This post will cover all of our October travels. I am All of my Alaska posts put me a few weeks behind on our travels.
LZJ Ranch’s Hiawatha Hideout outside of Price, Utah, was our first time at a Hipcamp. Hipcamp is a camping version of Airbnb. Private property owners offer a variety of campsites for people to stay at. This one did not disappoint. Our site sat near old stone buildings from the 1800s and 1920s. There were rock walls from the original homesteaders and building remains from a brothel that was in business in the 1920s.
While Aaron worked, Murphy and I explored the campground. We had the entire area to ourselves for our stay, so Murphy had some freedom from the leash to explore. I also had freedom from holding the leash and was able to catch a few landscape views.
Just before we booked this campsite, I had started reading Pioneer Girl: an Annotated Biography by Laura Ingalls Wilder, annotated and edited by Pamela Smith Hill. This autobiography was not published in Wilder’s lifetime. It gave a more realistic view of her childhood than the series of novels she wrote for children (the Little house on the Prairie series). The reason I mention this is that the campground had old wagons, and that camp in the wild feel, that brought the book more to life as I was taking pictures of the types of conveyances she used in her lifetime.
Here are a few photos of the old buildings…one even had an outdoor shower for those adventurous enough to use it.
We even had three of the ranch’s cows pay us a morning visit.
There were even old tin cans from the 1920’s still in the dirt.
The campground had really cool decorations, and even a roping practice cow.
We had a great stay here in Eastern Utah, but we needed to keep heading east toward Kansas City. We still had to cross the Colorado Rockies before the first snowstorm, which was forecast to happen soon. So we packed it up and hit the road.
This was my first time in Colorado, and I was not disappointed. We spent one night at Rifle Gap State Park, and we both really want to revisit that area again.
It was October, and a big snowfall was headed our way. So we kept heading east to stay ahead of the storm. Neither Aaron or myself wanted to be towing the Airstream in the Rocky Mountains during a snow event. There was already a little bit of snow on the mountains; we did not want to deal with snow on the roads.
Aaron needed to visit another job site outside of Denver. We stopped at our second Hipcamp, this one on a family farm. For whatever reason, I did not take any pictures of our four-day stay there. It was a really nice spot, and the property owners were very friendly. It was an adjustment on the eyes. We were in the plains of Colorado, with no mountains in sight. After Aaron finished his site visits in Colorado, we headed east again. This time, we drove into Kansas. We were closer to our goal of Kansas City, but we still had a couple of days of driving to get there.
As we went down the road, we saw a sign for Salina, Kansas. Aaron’s mom and stepdad had lived in Salina for a while, and his stepdad, Jimmie, was buried there. Jimmie had grown up on the family farm there in Salina. After he passed away, Aaron’s mom, Barbara, moved back to Louisiana. Barbara passed away about seven years ago and chose to be cremated. We have been traveling with a small urn of her ashes with us. We decided to make a detour, pay our respects to Jimmie, and leave the urn with some of Barbara’s ashes there with him. Aaron and I left the cemetery with such happy hearts that they were reunited again after all these years.
Our next stop was in Wakeenee, Kansas, at a Harvest Host. This host was the Prairie Rose Inn, which also had a bar and restaurant. Just across the street was a dog park and a World War II Iwo Jima memorial with an old military jet on display. We parked our home, took Murphy to the dog park, and checked out the memorial and the jet before Aaron and I went inside to grab some dinner.
The shadows on the wall of the sculpture seemed to bring the soldiers to life for me. I am not sure if that was the intention, but it was very powerful to look at.
When we took a seat at the bar to order some food, we saw Space Camper Cosmic IPA. Aaron had to give it a try. He enjoyed the IPA with his dinner while I had a vodka and tonic with mine. The food was great, and so was the service.
After a good night’s sleep, we got back on the interstate and headed to our extended stay outside of Kansas City, Kansas. We were really excited to get there. Our son, Mason, was going to be in Kansas City working with Aaron, which meant we were about to have some family time! We planned to be there throughout November, so we found a Hipcamp that allowed extended stays in Ottowa, Kansas, just outside of Kansas City.
My next blog will cover our November adventures in Kansas with Mason, some horses, and a quick trip to Iowa for Thanksgiving.
Wandering Cindi 