How do we get back?

So... new idea: We can visit Mt. Rushmore on our trip back without taking more time. It means seeing some different states and ordering more travel guides:

• Nebraska Tourism Board
• Kansas Travel & Tourism Office
• Travel Oklahoma

Moose/Elkey Thingy

Today's Mammoth webcam... Looks like an elk has posed itself right in the camera's view. (photo... lower left)

It's Here!

Ordered a hotel directory from Choice Hotels (Comfort Inn, Clarion, Rodeway, Econolodge, etc.) and it arrived in the mail.

Ordered it at least four weeks ago, so it took a while to get here (which is fine... I ordered it well in advance).

What Did The Buffalo Say When His Son Left For College?

"Bye, Son!"

Images from the Old Faithful Live Streaming Video Cam.

Familiar Haunts

I've been scanning in my Dad's slides from previous trips. Our family had a tradition of stopping at the Continental Divide to play in the snow. In the slides, here are some of the places we crossed "The Divide" and stopped for a bit:

Berthoud Pass

Shoshone National Forest Picnic Site

Day Trip to Fredericksburg

Yesterday, a couple of friends and I went to Fredericksburg, Texas, to visit the National Museum of the Pacific War, also known as the Nimitz Museum. The museum is on the site of Admiral Nimitz' childhood home.

You can see here some 3-D images I created from photos of our trip. The artillery image can also be viewed in color and 3-D.

• Information on the Nimitz Musuem
• Information on creating your own 3-D images using Photoshop or similar software
  

Boston Market

Woo-Hoo! There are four Boston Markets in Colorado along I-25.

What food do you enjoy while you're traveling that you can't get back home? Leave a comment below.

Traveling with the Interweb Thingy

While we're on the topic of cell phones, there is a company that rents data cards -- the cellular wireless cards for your laptop. RovAir ships you a card for about $6-12 a day, depending on the length of the rental (plus shipping and optional insurance). They carry Sprint and Verizon products.

Cell Phone Coverage

Can you use your cell phone on your trip? Here are some links to different carriers' coverage maps. Are you as surprised as I am?

• Sprint Interactive Coverage Map
• Verizon Interactive Coverage Map
• AT&T Interactive Coverage Map
• T-Mobile Interactive Coverage Map

Colorado's Highway of Legends

You can drive from Trinidad to Walsenburg, Colorado along I-25, or you can take the 84-mile Highway of Legends. This National Forest Scenic Byway loops past Monument Lake, through San Isabel National Forest, and along many scenic drives. The drive takes about two hours.

You can request a map and brochure of America's Scenic Byways from the US Dept of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration.

Other 3-D Roundup

I mentioned before that the USGS has 3-D images from several national parks. Here are the links to the image collections from the other parks my wife and I may visit this summer.

• Dinosaur National Monument (and vintage images)
• Grand Tetons National Park
  
• Carlsbad Caverns National Park

3-D Tour of Yellowstone

More goodies from the USGS Volcano Observatory. They have a collection of 3-D images from around Yellowstone NP. They have several sets of images. There are vintage red/cyan 3-D images and some red-cyan 3-D images taken with a modern camera (that means full-color). The vintage images are made from old black-and-white stereographs. Having the original stereographs, of course, would allow us to view them without red-green glasses.

They also have 3-D tours of other national parks. I'll create posts for the other parks on our trip that they cover.

You can do a quick web search to find suppliers of 3-D glasses. These guys look competent.

Alternately, you can enlarge these squares and print them on a transparency. (Hold the cyan over your right eye, the red over your left eye.)

Aerial Images of Yellowstone

The US Geological Survey has plenty of information about Yellowstone National Park. Some of it's pretty cool even if you're not a scientist. For example, there's a page full of Aerial Photography of the Norris Geyser Basin. They used a radio-controlled camera attached to a helium-filled weather balloon. They were looking at cracks in the earth's surface around the thermal features at Norris.

Visit the USGS Yellowstone Volcano Observatory for more!

More Webcam Fun

The Live Old Faithful Streaming cam was showing a "small" herd of bison today. I don't think I've seen that many bison outside of the hike I made with my dad and brother through Hayden Valley.

The image on the right may take a minute to load... it is a 300 kb animated .gif file.

Pikes Peak on a Bicycle

Here's an interesting company. Challenge Unlimited offers a Bicycle Ride Down Pikes Peak. They insist that you don't have to be an experienced bike rider in professional shape. In fact, their line is, "if you can sit on a bike, you're in."

Here's how it works: They serve you breakfast, and fit you for a helmet. Then drive you to the top of Pikes Peak (in 15-passenger vans... your group can be up to 35 people). After some quick instruction, you start the 3-hour bike ride down. They serve you lunch and you're done. Cost, $110 per person includes meals, guide, and rental of bicycle, helmet, and "all weather gear."

