November 29-30, 1975: A Weekend in Los Angeles
	June 8-12, 1975: A Week in Toronto, Canada
	Return to Index for 1975

The whole point of a "cross-country" trip was to get to the Pacific Ocean, of course, so we set that as our next objective.

Redwoods and the California Coast

We left the Crater Lake area about two, and headed down Route 62 to Grant's Pass, heading for the Northern California coast.

Crater Lake was incredibly beautiful, and it would have been nice to stay longer and do more, but we've found this to be true numerous times in the last five or six days.

We left the National Park via the south entrance road and picked up Oregon Highway 62 that angles down to the southwest through a number of small towns to Grants Pass. (Yes, yes, I know that the town was probably named for a geographical feature- a pass through the Cascades found by or named for someone named "Grant", and, if that's the case, it should be "Grant's Pass", but there is unaccountably no apostrophe in the official name of the town- so cut me some slack.)

The drive from Crater down to pretty close to Interstate 5 was pretty much through forest all the way, and there were numerous campgrounds and picnic table turnouts all along the way. Just south of the park, one of these served at a spot to have lunch.

The Rogue River Along Oregon Highway 62

The Rogue River flows about 215 miles in a generally westward direction from the Cascade Range to the Pacific Ocean. Known for its salmon runs, whitewater rafting, and rugged scenery, it was one of the original eight rivers named in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. Beginning near Crater Lake, the river flows through the geologically young High Cascades and the older Western Cascades, another volcanic province. Further west, the river passes through the more ancient Klamath Mountains, and in the Rogue basin are some of the world's best examples of the rocks that form the Earth's mantle.

People have lived along the Rogue River and its tributaries for at least 8,500 years and European explorers began beaver trapping and other activities in the region in the 18th century. As a result of the Rogue River Wars of 1855–56, most native Americans were removed to reservations elsewhere. Settlers came in and lived in relative isolation until 1895, when the Post Office Department added mail-boat service along the lower Rogue- service that continues today.

Dam building and removal along the Rogue has generated controversy for more than a century, due to its impact on salmon fishing. This has been true throughout the Pacific Northwest. There are also water temperature problems, but the Rogue is a fairly clean river, with the only significant pollution occurring near Medford, Oregon. Even including Medford, the average population density of the Rogue watershed is only about 32 people per square mile. Several historic bridges cross the river near the more populated areas. Many public parks, hiking trails, and campgrounds are near the river, which flows largely through forests, including national forests. Biodiversity in many parts of the basin is high; the Klamath-Siskiyou temperate coniferous forests, which extend into the southwestern Rogue basin, are among the four most diverse of this kind in the world.

At Grant's Pass, we took Oregon Highway 199 for the coast, passing through some extremely beautiful areas of forest. The closer we got to the coast, the narrower the road seemed to get, but that was probably an illusion, as it was getting dark and the forest getting thicker.

As night fell, we found ourselves going past the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, and we thought that in the morning we would come back to the park to have a look.

We stayed overnight in Crescent City, and in the morning went for a look at the redwoods. As in Oregon, the coast was foggy this morning, but as we went inland, much of the fog cleared off. Still, as we were walking through the redwoods, you'll see that there is still some fog lingering around.

The Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park preserves old-growth redwoods along the Smith River just 9 miles outside Crescent City on California Highway 199, the same highway we'd taken into Crescent City from Grants Pass yesterday. There are a number of short auto roads through some of the redwoods, and in the picture at left, looke closely and you'll see my car parked in one stand of the giant trees.

To get the picture at left, I had to walk a short distance from the car, and ended up standing right by one of the giant trees. So I pointed the camera up the trunk of the tree beside me, and that's how I got the picture at right.

Sequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family; common names include coast redwood, coastal redwood, and California redwood. It is an evergreen, long-lived (1200-1800 years or more) tree. This species includes the tallest living trees on Earth- recorded as tall as 400 feet- with trunk diameters measure at 30 feet.

These trees are also among the oldest living things on Earth. Before commercial logging and clearing began in the 1850s, this massive tree occurred naturally in an estimated 2,100,000 acres along much of coastal California (excluding southern California where rainfall is not sufficient) and the southwestern corner of coastal Oregon within the United States.

The park is named after explorer Jedediah Smith, and is one of four parks cooperatively managed as Redwood National and State Parks. This particular park unit covers over ten thousand acres and was established in 1939.

These trees are amazing; the coast redwood has a conical crown, with horizontal to slightly drooping branches. The bark can be very thick- up to a foot- and quite soft and fibrous, with a bright red-brown color when freshly exposed (hence the name redwood), weathering darker. The root system is composed of shallow, wide-spreading lateral roots.

(Picture at left) It was early in the morning, and the sunlight slanting through the early fog presented a beautiful sight. The trees don't grow that close together, but they are so high that most of the sun's light is blocked at ground level.       (Picture at right) Being here in the redwood groves was very unlike being in any other kind of forest. For trees the size of these, one might expect there to be a lot of smaller trees and a lot of brush as well. But at ground level one doesn't find much of anything save for the trunks of the redwood trees themselves.

Here in the state park there are 9,500 acres of redwood trees, including several groves of old growth trees. One of the groves, which covers a few thousand acres, includes the world's largest coast redwood, when measured by the size of their trunks. (The record-holder has a trunk that measure an incredible 20 feet in diameter! At 340 feet tall, it is certainly a tall tree, but certainly not the tallest ever measured.

In this shot, I am looking straight up. You can get a good idea here of what the foliage on these redwood trees looks like.

Here we are walking along one of the many trails through the redwoods, and you finally can see another human being (which gives you the scale of the trees).

The Smith River, which flows through the park, is home to rainbow trout and salmon; the park is also home to black bears, black-tailed deer, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons and other mammals. The Smith River is the last major undammed river in California. Within the park, the river is undisturbed.

