Day 9

Starting mileage is 13163.

Today our route takes us west through the mountains to Grand Junction, then south to Durango.


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A view to the west, if you squint it's possible to see the Rockies .  We'll be heading through the mountains on our way to Grand Junction.

The highway winds it's way through the mountains, we are still in the foothills here.

This is further along still working our way up the mountains.

This is descending on the other side towards Grand Junction.  The road and a rail road bead follow a stream down out of the mountains.

Closer to Grand Junction the hills appear to be much softer resulting in greater erosion.  I've always found the variations in geography interesting.  These areas weren't that far apart, but are quite diverse.

Near Grand Junction we turned south towards Durango.  Our route takes us down route 550, the "Million Dollar Highway".  It's a great driving road, very picturesque, although as usual, our pictures don't do it justice.

Unfortunately, during the drive through the mountains we got an error in the suspension.  We'll have to have it checked out when we get to Phoenix (the closest Lamborghini dealer).  Just one of the reasons taking a Lamborghini on a long road trip adds to the adventure.

We made it to Durango with no further incidents.  There was a bike race going on so again many of the hotels were full, but I had learned my lesson and started booking rooms at least a day in advance so we didn't have any issues finding a room.

Day 8

Starting mileage is 12567

Our route today takes us north from Alliance to Wounded Knee, SD then on to Mt. Rushmore and finally south through Wyoming into Colorado.


View 7a in a larger map

Our first stop was at Carhenge, just north of Alliance.  This is a fairly accurate reconstruction of Stonehenge constructed out of cars.  In addition to the Stonehenge replica, they had a number of other sculptures made out of cars or car parts.

This piece is suppose to represent the four seasons of wheat.

A short piece up the road from carhenge was the South Dakota border.

We made our way to Wounded Knee, but had some difficulty finding the cemetery that had the mass grave.  We drove through town and saw a cemetery up a hill so we pulled off the road and started walking up the path.  We hadn't gotten 100 yards when a car drives up the path and asks us if we were lost, that the mass grave was at the other end of town.  It turns out that they guy that redirected us was a tribal leader and he had actually stopped to ask if we would mind if he took a picture of the car.

We left Wounded Knee and headed north for Mt. Rushmore.  Along the way, we ran into some road construction which left the road in less than optimal state.  At first it turned into loose gravel.

Not too much further we were routed off the road into a ravine where we were driving on loose dirt.  I wasn't sure if we were going to make it, and am thankful that it hadn't rained recently.   I'm glad that I had the entire car wrapped with venture shield before the trip, otherwise I'd have had many rock chips all over the car.

All this time, we found that in remote areas like this, we had no signal on the ipad which meant that it was useless for navigation, the GPS wasn't any good for finding alternative routes and the large scale paper maps we had didn't provide sufficient detail to navigate these back roads.  We were really driving around hoping we were headed in the right direction.  We did run into a small brush fire long the way.  Several cars had stopped and the police had just showed up.

We did finally make it to our intended destination, but not quite the way we had intended.  We were going to pass by Mt. Rushmore first and Crazy Horse after, but we ran into Crazy Horse first so we stopped.  They still have a ways to go before they achieve their ultimate goal.

Finding Mt. Rushmore from the Crazy Horse location was easy so and only took 30 minutes or so.  It is quite impressive in person, these pictures don't do it justice.

After departing Mt. Rushmore, we headed south through Wyoming.  It was really amazing how wide open the geography is.

We worked our way south through Wyoming on back roads and hit the interstate just north of Casper, WY and followed it south into Colorado.

With all of the stops we made, this was a long day and we were looking forward to finding a room in Ft. Collins which is a short distance south of Casper.  Unfortunately,  once again we were unable to find a hotel room anywhere in Ft. Collins, and were able to secure one of the last few at the hotel in Longmont which is 20 miles further south.  There was a large event in Casper that had all of the hotels as far as Ft. Collins booked.

Day 7

Starting mileage is approximately 11924, I had forgotten to take the picture before we left, this was about 5 miles after we started.

We had a long driving day today, just over 600 miles.  The route takes us into Iowa and across Nebraska ending up in the small town of Alliance.


View 6a in a larger map

Our first stop was in Weston Missouri to see the largest ball of string (not twine).  This was constructed from postal string by a guy named Finley Stephens.  Finley opened a small museum where he displayed his prize possessions.  The ball is now on a covered deck outside O'Malley's Irish Pub which is located in the same building as the museum that originally housed the ball.

