Day 11
Sunday, June 9, 2019
Firehole Canyon Campground
We enjoyed a mostly peaceful night, with only a hot-rodding pickup taking a noisy joyride through the campground late at night. Thankfully, they moved on without incident. It had been a cold night. We didn’t know how cold until Fa, our campground host, made his rounds and mentioned that his dishwater had a layer of ice on the top of it. Brrrr! That was the coldest night we had ever spent in our Eureka! Sunrise, and I believe it still holds that distinction.
There’s something about camping in the cold, though. I never would’ve thought we could do that if I had known it would be cold enough to freeze water beforehand. The knowledge that we could do it, felt like we had mastered something. We were prepared with fleece layers, fresh socks, and extra blankets, so we weren’t cold inside the tent. It’s surprising how warm one can be inside of a thin layer of fabric.
Meet Fa
Our campground host was such an interesting character. Fa was from Switzerland. He walked around the campground barefoot, which was not something we had seen before in a campground host. It kind of made sense after learning more about his past. Megan was a journalism student at the time, so she decided to ask if she could interview him. He had been in the music industry and lived in New York City, where he made mixes of different genres of music, one of which was for the background music of a book. He had become burned out from the long hours, so he and his wife decided to move west to connect with the earth and become campground hosts. Everyone has a story to tell, some more interesting than others.
Fa gave Megan one of his records and a CD of the background music for the book, Bingo Palace.
We left our campground much later than we normally would, but the time spent connecting with interesting people might possibly be just as memorable as the scenery. The Flaming Gorge area might not be high on the list of bucket list places to visit, but it’s a beautiful area worth another look someday.
I never used to like to drive across Wyoming, but there are some roads that have better scenery than others. We took Highway 220 toward Casper and these photos are near the Pathfinder Reservoir. We spent the entire day driving across Wyoming, headed toward Spearfish to camp in the Spearfish City Campground. We arrived after dark and found an open tent site.
Day 12
Monday, June 10, 2019
Spearfish Canyon
The trouble with spending days and nights in the desert in June is that returning to South Dakota feels like a hot, wet dishrag. Every time. When I would plan trips and ask questions on Trip Advisor, I would get told that it’s crazy to visit the desert in June, that it’s like opening an oven door, but when you’re used to the hot, wet dishrag feeling, a blast of dry heat from an open oven door seems way better!
We had plenty of time to get home that day, so we took a drive through Spearfish Canyon. I had read about the Devil’s Bathtub, so we went in search of that. It didn’t take us long to realize that this was a trail with a stream crossing, which we were not prepared for, so we turned around. I looked it up later and found out that the trail has multiple stream crossings, so I was glad we had turned around.
The Wall
I had also read about “The Wall,” a boon-docking area near the Badlands, and I wanted to find out if that would be a viable option for tent camping on a future roadtrip. There is a wire gate at the entrance, which needs to be opened and then closed behind you so the cattle don’t escape. Then it’s a rough drive uphill to reach the camping area. The views were spectacular and it would be a great for folks in RVs, but we decided that tent camping up there was probably not a good idea. The area is high on a ridge, in a prime location to be super windy. The nearby cow pies also didn’t appeal to us as tent campers, so I crossed it off my list of potential campsites. I’m assuming we drove through the Badlands after that, but I didn’t take any pictures of it in the midday sun. We made it home well before the sun set this time.
Road Trip Wrap-Up
We visited so many, many beautiful places on this road trip! We crossed off two more states, Nevada and California, which meant we had visited every state west of the Mississippi River! This was our longest trip, and it still holds the record for the number of miles traveled. It ended up being a lot more miles than I had planned, probably because we had no plan after the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I still tend to plan trips where the route home is open to interpretation, but I do try to have a better plan so I know how many miles and days the trip will take.
If we could do the same trip over again, I would make it more of a loop, instead of backtracking over so many of the same places. I would probably leave off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and possibly add more of California along the Eastern Sierras. I had considered that when I planned the trip, but it was going to be more miles…which would’ve actually been fewer miles than this trip ended up being. I don’t regret skipping Monument Valley and going back through Moab, though. With the route we took, we were able to catch Cedar Breaks and Dinosaur National Monuments.
Of all the places we went, Snow Canyon State Park is high on the list of places to revisit someday. We didn’t know it would be so beautiful, so our morning there was not nearly enough time to take it all in. That is the one thing about sampling many different places, rather than spending a lot of time in one place…there’s always something left to see on a future visit.
We saw everything we planned to see, plus many places we had not planned to see. We covered a lot of territory in twelve days! I’ve included some stats from the trip, as well as links to each day.
Day 1: Drive across SD to Devil’s Tower National Monument in WY
Day 2: National Trails Visitor Center, Independence Rock, Devil’s Gate, Drive to Utah
Day 3: Drive through Utah, Zion National Park - Kolob Canyons
Day 4: Valley of Fire State Park, Drive to Joshua Tree National Park
Day 5: Joshua Tree National Park, Palm Springs, CA
Day 6, Part 1: Joshua Tree National Park Wilderness Hike
Day 6, Part 2: Mojave Preserve, Las Vegas Strip
Day 7: Snow Canyon State Park, Pipe Spring NM, Grand Canyon North Rim
Day 8: Grand Canyon North Rim, Bryce Canyon National Park
Day 9: Cedar Breaks NM, Drive across Utah
Day 10: Dinosaur NM, Flaming Gorge, Firehole Canyon Campground
Day 11: Drive across Wyoming, Spearfish Campground
Day 12: Spearfish Canyon, Badlands National Park, Drive home