national-parks – Dave Saari

Pat and Dave’s Winter Warmup – PART 3: Road Trip Home

April 20, 2025April 20, 2025 by davesaari

Part 2 of this travel blog series described the places of interest we saw in and around Green Valley, AZ. This final installment describes the fun stuff we did as we drove back home to Minneapolis. As a reminder, here is a map of the overall journey, including the main points of interest covered in this installment:

Grand Canyon West: We departed from the Canoa Ranch Golf Resort at 8:30 AM on Friday, March 28, heading northwest toward Kingman, AZ, where we stayed the night. On Saturday morning, we drove north toward Grand Canyon West, the recreation area owned and operated by the Hualapai native American tribe and best known for the Skywalk, which is billed as “a horseshoe-shaped bridge made of glass allowing visitors to walk 4,000 ft above the canyon floor.” (More about that language later.)

After driving for some 40 or 50 miles through dry scrubland which seemed to be used almost exclusively for cattle grazing, we were quite surprised to find ourselves driving past Joshua trees, then what appeared to be thriving orchards growing nut trees of some sort, perhaps walnuts. As we continued in a northeasterly direction toward Grand Canyon West, the Joshua trees became more and more abundant, until they completely dominated the landscape. Road signage informed us that we were in the Arizona Joshua Tree Forest, which seemed to me to have many more Joshua trees than the more well-known Joshua Tree National Park located 230 miles to the southwest in California. We stopped at a nice little nature preserve where we admired the trees and other desert flora and also learned something about the Hualapai tribe.

View from an Overlook in the Arizona Joshua Tree Forest

Nature Preserve in the Arizona Joshua Tree Forest

Map of Former Hualapai Territorial Homelands (Current Hualapai reservation approximate outline is shown in yellow)

We arrived at Grand Canyon West at about 12:30 to find the huge parking lot something like 10% occupied by vehicles. We strolled over to the Visitor Center, where the electronic tickets I’d purchased the day before were scanned and we boarded a bus to take us a few miles north to Eagle Point, the first of two stops near the canyon rim. Its name derives from the huge natural rock formation resembling an eagle with outspread wings. Once there, I scanned my ticket to enter the famous Skywalk, while Pat wandered around nearby – she was too much of a chicken to go on the Skywalk.

Marketing Photo of Skywalk by Hualapai Tribe

After the Skywalk, we walked along the canyon rim and then along a loop trail that passed by several types of traditional native American dwellings and structures. Pat and I both felt that the Hualapai tribe has done a very nice job of providing educational materials honoring the cultures of their own and other neighboring tribes.

Eagle Point Marker in front of Eagle Rock Formation

The Eagle’s Head is in the Middle, the Wings Outspread to Either Side

Dwelling Structure on Eagle Point Loop Trail

We then boarded the bus again for a short drive to the second stop, Guano Point. This name came about as a result of a bat cave discovered by boaters on the Colorado River in the 1930s. They successfully sold their dream of riches from guano mining to the U.S. Guano Corporation, who constructed a tramway system to extract guano from the cave to the canyon rim at what became known as Guano Point, as well as roads to transport the valuable shit to market. The cave’s guano supply, having been vastly exaggerated by the original discoverers, ran out in 1959. To add insult to injury, a U.S Air Force Top Gun wannabe wiped out the tram cable while hot dogging in the canyon some years later. Presently, the tramway structures have been left intact as a monument to man’s attempt to mine the Canyon, and the roads built by the mine operators are now used for Grand Canyon West tourism buses. At any rate, we disembarked at Guano Point, had a nice lunch of pulled pork and coleslaw, and walked around the site with our mouths agape as we took in the stunning views.

As we were leaving the recreation area, the Visitor Center had become jam-packed with people and the number of cars in the parking lot had probably quadrupled or more. This bore out the advice we had heard that the busiest times were between about 1 and 4 PM.

Before I move on to our subsequent points of interest, let me say a few words about the Skywalk and the recreation area in general. Perhaps you will have noticed from the words I quoted above that the Hualapai do not actually state that the Skywalk overhangs the Grand Canyon, although I suspect most people think it does – until they actually visit the place. You’ll notice from the pictures above that the Skywalk, while in fact some 4,000 feet higher than the Colorado River, does not actually extend beyond the canyon rim. Once I thought realistically about it, I realized that it would probably be impossible to construct such a structure – it would need to be extremely long, would probably cost billions, and would probably cause irreparable damage to the natural beauty of the canyon. The Skywalk does provide beautiful views of the canyon from an entirely safe vantage point, actually much safer than walking near the canyon rim, and does provide a feeling of being suspended in the air. It’s a great marketing “hook” and probably is the primary reason that many people go to the recreation area. In fact, it’s what hooked me.

At first, I was a bit annoyed by this discovery, but the sheer beauty of the rugged overlooks at Eagle Point and Guano Point were well worth the price of admission. Our experience at Grand Canyon West was much more intimate than our visits to the Grand Canyon National Park. The crowds were smaller, there were no CCC-built walls along the rim, leaving a much more natural view, and the vistas were as spectacular as anything at the National Park. If anyone asks me which of the two places to visit, I’d say go see both. They each offer something a bit different and very rewarding. Oh, and I failed to mention that the Hualapai recreation area also has a zipline for the adventurous, which both Pat and I were too chicken to try.