(Picture at left) The Coast redwood is one of the most valuable timber species in the lumbering industry. In California, 899,000 acres of redwood forest are logged, virtually all of it second growth.[35] The most storied company involved in the cutting and management of redwoods was the Pacific Lumber Company, founded in 1863. That company owns or manages over 200,000 acres of forests, primarily redwood. Coast redwood lumber is highly valued for its beauty, light weight, and resistance to decay.   (Picture at right) Because of its impressive resistance to decay, redwood was extensively used for railroad ties and trestles throughout California. Many of the old ties have been recycled for use in gardens as borders, steps, house beams, etc. Redwood burls are used in the production of table tops, veneers, and turned goods.

Here in the state park there are 18 miles of hiking trails and over 100 campsites. Mill Creek flows through the park and merges with the Smith River near the campground. Just walking along these trails seemed almost like walking down the center aisle of a cathedral. Here are the last two pictures I took in the redwood groves. Relatively little sunlight filters down to ground level, and that's why some of my pictures today were so dark.

San Francisco

From the Jedediah Smith Redwoods, we backtracked over to US Highway 101 and began heading south along the California coast, certainly one of the most scenic drives in the country.

As you can see from the map at left, the highway hugs the rocky California coast, and we always had great views out to the Pacific Ocean. We continued down the coast, eventually reaching another major stand of redwood trees in the Redwoods National Park. The picture below was taken at that National Park, and shows not only the heavy forestation of Northern California, but also the coastal fog that we had encountered:

Redwood National Park, while technically a separate entity, is managed together with the California State Parks that also preserve stands of old growth redwoods. Preservation of these redwood stands in California is considered one of the most substantial conservation contributions of the Boone and Crockett Club, a California conservation society. Members of that society formed the "Save the Redwoods League" in 1918 and worked tirelessly to create the set-asides. As California began creating a state park system in 1927, three of the preserved redwood areas became Prairie Creek Redwoods, Del Norte Coast Redwoods, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Parks. A fourth became Humboldt Redwoods State Park, by far the largest of the individual Redwood State Parks. Finally, in 1968, Redwood National Park was created.

From Redwood National Park, we on down to Arcata, where we had some lunch. At that point, we needed to make a decision about what to do next. We decided to call Greg Grosh, another Cullinane employee who lived in San Francisco, to see if he might put us up for the night if we made it all the way there. He was amenable to that, and so we cut inland on route 299 to Redding, hit a local Baskin-Robbins, and continued down I-5 towards Sacramento. I-5 runs through flat valleys, and anyway it was night by that time and there was not a lot to see. We cut over on Route 505 to I-80 into San Francisco, following Greg's directions to find his apartment.

I might note here that this page is actually being created in 2019, and much has happened since Tony and I visited Greg in 1975. At the time of our visit, living in San Francisco was still only moderately expensive. Greg's rent was high, but only a bit more so than my own in Chicago. Greg eventually left San Francisco and moved to Dallas in the early 1980s, living there for a time before embarking on something of a nomadic existence beginning late in that decade, after he founded a software company. Long after he left San Francisco, demand for city apartments and condos in San Francisco exploded, but there was only a moderate increase in supply, as building restrictions kept a lid on new construction. The rent on Greg's two-bedroom, two-bath apartment increased dramatically, and eventually the apartment was chopped up into smaller units. Living in the city of San Francisco is, today, beyond the reach of most people who aren't multi-millionaires or who haven't owned their residences for many decades.

Anyway, we arrived at Greg's apartment late in the evening, and I was able to find the parking space he'd arranged for us down the street at Grace Cathedral, where Greg parks his own car. Greg has been in his apartment for a good many years, beginning when he was an auditor at Wells Fargo Bank before he joined Cullinane last year (1974). At left, you can see an aerial view of his intersection, and I've marked his building and his second-floor front, two-bedroom apartment. I also marked the corner grocery across the street. How come? Well, have a look at the clip below taken from 1968's hit movie Bullitt starring Steve McQueen:

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

When the movie begins, McQueen is in the grocery store I marked. When he comes out, and walks across Taylor Street, you can see Greg's building, and his apartment on the second floor (the floor above sidewalk level with bay windows)- it's the light green building behind McQueen (its been painted since then). Greg was actually living in the building at the time, although he tells us he was at work when they were filming. Greg was very hospitable this evening, and gave Tony and I his bedroom while he took a couch in the living room.

Salt Lake City

The next morning, Greg led us over to Berkeley, on the Oakland side of the Bay, so that we could visit the local office of Cullinane, which was only established a couple of years ago. I was amused to find that I had been in that same building when I came out west for the User Conference at the time I was hired in 1973. We met the staff there, and then left Greg to do some work in the office while we got back on Interstate 80 to head back east.

We followed the directions the Berkeley folks had given us to find an entrance to I-80, and then it was an easy matter to follow the signs for that highway (there are lots of freeways around the Bay Area) to get to Sacramento.

We skirted around that city, California's state capital, and continued on I-80 up into the Sierra Nevada mountains towards Reno, Nevada. The Sierra Nevada mountain range separates the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin, and almost all of the mountain range is in California. The range is part of the chain of mountain ranges that form the western "backbone" of North America, Central America, South America, and even Antarctica.

The Sierras run 400 miles north-to-south, and are about 70 miles wide. Notable Sierra features include Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America; Mount Whitney (at 14,505 ft the highest point in the Lower 48), and Yosemite Valley. The Sierra is home to three national parks, twenty wilderness areas, and two national monuments. The Sierras have played a significant role in American history. The California Gold Rush occurred in the western foothills from 1848 through 1855, and the highway we are on would pass by the site where the famous Donner Party met its fate.

Donner Pass (el. 7,056 ft) is about 9 miles west of Truckee, California. Like the Sierra Nevada mountains themselves, the pass has a steep approach from the east and a gradual approach from the west. The pass has been used by the California Trail, First Transcontinental Railroad, Overland Route, Lincoln Highway and Victory Highway (both later U.S. Route 40 and still later Donner Pass Road), as well as indirectly by Interstate 80.

