Chapter 20: Yeah, But John, When Pirates Of The Caribbean Breaks Down, The Pirates Don’t Eat The Tourists.
I made an executive decision for this TR. This is the beauty of running a dictatorship. The last two days of our trip were filled with a lot of driving as we needed to get back to Denver for the flight home. As such, the interesting parts were fewer and farther between. So I’m going to combine them here and finish off the travel days. Then I can do a wrap-up and move on to a TR for my weekend getaway with Julie to Disney World, which you have all been clamoring for over the last few weeks.
Well, some of you.
Ok, nobody’s exactly clamoring for it, but we did get some nice photos I can post. And I need to work on that one before our next summer trip so I can keep these things spaced out. Some of you folks do multiple TR’s at once, and I honestly don’t know how you manage it.
Also, today (February 5) is Sarah’s 14th birthday. So now we have both a 14-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy in the house at the same time. Because we are idiots. I honestly can’t believe 14 years have passed by already. Anyway, I’m so proud of this young lady. She’s such a sweet, easygoing person. She’s priceless to me. It’s a privilege to be her father.
Now, onto the story…
We’d reached that point of the trip. You know the one. It’s the point where you’ve checked everything off the itinerary and seen everything you had hoped to see. Now there’s nothing to look forward to except the trip back home.
I hate that part.
Anticipation is always part of the fun, but it doesn’t work as well when you’re anticipating a 7-hour drive across nothingness. Such is the price of visiting some of these remote locations.
Sadly, we packed up the van and said goodbye to the Old Faithful Inn. We can’t wait to go back someday.
We had a full day of driving ahead of us, so naturally we made our first stop after about 20 miles, before we even left Yellowstone. We pulled into the parking lot for the visitor center at the West Thumb Geyser Basin. It lies on the western shore of Yellowstone Lake, which is the largest body of freshwater above 7,000 ft. elevation in North America. We figured we should at least be able to say we’d seen it.
Or, Julie and I did. The kids didn’t bother getting out of the van. Baby Drew was already feeling the effects of no nap yesterday. Either that, or the park pamphlets were not very interesting.
Julie and I took turns walking around the visitor center to get a view of the lake. We both determined that it was still there.
Back on the road, we headed south out of Yellowstone. Before long, we were once again entering Grand Teton National Park. I will always love the fact that these two parks back right up to each other. The one-two punch of Yellowstone’s unique thermal landscape and the jaw-dropping beauty of Grand Teton makes it one of my favorite places on earth to visit. We stopped at the Oxbow Bend overlook once more to drink in the beauty of the landscape.
Also, I really wanted to see more moose. Or meese. But it was not meant to be.
We decided to move on and enjoyed the scenery as we drove south. We made it to Jackson a little after 11:00 and figured it was a good spot to stop for lunch, being that it was the last outpost of civilization we’d see for a while. No PB&J today—it was time to treat the family right!
We stopped at McDonald’s.
And then, we drove. Leaving Jackson, you can distract yourself for a while with more mountain scenery as you drive through the Gros Ventre Wilderness. But after a little while, you leave the mountains and enter the desert plains, and…well, let’s just hope you have a full charge on your iPods and portable DVD players. Not for me, of course. I’m driving.
I wish I had a way to make the rest of Wyoming interesting, but there’s just nothing there. McDonald’s was very happy with us on this day, since we made a pit stop in Rock Springs for milkshakes to break up the drive.
Fast-forward to Utah.
Upon crossing the border, we entered the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area.
See? I wouldn’t lie to you.
Truth be told, there’s not much to see from the road through here. It’s meant to be experienced by boat, as most of the recreational area is a lake formed by a dam on the Green River that feeds the Flaming Gorge power plant. But we found a way to have fun. After climbing one bluff, I laid off the gas pedal and started coasting down the other side. We actually made it a full 10 miles before I had to hit the gas pedal again.
It’s the little things, when you’re stuck in a van all day.
There’s an overlook near the power plant. Here’s the best dam photo we could get from there.