I’ll add one final note regarding the Hualapai tribe and their great success in drawing tourist dollars to their reservation. I learned that Guano Point is sacred to the Hualapai for a very poignant reason. In 1874, the U.S. military forced the Hualapai people to march from their traditional lands in western Arizona to a relocation camp at La Paz, on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. This journey was physically demanding and resulted in many deaths due to disease and lack of resources. Many Hualapai weren’t able to escape the “Long Walk to La Paz.” These tribespeople, called the lost souls, jumped off the canyon edge to their deaths at what is now called Guano Point rather than be captured by the military. The tribe was eventually given their own reservation, a small portion of their ancestral homeland, and allowed to return. I find it very hard to begrudge a people so resilient as to have reestablished themselves once again and discovered a way to thrive in the modern world. Far from feeling “fleeced” by the slight deception regarding the Skywalk, I’m thrilled that Pat and I got to experience this special place.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area and St. George, UT: After leaving Grand Canyon West, we drove to the Hoover Dam Lodge, overlooking Lake Mead, to spend the night. On Sunday, March 30, we drove to Richfield, UT, via St. George. Rather than take the faster freeway route through the Las Vegas area, we drove through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, using my priceless Senior National Parks Pass for free entry. We didn’t actually stop anywhere except at St. George to charge the car, but we thoroughly enjoyed our leisurely drive (pulling over frequently to let impatient drivers speed past) and the beautiful scenery around Lake Mead, which we have visited several times during previous travel adventures. The mountain passes following the Virgin River into St. George are also absolutely gorgeous, so that Sunday’s travels were among our most enjoyable of the entire trip.

Lake Mead View from Hoover Dam Lodge Trail

So, why aren’t there more pictures? Since I did most of the driving, I couldn’t be taking pictures, and Pat doesn’t like to take pictures out the car windows because they usually turn out to be disappointing. Sorry.

Capitol Reef National Park: After spending Sunday night at a hotel in Richfield, we drove to Capitol Reef National Park, the 29^th National Park we’ve visited so far and the only one in Utah that we hadn’t visited previously. The park takes its name from white domes of Navajo Sandstone that resemble the dome of the U.S. Capitol building, and a formidable ridge of rocky cliffs that early Mormon settlers, who settled in a town they named Fruita due to the fruit orchards they established there, likened to a “reef.” Per the National Park Service brochure:

“Capitol Reef’s defining geologic feature is a wrinkle in Earth’s crust, extending nearly 100 miles from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell. It was created over time by three gradual yet powerful processes: deposition, uplift, and erosion. The result is a classic example of a monocline, or one-sided fold, in the otherwise horizontal rock layers.”

This “wrinkle” is known as the Waterpocket Fold, and it created a land of fascinating and spectacular scenery. The National Park is very large, comprising nearly a quarter million acres. The maps below show the entire extent of the park and the portion that we explored over several hours.

We drove into the park on Highway 24 from the west and stopped at the Visitor Center to watch the National Park Service video overview, then drove 8 miles south along the Scenic Drive until the pavement ended. Along the way, we stopped to hike along the Grand Wash trail and then stopped at multiple overlooks along the rest of the Scenic Drive. I was jumping in and out of the car like a jackrabbit and snapping pictures like a crazed documentarian, and Pat was doing her best to put up with my antics. After the tenth or twelfth stop, she suggested that maybe she could drive and I could just gawk out the windows.

View of Capitol Reef from Scenic Drive Overlook

The new knees are great, but … I couldn’t make it up to the cozy resting spot

With Pat at the wheel, we returned to the Visitor Center area and stopped to explore a walkway with views of a cliff containing ancient petroglyphs.

We then headed east again on Highway 24, and I contented myself with window gawking until we made one last stop at the eastern entrance to the park before heading on toward our next hotel in Green Valley, UT. Incidentally, we passed by those Capitol dome-like mounds along the way, but I failed to get a decent photo from the car, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Glenwood Springs, CO: Our original plan for Tuesday was to drive from Green Valley to Golden, CO, for our next night’s stay. However, weather reports indicated that a heavy snow storm was developing in the Vail Pass, complete with avalanche warnings. The prospect of battling the elements as we navigated the high altitude crossing through Colorado ski country was a bit unsettling, so we changed plans and booked a hotel in a cute little town called Glenwood Springs instead. We got there around lunchtime and spent a couple of hours walking around before checking into our Holiday Inn. We had lunch at the Colorado Hotel, a grand old place founded in 1893 and now included on the National Trust’s list of Historic Hotels of America, before wandering off to the nearby railroad station and passing by an impressive Hot Spring and Spa.

The Colorado River flows through Glenwood Springs

Interior of Glenwood Springs Railroad Station

Wind Cave National Park: On Wednesday, we resumed our eastward journey along I70, passing through the remnants of the storm in the Vail Pass and beyond. We passed a number of snowplows clearing the shoulders and experienced a few spots where the road was still icy, but by the time we reached the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel through the Continental Divide (11,132 feet elevation) all was clear. We drove on to a hotel with a destination charger that we had stayed at last October in Wheatland, WY, then drove on into South Dakota on Thursday morning and visited Wind Cave National Park. Unfortunately, all the cave tours were sold out for weeks in advance – we should have made on-line reservations before leaving Green Valley, but didn’t have enough foresight for that. As a result, our visit to the National Park (number 30 on our list) was limited to the Visitor Center, a short hike along a trail near the center, and a brief jaunt along a portion of the scenic drive. At least we saw some interesting rocks and some friendly animals. We’ll have to go back there some time to see the cave, which is said to be the seventh longest cave in the world with 154.2 miles of explored cave passageways (as of 2021) and the third longest cave in the United States. The cave was discovered in 1881 by a pair of brothers due to the sound of a strong wind blowing out of the hole (it blows in or out depending on the atmospheric pressure) and subsequently developed for tourism.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial: Since we were so close to this iconic piece of Americana, we had to stop and check it out. Unfortunately, the temperature was falling precipitously and the wind was rising, so, lacking appropriate cold weather wear, we didn’t spend a whole lot of time checking it out. There are some nice trails there, but they were closed due to the weather and we were too cold to go on them anyway. We did sit by a fireplace to watch a nice video and have some refreshments before leaving, though. One neat thing: it cost us only $5 to enter and park the car (half-price for seniors), and our ticket is valid for an entire year, so if we make it back out that way during better weather, we’ll stop in again.

