August 13, 2013

• Epic Road Trip, Day 5

  After that exciting night in Nebraska we woke early. The RVer's were also up and out of there early, waving goodbye to us and agreeing that this was the kind of place people only stayed one night at. I got a picture of the campground. No sireebob, we weren't in Washington anymore.
  
  As we finished packing up, I got a couple pictures of the Chimney Rock, since it was famous and all.
  
  Then, to be artsy, one of Chimney Rock with a wagon.
  
  And then, since it was there, a windmill.
  
  Then it was time to work our way to the Tri-State corner. We followed GeePS and Jack to the first cache of the group I wanted to do -- the tri-state corner, and 3 other caches within a quarter of a mile into each state. We found the road off the highway easily enough but we drove right past the road the GPS units wanted us to take because I hadn't recognized it as a road. But then, as I said, we weren't in Washington anymore and maybe 2 deep ruts and some tall grass counts as a road around here. So we backtracked and took it to the first cache.
   
  Then, the "road" got steadily worse. The bottom of my car was scarped clean as I tried to fit my tires where I wouldn't bottom out. I might mention that there is no one, and I mean no one for miles and miles so I wasn't too keen on the idea of getting stuck. Not that I would be with other people around, but you know what I mean. Heading to the monument, I was still about 700' from it when I saw a stream going across the....the place my car was supposed to go (not much of a road at this point). I sat there for a while contemplating driving through it, driving around it, or forcing grumbly kids who couldn't have cared less about some dumb monument to walk the distance.

  Which is when a school bus lumbered up behind me, drove around me, and sat in front of the stream. Passengers tumbled out, jumped the stream and started walking to the monument. This, suddenly, turned the situation around as far as walking went. The kids were excited to see other people and were eager to hike with them so we got out and kept to ourselves but engaged in a kind of toddler parallel play as we followed along. Then the bus rumbled to life again and made it's way downstream a bit then crossed and made it's way with us to the plaque.

    
  We got friendly with the bus people, apparently a 1994 class reunion field trip, and we took each others pictures at the monument which you can't see cause Kendrah is standing in front of it. Oh well. We were there, that's all that matters. We did our caching thing, drawing interest from a few of the people about it. One man saw my GPS and said he'd heard that the monument wasn't exactly where the state corners meet and suggested I "punch in all zeros" and see just how far off they were. I may have been confused by what he wanted, but explained that the tri-state corner, while very cool, does not have a reading of all zeros so it would not be an accurate way to determine how far off the monument was. I didn't laugh till I was far away.
    
  The driver gave us a ride back to our car, then waited to follow me out to the real road. We honked and waved and took off.
   
  Off to see Americana in the shape of a tipi hotel. Somewhere along the line we slipped into Wyoming, but I don't know if this hotel was in Wyoming or Nebraska. Here's the sign for Wyoming, with other people hogging the photo ops.

   
  And the cornerstone of Cheyenne.
  
  Then, into Colorado we went, followed quickly by seeing a giant bison sign up on a hill.

   

  We drove and drove, Unhappy Frog riding right along with us as we went from sunny....

  to stormy....

  and into the storm and traffic. 

  The storm came and went and by the time we got to the Celestial Seasonings factory, it was sunny again, and the prairie dogs frolicked and the tea pot signs led the way.

     

  Since all three of us love tea, this stop was a no-brainer. Who needs to drive through another boring place with the words "National Park" tacked to the end when there is a tea factory to see? So, yeah, the Rocky Mountains were nixed off the list and we headed here.

  

  The windows were all plastered with various art they use on their tea boxes and I couldn't resist the one with the bison. That particular tea has too much caffeine for me, but I've always been fond of the bison art on it. Seeing it 10' by 15' was kinda a big deal.

  

  As it was for Quin, who spent some time petting the tiger while Kendrah took pictures of him and I tried to get pictures of Kendrah taking pictures of him.

  

  Then it was time to browse the shop and go through the Tea Sampler Bar while we waited for our tour to start. Quin agonized over some chocolate choices, a moot point since they were about $5 each.

  

  Once our tour started of course it was time to put the camera away. They weren't actually making tea that day (figures!) but we got to see stuff. Quin's favorite part (maybe of the whole trip) was standing in "The Mint Room" deeply inhaling the menthol till his eyes watered. He bought a postcard that said "I survived The Mint Room!". Altoids and their curiously strong mints have nothing on The Mint Room, it was downright intense and many on the tour had to step out.

  Interesting fact about mint, its sticky. They said if they didn't have separate machines to run the mint on, they would end up with 76 varieties of peppermint flavored tea.

  And speaking of varieties, there is a guy that has worked there almost 40 years that has such a refined tea palate that he can sip any tea from any company and identify every ingredient, and what region that individual ingredient had been grown. He tastes about 100 cups of tea each day to assure that the mix is done perfectly. That's so crazy cool. They told us that if we wanted his job when he retired, we needed a 4-year degree in some kind of food management or something, plus be his apprentice for 4 years before he'd consider hiring us. No thanks. I like tea, but I also like burning my mouth off with spicy food and I suspect that can't be good for later identifying some herb in miniscule quantities brewed in hot water.

  After the tour and browsing the tea shop again, we headed back outside to grab a cache called Prairie Dog Preserve. Along the way....you may be shocked by this....we saw a lot of the creatures between teh factory and the cache.

    

    

  It was so fun to watch them! They moved so fast, if you blinked you might miss them entirely as they dove in and out of their tunnels. They also hid very well just sitting in the grass. You may also be surprised to know that there are 2 prairie dogs in each of three of these photos.

  After that we just made our way to my sister's house in Colorado Springs and got some rest and visiting and laundry done before heading off to bed so we can have another full day tomorrow.

   

  • 8:09 pm
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