And the rest of the view from the dam overlook.
Approaching late afternoon, we arrived at our destination for the evening: Vernal, Utah. I chose this place mostly because after we’d been roughing it in the most remote areas of Wyoming for several days, I wanted to re-enter civilization with a touch of class.
Sadly, I had not learned anything from our trip the previous summer, when we’d entered Utah on a Sunday and found that the entire state was closed on Sundays. Three guesses what today was, and the first two don’t count.
But that’s ok. We had a backup plan: the pizza and pool party! First we’d go swimming, and then order pizzas for the room. The wood-fired pizza shop down the street was closed, but Domino’s was open. Hey, it beat Chuck E. Cheese.
Ok, first we changed into our bathing suits. THEN it was time to hit the pool.
The kids were all excited, because, you know, swimming pool. I walked up to the edge, dipped my big toe in…
…and watched in horror as it immediately froze solid, turned black, and fell off.
Ok, not really. But it felt like it. I think we could have gone swimming in warmer water in some of the glacial lakes back in the Tetons. Julie and I exchanged a look like, “Do we really want to do this?”
The kids, of course, jumped right in. There could be a dead elephant floating in the middle of live great white sharks surrounded by pond scum in there, and they’d still want to go swimming in the hotel pool. So I sucked it up and jumped in, too.
You know when you’re in the shower and the hot water suddenly craps out and you get that ice-cold blast on your back, and suddenly you find you can no longer exhale? Imagine that for about 20 minutes. Julie swam with the baby for a few minute and then announced she would go ahead and dry off and head up to order the pizzas. Taking one for the team. Finally I gave up and jumped in the hot tub, which felt like heaven and chocolate kisses.
The next day, we ate our cinnamon rolls and then left on our final drive. There was one more landmark to visit:
Dinosaur National Monument.
When I’d planned the trip, I had looked for ways to break up the final drive back to Denver. Dinosaur is located near Vernal, in the northeastern corner of the state of Utah. It’s really not close to anything at all. But “close” is a relative term, and I figured this trip was going to be our only chance to see the place.
In 1909, a paleontologist named Earl Douglass discovered the fossil bed at this site. It was an amazing find—thousands upon thousands of dinosaur bones lay entombed within the sandstone near the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers. No one knows for sure why so many fossils were concentrated in this one spot. The best guess is that dinosaurs may have been caught in a mudslide or otherwise died near the river, and the natural flow of the waterways made this prime spot for the waters to deposit them. President Woodrow Wilson declared the dinosaur quarry a national monument in 1915. Instead of harvesting every fossil they could find, the National Park Service has preserved the quarry itself, making hundreds of fossils visible still in the rock itself for all visitors who enter.
During the summer months, crowd control requires visitors to park at the visitor center and then take a tram up to the quarry itself. Unless, that is you follow Rope Drop strategy and get there in the first hour. Then you can just drive up to the quarry yourself. That’s what we did.
It doesn’t take long to complete a visit here, but I think it was worth the effort. I know I use the word “unique” quite a bit, but really, where else do you get to see actual dinosaur bones embedded in a hillside?
The lower floor of the building has several exhibits. You can compare a dinosaur’s femur to, say, an 18-month-old toddler (toddler not included).
Many of the bones that were found belong to the allosaurus, modeled in plaster here.
You’re even allowed to touch some of the real fossils where they lie.
I’m sure he’ll remember this experience forever.
Anyway, we enjoyed the visit—especially my dinosaur-loving daughter. But we couldn’t stay long because we had yet another long drive ahead of us in order to get back to Denver. Also, the bathing suits hadn’t yet dried out from the pool the night before, so we needed to give them some time in our redneck dryer.
It wasn’t long before we saw this:
We’re hoping that one day, we’ll have photos of the welcome signs for all 50 states and can put them together into a collage or something. Just for fun.