Entrance to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial

An array of U.S. State and Territorial Flags leads to the viewing area

In better weather, we could have walked up a trail for a closer view

Badlands National Park: Afterspending Thursday night in Rapid City, SD, we drove to Badlands National Park, which brought our total number of National Parks to 31 so far. As you see on the map above, we failed to avoid Wall Drug as I had planned, but the only reasons we went there were: 1) to charge the car, and 2) to get on the road that enters Badlands from the north. I’ll admit that we did go inside – to use the rest rooms, not to bathe in the kitsch. At any rate, after surviving Wall Drug, we drove south to the park entrance.

After stopping at the entry gate and showing my Senior Parks Pass, we headed southeastward through the park to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center. We had somewhat of a repeat of the Capitol Reef experience – jackrabbit Dave, Pat growing impatient until she took over driving, and Dave gawking and taking crummy pictures through the car windows. At the Visitor Center, we watched a video (of course) and perused the exhibits before heading off to the east toward Sioux Falls. If I can sum up the park in one simple statement, I’ll use a quote from the video, which was something like: “Badlands is a geologist’s wonderland.” As is sort of becoming a pattern with these travel blogs, I’m running out of gas, and you probably are, too, so I’ll just finish off with pictures.

View of Badlands National Park from Scenic Drive Overlook

Bison have a beautiful Home on the Range

Okay, that’s a wrap for Pat and Dave’s Winter Warmup. After a night in Sioux Falls, we arrived safe and sound back home in Minneapolis on Saturday, April 5. We once again enjoyed traveling to the beautiful southwestern United States, visiting some familiar locales and some new ones, each and every one interesting and enjoyable. I hope readers enjoyed sharing the adventure with me!

Our next planned travel adventure (no doubt to be documented in yet another travel blog series) will be in October and November of 2025, when we go on a Viking Ocean Cruise with pre- and post-cruise extensions. This time, Viking will be escorting us from Baveno, Italy to Athens, Greece.

Thanks for reading! Bon voyage, until next time …

Pat and Dave’s Nifty National Park Lark – PART 2

October 30, 2024 by davesaari

In Part 1 of this travel blog, I began the description of our recent 4,128-mile road trip, during which we visited six National Parks and one National Battlefield. As a reminder, here’s a map of the journey:

I’ll pick up the narrative again after our visits to the three National Parks located in Utah.

Mesa Verde National Park (October 9): I’d never heard of this park before the trip, but Pat suggested we check it out. The name for the area, which translates as “Green Table Mountain,” was coined by early Spanish explorers who noted the unusually lush greenery on flattened mountain tops separated by canyons. This was a misnomer, however, since the top of a mesa is almost perfectly horizontal, whereas the flatlands in the park actually are inclined at an angle of 7 degrees toward the south. Such an inclined, flat surface is known geologically as a cuesta, so that the “proper” name for the park perhaps should have been “Cuesta Verde.” At any rate, the park is very picturesque, with a well-maintained road that winds among the canyons to provide access to the various points of interest. Here’s a map:

The cuesta top land is covered by soil, providing a much more fertile climate then the surrounding desert land. As such, it became an attractive home for the Pueblo people who began growing corn in the area as early as 1000 BCE and lived in villages on the surface near the crop fields. The people flourished as corn production increased and a thriving trade economy developed, with the population of Mesa Verde reaching about 40,000 at its peak in the 1200s. Around that time, the inhabitants began constructing and moving into cliff dwellings adjacent to the flatlands, which provided access to potable water via seep springs, protection from heat and rain, and places for storage of grain, clothing, and manufactured items such as baskets. One of the largest of these dwellings, known as the Cliff Palace, is a main feature of the National Park.

The highlight of our visit to Mesa Verde was a ranger-guided tour of the Cliff Palace. On the evening before our visit, we obtained tickets for a 1:30 PM tour on October 9 ($8.00 apiece) using my Recreation.gov app. We arrived at the Visitor Center around 10:30, watched a nice movie about the park (of course!), and then ogled the spectacular scenery while driving to the Chapin Mesa area.

Once at the Chapin Mesa area, I bought a souvenir T-shirt at the Mesa Verde Museum and we ate lunch at a nice cafeteria before our tour. Access to and exit from the Cliff Palace was a bit challenging, including stone steps, some narrow passages, a path that was precariously close to the cliff edge in places, and even a series of wooden ladders –the ranger was very careful to stress the hazards before we started – but the tour was well-worth it. I highly recommend it for anyone traveling to Mesa Verde, as long as they are fit enough for the climb down and out again. There were a couple of people on our tour (out of about forty total) who seemed a bit wobbly to me, but everyone managed to navigate it safely.

Great Sand Dunes National Park (October 10): This is another one I had not heard of before this trip, and once again I give credit to Pat for steering us there. After driving for about four hours from the Casa Blanca Inn, we were approaching the National Park from the south over a flat plain that extended for many miles with a view of some mountains in the distance, and I began to wonder if we had taken a wrong turn since there appeared to be nothing of real interest on the horizon. However, a huge pile of sand gradually began to take shape and we eventually came to the park entrance sign.