The pass was named after a group of California-bound settlers. In early November 1846 the Donner Party found the route blocked by snow and was forced to spend the winter on the east side of the mountains. Of the 81 settlers, only 45 survived to reach California; some of them resorting to cannibalism to survive. There was a turnout off the Interstate to a historical marker, and we stopped there for a little while. That's where these two pictures were taken:

We spent the night in Reno, which I had never seen before, and I tried my hand at gambling (winning $20, all told). The whole scene fascinated me, and I can see how some people can get lost in the scene- the shows, the food, the gambling and the atmosphere. There were a lot of people who looked as if they should be saving their money, and a lot of people who obviously didn't need to. But then too there were the unknowns, the plainly-dressed people putting down thousands at blackjack or the craps tables. I thought it a great deal of fun to try to make my funds last as long as possible, playing the low limit blackjack tables mainly, as well as roulette, and watching the people around me. Tony didn't seem to be interested at all, and he retired early. Tony is usually pretty gregarious, and so it seemed to me that something was a bit "off" with him. I would find out later what that was.

Reno, Nevada, founded in 1868, was originally a small settlement at the end of a private road bridge across the Truckee River. Now known as "The Biggest Little City in the World", it is known for its casino industry. The city is named after Union Major General Jesse L. Reno, who was killed in action during the American Civil War. It is the second most populous area in Nevada, after Las Vegas.

Winnemucca, Nevada, was also founded in 1868 when the Central Pacific Railroad reached that point. A small commercial center, the town straddles the Humboldt River and was named for the 19th-century Chief Winnemucca of the local Northern Paiute tribe, who traditionally lived in this area.

Elko, Nevada, also straddles the Humboldt River and, although it lies along the route of the historic California Trail, it was first inhabited only in 1868, when it was at the east end of the railroad tracks built by the Central Pacific Railroad (the portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad built from California to Utah). When the railroad crews moved on, Elko remained, serving as a center for ranching, mining, rail freight and general supplies.

I mention the history of these three towns because there's not a lot I can say about the 300-mile trip from Reno to Elko. Of course, to a Chicago boy, the scenery was pretty interesting, albeit a bit boring, as much of it was flat, desert-like terrain.

The landscape was beautiful, but monotonous, these long stretches of highway being the rule.

This was taken just East of Winnemucca, Nevada. Already you can see traces of the salt deposits.

Here is a view of the landscape near Elko.

This was taken near the Nevada-Utah state line.

From the pictures above, you've gotten a good idea of what the drive was like from Reno eastward. All we had to do was put the Charger on cruise and steer. We did notice that the speed limits (when they were posted at all) were higher than we were used to, but then there was sometimes not even a curve in the highway for many miles.

The Great Salt Lake Desert

Just over the state line, this is a view of the Great Salt Lake Desert in Utah- certainly my idea of desolation. The vegetation, never profuse since Reno, had been growing sparser and sparser, and now there was hardly any left. The Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake that lies between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border; it is noted for white evaporite Lake Bonneville salt deposits.

Several small mountain ranges criss cross through the edges of the desert, such as the Cedar Mountains, Lakeside Mountains, Silver Island Mountains, Hogup Mountains, Grassy Mountains, and Newfoundland Mountains. On this western edge of the desert, just across the border with Nevada, stands Pilot Peak in the Pilot Range. We are coming down out of those mountains now. Just behind us is one of those long, straight stretches of highway that I mentioned. We measured it as perfectly straight for between 47-48 miles!

The desert is cool during the winter and includes unusual plants adapted to the dry conditions. Most of the desert receives less than 8 inches of annual precipitation. The salt crust covering the desert reforms each year when the rain evaporates. The military's Utah Test and Training Range is in the northern portion of the desert. During Jedediah Smith's 1826-27 expedition, Robert Evans died in the desert and in the 1840s, westward emigrants used the Hastings Cutoff through 130 miles of Great Salt Lake desert to reduce the distance to California. The 1846 Donner Party's difficulties in making the crossing contributed to their becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Howard Stansbury explored the desert in 1849 and a hundred years later, I-80 was built.

Coming down from the mountains, we found ourselves on the famous Bonneville Salt Flats- a densely packed "salt pan". The area is a remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville and is the largest of many salt flats located west of the Great Salt Lake. The property is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is known for land speed records at the "Bonneville Speedway" (first used in 1914). We found a rest area on I-80, and stopped so I could take some pictures.

In those pictures, which look north, the mountains in the distance are some 40 miles off, and the whole area was unbelievably flat and white. Once you got away from the highway itself, the scene was also eerily silent, and stopping here was just a bit surreal. At the eastern end of the desert is a place called the Knolls, which stick up from the desert floor with no other high land anywhere close. Even though the sign said they were only sixty or seventy feet high, because of the flatness of the surrounding area they offer an unobstructed view.

The stretch of I-80 through the desert is absolutely straight and flat, and we measured it at about 40 miles without a turn.

This looks South from the Knolls, towards the Dugway Proving Grounds.

The trip from Elko over to the vicinity of Salt Lake City was another 200 miles, making our trip so far today a bit over 500 miles, and as it was getting to early evening, we assumed that we would stay somewhere in the area this evening.

The Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake is the largest salt water lake in the Western Hemisphere, and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. (A terminal lake is a lake with no natural outlet, such as a river or a creek. We have seen a few terminal lakes on our trip, Crater Lake being the most memorable. Terminal lakes are almost always "endorheic", which means that there is no way, natural or man-made, that water can leave save by seepage or by evaporation.) In an average year the lake covers an area of around 1,700 square miles, but the lake's size fluctuates substantially due to its shallowness. For instance, in 1963 it reached its lowest recorded size at 950 square miles. In terms of surface area, it is the largest lake in the United States that is not part of the Great Lakes region.

The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric pluvial lake that once covered much of western Utah. The three major tributaries to the lake, the Jordan, Weber, and Bear rivers together deposit around 1.1 million tons of minerals in the lake each year. As it is endorheic (has no outlet besides evaporation), it has very high salinity (far saltier than seawater) and its mineral content is steadily increasing. Due to the high density resulting from its mineral content, swimming in the Great Salt Lake is similar to floating. Its shallow, warm waters cause frequent, sometimes heavy lake-effect snows from late fall through spring. Although it has been called "America's Dead Sea", the lake provides habitat for millions of native birds, brine shrimp, shorebirds, and waterfowl.

