The Ruly Road Trip – Part Four

Bear with me today, dear readers! We are going to cover nine states and seven days to finish out this road trip adventure.  If you are overwhelmed by the text, take a break halfway through and come back to finish.  🙂 Ready?

Days Ten through Twelve:  Salt Lake City, Utah

We spent about three days in Salt Lake visiting family.  It was the typical whirlwind of social events, including a special birthday celebration for my two year old and her three year old cousin.  Our girls are very lucky to have many cousins very close in age on both sides of the family.  When they all get together they click immediately and have a great time.

One of the great luxuries of living near grandparents is the availability of babysitters!  My husband and I stole a day to ourselves while my wonderful mom watched our daughters.  We went to Park City for a relaxing lunch on Main Street and a walk in the mountains.

To thank our fabulous babysitter, we stopped at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory where the display cases of desserts were picture perfect: dipped apples, dipped marshmallows, handmade toffees and fudges.  Dessert is legendary in Utah.  While best known for its consumption of Jell-O, sources indicate that Utahns consume the most candy and ice cream of any American state.

We bought some of the dark chocolate sea foam chocolates and when my mother shared a taste with us, we discovered it was the best sea foam we had ever tasted!

Day Thirteen: Salt Lake City to Boulder, Colorado

After a wonderful visit in Salt Lake City, we bade farewell to our families and packed the car for our journey home.  As always, we were carrying a bit more weight going back, heavily laden with presents.  Thankfully, however, we had a clean supply of clothes thanks to the washing efforts of my father-in-law.

We drove from Utah into Wyoming.  The land becomes flatter but the elevations are higher.  Wyoming is known for its very strong winds and there are wind farms throughout the state that we found quite beautiful.

Another unusual characteristic of Wyoming driving is that the left lane of the highway is studded with rumble strips that are exactly the width of semi-truck tires.  When you drive along the strip you feel an uncomfortable bumping.  We are not quite sure what the purpose of these strips was (Keep drivers awake?  Keep drivers out of the left lane? Traction in severe weather? Prevent texting while driving?) but the highway department was busily installing more of them all along the highway.  The traffic on this stretch of highway seemed to be 80% semi trucks, 10% motorcycles and 10% cars.

Wyoming is kind of flat and dry and is a little like Texas with big, open skyscapes and cattle farms but there are occasional mountains and streams as well.  Wyoming caters to a lot of outdoorsmen and signs directing you to “sweetwater” lakes are prevalent.

We stopped for lunch at an ice cream parlor in downtown Rawlins, Wyoming, a very small town. We had delicious sandwiches and ice cream and even put a pin on the map they had on display to indicate our home state of Virginia. The map was quite a pincushion of people from all over the world!  The restaurant had a good tip for additional sales revenue.  A small bookcase was set up with used books for sale.  The ice cream parlor was the perfect place for having a few moments to relax and peruse the selection and the used books were not as delicate as new items and could withstand the occasional ice cream drip.

We crossed into Colorado where instantly the landscape became more green and mountainous and then a few minutes later was back to flat.

We drove on through winding mountain roads to Rocky Mountain National Park.  This was the only instance of car sickness on the journey where our littlest one’s tummy could not keep up with all of the twisting and turning in a rear-facing car seat.

The scenery became more and more beautiful as we climbed into the mountains.

We ate dinner at The Baldpate Inn, a beautiful historic wooden cabin building.  There were many great ideas to share at the Baldpate.  First, the menu was kept very simple–just a serve-yourself soup and salad bar.  The salad bar was creatively staged in an old bathtub with salad fixings on ice in Mason jars.   Where the restaurant earned its reputation, however, was in the small details of the food.  Each day they made two fresh soups and two new types of bread in addition to their delicious sweet cornbread.  It made for an elegant meal.  The other great tip was with regard to the kids menu.  Rather than provide a handful of crayons and a paper menu to color, they pasted the kids menu inside Little Golden Books!  Our children enjoyed reading the stories while we ate our meal.