Introductory View: Great Sand Dunes and Sangre de Christo Mountains

We proceeded to the Visitor Center and, naturally, watched a movie about the park and bought a souvenir T-shirt. (Perhaps you’re beginning to realize that we are creatures of habit.) The film was absolutely mesmerizing to a fluid dynamicist such as myself. What does a huge sand dune have to do with fluid dynamics, you might ask? Plenty, it turns out. I learned that the Great Sand Dunes developed over thousands of years, beginning as sediment deposited in ancient lakes. As the climate warmed, the lakes disappeared, leaving a vast layer of sand behind. Predominant winds from the southwest blew much of the sand into a low curve of the Sangre de Christo Mountains, and periodic storm winds from the mountains pushed sand back in the other direction, causing it to build up into the immense dunes. The dune structure now maintains itself through an annual cycle as follows: the desert winds blow sand into the mountains during the fall and winter seasons, and then spring and summer floods wash sand back down via Medano Creek, which borders the sand dunes to the east and south. Another fascinating aspect of the system is that the water flow in Medano Creek exhibits a pattern of waves that is unique in the world due to the ebb and flow due to the large quantity of sand carried by the water. The only disappointment in all this was that, while the film included beautiful footage showing the water flow, the actual creek was completely dry at the time of our visit, as it always is in late fall and winter. In other words, a return visit during the spring or summer will be an absolute must.

We did spend a couple of hours exploring the park, first walking around a nice loop trail near the Visitors Center, which offered great views of the dunes and the mountains and also had signs identifying the various species of local foliage, and then driving to a parking lot with access to the dunes. We walked for some distance on the coarse, khaki-colored sand, which made for very tough slogging. I found the immensity of the dunes very impressive, but in fact they were neither as accessible nor as interesting as the dunes at White Sands National Park, which we visited back in 2020, where the dunes of fine, white sand are easily accessible and more changeable in the wind. All of which again points to the need to visit Great Sand Dunes at the proper time of year, when the water is flowing.

Little Bighorn National Battlefield Monument (October 12): I first learned about the battle of the Little Bighorn some 65 years ago, when I was a young boy. At that time, it was universally referred to as Custer’s Last Stand and portrayed as a tragic loss in the righteous war to subjugate the Native people. One of the first things I saw that presented somewhat of an alternate view of the battle was the 1958 movie, “Tonka,” starring Sal Mineo in a non-PC role as a young Lakota who captures and tames a wild stallion (the titular Tonka) before eventually joining Custer’s 7^th Cavalry and surviving the battle. I suspect the film was actually quite biased, but somehow it sparked an interest in me and planted a seed of doubt about just how “righteous” the white man’s war actually was. I have since read many things about the conquest of the Native peoples, George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the battle at Little Bighorn which have confirmed those early doubts. I also remember seeing an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” in which three US Army soldiers on a tank training exercise find themselves retracing Custer’s movements – after some rather mysterious goings on, the final scene shows the three men’s names on grave markers at the Little Bighorn Battlefield site. All of this background left me with a curiosity to see the actual battle site. Since we were traveling not too far from it, I suggested that we add it to our itinerary.

The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument was originally established by the Secretary of War in 1879 as a National Cemetery to commemorate the battle and preserve the graves of the soldiers and their allies who died there. In addition to those who died in the 1876 battle, the site includes graves of many hundreds of soldiers who subsequently served in the military in an area called Custer National Cemetery. The site was transferred to the National Park Service in 1940 and eventually given its present name in 1991 by an Act of Congress, which also decreed that an “Indian Memorial” be added to the site near Last Stand Hill. Here’s a map of the site:

We spent about an hour walking around the area near Last Stand Hill and the newer Native People’s memorial and then driving along Battlefield Road to see the various points of interest. In addition to white gravestones marking places where 7^th Cavalry soldiers fell, newer, granite markers have been added to mark places where some of the opposing Native warriors died. The site was interesting, and I was pleased to see that the NPS is trying to present a more balanced view of history than I remember from the 1950s. I would hope that all Americans can agree that this is a good thing (though I have my doubts given ongoing efforts by many to recreate the 1950s version of history).

Theodore Roosevelt National Park (October 13): This was the final stop on our road trip, easily accomplished since we were driving right past it on I94 as we headed back toward Minnesota. The park was designated to honor the man known as the Father of the National Parks, which have become Theodore Roosevelt’s most lasting legacy. What is now called the North Unit of the park was originally designated as the Roosevelt Recreation Demonstration Area in 1935, before being transferred to the US Fish and Wildlife Service and renamed the Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge in 1946. What is now called the South Unit was established as Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park in 1947. The North and South Units, along with the Elkhorn Ranch Unit, were finally designated as Theodore Roosevelt National Park in 1978.

We arrived at the South Unit Visitor Center at about 10:30 AM. This time, after viewing the park movie, I bought a souvenir sweatshirt, rather than a T-shirt (a near-radical departure from past practice). We spent about three and a half hours driving along the Scenic Loop and stopping frequently at various points of interest and to take a couple of short hikes. Since I’m running out of steam, I’ll just share some photos and call that good enough.

View of Medora, ND, from Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Bison at Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Prairie Dog Metropolis at Theodore Roosevelt National Park

View from Scenic Loop at Theodore Roosevelt National Park

View of Little Missouri River from Nature Trail at Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Scenery Along the Way: In addition to the main attractions described above, we also enjoyed beautiful scenery we encountered during many of the major stretches of driving. These sights only added to our enjoyment, so I thought I’d leave you with a few miscellaneous photos we took, some through the car windows and some from roadside stops.

Colorado River, near Glenwood Springs, CO

On I70 in Utah, on the way to Bryce Canyon

The “Candy Mountain” Along US Highway 89 in Utah

That wraps up my documentation of this fabulous trip. I won’t include a lengthy discussion of our Tesla Model 3 EV this time, as I did in relating our April trip to the Great Smokey Mountains. Let it suffice to say that this trip again showed that taking a road trip in an EV is easily done, requiring only a little more planning and patience than driving an ICE car. The Tesla performed very well throughout, and we had no problems finding available chargers. One difference on this trip was that we encountered other EV brands using some of the Tesla Superchargers, specifically including several Rivians and one Mustang Mach E.

