Carol writes: One lesson we learned very quickly when we first started our nomadic life on the road was to have all spring and summer holiday reservations made well ahead of time, because the campgrounds will be full!
GRAND JUNCTION, COLORADO
And so, as the 2019 summer vacation season got underway, we headed to Grand Junction, Colorado, for the Memorial Day weekend. Here, the lower elevation offered a very good chance of warm, sunny days.
Nothing says Grand Junction like the beautifully eroded cliffs that dominate the imposing topography alongside the Colorado River at the confluence with the Gunnison River.
We were assigned a deluxe KOA campsite, and ours even had its own grill. Several weekend cookouts immediately entered the planning stages…
For 25 years, Al and I had called Colorado our home, so it seemed somewhat appropriate that our last tourist stop in the Centennial State was at the Colorado National Monument, which joined the park system to preserve the plateau and canyon country that rises 2000 feet above the Grand Valley of the Colorado River.
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| The Grand Valley |
The road through the monument wound upward to the top of the plateau where a grandiose view of the valley below invited one to linger.
Short trails led to sweeping viewpoints of some mighty remarkable Colorado scenery that we have grown to love.
CRAIG, COLORADO
After the Memorial Day weekend stay in Grand Junction, we headed north to Craig, Colorado, located in Moffat County on the high plains of northwest Colorado. We found Colorado’s Great Northwest to be very sparsely populated, having very few towns of any size… and that included Craig.
In Craig we closed out our last 3 days in Colorado on ‘Carol’s Court’
… where there wasn’t a whole lot to do. In between rain showers, we occupied ourselves by scouting out the town’s booksellers and coffee shops, in addition to antique stores in search of vintage beads for my new hobby.
DOUGLAS, WYOMING
Our first of two stops in Wyoming was for 3 days in the tiny town of Douglas, home of the original jackalope. We even saw jackalopes in the campground!
Like Craig, Douglas was also a bit on the quiet side, but we were setting a fast travel schedule, so we didn’t mind not doing a whole lot besides watching the “buffalo roam”
and the “antelope play.”
SUNDANCE, WYOMING
From Douglas, we continued heading north all the way up to Sundance, Wyoming, along the I-90 corridor. The town of Sundance will forever be enshrined in folklore about Harry Longabaugh (a.k.a. The Sundance Kid), who was jailed in Sundance for 18 months, then joined up with Butch Cassidy to wage the longest crime spree in American history.
The opportunity to visit Devils Tower National Monument made Sundance, Wyoming, a perfect stop-off point along our route north. Devils Tower was designated as our nation’s first national monument in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt. This geologic wonder in northeastern Wyoming rises 865 feet into the air at the point where Black Hills pine forests merge with rolling prairie grasslands.
The tower was formed when molten magma cooled underground into hexagonal columns and then was exposed by means of erosion over millions of years.
Devils Tower has become world famous in the rock climbing community and as such draws over 5000 climbers a year. From the trail around the tower, an historic wooden ladder dating back to the very first ascent in 1893 was still visible in a giant crack between hexagonal columns.
Although I wasn’t a fan of the Circle of Sacred Smoke sculpture, I couldn’t resist the urge to incorporate it into the requisite arty shot of the tower. This sculpture was supposed to represent a puff of smoke from a ceremonial pipe used by the Native American people who still consider the tower to be a sacred place.
The mystique around Devils Tower made it the perfect location for a movie about extraterrestrials called “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” which was filmed on site in 1978.
From our base camp in Sundance, a visit to the rollicking Wild West town of Deadwood made for a very enjoyable day.
In 1875 the discovery of gold “in the gulch” of a narrow canyon started the Black Hills gold rush. This canyon became known as "Deadwood Gulch," because of all the dead trees that lined the canyon walls at the time.
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| Present-day Deadwood |
The story of Deadwood in its early years encompassed a tale of anonymous miners, famous legends, a catastrophic fire, a devastating flood, and a host of log saloons.
The early history of Deadwood is tied intimately with Wild West legends like Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Seth Bullock (Deadwood’s first sheriff). All three are buried at Mt. Moriah Cemetery, along with many other notable residents of Deadwood. The entire cemetery showcased the marvelous restoration project that was paid for with gambling profits in the mid-1990s.
The side-by-side gravesites of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok, folk heroes of the American West, were nicely restored and stabilized with retaining walls.
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| Graves of Wild Bill Hickok (left) and Calamity Jane (right) |
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| Internet photo |
It was Calamity Jane’s dying wish that she be buried beside Wild Bill Hickok; at Mt. Moriah Cemetery, she got her wish.
Meanwhile, back in town, we peeked inside the original “Number 10” saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was murdered by Jack McCall with a shot to the back of the head. Wild Bill was playing poker at the time with his back to the door, holding the so-called dead man’s hand—two pairs: black aces and eights.
“Number 10” displayed tasteful and appropriate mementos recalling that fateful day.
The storefronts of Deadwood were incredibly picturesque,
and evoked an authentic old western ambience, some with a touch of humor, such as the windows through which ladies of the night advertised their “wares.”
The seated bronze statue of Wild Bill Hickok invited shameless tourist selfies…
Although many of Deadwood’s historic buildings have been converted into casinos, in our opinion Deadwood did not appear consumed with a distasteful gambling atmosphere. Instead, we felt the town fathers did a very good job of managing gaming profits to pay for the continuing restoration of this truly historic town straight out of the Wild West.
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