The Baldpate has a terrific wooden deck with rocking chairs to relax in while taking in the scenery or observing the activity at their numerous hummingbird feeders.

The Baldpate is also steps away from Lily Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.  It made for the perfect after-dinner walk and literally felt like walking through paradise.  Our children loved it so much they wanted to go around twice.  To our delight, they tired themselves out and slept soundly all the way to Boulder.

Day Fourteen: Boulder, Colorado to Colby, Kansas

The next morning, we awoke early in part due to the high and bright Colorado sun.  At 5:45 a.m. the sun was blaring so brightly through the curtains I awoke in a panic concerned we overslept.  We slept in for a few more precious hours and ate delicious fruit-filled Polish pierogis for breakfast at the Eggcredible restaurant in the hotel. We drove out of Boulder, which has to be one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the country.  The road signs indicate when cars have to merge into a single lane so that bicyclists can have a lane to themselves!

We drove into Denver to visit our beloved Auntie!  It was a hot day and our girls found the best spot to be was the natural “treehouse” created beneath the Colorado blue spruce in Auntie’s backyard.  After a wonderful afternoon visiting and picnicking, we loaded back into the car.

We drove through eastern Colorado which is largely farmland.

Right before we hit the Kansas border, a beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky and we drove “over the rainbow” into the state—which could not have been more perfect.

We expected Kansas to be flat and full of corn.  We were not wrong in this regard but we weren’t expecting to find it beautiful.

We stopped for the night in Colby, Kansas, a small town on the western end of the state.  We ate dinner at the local “Taco John” where we saw some locals dressed in overalls and John Deere hats.  Our hotel was a pleasant surprise with nicely furnished rooms including granite countertops and elegant bedding.  This hotel also gets our award for best hotel pool policy.  The pool is open 24 hours!  This was the only hotel we encountered on our journey with such a policy.  It makes perfect sense.  The pool is indoor and has no lifeguard (as most hotel pools) so the hotel does not have any restrictions on when you can use it.  After arriving half an hour too late for the pool at almost ever hotel we visited on our journey we were elated.  Our girls had a great time swimming.

Kansans are very sweet people.  When my husband dragged our 4-year old out of the pool and she began kicking and screaming all the way down the hall to our hotel room, a grandmother popped open her hotel door to make sure my husband was not mistreating her.  She only closed it when my daughter called out “Mama” and the woman saw me walking down the hall.  If only we were all so attentive!

Day Fifteen: Colby, Kansas to Kansas, City, Missouri

We awoke the next morning in time for the hotel’s free breakfast.  The buffet included my favorite waffle-making device and I was able to replace the pictures from Knoxville lost in my iPhone accident.  The magical device in question is “Carbon’s Golden Malted Waffle Baker.”  It is a wonderful machine where you pour in some liquid waffle mix (no greasing required!), close the lid, use the handles to flip the griddles 180 degrees and a timer counts down for you.  When the timer goes off, the waffle is perfectly done, fluffy and delicious!  We saw these machines in use all over the country from Knoxville, Tennessee to the breakfast buffet in Las Vegas.  The built-in timer is so handy.  I want to find one for my home!

As we feasted on cereal, waffles, sausage, biscuits and gravy, we listened to the morning television in the dining area.  Commercials for “100% pro life” and “A Grade from the National Rifle Association” politicians were interspersed with commercials for large farm equipment.  It is a very different world from Washington.

After breakfast, we headed on to Grinnell, Kansas where we were in search of Monument Rocks, an interesting geologic formation.  After you leave the highway in Kansas, you might find a brief patch of paved road near strip malls or other business areas but most of the state roads are unpaved.  Monument Rocks was about 7 miles down an unpaved road in the middle of farmland.  But it was worth the trip!

The rocks jut out in the middle of the surrounding farmland.  They are elegant and sculptural.  The rock is very soft to the touch and crumbles easily, sort of like talc.  The other name for this formation is the “chalk pyramids” and the monument does smell of chalk.