Just to let readers know, you won’t have to wait too long for my next travel blog installment. Next up will be another Viking River Cruise, this time to Spain and Portugal in November. Bye for now!

Pat and Dave’s Nifty National Park Lark – PART 1

October 27, 2024 by davesaari

Fall has arrived and the golf courses are closed in northeastern Minnesota, which can only mean one thing. It must be time for another road trip travel blog! Sure enough, Pat and I have just recently returned from a road trip outing, which I will now attempt to memorialize. The trip was a classic example of our rather spontaneous, some might say haphazard, approach to car travel. In contrast to certain unnamed relatives, we do not go in for detailed planning of such things, though at least some aspects, such as lodging in high-demand locations, do need to be arranged in advance to ensure availability when desired. So, here’s how this latest trip began and then developed as time went by.

The central idea for the trip was actually born some two-and-a-half years ago, in May of 2022, when we spent one day visiting Bryce Canyon National Park as part of a previously documented road trip. In that earlier blog post, I made a vague reference to my aching knees. In fact, it was at Bryce Canyon that I finally decided I needed to have my severely arthritic knees replaced, since walking on the trails was extremely difficult for me. Add to that the fact that we did not actually drive our car into the park and were thus unable to visit places where the convenient shuttle bus route does not reach. Further add that we very much admired the look of the in-park lodge cabins as we strolled past them. As we were leaving, we decided that we would come back for a longer visit once I had my new knees, that we would stay in one of those nice cabins, and that we would drive all the way to the end of the park road to take in the full park experience. Fast forward to February of this year: I made a reservation for three nights in one of those little cabins, from October 5 through October 8, by which time I assumed the golf season in Grand Marais would be winding down. (Incidentally, the process for making the reservation was really convoluted, requiring multiple phone messages and callbacks rather than the expected few clicks on a web site. Government contractor inefficiency at its finest.) We put the dates on the calendar, leaving all further details of the trip to be determined later, and went on with our spring and summer activities.

Sometime around the end of September, Pat began to suggest that we maybe ought to start thinking about what else we might do as part of the road trip. After all, it seemed like a long way to drive for only a three-day visit to one National Park. “Let’s just book some hotels near EV chargers for the trip out there, and we can add some other stuff for the way back,” I suggested. So that’s what we did, after deciding that we would leave on October 1^st. Once we took off, the trip developed organically, eventually turning out to cover 4,128 miles in our Tesla Model 3 with visits to six National Parks and one National Battlefield. Here’s a map of the journey:

NOTE: This brings our total of National Parks visited to 27, or 43% of all the National Parks in the US. Maybe we’ll get to them all someday, or at least a majority of them. We’ve now also visited 20 other paces operated by the National Park Service, including National Monuments, Conservation Areas, Wildlife Refuges and Sanctuaries, and Battlefields. All of these national treasures represent socialism at its finest, if you ask me.

Although I’ve included the various hotels on the map to illustrate our actual route (I left off the Moab Valley Inn for visual clarity), I won’t spend any time describing them, since we only spent one night at each of them except for two nights at the Moab Rustic Inn. Suffice it to say that reserving all of these places was very easy using various travel and lodging apps on Pat’s iPhone and that all of the accommodations were convenient and comfortable. (A side note for EV drivers: both the Casa Blanca Inn and Suites in Farmington, NM, and the Heartland Inn and Suites in Wheatland, WY, had free Tesla Destination Chargers. The Heartland one was unusual in that there was also a Tesla Supercharger at a different location in the hotel parking lot.)

OK, now let’s move on with some descriptions of the main attractions, in chronological order.

Arches National Park (October 4): We arrived at the Moab Rustic Inn shortly before 4 PM on October 3. At 7 PM, I used the Recreation.gov app on my phone to obtain a timed visitor’s pass for access to the National Park between 10 and 11 AM the following morning. The National Park requires these passes, which cost $2 per car, during prime visiting hours in order to manage traffic in the park. (As I understand it, a pass is not needed for access before 7 AM or after 5 PM.) We obtained free entry to the park using my Lifetime Senior Pass, as we did at all of the other NPS sites during the trip. Here’s a map of the park, which covers 76,680 acres (120 square miles):

After stopping at the Visitor Center to watch an excellent movie about the park and buy a souvenir T-shirt, we spent about 6 hours driving along the excellent road through the park and stopping at multiple points of interest. The park includes over 2,000 natural sandstone arches, of which we saw about 20, a multitude of fascinating rock formations, and a limitless number of stunning vistas. We walked along the one-mile Windows Trail for some excellent views of the Windows Arches, then returned by the 1.2-mile primitive trail, which provided a good test for my new knees. I did use walking sticks due to the rough terrain on the primitive trail, but I was quite pleased with how it went. I couldn’t quite keep up with my younger and spryer wife, but I didn’t feel like a near invalid as I did back in 2022.

Enough words – here are some pictures:

Interesting Terrain at Arches National Park

Bryce Canyon National Park (October 5 – 7): After our second night at the Moab Rustic Inn, we drove to Bryce Canyon National Park, which, as noted above, was the central idea for the road trip. Bryce manages traffic in the park by means of their free shuttle service and thus does not require timed entry passes. The shuttle picks up passengers who stay in the nearby town of Bryce Canyon City (as we did for our 2022 visit) or at the Visitor Center and ferries them around a loop to various points of interest in the Bryce Amphitheater as shown in the following maps:

This time, we drove directly into the park (using my Senior Pass for entry) and to the Bryce Canyon area Lodge, where we checked in to Room 526, one-half of a lovely duplex cottage. The accommodations were very comfortable, with a gas fireplace, two queen beds, a bathroom, and a dressing area – the only drawback was the lack of Wi-Fi (heaven forbid!) in our room. Wi-Fi was available in and around the main lodge, however, and I occasionally got a cell signal in our room, so we weren’t exactly roughing it. The lodge has an excellent dining room, where we had breakfast and dinner each day, and there are a couple of nearby places where we could get lunch. Here’s a photo of the cottage – note the interesting roof tile construction which gives an optical illusion of a wavy surface.