We arrived in the area at dusk, a little later than planned, and our hope was to find a place to stay and then go for a swim in the lake, more to say we had done it than to get refreshed. Salt Lake City turned out to be plagued with smog, which backs up against the surrounding Wasatch Mountains, and you can see some of that smog in the background of the picture above. Here are two more views of the lake:

We stayed overnight on the highway west of the city, and did change and go out to the lake to swim. Two things dissuaded us, however. The first was that the mosquitoes around the lake shore were terrible, and no sooner had we left the confines of the car than they began to eat us alive. Even so, we thought we could make a dash for the water, and seek comfort in it, but when we got close to the shore we found that not only would it take some time for us to get far enough out so the water would cover us (the lake is very, very shallow), but it was also far colder than the time of the year would have led us to suspect. Discretion being the better part of valor, we decided to chuck it, went back to the motel to change, and went into the city for dinner (a rather mediocre one at HoJo's, almost balanced by a stop at a local Baskin-Robbins).

The next morning was reserved for a tour of the Mormon Temple grounds in Salt Lake city- an area referred to generally as Temple Square. So we first left our motel in west Salt Lake City and continued on I-80 into the center of town, following the marked exit and route to Temple Square. We were lucky to find a parking space on a street relatively near the square.

Temple Square is a 10-acre complex, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), in the center of Salt Lake City. In recent years, the usage of the name has gradually changed to include several other church facilities that are immediately adjacent to Temple Square. Contained within Temple Square are the Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake Tabernacle, Salt Lake Assembly Hall, the Seagull Monument, and two visitors' centers. The square was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1964, recognizing the Mormon achievement in the settlement of Utah.

In 1847, when Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, LDS Church president Brigham Young selected a plot of the desert ground and proclaimed, "Here we will build a temple to our God." When the city was surveyed, the block enclosing that location was designated for the temple, and became known as Temple Square. Temple Square was surrounded by a 15-foot wall that was built shortly after the block was so designated, but today much of that wall has been removed.

At right is a modern (2018) aerial view of Temple Square. While over 40 years have passed between the time of our visit in 1975 and today, most of the square is still the same, and in the pictures we took, you'll be able to pick out buildings shown in our pictures that appear in the modern aerial view.

The square became the headquarters of the LDS Church, but other buildings were built on the plot, including the first tabernacle and the Endowment House, but both are gone now. The current Salt Lake Tabernacle, home of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, was built in 1867; an Assembly Hall was also built some years later.

As the church has grown, its headquarters have expanded into the surrounding area. In 1917, an administration building was built on the block east of the temple and in 1972, the twenty-eight story LDS Church Office Building, which was, for many years, the tallest building in the state of Utah.

So we parked the car and began our walk around the area in the cool morning air. It was a beautiful day, and the smog hadn't had a chance to get started.

The Salt Lake Temple

The Salt Lake Temple here on Temple Square is the largest LDS temple by floor area (253,015 square feet). Dedicated in 1893, it was the sixth temple completed by the church, requiring 40 years to complete, and the fourth temple built since the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846.

Many people, including me, often confuse the Salt Lake Temple with the Mormon Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is actually the large oval-shaped building just to the west of the temple; you can see it in the aerial view above, right, and you'll also see a portion of it in one of my other pictures below.

Like other LDS temples, the church and its members consider it sacred and a "temple recommend" is required to enter, so there are no public tours inside the temple as there are for other adjacent buildings on Temple Square. In 1912, the first public photographs of the interior were published, and others have been published since then, notably in a major article in Life magazine in 1938. The temple grounds are open to the public and are a popular tourist attraction. Due to its location at LDS Church headquarters and its historical significance, Latter-day Saints from around the world patronize the temple.

The temple includes some elements thought to evoke Solomon's Temple at Jerusalem. It is oriented towards the Holy City, and various interior and exterior elements are similar. The Salt Lake Temple, however, is about 30 feet taller.

In the northwest corner of the complex we found a visitor center, and we stopped in there early in our visit. (My car was parked just a block north of that.) You can see this visitor center in my picture at right, and if you look closely you can also see the Utah State Capitol about five blocks away to the north.

The visitor center was very interesting; I can't imagine that many other religions have such a facility, simply because most other religions don't have one mother church (except, perhaps, the Catholics with St. Peter's in Vatican City). Certainly, the only other religion I've had any experience with, the Presbyterian Church, doesn't. There were many interesting exhibits and displays inside, and also an information desk where I wanted to enquire about entry to the Temple, the Tabernacle, and the other buildings.

But we didn't even have to get to that desk to have these questions answered, because as soon as we came in the doors, one of the guides on duty, a young man of about 35, met us and was quite eager to escort us personally through the center and from there through the grounds. My first thought was that accepting his offer would be accepting a gift for which some payment (a donation to the church) would later be required. But then I thought about the Mormon missionaries that one often hears about or sees- young men in white shirts going out into the world to evangelize for the church, and I assumed this was the same sort of thing.

The fellow was very eager to show us around; when I mentioned that we'd parked at a meter some distance away and only had a short amount of time to spend in the complex, he actually offered to have someone go out and periodically feed the parking meter for us rather than have us use that as a reason for hurrying! It seemed as if one of the tenets of Mormonism must be that all church members are also evangelists for the church, and indeed, I discovered that this is the case.

But when the young man suggested a schedule and amount of time for him to give us the 50-cent tour, we had to demur, as we really couldn't spend all day here. We did find out that entry to the Temple requires advance notice and planning, but he did suggest some other buildings to see and points of interest in the complex, taking us back outdoors to point them out. With thanks, we separated from him and walked off to see what we could see.

This building is the Temple Annex that opened in 1966. It was built to house seven new sealing rooms, a children's waiting room, mechanical systems, two new locker rooms, new initiatory areas, and a new chapel seating 450 patrons. You can see the State Capitol in the distance and a bit of the Church Office Building.