When we left the monument, my husband decided to rely on the GPS navigation in the car rather than retracing our steps back to the interstate.  The GPS had some wild inaccuracies and we ended up on a miles-long tour of Kansas farm roads.  These roads are actually quite dangerous.  Cars and trucks driving along the road kick up enormous amounts of dust rendering white-out conditions.  You have to give lots of room between your car and the car in front.  If you see nothing but a dust cloud on the horizon, you have to learn to assume that it is a truck or maybe a farmer tilling his field.  We had a few close calls.

Along one road, we saw a strange vehicle coming down the road.  It seemed large but we couldn’t quite tell.  As it drove closer, we realized it was an enormous piece of farm equipment and there was no way both of our vehicles could share the road.  We pulled off into a driveway and waited for it to pass.

Driving through the farms, we gained a new respect for both the danger and the sophistication involved in running a farm.

We pressed on to Hays, Kansas where we ate at wonderful Gella’s diner.  Downtown Hays was quite small and we were surprised when we opened the door to Gella’s to find a contemporary restaurant with inviting menu items.  Gella’s brewery has won several awards for its beers and its homebrewed root beer was creamy and delicious.  The fish tacos special was delicious. Kids meals were served in a paper vintage car which delighted our girls.

After lunch we visited the Sternberg museum which has the best dinosaur exhibit I have ever seen!  While the collection of dinosaurs is not large, the way they are displayed is as close to Jurassic Park as one can get.  Through subtle tricks of lighting, sound, color and creatively staged models, you feel like you are swimming underwater with large shark-like dinosaurs and then you climb a subtle incline to feel like you have walked out of the water onto a beach where plant-eating dinosaurs roam, pterodactyls fly overhead and the mechanical T-Rex actually moves and roars and looks right at you!

Again, we experienced Kansas hospitality when some cute grandparents went out of their way to warn us that the T-Rex moves and that it terrifies their 2-year old grandson and also to check out the discovery area in the back of the museum.

We drove on through Kansas farmland.  Kansas has a lot of signs along its highways, some are official signs for businesses or highway signs but some are more home grown.  It made for some entertaining “reading.”  For example, a sign for a “XXX Adult Supperstore” was followed by a religious sign indicating that pornography is a terrible addiction and encouraging people to follow Jesus instead.

We arrived in Topeka for dinner where we ate at the award-winning “Boss Hawg’s” barbecue.  We sampled a bit of everything in their “Beast Feast.”  Our favorite was a dish called “Burnt Ends” which is specially cooked beef brisket, but the shredded pork was also incredible and our children gobbled up the barbecue chicken.

We drove on that night into Kansas City, Missouri.  We were too tired to go out to walk around the nightlife area and instead relaxed in our stylish hotel, the Q Hotel.  The Q had great style with round, ball-like throw pillows on the beds and beaded curtains in the closet area.  The hotel is dedicated to being environmentally friendly.  One of their eco-friendly innovations is to put all the soap, lotion and conditioner in a large reusable dispenser in the shower area.  No little bottles to throw away!

Day Sixteen: Kansas City, Missouri to Lexington, Kentucky

In the morning, we did a quick drive through Kansas City.  It is very hard to understand the character of a city when you drive through at night.   We were delighted to find many signs of creativity in St. Louis.  There was an art museum with oversized shuttlecocks on the front lawn, a luxurious “country club” shopping area, fountains and public parks.  It looked quite lovely.

We had a lot of miles to cover that day so we got back onto the interstate and headed toward St. Louis.   We ate lunch at a lovely art deco-inspired restaurant, The Fountain on Locust.  The interior is fantastic with black and white tiles on the floor and large murals with ladies doing gymnastic feats with the sconce lights or painted moons.  The bathroom is equally impressive and has been nominated as one of the best restrooms in the entire United States!  The food was fresh and good and the ice cream was excellent too!

We took a quick drive to see the St. Louis arch and peek at the Mississippi riverfront before we drove across the bridge into Illinois.

The stretch of highway across Illinois and Indiana wasn’t particularly memorable.  We had seen so many farms and open spaces by this point that we were a little hard to impress.