Our Cottage at Bryce Canyon National Park

We spent the afternoon and evening of the 5^th walking along the paths near the lodge, oohing and aahing at the spectacular views from the canyon rim, and I easily traversed the very same paths I was nearly unable to manage in 2022.

View from Bryce Canyon Rim at Sunrise Point

The next day, we took a hike on the Navajo Loop Trail, which meanders 450 feet down into the canyon, then returned to the rim on the Queen’s Garden Trail, some 2.9 miles in total. It was especially fascinating to see the rock formations and the foliage from the canyon floor, which provided a very different perspective than the view from the rim.

After our hike, we took the shuttle bus to the Visitor Center for, what else, a movie about the park and a souvenir T-shirt, then rode the shuttle back to the Lodge. On the third day, we drove along the excellent park road to Rainbow Point, the highest elevation in the park at 9,115 ft, and walked along the easy, 1-mile Bristlecone Trail. On the way back to our cottage, we stopped at all the points of interest and took another short walk from Fairview Point to Piracy Point.

Another feature of the park is its certification as a dark skies location. I stepped outside a couple of times during the night to take in the stars, which looked especially bright in comparison to the views from the various hotels we had been staying in, or for that matter from our Minneapolis condo, but not too dissimilar to that from our Grand Marais summer home. All in all, the Bryce Canyon visit was an excellent cornerstone for our road trip.

Canyonlands National Park (October 8): After leaving Bryce Canyon, we retraced our steps toward Moab and then drove to the Canyonlands Island in the Sky Visitor Center from the north. The visitor center was smaller than those at Arches and Bryce, and there were fewer visitors. This may be due to the presence of the Needles Visitor Center which is accessed from the south and which we did not visit. We arrived at the Visitor Center at around 3 PM and, after watching another excellent movie (no T-shirt this time), spent about two hours driving to the Grand View Overlook and back again, with several stops including a short walk to see the Mesa Arch.

OK, that’s it for Part 1. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the three remaining National Parks and the National Battlefield, as well as some pictures of the scenery we encountered at various points during the journey, all coming in Part 2.

Pat and Dave’s Easy EV Road Trip – PART 3: The Trip Home and EV Performance Summary

May 27, 2024 by davesaari

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I described our travels from Minneapolis, MN to Pigeon Forge, TN, and our visits to two National Parks, New River Gorge NP in West Virginia and Great Smoky Mountains NP in Tennessee. This final episode provides a brief summary of our trip back home and some details of how our new EV performed on the road trip.

Wednesday, April 24, 2024: We left the Golf Vista on Dollywood Lane shortly after 9 AM and headed eastward, stopping to charge the car at a place called Buccees in Crossville, TN. We’d never heard of Buccees before, but it’s apparently a very popular fuel and convenience store chain in the southeastern US. We were absolutely amazed by the place. There had to be sixty or more gas pumps in addition to two charging stations – a Tesla Supercharger bank with 16 chargers and a ChargePoint station with four chargers (interestingly bearing Mercedes Benz logos). The convenience store was huge – easily as big as large truck stops such as Loves or Pilot – and was filled with an amazing array of ready-to-eat foods, groceries, gift items, and such. One especially unique feature was an array of about twenty or thirty different types of custom-made beef jerky. We bought a bag and it was delicious. I’d recommend Buccees as a welcome stop for travelers of all stripes.

Tesla Superchargers at Buccees — hardly anyone using it, as usual

After charging the car, we drove to the Stones River National Battlefield in Murfreesboro, TN, for our final point of interest before sprinting for home. This site, operated by the National Park Service, memorializes the Battle of Stones River, which took place from December 31, 1862 through January 2, 1863. Union forces squeaked out a victory in a bloody conflict there, boosting morale in the North and gaining control of central Tennessee. Of the major battles in the Civil War, Stones River had the highest percentage of casualties on both sides.

We first stopped in at an impressive Visitors Center with interesting displays about the battle and its aftermath and then strolled around the 600-acre site to see several key battleground areas and the large National Cemetery in which more than 6,100 Union soldiers are buried, including more than 2,500 who were never identified. We left with a somber feeling, with a new appreciation for the immense toll that the Civil War took on the soldiers who fought in it and their surviving families and loved ones.

Then we headed off to another charging stop just southeast of Nashville and then on to the Hampton Inn in Pleasant View, TN. We enjoyed a meal at a little place called Firecracker Pizza near the hotel before turning in for the evening.

Thursday, April 25, and Friday, April 26, 2024: Our last two days were uneventful, including a drive to the Hampton Inn O’Fallon near St. Louis for our final night’s stay and then a long (for us) eleven-hour drive home as the weather turned cold and rainy. As we trundled our luggage up to our fifth-floor condo, we felt very satisfied with our Easy EV Road Trip. Here’s a recap:

EV Performance: Now for some information (hopefully not too nerdy) about how our new EV performed on the Road Trip. Hopefully this will be of interest to readers who may be considering purchasing an EV or who may feel hesitant about it due to perceived EV problems.

