Jackson Hole WY to Clearfield Utah

There's a less artistic photo of the Elk Antler arch in Jackson Hole for you. :) In the morning we walked around town, found some postcards to buy and then headed to Utah. On our way out of Jackson Hole, on the side of the highway, we saw a Sheriff and two inmates who, I swear, were wearing orange and white striped jumpsuits and digging a hole or something. It fit in very nicely with the old West feel of the town and definitely made me look twice.

Along our drive we saw some interesting things:

A Liquor Drive Thru at the gas station,

Sheep!

a truck with my name on it. Granted, my name spelled differently but still!

Along the way we also drove through the Rocky Mountains on a path we took the last time we were out that way. Last time it was in April and the mountains were covered in snow. It was raining and foggy and very moody and I loved it. This time everything was green, the sky was blue and there were puffy white clouds. We stopped at a pull out that we had stopped at last time and took the same photos as best we could remember. At some point I'll post the old photos alongside the new ones, but for now:

For a late lunch we finally hit up a Chick-Fil-A. We both love Chick-Fil-A, but there aren't very many in the Northeast and there are NONE in Connecticut, so we always get excited when we find one. It was about 103 degrees outside and one of their employees was in a cow suit outside waving to people, we felt kinda bad for him or her. The food was delicious. 

In Utah, we stayed with my cousin Elizabeth and her husband and three kids. We spent some time chatting with Liz, playing Mad Libs with her daughter Zoe, playing with the cat Cooper and just relaxing. We watched The Three Amigos, which both Liz and Matt were astonished that I'd never seen. :) I liked it.

Route 66: Day 5 Oklahoma - New Mexico

 Day 5 was a long on driving and no so much on attractions - but the attractions we did stop for were pretty awesome so it was a really good day. At it's hottest, though, it was 104 degrees with a brutal hot wind coming at us while we were at Cadillac Ranch in Texas.

First of all, my apologies on the delay in continuing this story, but we've had a series of internet problems / arriving too late to do anything but sleep nights.

 We drove a nice piece of Route 66 through Oklahoma, but the signs weren't as good as the previous states and we got a tad lost. Driving through corn fields and cattle grazing land, not for the first time, wondering where we went wrong. It was fun though, and a beautiful blue skies day. Once we got back on track we crossed the bright yellow pony bridge that you see above.

 Our next stop was a Route 66 museum in Clinton Oklahoma which led you through the decades of Route 66 from beginning to end. There were lots of informational things to read, full displays to represent each era, music you could listen to and lots of memorabilia as well. It was a fun little stop and a great museum.

Not long after we stopped at another Route 66 Museum but we decided to just walk around the outdoor "cowtown" instead of the museum inside. One thing we noticed first was the GIANT Route 66 sign guiding us into the parking lot.

The "Cowtown" was just like an old western town with store fronts and an open ice cream parlor. There were also a few large Kachina Dolls outside. Around this time the heat became ridiculous. We hopped the highway all the way to Texas and next stopped at Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo.

Cadillac Ranch is similar to Carhenge in Nebraska, but the cars are in a row instead of in a Stonehenge formation. They are also heavily graffitied by the crowds that come to see them. It's a pretty cool sight, walking down a path in a huge wheat field and arriving at this row of cars. At 104 degrees with a hot hot wind, we didn't stay too terribly long but I think I got some great photos and I'm really glad we went.

As we passed from Texas to New Mexico we started to see mountains in the distance, an exciting thing after so much flat farm land and desert. We drove through Tucumcari - a town that used to be a hot spot on Route 66 but is now a bit rundown. Their motto is Tucumcari Tonight! and there are some great hotel signs and unique buildings to take photos of. I think I got some great shots here as well and I'm excited to really look at them when I get home.

From Tucumcari we drove through more desert and up to Santa Fe New Mexico. We rode into town just as the sun was setting and the view was beautiful. I wish we could have spent more time there, but unfortunately we had to keep moving. I think that is the first place we stopped that I consciously thought "I should come back here sometime". One thing that amazed us both was a double decker TRAIN that passed by when we were at a red light. I was so baffled I didn't know what to think of it, but upon later thought - damn that's cool!

We set up our plan for the next day and crashed for the night. Stay tuned, another post coming right up!

The Heat Defeated Us

Looking outside we thought - hey it looks like a beautiful day to go hiking. So we did. We checked the weather (it said 86, but since when is weather.com ever right?), put on some shorts and headin on up to Sleeping Giant.

We printed out directions for a series of letterboxes and were ready for action.

It seemed hot out, but that was okay. We hiked to the first letterbox - but couldn't find it. The directions said that some of the other ones might be missing, so we just guessed this one was missing too. Sad, but there were more to go. Unfortunately, we hadn't read the directions ahead of time - and this hike was going to take us up the Giant's Head, which is a very steep hike that I am just not up for right now. I need to be in much better shape to tackle that. It's one of the hardest hikes at Sleeping Giant.

So we headed back with the intention of meeting up with the next set of directions on the tower trail, but that was when the heat defeated us. Some reports say it hit 95 degrees today and I wouldn't doubt it. All I know is that is strangely muggy and hot for April and I don't like it much. I want Spring, not Summer. I was having trouble breathing and my allergies were acting up, which wasn't helping. Normally I'm not quite this wimpy, but it was just too hot to be out there.

We've decided to go back on a more normal Spring day, and hopefully next time our hike will last longer than 30 minutes.

Have you ever had a day when the humidity just wore you out before you got very far?