They offer many programs. Their Gold Camp ride is also downhill, but starts at a lower altitude to avoid altitude problems. Children who are too small for the bicycles are allowed to ride along in the support van.

Name That Geyser...

I visited the Old Faithful Live Streaming Video site today, and caught an eruption. At about 3:50 Central time, March 7, 2009. I think it's Beehive geyser. Can anyone confirm or deny? (You can leave a comment by clicking below.)

Chamberlin Observatory, Denver, Colorado

This hardly even looks like an observatory! It seems that each observatory has such character and personality. The structure is often steel prefab, but the remote locations (as seen here) or the science graffiti (as seen here) make each station unique. The Chamberlin Observatory in Denver, however, is a really nice looking building.

The University of Denver and the Denver Astronomical Society allow the observatory to host public visitors frequently, and you can even reserve a spot in an upcoming event online. Our trip plans include a visit to the Chamberlin Observatory on our trip up, after spending a day in Colorado Springs!

Western Observatories

We're interested in trying to stop by an observatory during our trip. Here is a list of observatories in the states along our route...

Texas

• Stephen F. Austin Univ. Observatory (Nacogdoches)
• Texas A&M Univ. Observatory (College Station)
• McDonald Observatory (Fort Davis)
• George Observatory (Houston)
  

New Mexico

• University of New Mexico Campus Observatory (Albuquerque)
• Etscorn Campus Observatory (Socorro)
  

Colorado

• Chamberlin Observatory (Denver)
• Sommers-Bausch Observatory (Boulder)
• USAF Academy Observatory (Colorado Springs) - rare events
  

Mark Peairs has a long list of observatories that have public viewings. (I don't know how recently his list is maintained... but it's better than anything I've got!)

Carlsbad Caverns Tour Schedule

The Carlsbad Caverns NPS website lists their tour schedule (along with all sorts of other sundry stuff). They do recommend that you make reservations.

Summer Tour Schedule
Tour	Time
Kings Palace	Daily 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 2:00, 3:00
Left Hand Tunnel	Daily 9:00
Slaughter Canyon Cave	Daily 10:00
Lower Cave	Monday-Friday 1:00
Hall of the White Giant	Saturday 1:00
Spider Cave	Sunday 1:00

Summer Visitor Center Hours: 8:00 to 7:00
Natural Entrance Hours: 8:30 to 3:30
Big Room Hours: 8:30 to 5:00

Maroon Bells, Colorado

I've never heard of Maroon Bells Scenic Area in Colorado, but as the images here show, it looks beautiful. The Forest Service has a nice PDF guide to the area available online. Maroon Lake is inside of White River National Forest.



The area is beautiful, but pretty remote. It is about 12 miles west of Aspen, but there are these Rocky Mountains in the area that slow down a lot of travel... there are direct roads between a lot of places.

Pecos, Texas

The proposed route we're looking at for the trip north goes right through Pecos, Texas (as well as Junction, Sonora, and Ft. Stockton). I remember Pecos from a 1985 trip when my mom drove our foreign exchange student, my little brother, and me all around Texas for a whirlwind tour of the state. (Seeing the Southforks Ranch near Dallas was a big deal... that show had just hit Denmark, the exchange student's home.)

Out west, we saw Pecos. Right on the Pecos River. I've always associated Judge Roy Bean with Pecos, but it seems he actually set up shop in Langtry, Texas -- a little further west.

Pecos is home to the World's First Rodeo and the "West of the Pecos Museum." They have a nice PDF visitors' guide online.

By the way, Fort Stockton is home to the World's Largest Roadrunner.

Webcams!

Today is the 137th anniversary of Yellowstone being declared a national park.

The images above came off of the NPS Old Faithful Area Live streaming webcam today. Unlike the Old Old Faithful webcam (confusing, huh?), the new one streams constant video instead of taking still photos every 30 seconds or so. Another advantage with the New Old Faithful webcam, it will be refocused and zoomed to show other geysers erupting or wildlife wandering around. (The third image above shows a bison near the center of the shot... it was clearer before I resized it for the blog here.)

Some other NPS Webcams:

• New Old Faithful Area Live
  
• Old Old Faithful Geyser Webcam
  
• Mt. Washburn Fire Lookout Webcam
  
• Original Mammoth Webcam
• New Mammoth Hot Springs Webcam
• Glacier National Park Webcams
• Grand Canyon Webcams
• Hawai'i' Volcanoes Webcams
• Comprehensive List of NPS Webcams
  

And there are others. You can search the NPS site to find some.