Many questions are related to charging an EV. How much does it cost? How long does it take? How hard is it to find chargers? I’ll answer these questions based on actual data from our Easy EV Road Trip. Details of our charging sessions during the trip are provided in this table:

One thing I’ve heard from a number of people is that, with electric costs rising due to inflation, operating an EV is too expensive. So, what did we actually spend on electricity during this Road Trip? $238.94, including the pre-trip charging at home in the condo garage. How would that compare to the identical trip with an internal combustion engine (ICE) car? If we assume an average gas price of $2.60, based on what we observed on various gas station signs along the way, fueling an ICE car would cost the same as what we spent on charging the EV if it got 37.2 mpg. (If gasoline prices miraculously fell to $2.50, an ICE car would only need to get 29.1 mpg to break even with the EV, but if it spiked to $4.00, it would need to get 46.5 mpg for an equivalent fuel cost.) Put it this way – the plethora of large pickup trucks and SUVs we observed along the way are costing a lot more to take on a road trip, while a Toyota or Honda hybrid would cost a bit less.

It’s important to understand that using high-speed (Level 3) chargers (such as the Tesla Superchargers we used) is the absolute most expensive way to charge an EV. By comparison, slow (Level 1) charging at our condo with a simple 110V circuit costs less than half as much, or intermediate (Level 2) charging at our Lake Superior cabin, with a reduced off-peak rate, costs less than a fifth as much. Equivalent-cost ICE cars would need to get 77.2 mpg or 193.7 mpg to compete with these Level 1 and Level 2 chargers, and I can guarantee there are no such ICE cars in existence anywhere. So, if you consider that road trips probably represent a very small percentage of the total driving that any of us do, an EV with a Level 1 or Level 2 home charger is far less costly to operate than an ICE car.

Another issue for EV hesitance is the time required for charging stops on a road trip. So, just how long did we spend charging the car on our Easy EV Road Trip. As the table above shows, the total charging time for the 17 stops was 468 minutes (7.8 hours) with an average of 27.5 minutes per stop. We generally used that time for something more or less productive, such as eating lunch, buying groceries, using the rest room, watching a Netflix movie on the Tesla screen, etc., so it didn’t really feel like wasted time. However, if getting to your destination as fast as possible is a high priority, the time spent charging is a significant detriment.

To put it in perspective, the comparable time for fueling an ICE car depends on the size of its gas tank and the car’s mileage. Calculations I did based on a Honda Accord hybrid, a light-duty pickup, and a heavy-duty pickup showed minimum total time for fueling over a 2,777 mile Road Trip would be 49.7 minutes, 55.1 minutes, and 59.3 minutes, respectively (assuming ten minutes per fill up), for a saving of nearly 7 hours compared to our EV, although some of that time would be eaten up by the aforementioned eating, shopping, etc. This would easily allow the trip to be completed in a day less, although Pat and I – retirees both – don’t like to drive for more than 4 hours a day anyway, so the savings would be meaningless to us. A good deal of this aversion to long driving times comes from the stress induced by other drivers — huge pickups that tailgate menacingly, freeway mergers who insist on reaching their final merge point at exactly the same position as our car — or driving conditions such as endless stretches of road construction or heavy wind or rain, to name but a few.

Probably the biggest factor in EV hesitance is range anxiety – will an EV driver be able to get to the next charging station before running out of power? The new Tesla Model 3 proved to be excellent in this regard. The quoted range is 324 miles under ideal conditions, and we found that the actual distance traveled averaged 93.4% of the range estimated by the car during the Road Trip. We generally recharged the car when it dropped below 20% of battery capacity and charged it to 80-90% of full at each stop. A major reason we bought the Tesla is the large number of Superchargers that have been deployed all across the country, and we never had any anxiety about reaching one in time. Planning the stops was very easy; we used two methods. The simplest way was to give a voice command, e.g. “Navigate to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee,” and let the car map out recommended charging stops. Sometimes we used an app called ABRP (for A Better Route Planner) to check out alternate routes – this app can be customized to use actual performance data from a specific car and/or to specify such things as minimum charging time, avoiding tolls, and the like.) Thus, the trip truly lived up to my claim as Pat and Daves Easy EV Road Trip. I can’t offer any insight regarding road trips in non-Tesla EVs, however.

One final note about the Tesla. Coincidentally, just before we left on the trip, Tesla decided to give all or most Teslas on the road a free month of what they call “Supervised Full Self Driving” capability, so we decided to try it out during the trip. The video below shows how it worked – quite well and rather fun.

Tesla “Supervised Full Self Driving” demonstration

It also included automatic parking in parking lots and automatic parallel parking on streets. However, neither of us was comfortable letting the car drive itself, and we also felt that the price for this feature — $ 99 per month or $4,000 dollars for the life of the car – was too steep, so we did not pick it up after the free trial. The car still has what Tesla calls “Autopilot,” which is adaptive cruise control, and “Autosteer,” which maintains the car within the driving lane and automatically steers around curves.

While the above considerations are all related to practical matters – cost, time, level of anxiety – they do not speak to the major reason to buy an EV, which is to help slow the inexorable advance of climate change. While I’m afraid that the drivers of those menacing, tailgating pickup trucks will merely scoff at that idea, I hope it can influence some readers; after all, doesn’t helping to save the planet seem more important than saving a little time on a road trip?

OK, that’s it! Thanks for reading, and please consider joining the EV universe!

Pat and Dave’s Easy EV Road Trip – PART 1: Overview

May 3, 2024 by davesaari

As past readers know, for the past several years I’ve been documenting some of our travel experiences through blog posts. (The most recent of these was entitled Pat and Dave’s Magical Maritime Meanderings, describing our travels in September of 2023 to the Maritime Provinces of Canada.) We are among those most fortunate of people who are able to travel about the world in our Golden Years, and we are constantly discussing ideas for where to go next. Travel during the 2023-2024 winter season was off the table, however, since I had decided to have both my arthritic knees replaced. The left knee operation took place on October 18, 2023 and the right one on January 19, 2024, leaving me in a state that I call “knee-hab” – physical therapy sessions and daily home exercises to rehabilitate the knees. In part to give me something fun to look forward to at the end of all that, Pat suggested that we take a road trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in mid-April, by which time we figured I’d be able to drive and walk around – not to mention play golf – reasonably well with the new knees.

