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Jasper John's take on the Stars and Stripes
We finally got around to making that road trip to the western states of Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota and Utah. The notion had formed 15 years ago following a mesmerising road trip with our three teenage children through Arizona, Utah, California and Oregon. The Utah landscapes had been seared into my memory but we had no time to get to Yellowstone. Work never allowed a three-week break thereafter so the trip was deferred until retirement. As always the holiday was a late decision, we had only three weeks after purchasing flights to Denver, booking some of the accommodation and then reading up on places to visit.
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An anti-clockwise loop was planned travelling from Denver to the most northerly states first. I assumed that the late summer heat would be offset by the altitude and mountains. We would take in the plains of Wyoming, Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills of Dakota, the Devil's Tower, and then onto Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. In September we would travel south to the desert lands of Utah and visit Canyonlands and Arches national parks, hoping that the furnace-like temperatures of summer had subsided. The final part of the road trip would be to four corners (where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet) and then to Mesa Verde National Park before returning to Denver through the Rockies. We completed off the trip with four days in New York to reacquaint our minds and bodies with noise, fumes, corporate excess and a bit of culture. It was an ambitious plan with 3000 miles to be driven on top of 10,000 miles of flying - not exactly carbon neutral but the first holiday of the year.
We flew from Edinburgh to Newark Liberty International where we changed after a four-hour break for a flight to Denver. The flight was well ahead of schedule until we were put on hold over western Idaho and circled over the drab colourless plains watching the traffic and trains below whilst an electrical storm passed through eastern Colorado. Denver airport was both modern and efficient and we were soon at an airport hotel 7 miles away from the airport. There was a good diner nearby and I started as I meant to continue with some fine craft beer to accompany the salad and chicken.
First thing the next morning we hired a car but had to survive the usual hard sell to upgrade to a 4X4 or a large saloon for our 3000-mile trip. I resisted to the chagrin of the salesman so the choice was a line of Chevrolets, a couple of Toyotas or a VW Golf estate. We chose the latter thinking it would be more familiar and less thirsty. We headed north through Colorado staggered at the extent of the commercial developments stretching northwards from Denver. It was also apparent that we had one of the smallest vehicles on the road with gas-guzzling 4x4s, huge trucks often pulling similarly sized trailers and the odd convoy of military vehicles creating the impression that we were in a war zone. The environment was certainly being crushed by American prolificacy.
The railroads were chock full of trains that had three locomotives, and 90 plus trucks that were over a mile long, but this is mining country. I took a 60-mile diversion through Pawnee Indian grasslands to escape the traffic en route for Cheyenne and found images of America that could have been the 1950s: vast plains, old cars, trucks, fences and moody skies. Cheyenne is the largest town in Wyoming and has a vibrancy that owes much to the public buildings like the town hall, museum, railway station and the sense of being a "centre" of a very sparse state. We had lunch in an Italian diner and visited the museum and the biggest railway locomotive in the world: Big Boy.
It was 3pm when we started to roll again and drove north on the near-empty Interstate 25 highway. The scenery was glorious in the afternoon sunshine although the vast empty prairie landscapes were vandalised by massive adverts for real estate and dotted with signs for small settlements or rivers. The villages, roads and creeks were mainly named after extinct animals, lost Indian tribes and dead people. Names like buffalo plain, little bear bluff, old woman creek, or dead Indian hill.
We turned off Interstate 25 to take a route via Guernsey and Hartville, the smallest settlement with a post office in the United States (pop 25). It would have been closed years ago in the UK. Then along the glorious rising highway 270 to the remote town of Lusk. We battered on through flatter scrubland to Newcastle, a small but busy town which was infested by pick-up trucks, take away food outlets but no sidewalks.
The highway to Mount Rushmore was through the scenic Black Hills of Dakota. It was being resurfaced and even at 8pm, there were still dozens of trucks and roadmen rolling out the asphalt. It delayed us by half an hour so that it was dark when we drove past the floodlit profiles of the Presidents and into the adjacent town of Keystone.
I was not sure that a 460-mile drive was the most sensible idea on the first day of the holiday but at least the schools were back after the holidays and we were blessed with relatively quiet roads for the trip. All the restaurants were closed as the visitors had left with the schools going back but the hotel was comfortable and it was 4am UK time. As a first day, we had certainly sampled some sublime landscapes, enjoyed the emptiness of Wyoming, the least populated state, and learnt to cope with driving amidst monster trucks at 75mph.
We flew from Edinburgh to Newark Liberty International where we changed after a four-hour break for a flight to Denver. The flight was well ahead of schedule until we were put on hold over western Idaho and circled over the drab colourless plains watching the traffic and trains below whilst an electrical storm passed through eastern Colorado. Denver airport was both modern and efficient and we were soon at an airport hotel 7 miles away from the airport. There was a good diner nearby and I started as I meant to continue with some fine craft beer to accompany the salad and chicken.
First thing the next morning we hired a car but had to survive the usual hard sell to upgrade to a 4X4 or a large saloon for our 3000-mile trip. I resisted to the chagrin of the salesman so the choice was a line of Chevrolets, a couple of Toyotas or a VW Golf estate. We chose the latter thinking it would be more familiar and less thirsty. We headed north through Colorado staggered at the extent of the commercial developments stretching northwards from Denver. It was also apparent that we had one of the smallest vehicles on the road with gas-guzzling 4x4s, huge trucks often pulling similarly sized trailers and the odd convoy of military vehicles creating the impression that we were in a war zone. The environment was certainly being crushed by American prolificacy.
The railroads were chock full of trains that had three locomotives, and 90 plus trucks that were over a mile long, but this is mining country. I took a 60-mile diversion through Pawnee Indian grasslands to escape the traffic en route for Cheyenne and found images of America that could have been the 1950s: vast plains, old cars, trucks, fences and moody skies. Cheyenne is the largest town in Wyoming and has a vibrancy that owes much to the public buildings like the town hall, museum, railway station and the sense of being a "centre" of a very sparse state. We had lunch in an Italian diner and visited the museum and the biggest railway locomotive in the world: Big Boy.
It was 3pm when we started to roll again and drove north on the near-empty Interstate 25 highway. The scenery was glorious in the afternoon sunshine although the vast empty prairie landscapes were vandalised by massive adverts for real estate and dotted with signs for small settlements or rivers. The villages, roads and creeks were mainly named after extinct animals, lost Indian tribes and dead people. Names like buffalo plain, little bear bluff, old woman creek, or dead Indian hill.
We turned off Interstate 25 to take a route via Guernsey and Hartville, the smallest settlement with a post office in the United States (pop 25). It would have been closed years ago in the UK. Then along the glorious rising highway 270 to the remote town of Lusk. We battered on through flatter scrubland to Newcastle, a small but busy town which was infested by pick-up trucks, take away food outlets but no sidewalks.
The highway to Mount Rushmore was through the scenic Black Hills of Dakota. It was being resurfaced and even at 8pm, there were still dozens of trucks and roadmen rolling out the asphalt. It delayed us by half an hour so that it was dark when we drove past the floodlit profiles of the Presidents and into the adjacent town of Keystone.
I was not sure that a 460-mile drive was the most sensible idea on the first day of the holiday but at least the schools were back after the holidays and we were blessed with relatively quiet roads for the trip. All the restaurants were closed as the visitors had left with the schools going back but the hotel was comfortable and it was 4am UK time. As a first day, we had certainly sampled some sublime landscapes, enjoyed the emptiness of Wyoming, the least populated state, and learnt to cope with driving amidst monster trucks at 75mph.
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