Anyway, we settled in for yet another long drive through barren terrain. We eventually found I-70 again at Rifle, Colorado. Not being able to bear the thought of PB&J again, we instead found ourselves eating at McDonald’s. Not necessarily because we wanted more McDonald’s, but they had a playground so the kids could bounce off the walls in there for a little while. You do what you gotta do.
Anyway, I can once again confirm that I-70 through the Rockies is one of the best interstate drives in the entire country. Just gorgeous scenery.
By late afternoon, we were back in the city of Denver. We drove all the way downtown and found a parking garage at The Pavilions, a shopping center located adjacent to 16th Street. 16th Street has been turned into a sort of town square in the city—it’s a long pedestrian mall where you can wander among shops and restaurants.
Our dinner destination was the
5280 Burger Bar, right there in the Pavilions. I’d stumbled onto this place somehow when researching Denver restaurants, and loved the various burger combinations on the menu. But then I had a big laugh when I saw the name of the “build your own burger” option on the menu. You can see it listed in the lower right portion of this photo.
I do love a place with a sense of humor.
One downside—you have to order your sides as an extra, which I always find a little chintzy on the part of the restaurant. However, we did learn that every single thing in this place was made from scratch—burger patties, buns, bacon, fries, onion rings, even the sauces and ketchup. And the sides were big enough to share. Also, they let us combine the fries and onion rings.
Everything was amazing. I had the “Boss Hog”: pulled pork, cheese, bacon, and bbq sauce. Sarah went with the “Vail Valley”: white cheddar, fried onion straws, and skipped the sauce. Julie couldn’t decide between the “Fat Boy” (probably reminded her of me) and the “5280 Prime”. Luckily, they had an “I Can’t Decide” option on the menu where she could get 2 sliders in different styles for $12.95. Perfect.
Great, great food, and highly recommended.
Now, you may have noticed in an earlier photo that not only are they a burger bar, but they have their own ice cream shop as well. As painful as it was, I decided I would be derelict in my duty as a Trip Reporter if I did not sample this for you.
Once again, we learned that everything is made completely from scratch. Ok, maybe they don’t milk their own cows, but still. My kids like to make fun of me because whenever we get ice cream, I will almost always order cookies & cream. They say it’s because I’m “boring” or “unadventurous”. I say it’s because I have tried other flavors from time to time and can never find any that improve upon the flavor of cookies & cream. Nevertheless, Sarah loves to get in line with me and say, “So, Dad, are you going to walk on the wild side and order cookies & cream?”
Yes, and I’ll pay with my own money. How will you pay for yours?
Anyway, they had Oreo on the menu, so the jokes started. But I soon learned that this was not your standard cookies & cream. The server informed us that they didn’t just mix oreo chunks into vanilla ice cream. Instead, they said the ice cream was actual Oreos that had been creamed(!). Don’t ask me how that works, because I have no idea. Anyway, after they make the ice cream from the Oreos, they also pour more Oreo chunks in.
It tasted amazing. Best cookies & cream I’ve ever had. It’s hard to describe except to say that it tasted like an Oreo in ice cream form. I found myself wishing I had 5 more scoops.
Naturally, the 5280 Burger (and Ice Cream) Bar is a shoo-in for a Drooling Homer Award for Excellence in Unpretentious Dining.
And so it came to pass that on the last night of our vacation, after covering approximately 3,000 miles, 5 states, and 10 National Park sites, we spent our final moments eating homemade ice cream on a pleasant summer evening in downtown Denver.
There’s nothing I really need to tell you about the trip home except that we made it safely, and the rental car employee was impressed at how many miles we’d put on the van in 2 weeks. Upon landing in Philadelphia, we received the bad news about Julie’s father, but I’ve already told that story. Now we’re more interested in the next story—the next adventure to come.
Coming Up Next: final thoughts, wrap-up, and a lazy man’s PTR of our next summer vacation plan.
Especially with the stubbornness.
to Sarah........although just a wee bit late. 
Amazing! 
Again? I understand the bouncing off the walls part, but three times in a row! Well excluding the pizza.