Seizing on this idea, Pat located a condo in Pigeon Forge, TN, which, according to the internet, was close to the National Park but also within a stone’s throw of the Gatlinburg Golf Course. I eagerly booked a one-week stay at the condo, called Golf Vista, for April 18-24, 2024 through VRBO. As I labored through the winter months with various knee flexes, leg lifts, wall squats, and twice-daily jaunts on the stationary bike, the prospect of the upcoming Smoky Mountains road trip helped me maintain a positive frame of mind. Day-dreaming of eagles and birdies in Tennessee (both the avian kind and the golfing kind) motivated me to keep going with the knee-hab, and the new joints gradually recovered.

Meanwhile, we also made the decision to buy a new Tesla Model 3, for reasons which are not entirely clear in retrospect – a combination of the potential for a new EV rebate, which unfortunately failed to materialize, and my unbridled enthusiasm for the EV revolution. We thus become an all-EV couple, as our former ICE car is now being used by our youngest son. Once we realized that the new car would be delivered before we left for the Great Smokies, the road trip became even more exciting as a chance to give the new EV a thorough shakedown.

Against that backdrop, we began planning details of the trip – to the extent that we actually plan anything – during the first two weeks of April. The map below shows the complete trip, including the various places where we stayed and where we charged the car. All of the hotel stays were for a single night except for the one-week stay at the Golf Vista. We picked the various hotel stops by limiting our daily driving time to about four hours so that, starting out on April 14, we would easily get to Pigeon Forge by the 18^th. The map doesn’t show all the places we visited during our week in Pigeon Forge – I’ll expand on that in Part 2 of the series. I’ll also provide some detailed information about how the new car performed (including the cost and duration for charging) in Part 3, for those who might be interested in learning more about taking an EV road trip.

**Pat and Dave’s Easy EV Road Trip — April 14-26, 2024**

Getting There, April 14 – 18, 2024: As planned, we left the condo on the morning of April 14^th and drove to our first hotel stop in Madison, WI. There’s not much to tell about the first three days – driving, charging, eating, sleeping – so let’s skip ahead to the first point of interest.

On Wednesday, April 17^th, we visited the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia, the nineteenth National Park we have visited so far in our travels. Despite its name, the New River is actually one of the five oldest rivers in the world, older than the Appalachian Mountains through which it flows. Its origins are in South Carolina, flowing northward for 360 miles through Virginia and West Virginia before joining with the Gauley River to form the Kanawha River, which eventually flows into the Ohio River. One explanation for the name of the river is that a mapmaker added it to the Fry-Jefferson map of Virginia, which did not show the river when first published in 1753, thus adding the “new river” to the old map. A 53-mile stretch of the New River in West Virginia – the so-called New River Gorge – was designated as a National River in 1978 and placed under supervision of the National Park Service. It was designated as the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve on December 27, 2020, essentially becoming America’s newest National Park.

We first went to the Canyon Rim Visitor Center, where I eagerly offered my National Parks Senior Pass for admittance, only to learn that New River Gorge is a free park. I couldn’t decide whether to be disappointed that I wasn’t getting anything special with my pass or happy that the Government makes the lovely park available to all for free. Anyway, the visitor center had some nice displays about the geography, flora, and fauna of the National Park, and the walking paths afforded stunning overlooks of the river and the large bridge that crosses it.

**New River Gorge Overlook from Canyon Rim Visitor Center**

**Viewing Platform on the Visitor Center Grounds**

**Proof of Visit? Another of my lousy selfies …**

**New River Gorge Bridge — from Viewing Platform**

**River Gorge from Viewing Platform with Fayette Station Road on Left and Bridge Below**

We then took the Fayette Station Road Driving Tour, a very narrow and winding eight-mile road that descends from the visitor center to the river below and crosses a rickety-looking bridge before climbing back up to the town of Fayetteville, WV. We stopped at several places along the way to admire the scenery.

**Along the Fayette Station Road Driving Tour**

**Fayette Station Road — Tunney Hunsacker Bridge**

**New River and Tunney Hunsacker Bridge**

We then drove to the Sandstone Visitor Center, then followed the highway along the river southward to the town of Hinton. We crossed the river and drove northward on the other side to the Sandstone Falls Boardwalk for a close-up view of the Sandstone Falls. As you see below, the falls extend across the full width of the river, making it impossible to see the entire span at once, but the excellent boardwalk provided many nice photo opportunities.

**Another Portion of the Sandstone Falls**

After our time spent ogling the New River Gorge, we proceeded southward to Wytheville, VA, where we spent our last hotel night before the week’s stay in Pigeon Forge. On Thursday, April 18^th, we headed for the Golf Vista, located appropriately on Dollywood Lane, with a stop along the way at Saltville, VA. We visited a fascinating place called the Museum of the Middle Appalachians, which included a wide array of displays including ancient fossils, ice-age mammoth skeletons, dioramas and artifacts from indigenous peoples, development of the important salt mining industry, the famous Civil War Battle of Saltville, and transition to the 20^th century industrial age and the residual pollution issues. Before heading off for the final drive to Pigeon Forge, we also stopped at one of the Saltville Battle sites, which turned out to be a dud, but we vowed to visit a more interesting Civil War Battlefield site later during the trip.

**Saltville Battle Site — not much to see …**

I’ll stop for now, but stay tuned for Part 2, in which I’ll describe our week exploring the Great Smoky Mountains and local environs from our base at the Golf Vista on Dollywood Lane.