Shortly after we left the ball of string, we passed into Iowa.  Our visit to Iowa was pretty short, we passed by what is claimed to be the largest coffee pot, but it's really just a water tower that the SAPP brothers chain has dressed up to look like a coffee pot.  We ran into this chain all over Nebraska.

We were only in Iowa for ab out 10 miles before we ran into the Nebraska state line.  This was one of our shorter state visits.

On the eastern side of Nebraska is a small town named Unadilla.  They claim to have a groundhog named Bill that also predicts the weather much like Punxutawney Phil.  Bill can be difficult to locate, but we found him in the bar.  This and the bank next door are his favorite hangouts.

Since we are visiting large objects today we also stopped in Gothenburg, NE at what is claimed to be the largest plow.  This was outside a reconstruction of a sod house and dedicated to the sod house settlers who settled this area.

Further into Gothenburg was an "original" pony express station.  I'm not sure how original this was, it had been moved and rebuilt by the local American Legion post.

It was a long driving day, over 600 miles total, but we finally ended up in Alliance, NE.  I was surprised once again that the first hotel we stopped at was again full.  This time it was a wedding party.

Day 6

Starting Mileage is 11365.

We've changed our route a bit, we had originally planned on going east to St. Louis, but instead went east across Oklahoma then north to Kansas City.  The route was changed to leave us a little more time to run over to Los Angeles later in the trip.


View Directions to overland park, ks in a larger map

We stopped by the local WalMart to pick up some magic tape to repair the eye glass compartment.  This should hold until I can get the parts.  It was surprising how much tape was required to hold the door closed.

Heading north out of Texas we actually need to turn around to find the Oklahoma sign, but we finally found it, it was quite subtle.

In the wide open planes you can see the rain approaching long before it hits.

I was surprised to see the golden arches stretched across interstate 44.  They seem to have the contract with Oklahoma to operate the rest areas.

We finally made it to Missouri...

where we turned North to Kansas City.  We actually stayed on the Kansas side of the City so we were able to pick up another state before the end of the day.

We were able to get a room at the first hotel we stopped at, but it was the last room they had.  There was a soccer tournament in the area.

Day 5

Starting Mileage is 11074

We have a fairly light trip today, our route today will take us to Wichita Falls, TX to visit one of my sisters.


View Segment 5 in a larger map

We started in Texarkana so we stopped by the Federal Building.  The unique think about the building is that it's the only Federal Building that straddles two states.  The post office located there is the only one to issue a bi-state post mark.

It was interesting that there were Welcome to Texas signs on most of the streets, and the Texas side of the Federal buildings had Texas flags on the light poles, but the Arkansas side didn't appear to have similar Arkansas flags or signs.

Our route took us through Paris, TX where we stopped to take a picture of the Texas style Eiffle Tower.  It wasn't actually very impressive, but I guess it serves it's purpose to get people to stop.

We did have a minor car issue while stopped at a gas station.  Although it's never used, the latch on the eye glass holder seems to have failed leaving it an an open position (it's attached to the roof of the passenger compartment behind the rear view mirror).  The only real problem is that it obscures the already limited view out the back.

We did seem to run into lots of grass hoppers, we'll have to find someplace we can get the car cleaned up.

Day 4

Starting Mileage10592

Our route takes us through Mississippi, Louisana and into Arkansas.  We did have a navigational error which added some additional miles but we still made our intended destination.


View Segment 4 in a larger map

The car had gotten quite dirty over the last couple of days (and many miles).  I ended up washing it in the hotel parking lot using trash cans with liners to hold the water.

Before we started out we needed to find an orthodontist to take care of clipping a couple of wires.  The folks at Granberry-Henderson were kind enough to take care of the problem and were kind enough to fit us in as soon as we got there, and at no charge.

We had intended to visit the large rocking chair that was suppose to be in Hattiesburg MS, but we couldn't find it so we moved on.  Today we hit what was left of Bonnie driving through some torrential rain.

A navigational error took us through Natches MS, crossing into Valida LA.  We never did find a welcome sign, only a concrete silhouette of Louisiana.  The roads were quite confusing, the GPS and paper maps indicated we were on route 65, but the road signs indicated 85, 425.  Only once did we see a sign for 65 as well.  We did make it to Arkansas and took a picture of both the Louisiana and Arkansas welcome signs.