In a 1-2 hours Ben and I woke ... read more
Day 5 we started out the day by going to this nice little park, called storybook island, in search of a letterbox (if you want to find out more about letterboxing you can go to www.letterboxing.org ). When we arrived at the place where the paper said the letterbox was we saw that it was missing. From there we headed to the petrified forest. The petrified forest was cool there was petrified logs everywhere some up to 100 feet long! We went to there gift shop and then we were back on the road again. Then we went to this little town called Lead. In Lead there was a museum about gold mining. We then walked to this huge goldmine that had begun to collapse.We then headed off to Devil's Tower. As we parked in ... read more