We thought it might be fun to stop for dinner in Santa  Claus, Indiana.  We visited a few small attractions and were a little disappointed.  If you have ever been to a wonderful Christmas store with elegant and surprising decorations, you will not find that here.   The stores were very simple and a bit ordinary selling inexpensive goods from China.  It was commercialized Christmas without any of the art and magic you might want in a Christmas-themed town.  The main attraction was Holiday World, a huge amusement park which we didn’t have time to see.  The parking lot for Holiday World was packed, though.  Perhaps Holiday World is the type of amazing experience we were looking for but it didn’t appear to be so.

Unfortunately on a long road trip, a disappointing stop really sucks the energy out of you.  It was the end of a long day of driving and we really wanted to end on a high note.  We pressed on to Louisville, Kentucky and then to our hotel in Lexington where the only place open for dinner was Wendy’s.  We decided to just tuck into bed and hope for a better day the next day.

Day Seventeen: Lexington, Kentucky to Fredericksburg, Virginia

We started the morning with another generous hotel breakfast including biscuits and gravy.  We hit the road.  We decided we were done with road tripping and ready to get home.  When this rig drove by, we thought, “Our sentiments exactly!”

This patch of Kentucky didn’t have anything particularly noteworthy to grab our attention.  There was lots of green farmland.

We drove into Huntington, West Virginia.  At first we saw an economically depressed downtown.  We decided to explore the two points of interest I researched in advance.  We stopped briefly at the Ohio riverfront, which was beautiful.  Elegantly dressed people were walking in for Sunday brunch at Schooner’s.

We also drove up a hilly part of town through a rather nice neighborhood to an interesting looking art museum.  We had planned to walk one of the trails through the woods near the museum where art objects were placed among the trees but a torrential downpour of rain derailed those plans.  We were a bit too tired to supervise two wiggly children inside the museum so we headed on to our next stop in Fayetteville, West Virginia.

West Virginia is a very beautiful state in terms of geography.  It is green, mountainous and has many rivers and bridges.  It finally stopped raining by the time we reached Fayetteville.  We stopped at the visitors center for New River Gorge National Park.  The park was having an interesting exhibit of quilts used in the underground railroad.  We walked to many overlook points and took in the engineering marvel that is the New River Gorge Bridge.

We drove down the road for the old bridge as well, a one-lane twisting road that would be completely impassable for today’s semi-trucks.  It gave us another view of the bridge from below.

We had an early dinner at Pies and Pints, a terrific restaurant with excellent food and a fenced patio with playground for kids.  While our girls played on the swings, we feasted on the world’s best spinach salad and a Cuban Pork pizza with pineapple, jalapenos and crème fraiche.

It was a nice moment to reflect on our trip.  While we were tired and ready to be home where at a minimum, we could stop packing and unpacking suitcases, refresh our wardrobes with more than just the 8 outfits we had been wearing the past two weeks and sleep in our own bed.

The end of the journey also made me a bit teary.  It will always be a grand memory for me of my husband and very young children.  I will remember fondly the “tickle spider” my husband invented to keep our 4-year old entertained in the car, the bonding moments playing in the pool, discovering natural wonders, dinosaurs and fireworks and, best of all, uninterrupted time together.

We drove on into Virginia and to our home where our girls bounded out of the car a bit surprised to remember their home.  After a few minutes readjusting, they decided to inventory the beloved toys they left behind.  We appreciated everything about our home– its size, its smell, its layout.  It just felt right.  It felt like us.

We are still coming down from our vacation high and realizing how busy and full our lives are on a day to day basis.  My husband put in a 60-hour workweek his first week back and didn’t get home each night until very late in the evening.  It was a shocking transition from vacation.  We all carry fond memories of our time on the road and are still trying to learn how to capture some of that vacation spirit into our everyday lives.

Thank you for coming along with us on our road trip!  We were happy to share it with you and hope you learned something new about our wonderful and diverse country.

Back on Wednesday with Ruly Ruth!