The Salt Lake Assembly Hall was built in 1879 on the southwest corner of Temple Square. It can seat 1400 people, and is used for concerts and performances and as an overflow for Church convocations. The Star of David symbolizes the LDS perception that they are a re-gathering of the Tribes of Israel.

This Salt Lake Temple

The Joseph and Hynum Smith Statues on the south side of the Temple. The Joseph Smith Memorial Building is at right.

We finished walking around Temple Square after noontime, we had some lunch, and then we started off to continue our trip, getting on I-15/I-80 headed east.

Rocky Mountain National Park

On leaving Salt Lake City, Tony and I had an extreme difference of opinion as to the route to take next. I'd looked at the map, and I thought that taking In my view, Route 40 Eastward through Northern Colorado to Denver offered better scenery, plus a trip right through the Rocky Mountains National park West of Denver (where we would have our choice of routes through the park). It would take, I thought, three more days to get home going by that route, which would be relatively slow going until Denver, but then a fast trip across the Plains from there. I marked my suggested route in blue on the map below.

Tony wanted drive non-stop along I-80 all the way to Chicago, alternating driving during the night so as to arrive in Chicago the next evening. I guess he felt we'd seen and done enough, but I thought that since we'd come six thousand miles already, and since there were some really neat places between us and Denver, that we ought to take the extra day or two and take advantage of where we were already. I couldn't see a good reason to hurry back, as we both still had four or five free days before going back to work. (I marked Tony's suggested route in red on the map above.)

In the end, I agreed to go ahead and follow Tony's route, although I'll admit I wasn't happy. I'd never been to the parks west of Denver, and wasn't sure when I'd get an opportunity like this one. So we headed off east from Salt Lake City, following Interstate 80.

This view, taken just east of the Salt Lake City area, looks northeast at the high country in the Wasatch Mountains.

This is Rockport Reservoir, located on the east side of the Wasatch Mountains, about 30 miles east of Salt Lake City, right by I-80.

We continued driving all during the day, arriving in Cheyenne at nightfall, by which time I was already tired, and definitely not relishing another 24 hours of non-stop driving to get back to Chicago.

I'll freely admit that I was relatively quiet and taciturn on our drive from Salt Lake City. That was mostly because I was trying to search for an argument that I could formulate that might get Tony to aquiesce in taking a bit more time to get home. Our route had already brought us past two things I wanted to see- Dinosaur National Monument and Colorado National Monument, both out by Glenwood Springs way west of Denver on Interstate 70, but I thought that if I could get Tony to change his mind, we could still go south on I-25 to do Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow.

I was not in a hurry and I still couldn't see a good reason to knock ourselves out so that Tony could get home a day earlier than we'd planned when we first started out on the trip. I did have one idea though. If I could arrange to get Tony home on a flight from Cheyenne or Denver, then maybe we could just part ways now. Tony would get home much quicker than even he thought if he didn't have to spend 24 hours driving to Chicago, and I could take the car and see some more of the Rocky Mountain scenery on my own.

So while we were filling up with gas, I went to a pay phone to call United Airlines (my frequent carrier) to see what arrangements I might make. I really didn't think there would be anything going east this late in the day, and I was right; there was no decent connection to Boston until in the morning. And then there was a good connection at about ten in the morning from Denver that would get Tony back to Boston by mid-afternoon tomorrow- cutting another whole day off his trip. And if we drove down to Denver tonight, then Tony would be right at the airport for his flight and I would be right next to Rocky Mountain National Park. It seemed like a logical solution.

Sadly, and a little surprisingly, it was Tony that wasn't happy this time- even when I offered to pay whatever additional fare would be incurred if he went Denver-Boston rather than Chicago-Boston. But maybe Tony saw the logic of it, because he said that he would call American Airlines (I think that was the carrier he'd flown to Chicago on) to check things out himself. The airlines being as connected as they are, I really didn't think American would have something United couldn't see, but I saw the appropriateness of his making any changes with American, since it was their ticket that he held.

Actually, talking to American was better, for they found a morning flight of theirs from Denver that he could get on, and, as it turned out, the change of routing, even with so little advance notice, only involved about $30 over and above what Tony's existing ticket, plus his share of the expenses between Cheyenne and Chicago would have been. So Tony booked that change, and after an hour or so in Cheyenne, we had some dinner and drove down to Denver, getting a room at a Holiday Inn right close to Stapleton Airport. (We did that so there would be a hotel shuttle in the morning to take Tony over to the terminals, allowing me to get an earlier start to head west into the Rockies.)

As we'd been doing right along, we shared a room, so I just tried to be as quiet as I could when I left the next morning, leaving Tony to sleep a bit longer before taking the hotel's courtesy shuttle to the airport. I should say that I did, the very next week, find out what lay behind Tony's desire to get home quickly. Somewhere between San Francisco and Reno, or perhaps in Reno, something had happened with one of Tony's teeth, and since Reno it had been uncomfortable and causing him a good deal of anxiety; he wanted to get home quickly to have it looked at. I was glad that it wasn't something I had done, although had I known in Reno, we might have been able to find something for him from Salt Lake City, shortening the time until he could get it looked at. But these things happen, and our conflict was soon forgotten. We continued to work together frequently while we were both at Cullinane, and remained close even after I left the firm. And we are still, more than forty years on, very good friends.

So I left our room at the Holiday Inn fairly early, and drove the few blocks north from Stapleton International Airport to get to Interstate 70, at which point I headed west.

NOTE:
Here is one of those times when the narrative I wrote for these photographs for my paper photo album, narrative written a year or so after our trip, may not make a whole lot of sense today. Certainly, you millennials may be scratching your heads and asking "Stapleton International Airport? Where is that?" Those of you under 35 may never have heard of it, even though it was once one of the busiest airports in the United States. It was Denver's airport, and because it had been around a while, it was pretty close-in to the city like, for example, Dallas' Love Field or Chicago's Midway. Air traffic grew so much here in Denver that in 1995 Stapleton was closed, replaced with a brand new airport many miles outside the city to the east. So what happened to the airport itself? Unlike Love Field or Midway, which are still active, though secondary airports for their respective cities, Stapleton was completely bulldozed and removed. Today, the neighborhood of Stapleton, Colorado, sits on that site, complete with a fairly large park where one of the runways used to be. I can still remember flying in and out of Stapleton. Indeed, I believe that I have only flown to the new Denver airport just once or twice, as by the time it opened, my days of constant, frequent business travel were coming to an end (thankfully).

