Fort Collins-July 23

The original plan for today was to take a fairly short drive in the old Jeeps with the whole family, but the Jeeps didn't want to cooperate! Scott and Janie's '59 CJ3B has been in Yuma waiting for the broken overdrive to get repaired and returned so that David could get it installed. David had it put back together and it was running just fine so Keri and Becca were going to bring it to Fort Collins on the car trailer the week before, but after starting once, it wouldn't start again to get on the car trailer! Since David couldn't diagnose the problem remotely, it stayed in Yuma. Drew and Tara's '46 2A was having problems starting (turned out that the battery had gone bad) and then overheated, so it stayed in the garage as there wasn't time to figure out it's issues to trust it on a dirt road. We started out with David and I in our '05 (which we've discovered needs a new seal on the front diff), the Rebmans' Jeep Liberty, Scott's Honda Pilot and the Chapman's '77 S10 Jeep pick-up. We had just hit the dirt road a couple of miles when Brian in the pick-up turned around as he realized that he had a gas leak and didn't want to take a chance of running out of gas! We all turned around, found a lovely park along the Cache la Poudre River, had a picnic lunch and watched the kids play. Although it wasn't the original plan, we had a lovely day and hope to try this again next year!

Here are many pictures of the grandkids!

David providing a "thigh pillow" as Drew tries to re-clamp the fuel line.

Yup, I'm definitely "chopped liver" when PaPa is around!  

This tree made an amazing hiding spot for "hide and seek". 

Rolling down the hill!

Cousin Love!

Vernal, UT to Fort Collins, CO-July 21, 22

We had originally planned to spend another day in around Vernal and Flaming Gorge, but we were both feeling ready to head closer to home. We visited the Dinosaur museum in Vernal (very nice, well worth the price of admission) and then went to the quarry and visitor's center at Dinosaur National Monument. When we were there 41 years ago, there were paleontologists on scaffolding working away exposing the fossils on the side of the cliff. They stopped that work in the 90's so you don't get to see them working at this site any longer, but what they have uncovered is amazing.

After that, we headed east thinking we would stop in Craig or Steamboat or maybe Walden when we got tired, but we ended up driving all the way to Fort Collins. We got the oil changed in the Jeep on Friday morning and spent the afternoon with Tara and the boys. She made supper for us and Scott, Janie and the girls. Very pleasant evening!

Thigh bone of a Camarasaurus

Lava Hot Springs, ID to Steinaker State Park, Vernal, UT-July 20

This was mostly a day of traveling. We drove around Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming and Utah. We were there 40+ years ago with David's sister, Joann, when she and her family lived in Vernal. I wish we had time to find the hike that she had taken us on back then. I remember the wonderful scents of the conifer forest and the view of the water from the end of the hike.

We both remember Vernal as being an ugly little town back in about 1975. It is several times bigger and has the MOST beautiful pots of flowers of any town that we've ever visited! There were miles of them both along the sides of the street about every 30 ft. or so as well as hanging from the lamp posts. There were from one to five or six pots together. The pictures don't do them justice, but they were spectacular! A big part of Vernal's growth was because of the oil boom, but true to the "feast or famine" nature of the oil field, the town is now in the famine stage. We were talking with a gal who told us that the town went from a population of 30,000 to 10,000 in just three months when the bottom dropped out of the oil prices!

After supper, we drove out of town a ways to see some petroglyphs. It was an interesting spot and climb to see them and the lighting wasn't be best for taking pictures, but I've added a couple.

Flaming Gorge

"Tiny" front-end loader at a phosphate mine north of Vernal

Flag atop a cliff on our way to the pertoglyphs.

Lizard posing on a rock.

You can't tell from this angle, but this whole rock is free from the cliff except at the very base where the rock is dark again.

A few of the flower baskets in Vernal

And our sunset, back at camp.

Sula, MT to Lava Hot Springs, ID-July 19

Headed south and slowly toward home. After nearly two weeks of temps in the 60-70 range, this near 90° stuff isn’t any fun! Our main stop today was at Bannack State Park in Montana. It is as near to a true ghost town as I’ve ever been to as there are only a couple of houses that park personnel live in and all the rest are empty. And at least one is reportedly haunted. It started as a gold rush town in 1862-63 and ebbed and flowed until the 1960’s when nearly everyone was gone from the town. It is now a state park with camping outside of town and main street preserved with many buildings from the early days of the town. It was a wild town in its early days with many shootings and hangings. Even the sheriff and his deputies were hung for being the head of a criminal gang.

Here are pictures from today.

I love old barns!

David checking out one of the buildings in Bannack

This was the first county courthouse in the territory of Montana. When the county seat moved to Dillon, this was bought and remodeled into a hotel. The back part was added on for a kitchen, dining rooms and more rooms upstairs. 

What one of the hotel rooms would have looked like.

Beautiful front stairway.

Fancy hinges!

Some of the mining equipment with the hotel in the background

The bankers house. It was definitely the fanciest house on the street.

The Methodist Church, the only structure ever built in Bannack as a place of worship.

David thought the hat holders underneath the seats in the church were a nice touch.

I loved the way this old wood looked.

And I love old wheelbarrows.

One of two jails. In the early days of the town, they had a hard time finding anyone willing to watch prisoners as the men all wanted to be mining for gold, so the jails wasn't used much. Instead the "bad guys" were given a warning, run out of town, or hung.

 The Masonic Lodge built this in the 1870's. The school room was the bottom floor and the Masons met on the upper floor.

What the Masonic room would have looked like at the time. The rug is original.

A couple shots from our evening campsite.