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Published: April 14th 2011
Monday morning found us on the road again (with a quick stop at a town called Grand Junction to buy a new tent) headed for Aspen, Colorado - exchanging a desert landscape of sandstone and red dust for mountains, pine trees and snow - lots of it!
We had a bit of a wander around the centre of Aspen, and I checked out a few of the shops (photographic evidence provided by Craig). The town seemed pretty quiet with only a few skiers still around, but can imagine it's manic when the season's in full swing. As my camping rule for this holiday is "I'm not sleeping in a tent when there's snow on the ground", we found an off-season special and stayed at a place called St Moritz Condominiums - not as ritzy as it sounds, but comfortable except that we couldn't work out how to turn down the central heating, so felt like we were sleeping in a sauna.
Yesterday morning we headed off from Aspen on the interstate, which took us past the ski area of Vail and over a couple of mountain passes (3,400m - very cold and snowy - brrr!!!), but luckily the roads
were all clear so there were no driving worries. On the way out of Colorado we dropped in on Rocky Mountain National Park, where we had a quick walk in the snow around a lake called Bear Lake - no bears in sight and no lake either as it was covered in ice, but Craig found a very obliging blue jay and snapped away. He was so engrossed in his photography that he forgot to "walk like a penguin" in the snow, and managed to end up on his backside in the snow, but fortunately no harm was done, except to his dignity.
Back on the road, we left the mountains of Colorado behind and headed for the plains of Nebraska - flat grasslands that go on and on, and on, and on. It was a real eye-opener for us into what rural America looks like - at least in this part of the country. We had camped the night before close to the southern border of Nebraska, and spent the morning driving north to South Dakota, stopping by at Wounded Knee (because Craig had read "I Buried My Heart at Wounded Knee" when he was at school) on
the way to Mt Rushmore. The visit to Wounded Knee was a bit of a non-event, but it did take us through Sioux Indian reservation land in South Dakota where we were quite shocked by what we could see of the poverty-stricken look of the communities we drove through, which reminded us much more of places we have seen in Africa than the reasonably prosperous farming communities 100kms down the road in Nebraska.
We arrived at a tiny place called Hot Springs about 3pm and checked into a Motel 6, before heading off for Mt Rushmore via Wind Caves National Park, with hopes of possibly seeing some bison on the way through. We'd just entered the park when Craig spotted his first bison, and I spotted the first of many prairie dogs - very funny little creatures which you really can't help laughing at. We spent the next couple of hours enjoying looking at lots of bison, prairie dogs and pronghorn deer, so Mt Rushmore will just have to wait until tomorrow.
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Sandy, Mike & the ankle biters
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Where are the rocks??
Great photos!! How many shots of the Blue Jay did you have to select from, very cool. Never seen a woman walk out of GAP empty handed - Sandy told me that purchasing was a condition of entry! Could she have been lying? Looks a bit chilly - funny thing that about snow. Looks to be a very different landscape from last weeks. Have a great time and keep posting the blogs.