The View West (from west of Denver)

Interstate highway are great when you are going long distances from city to city. I guess our parents remember when you had to use two-lane roads, when passing was a problem, and when there was a town you had to slow down for every twenty miles or so. I don't think "cruise control" would have become so popular (my Dodge Charger is equipped with it) if we didn't have Interstate highways in our rural areas.

But I think that an even bigger benefit is traveling on an Interstate highway through a major urban area- like I-70 through Denver. The urban cores of our major cities are very complex and usually very congested, but if you are on an Interstate highway (and not, perhaps, traveling at rush hour) you can usually maintain 50-60mph right through town and hardly ever have to slow down, even though many cars are entering and exiting the highway.

This morning, I zipped through Denver and 45 minutes later was well west of town.

That's where I pulled over into a rest area to take the picture above, which looks west along I-70 as it begins climbing into the Rocky Mountains. It was right when I decided I wanted a photo that I realized that for the rest of the trip, I wouldn't have the luxury of asking Tony to take a picture while I drove, or taking one while he did. If I wanted a roadside photo, I would have to pull over to snap it. But that was OK. After all, the whole point of today is going to be to see stuff, not just to drive right be it to get somewhere.

Some miles west of Denver, I saw the first advisory sign for the Eisenhower Tunnel, and at first I thought I might be able to drive through it for the first time. It has only been open two years; when I returned from California in 1968 to go to Indianapolis to begin Army active duty, I used the former route over Loveland Pass. Unfortunately, the road I needed to exit on to head north towards the Rocky Mountains, Colorado Highway 119, is east of the Eisenhower Tunnel, so I guess that going through it will have to wait for another time.

The exit for Highway 119 was about thirty miles west of Denver (and about fifty miles east of the new Eisenhower Tunnel). The road I would follow, which was extremely scenic, was Highway 119 through Nederland, Colorado, but then became Colorado Highway 72 north.

The road was very scenic, and in quite good shape. From some distance away, that is the Rocky Mountain National Park.

This view is from further along on Route 72, still looking North.

I continued north on Highway 72 until it dead-ended into Colorado Highway 7 that was coming west from Longmont, Colorado. Highway 7 continued north towards Estes Park, Colorado.

State Highway 7 is one of Colorado's shorter state highways; it is only 82 miles long and it traverses the mountains on the east side of the continental divide south of Estes Park as well as portions of the Colorado Piedmont north of Denver. The northwestern segment of the highway is part of the Peak-to-Peak Scenic Byway and furnishes an access route to Estes Park, Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. In its southeast portion it skirts the northern end of the Denver Metropolitan Area, providing an access route connecting Boulder, Lafayette and Brighton with Interstate 25. The western terminus of this mostly two-lane highway is in Estes Park- the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Estes Park is a popular summer resort and the location of the headquarters for Rocky Mountain National Park. The town lies on the Big Thompson River. The area was the summer hunting ground for the Arapaho Indians, and the still-visible ruins of their rock fireplaces and dance rings at Mary's Lake from the 1850s are still visible. The first European visitors were trappers, although the town was founded in 1859 by Missouri native Joel Estes, who moved his family there in 1863.

In the ensuing years, naturalists and adventurers came to the area, and wrote of its pristine beauty, as well as its hunting, fishing, and mountaineering opportunities. A famous 1876 Bierstadt painting of the Estes Park/Long Peak area is now in the collection of the Denver Art Museum.

The 4th Earl of Dunraven tried to take over the whole valley in the 1870s, failed, and opened the area's first resort instead. Other adventurers came to the area, and many of them published glowing reports about the area. In 1874, MacGregor a toll road was built into the area, which brought more visitors to Estes Park. Some of them became full-time residents and built new hotels to accommodate the growing number of travelers.

In 1884, Enos Mills (1870-1922) left Kansas and came to Estes Park- a move that proved significant. Mills became a naturalist and conservationist who devoted his life after 1909 to preserving nearly a thousand square miles of Colorado as Rocky Mountain National Park. He succeeded and the park was dedicated in 1915. Here are two good pictures that I took just south of Estes Park:

I stopped in Estes Park to replenish my stock of snacks and drinks and then headed west into Rocky Mountain National Park.

Before detailing my drive today, I want to show you how the park is laid out, so I can explain the route that I took. At left is a very high level look at the park. Now, I know you can't read anything, I just want to illustrate that the park itself is like a large rectangle oriented north-south. There is a highway just east of the park that goes from I-70 up to Estes Park, where a couple of the park entrances are located.

The park roads cross the top of the rectangle, going east-west, and then the main park road turns south in the upper left corner and goes all the way back south (to once again intersect with I-70 (via US Highway 40). Now if I wanted to see everything in the park, I would follow that road all the way around. The route would be somewhere around 125 miles, which is not a lot if you are going 50-60mph, but the problem is that you can't do that speed on the park road- and you wouldn't want to, either, as there are so many things to stop and see.

I thought I would be lucky if I averaged 25 miles every hour, counting the time to stop and see stuff. That would make maybe 6-7 hours to get all the way around and back to the Highway 119 exit off I-70. As it was already noontime, I could easily see that it would be getting dark in the last couple of hours, and so my ability to see stuff would be hampered. So I decided that I would let the clock determine how far I went.

It's Friday, and I need to be back in Chicago on Sunday. It's a thousand miles from Denver to Chicago. I could do that in a day, but it would be a slog. I figured that if I was east of Denver by nightfall, I could drive until midnight or so and find a hotel along I-80, that might leave maybe 800 miles, and I could do that by driving all day Saturday, getting me back to Chicago late on Saturday night. That seemed like a plan.

