January 6, 2017 - In-Ko-Park Road

On a trip to San Diego, we stopped at the Desert View Tower.  We had the cat in the truck and had to leave the truck running, so we didn't have a lot of time.  We checked it out, asked some questions and took a few pictures.  we'll be returning to get a fuller look, later.

There had been an old road that ran through the mountains to the valley.  When they put in a modern road, it cut across the old road.  Bert Vaughn got the credit for the design of the new road and he built the desert tower as a monument to the workers who built the road.

You take the exit for In-Ko-Pah park road, which comes up pretty suddenly on the winding mountain roads.  Then a drive up a long road to the park area.  We passed by a place with a house, several RVs, and lots of junk. (Did I just see a flying saucer?)  The tower park has great views of the surrounding lands.  Admission is only $6.50, but as stated, no time. There are some "caves".  The attendant, said it's really mostly a walk through rocks.  In there, a number of early native wall drawings can be seen.  I'm sure the view from the actual tower is great.  We took pictures from the "lobby" and found out that the guy down the road is a bit of a hoarder.  Apparently, he filled his house with collectables, bought an RV, filled it, bought another, filled it. and on and on.  Interesting.

A visitor

Oh, it was a flying saucer!!

June 3rd - Arizona Day One

Cruising into Arizona, our first stop was at the welcome sign for a picture of us.  Another couple arrived about when we did, and we took their pics and they took ours.  Right there at the border is a huge water power plant on the Colorado River.  Great view.  Just a few feet up and across to the other side of the highway, was a geocache location.  We now had Arizona.  We drove on through the desert to the town of Williams.  We've been here before.  Williams is at the junction of I-40 and the road that leads to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We stopped and obtained a hotel room, dropping of our peace lily which travels everywhere with us.  Then we headed to the canyon 20 miles down the road.  It was evening, and we took a tram out to the west viewpoint to catch the sunset.  Normally, when you take pictures of a sunset, it's the sky and the sun as subjects.  Here, it's the eastern walls of the canyon and how the fading light creates shadows and colors against the walls.  If you've never seen the Canon, pictures won't do it justice. If you have, I'm not sure most pictures are anything more striking than the ones you've seen. 

Afterwards, we drove back to Williams and had dinner outdoors at a nice restaurant with a local boy singing and playing guitar.  Tired and worn, we went to our room and crashed, planning on returning to the canyon the next day.

Power plant on the Colorado River

Welcome

A local

November 15th - Wisconsin and parts west

Moving on...

In our attempt to bypass Chicago, we passed roght through it during late rush hour.  The main thing we were trying to avoid, was the Memorial bridge that cost us over $20.00 on our trip east.  This we did.  The route we took brought us up hwy 12 instead of I-94.  This meant we entered Wisconsin about halfway west.  Therefore, we missed Kenosha (home of the Cheese Castle) and Milwaukee.

 What we did hit was a sleepy little town of 8000 people called Lake Geneva on the east side of Geneva Lake.  A town that caters to lake and water activities, boating and fishing, etc.  It was getting late and we just needed food and a place to park ourselves for the night.  Stopped in a jumping little club full of younger people and loud music.  sat near the front window at the curve of the bad and tried some craft beers and appetizers.  A group of people came in and we found out that they were a large group doing their annual Tavern Crawl.  It had started out with a few friends out on the town and had grown into an annual event.  The group was about 30 people cruising from bar to bar in town. They were friendly and even gave Laurie one of their custom T-shirts.  As we left, we couldn't help looking up a local geocache which turned out to be a ammo box on the front porch of a local store. Cute. We parked at the local Walmart and slept in the camper.

The next day, looking down the road for breakfast, we found a cache location in a small triangular park.  It was a memorial park, so we wanted to check it out anyway. There are war memorials spread out across the park. Nice little park worthy of some photos.  The geocaching was an intrigue. we were given partial GPS co-ordinates and had to visit many of the memorials to pull numbers off to complete the coordinates.  Using that, we found a small container stuffed in a guard rail in the park. Researching, I found out and partially remembered The town is Fort Atkinson and the park is McCoy Park.  http://www.dailyunion.com/news/article_f95077c8-dce1-11e2-a09c-001a4bcf6878.html

As we were cruising across the state, we had begun stopping at nearly every rest stop as most will have a cache.  At one we had a real adventure. The description of the cache tells us there is a memorial for the branches of law enforcement in Wisconsin. Then it tells us to enjoy the scenic overlook trails just past the rest stop. The cache was in there somewhere.  We would probably have driven right by this rest stop if the geocache hadn't been part of our travels.  We crossed a back parking area, and across a small bridge into the woods.  The path was paved, and at a fork, we had the option to walk down a long wooden bridge spanning a canyon area, or climb wood beam stairs set into the hillside.  The cache was not supposed to be down the bridge.  Up we went.  Quite a climb with us laughing all the way.  Eventually we were getting worn out from the climb and the path became one with the woods we had been walking through on one side, and a drop masked by trees on the other.  Finally, we reached the top, and the path went a little further out.  There was a small wooden fence across the trail, but it had been broken down. At the final end of the walk, there were a couple of large rocks and an overlook with a huge valley below. Spectacular!  I had to walk alongside the fence through the wooded area on a slope to find the spot where the cache was. Once we had rested we walked back down, but decided, when we came to the wooden bridge to walk down it as well.  It ended with a small patio with benches where you could look out at a good overlook as well.

From there, we crossed the rest of Wisconsin and into Minnesota after dark.  We stopped in Alexandria for dinner and made our way home. We didn't find a cache in Minnesota, but since we were going to be in Fargo, It wouldn't be a problem.

Finally, we landed at Eliza's apartment. That felt good.  An opportunity to finally see our daughter and our grandkids.

The next day, we drove the camper home to Petersburg, checked out the house and parked the camper.  The next couple of days, we slept there, winterized the camper and the house. Then took both the truck and the Jeep to Fargo.  I was supposed to stay there to help Eliza out for a bit while Laurie was to go to California, so I needed to have a vehicle in Fargo.  We've picked up a few geocaches around the state from Petersburg to Fargo.  Mostly, it's just too cold to do much of that.

A few events ahead before travel begins anew.

War Memorials at McCoy Park in Fort Atkinson, Wi

Next, the rest stop and overlook trail
Rest stop 54 on I-94 Black River Falls
http://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/travel/road/rest-areas/54-black-river-falls.aspx

Law Enforcement Officer's tribute

The Trail

Near the top

Mineral deposits growing under rocks

Out to the end

Geocache

The end

The view

The fence

Bridge

Spectacular