Chris McCabe's Post-Pandemic Colorado-Utah National Parks Solo Road Trip 2021

My epic 3-week road trip is now finished. The Subaru Outback has been emptied and is parked silently in front of the house. The maps, brochures, and guidebooks have been stowed away, returned to their rightful owners, or trashed. The dirty laundry has been washed and put away. And I am home recovering from the long drives and resting, and, of course, planning the next road trip somewhere in America.  It was a wonderful, enlightening, and fabulous trip across the varied landscapes of America, allowing me to see and feel America, from small town life in Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, to gorgeous scenery in some of our greatest National Parks in Colorado and Utah. I am happy that I was able to plan and achieve this trip before I turn 60 years old in September. I can profess with certainty, and extreme gratitude, that our National Parks are truly an American treasure, the crown jewels of the American landscape. In the end, here are some "by the number...

In no particular order, here are some additional photos (part 3) of things I came across on the road trip that didn't quite fit into a specific blog post (with descriptions of same), but that I thought were interesting nonetheless and therefore worth sharing. At Mark Twain Museum, Hannibal, Missouri Kansas Historical Marker Elk statue at Elks Lodge, Ouray, Colorado Pony Express plaque at Scotts Bluff National Monument Plaque at Rocky Mountain National Park Memorial marker at Glen Canyon Dam Historical marker in Arizona on the way to Goosenecks and Valley of the Gods San Juan Skyway Coal Bank Pass Summit marker Historical marker on San Juan Skyway Amtrak's Southwest Chief leaving Raton, New Mexico, headed to Chicago, Illinois Mural on side of Plains Indians and Pioneers Museum, Woodward, Oklahoma Pioneer statue in Perry, Oklahoma Red Canyon, Utah, on the way to Zion NP

After the flawed exit to see Wilbur Wright's birthplace, I was determined to redeem the day with a visit to an attraction which was worthy of a road trip detour. In 2013, on the last stop on the way home from the Grand Canyon, Clare and Conor and I visited the Flight 93 National Memorial. That was only two years after its creation, and at the time there was only a wall of names and a parking lot. There was no visitor center and no other amenities. So I decided to fit in a visit on the way home as I knew that there were now more features to the Memorial.  The Memorial is located in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about a 15-minute detour from the Somerset turnpike exit. Fast forward some eight years later, the Memorial is now full fledged, with a Visitor Center, a Memorial Plaza, including the original white marble wall with the names of the passengers and crew, a Memorial Grove of trees, and a giant tower with 40 wind chimes called the Tower of Voices.  The Memorial is very solemn ...

Sometimes on a road trip, a sign for a museum or scenic attraction catches your eye and seduces you into pulling off the highway and taking a side detour. Sometimes this can be good thing, where you discover a fascinating museum or a beautiful waterfall, and sometimes it can turn into a total dud which eats up precious time from your plan for the day, and makes you curse the damn sign that forced your exit. That's exactly what happened to me on the way home. As I was speeding east along I-70, a brown highway sign (the color brown is used for parks and recreation signs) announced the " Wilbur Wright Birthplace & Museum ." (I saw the same sign on the first day of the road trip while traveling west on I-70 and promptly ignored it and went right on driving west!). The day was packed with a drive of 632 miles to home and I got a somewhat late start leaving Indianapolis at about 9 am, so I really couldn't afford any lost time or any unnecessary detours. Nevertheless, so...

In no particular order, here are some additional photos (part 2) of things I came across on the road trip that didn't quite fit into a specific blog post (with descriptions of same), but that I thought were significant nonetheless and therefore worth sharing.  National Historic Landmark-designated Beaver Meadows Visitor Center, RMNP Statue outside the Mining Museum, Leadville, Colorado Silverton, Colorado Relief mural on a wall of a building in San Luis, Colorado The Luna movie house in Clayton, New Mexico

I had originally planned to eat at one the two restaurants we ate at during the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone road trips (both of which were classic road trip places - one a cafeteria-style eatery and the other a diner with great food), but a client suggested that I eat instead at  St. Elmo Steak House in downtown Indianapolis.  I looked it up and found that St. Elmo has been a landmark in Indianapolis, located in the same place since 1902. St. Elmo was featured on the Travel Channel series Food Paradise. It was also one of several Indiana institutions featured in the Season 5 Parks and Recreation episode "Two Parties," where Ron Swanson picked the restaurant to celebrate a bachelor party. And in 2018 the restaurant was featured on a seventh-season episode of the Travel Channel's Man v. Food . And so I decided it was the perfect eatery to have my final meal of the road trip.  All I can say is that St. Elmo was a welcome and luxurious change from the usual road trip d...

The last time I visited Gateway Arch National Park was in 2013, on the way home from the Grand Canyon, and at that time it wasn't a National Park; rather, it was simply known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Here is the post  on the Gateway Arch from my travel blog for that trip. The Gateway Arch commemorates St. Louis' role in the westward expansion of the U.S. in the 1800s. The Arch itself, designed by Eero Saarinen , was built between 1963 and 1965, and is made of stainless steel on the outside, carbon steel on the inside, and concrete in the middle. The Arch has foundations sunk 60 feet into the ground, and is built to withstand earthquakes and high winds; it sways up to 1 inch in a 20 mph wind, and is built to sway up to 18 inches. After our visit in 2013, the National Park Service embarked on a five-year, $380 million renovation, and the Park was completely transformed with a new visitor center, museum and underground complex. Indeed, I tried to f...

Waffle House is an iconic restaurant chain founded by two friends in 1955 in Avondale States, Georgia, and now has 1,900 locations in 25 states, open 24 hours, seven days a week. The original store is now a museum  which I intend to visit if I get down that way again. The apocryphal story is that Waffle House never closes, and, if perchance it does close, then that signals a serious weather event or another natural disaster. Indeed, there is something known as the Waffle House Index - if a Waffle House closes before a storm, it is a sign that they expect extremely severe weather – and that people in the area should also evacuate. During our road trips to the Grand Canyon, the Great Smoky Mountains, and Key West, we passed numerous Waffle Houses and I always wanted to check them out for breakfast. But each time I was voted down by Clare, Conor, and Suzanne. But this time I was on my own, the hotel had no breakfast, and I needed to eat to fuel me for the day. So I decided to stop a...