So since it was noontime, I would take my time driving west through the Park and about five or five-thirty turn around and come back east. That trip would be a lot shorter as I would have done the stops on the way out, and could simply just drive steadily (albeit fairly slowly) on the way back. I figured I'd be back in Estes Park at six or six-thirty, and still have enough light to get down out of the mountains and back to an Interstate. Then I could eat dinner and drive until I got tired on the way back to Chicago.

While it might not be important, I thought I would add here the park map from the brochure that I picked up at the entrance station. I will say that the map you see here is not actually a scan from that 1975 brochure; that document is long gone. This is the current park map, and while some of the facilities may have changed, the roads and major points of interest are still the same.

I took the marked road out of Estes Park and headed northwest to the Fall River Visitor Center, where I picked up my park guide.

Rocky Mountain National Park is situated about 75 miles northwest of Denver on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The eastern and westerns slopes of the Continental Divide run directly through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the park's northwestern region.

The main features of the park include mountains, alpine lakes and a wide variety of wildlife within various climates and environments, from wooded forests to mountain tundra.

Sheep Lake

I entered through the Fall River entrance, and shortly after that passed this small lake made by the river. Nearby are Sundance Mountain, Mount Chapin, and Mount Chiquita (each about 12,000 feet). On a regular basis, but with no set schedule, the sheep will comedown from the high country, cross the road and graze for up to an hour or more before returning to the high mountains. Rangers and Park Volunteers will stop traffic to allow the animals to cross. In these sink holes, they seek mineral salts needed to sustain life, grow coats and horns, and produce milk for their young.

The Rocky Mountain National Park Act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson on January 26, 1915, establishing the park boundaries and protecting the area for future generations. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the main automobile route, Trail Ridge Road, in the 1930s. The park has a total of five visitor centers with park headquarters located at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center— a National Historic Landmark designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West. National Forest lands surround the park including Roosevelt National Forest to the north and east, Routt National Forest to the north and west, and Arapaho National Forest to the west and south, with the Indian Peaks Wilderness area located directly south of the park.

After that point, the road began climbing steadily, and the scenery got better and better. There was one turnout after another with one amazing view after another.

This is some of the scenery west of Sheep Lakes on the main Park road.

Mt. Chapin

All of the turn-offs and overlooks had descriptive information, and it would have been nice to have had all the time I would have liked to make notes on all that these pictures show at the time I was taking them. (It would also have been nice if digital photography had been available to me, but that, and even the personal computer revolution is still more than five years in the future. If it had been, and the cost to take a picture was essentially zero, not only would I have taken many more pictures than I did today, but I would also have simply photographed all the signage at all the turnouts, and today I would know exactly what each picture shows.)

Hidden Valley typifies the boreal ecosystem within the park.

This looks southwest to Terra Tomah Peak.

I continued along Trail Ridge Road and came to a place where the road began a number of switchbacks where it ascended to the Many Parks Overlook. This is where I stopped for lunch, sitting on a low wall at one of the turnouts, and taking in some of the most spectacular scenery I've ever had while eating lunch.

The Road Up to Many Parks Overloook

At left is the view that I had while I was eating my sandwich. Pretty neat, no? I have to say that I was really fortunate in that the weather today was absolutely perfect. It was cool at the lower elevations and actually a bit chilly high up if the wind was blowing, but I was still comfortable.

Before I continued on, I put on my wideangle lens to get another picture. Sadly, I forgot to adjust the aperture enough so the picture is a bit darker:

As I've said before in this photo album (and on the pages for this cross-country trip) I have, up until now, been a "city boy", and pretty unfamiliar with anything much outside the suburbs. This trip has opened up a huge new world for me. While I've been in National Parks before (in the Appalachians, on Mt. Ranier, etc.) I have never seen such a variety of parks before, nor visited many of what are considered the "Crown Jewels" of the National Park System.

The View Southwest

I can tell you how my outlook has changed and use the picture at right, which was the view to the southwest from Trail Ridge Road, to illustrate. A few weeks ago, before this trip, I would have just parked here, looked at the view, taken a picture or two, and then headed on to the next vista. But in the last couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and hike up, down, and through some of these amazing places. I am no hiking expert, and certainly not a backcountry hiker, but for hikes out and back all in a day- that's something I think I'm capable of.

So when I looked at this view today, one of my first thoughts was how neat it would be to just sling my small rucksack over my shoulder and light out across the landscape to one of the peaks in the distance. I could see a route I might follow, and I could imagine how neat it would be to just climb over rocks and stuff to get high up to see the views.

Of course, I wasn't presupposing that I would be by myself; having someone like Tony along to have someone to talk to (and for safety) would certainly be nice as well. But in places like this you have the opportunity to leave civilization behind so it's just you and nature (which everyone says is good for the soul). I'm not sure about the soul part, but I can see the attraction so many young people (and others as well) have for hiking. I found myself hoping that I'd have more opportunities to do this sort of thing in the future.

NOTE from 2019:
As I was cutting and pasting the narrative above from my paper photo album onto this digital page, and rereading what I'd written back in 1975-76, I found it interesting that the wish I expressed to myself back then to do more of this in the future would get fulfilled. Not soon, but eventually. And, as fate would have it, when I did get those opportunities, I would at one point find myself right back here, on this same park road, seeing the same views but also doing more of the day hikes I've been thinking about.

I've driven far enough now that I need to switch out the park map I showed you earlier. The one at right covers the second portion of the drive I made today, and shows the route from the Many Parks Overlook up to the Alpine Visitor Center, which is right near the highest point in the park.

I am, of course, on Trail Ridge Road, which is the name for a stretch of U.S. Highway 34 that traverses Rocky Mountain National Park from Estes Park, Colorado in the east to Grand Lake, Colorado in the west. The road is also known as Trail Ridge Road/Beaver Meadow National Scenic Byway. It is named for the geologic feature that it follows- Trail Ridge- that runs from the highest point in the park southeast.

Trail Ridge Road is closed during the winter, and often remains closed until late spring or early summer depending on the snowpack. The Trail Ridge Road is the highest paved through road in Colorado and it is also the highest paved road in Colorado that crosses the continental divide (Colorado State Highway 82 at 12,095 feet going through Independence Pass is the second highest).

