Spent our last weekend in Lexington,Ky.  Friday we went to Berea, Ky,  Jack got to talk to some weavers and got inspired to get going on his weaving.  We also went to a Dollhouse museum, it was a little creepy.  Finally we got to see Theo!! Saturday we went to the horse races, very interesting.

Sunday HOME!!!!

       We spent the night in Dodge City, Kansas.  We took a walk around town and visited the museum and Boot Hill Cemetery, but did not have our camera with us.   
          We have stayed off the major highways since getting into Utah and it has been very interesting.  Today we found this great place check it out, there are tons of metal sculptures, lining a corner lot. We could not get enough of this place.

 

Saturday was a very good day, we started out visiting Edge of the Cedars State Park in Utah, and then Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado. Sorry no pictures, don't know what we were thinking!

We spent the night in Pagosa Springs, Co.  in a very nice campground.

Sunday started out great! We passed by Treasure falls in the morning,  We kept going up the mountain into a lot of snow.

Then to our first stop of the day Great Sand Dunes National Park

I had been here when I was 10 years old, Jack was a little skeptical about going to see sand dunes, thank goodness they were as spectacular as I remembered them!

Our very good day was about to turn into a very bad day.  We had planned on going to Pikes Peak and take the train ride to the top.  But we had drove up and down so many mountains in the last few days, that it did not sound appealing at all.  What we decided to do was go visit a few ghost towns instead.  We had bought a book about Colorado ghost towns, it had descriptions and maps to all of them, we decided on Cripple Creek, there were 3 ghost towns in that area.  In the map we had, it looked like there was only one way to get there, it looked like we had to go up north of the towns and then come down south.  But in the book we bought it clearly showed that the road went south to north through the towns, so to save about an hour and a half we decided to go that way.  We found the road and started on our way, about a mile up the road there was a sign that said if you car was more that 25 feet turn back, the truck and trailer are much longer than that, so we knew we should turn around but there was no place to turn around! A few hundred feet behind us was a ranch that we thought maybe we could turn around, so we backed up the road to the driveway, as we were realizing that it probably wouldn't work, a woman yelled from the ranch to keep driving there was a turn off about 1/4 mile up the road.  Ok that sounded good so off we went.Around the curve we went, no turn off but there was a mountain on each side of us and a creek (Cripple Creek) on the other side of us, oh and there were cows in the road.  So we now know that we have 22 miles to go on this road that was only getting worse.  We went over a one lane bridge, a one lane tunnel, that we only had inches to spare on each side.  We went 2.5 miles and then a sign that said this is your last chance to turn around and there was a turn around!!! Back to the main road in one piece!!!! You would think we had learned our lesson, NOT US.
       We decided to go up to the north end and check it out, almost 2 hours later we got to the north end of the road, and it looked great!  We guessed we had 2 hours of daylight left, we only had 1hour, but we were 18 miles from the campground.  We were sure we would have no problems, there was a casino and 3 campgrounds in the area, Woodalls said there were open until November. But the road started going up a mountain, noooooooo!  We are going to Cripple creek, named after the creek we drove by already, in the valley between 2 mountains. Now it is getting darker and we see the road divides, the casino is on the road to the right and the KOA is just up the road to the left, so the left road we take, and it is very dark now and the driveway to the KOA has a chain across it, it's not open and we can not turn around.  We have to keep going up the mountain, in the dark, with a trailer. At the top of the mountain was a look out, We could turn around and go back down the mountain in the dark.  We ended up spending the night in a hotel.

Camping in Page,Arizona

Moqui Cave, This was an old fashion roadside attraction , it cost less than $10 for us to get in, most of it was pretty bad, but the history of it was very interesting, it was a speakeasy in the 20's.

The next 4 pictures are in Utah on our way to Escalante, we passed through Brice Canyon NP.

Pictographs at Capital Reef National Park

The next pictures are our whole day of driving 8 hours and only 240 miles, the landscape changed at every turn.  We were on secondary roads and went up and down mountains.

Spent the night in Blanding Utah

We are in Utah, have been seeing a lot, but are having troubles with the photo card and can't load any pictures.  Hopefully we can fix that in a few days.

Monday we got the electrical problem fixed, hope that is the last of repairs!  We rode a train to the Grand Canyon and was entertained by train robbers and singers.

There is no picture that can do the Grand canyon justice, it is amazing, when you see it you are speechless!

                                                This is Box Canyon Ruins

Wupatki Pueblo