As I made my way up the road (and I do mean up) I passed the trailhead for the Forest Canyon Hike. There were lots of cars there, so I assumed it was a popular hike and I stopped to check it out. The signs indicated that the hike took a couple of hours, which was more time that I thought I might have, so I continued on. Between that trailhead and the Rock Cut rest station the scenery, particularly to the southwest, was just beautiful:

Later in the afternoon, as I was approaching the Alpine Visitor Center, I saw another parking area that was pretty busy, and I stopped to check it out. It turned out to be the hike to the highest point in the park that is accessible by automobile. Well, you couldn't actually drive to the highest point, but it was at the end of just a half-mile trail from the parking area. This was certainly doable, so I got my camera and about fifteen minutes later was standing on the top of a rounded hill looking around at the amazing views in all directions. I took a number of pictures- four with my 35mm lens, and two with the wideangle (which, like my other wideangle shots today, turned out a bit dark.) Here are those pictures:

Yellowstone is about 350 miles that way.

This view looks southeast.

From here, you can see rolling hills....

....and craggy mountains.

From the highest point in the park, I drove on the last mile or so to the Alpine Visitor Center, figuring that it would be a good place to turn around. There were a couple of overlooks and the views were neat. It was getting on past four in the afternoon, so I thought that I would end the drive west at this point, and return the way I came to Estes Park.

The last view from my drive through Rocky Mountains National Park is this picture looking ahead to Fall River Pass.

Fall River Pass (elevation 11,796 feet) through the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, is traversed by U.S. Highway 34 on Trail Ridge Road between Granby and Estes Park. However, as at Milner Pass on the Continental Divide, the road does not descend after reaching the pass from the west, but instead continues to climb along a side ridge; thus, neither pass is the high point on Trail Ridge Road, which crests at 12,183 feet elevation, east of Fall River Pass, still within Rocky Mountain National Park. On the other hand, the old, largely unpaved, and one-way-uphill Fall River Road does have its summit at Fall River Pass, where it joins the modern highway for the descent to the west. The Alpine Visitor Center, one of five visitor centers for Rocky Mountain National Park, is located at Fall River Pass. The highway has a moderately steep 6% grade on either side of this point.

At this point, I turned around to head back east, and 90 minutes later I was back at the Park entrance northwest of Estes Park. I stopped in town to get some gas and to plan my route back to Interstate 80.

Looking for the easiest and fastest way back down to Denver, where I could pick up I-80, I settled on US Highway 34 which took me directly east from Estes Park, through the small town of Drake, over to Loveland. I didn't know it when I started out from Estes Park, but this road would be even more scenic than the road up from I-70 earlier this morning.

The Big Thompson River Along Highway 34

One reason why this drive was so scenic was that, for much of the way to the eastern edge of the Rockies, I was paralleling the Big Thompson River, and often the road ran right beside it through a fairly narrow gorge that has been cut by that same river. The 78-mile-long Big Thompson River is a tributary of the South Platte River, entirely within the state of Colorado.

Had I taken the time to do the hike to Forest Canyon earlier today, I would have seen the headwaters of the Big Thompson River, as it begins within that canyon. The river flows east through Moraine Park to the town of Estes Park. There it is held in Lake Estes by Olympus Dam before being released into the Big Thompson Canyon. The North Fork Big Thompson River also begins in Rocky Mountain National Park, on the northern slopes of the Mummy Range. This tributary flows east, through the town of Glen Haven, where it merges with the Big Thompson River in the town of Drake, in the Big Thompson Canyon.

From Lake Estes, the river descends 1/2 mile (800 m) in elevation through the mountains in the spectacular 25 mi Big Thompson Canyon, emerging from the foothills west of Loveland. It flows eastward, south of Loveland across the plains into Weld County and joins the South Platte approximately 5 mi south of Greeley. It receives the Little Thompson River approximately four mi upstream from its mouth.

NOTE:
I actually didn't write the narrative for this trip until well over a year later, after I'd gotten my slides back from being developed and had the time to catalog them. By then, I knew that just eleven months from my trip through the canyon, in July of 1976, a stationary thunderstorm dropped a foot of rain in under four hours just east of Estes Park at the top of the canyon. This caused a flash flood that swept down the gorge, inundating the highway with eight feet of water. Sadly, celebrations for the Colorado Centennial were going on at a couple of sites at the lower end of the canyon. The death toll reached 143.

Past Drake, the gorge began to open out and the road began a serious descent. Coming down out of the Rockies and into Loveland was an abrupt transition, and by the time I reached the outskirts of Loveland, the land was basically flat (even though I was still a mile high). I went through Loveland and turned north on Interstate 25.

At Cheyenne, I got back on Interstate 80 heading east, a day after Tony and I had come through the same interchange on our way down to Denver. It got dark east of Cheyenne, but I continued driving, eventually getting a motel outside Kearney, Nebraska, for the night. The next morning, I continued east on I-80 to Omaha.

I had left myself an easy 450-mile trip back to Chicago, and I crossed into Iowa just east of Omaha. I drove through Des Moines, south of Cedar Rapids, and around Davenport. Today, I could have taken I-88 to Chicago, which would have been just a little shorter, but I continued east on I-80 to pick up I-90/94 north into the city and home.

I arrived home, tired, at about six in the evening and, fortunately, didn't have to be anywhere until Wednesday. So I had time to unpack, decompress, call to see how Tony's dental work had gone, and reflect on such an amazing trip. I returned to Chicago something of a changed person.

First, I had been exposed to more National Parks, National Forests, National Monuments, and National Grasslands than I could count. Many of them left me looking forward to return trips when I could spend more time in them.

Second, since I hadn't bothered to shave all the time we were gone, I now had a full beard- a fact which would figure in to quite a few things in the years hence. (It is 2019 at the moment, and I still have it.)

You can use the links below to continue to another album page.

	November 29-30, 1975: A Weekend in Los Angeles
	June 8-12, 1975: A Week in Toronto, Canada
	Return to Index for 1975