The Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands: Historic Hotels in Billings and Buffalo

Cody Wyoming is a gateway to Yellowstone

THE ORIGINAL PLAN

I had this idea to take a four day trip out to Cody Wyoming and back. Cody is a nice town, not far from Yellowstone. I went through there on my trip to Yellowstone, but didn't stop to check it out. I was thinking that 2 nights and a full day might be a good idea. They have both a yarn shop and a couple of breweries there, and the trip goes through the very scenic Big Horn Mountains.

The Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands: Le Tour d'Idaho

Idaho is a good place to visit!

Idaho is an underrated state, I think. I mean what does anybody know about it besides famous potatoes and white supremacists, if you're old enough? It's shaped funnily what with that real skinny part at the top which seems like all it does is to separate Montana from Washington for no apparent reason. I imagine that if you drive it through the pan handle from Montana to Washington, Idaho must be a big yawn. Or a tiny blink. "Oh, did we just go through another state? I guess we did. Oh well."

But Idaho is right on top of Utah, and people from Utah go there from time to time, not just when they are driving through to Oregon or Washington. Fly fisher people know it as a kind of paradise. It has more natural hot springs than any other state (who knew?).

And they say that Boise is "the new Asheville".... or that Boise is a trendy place to live now that all the other places are "filled up" and maybe even "spoiled." Like Prescott Arizona, Boise shows up regularly now on lists of good places to live for a variety of reasons.

So a visit to Boise and therefore surrounding areas in Idaho has been on my list for some time now. Time was getting short in Utah for me, and I just decided to do it NOW. I told my knitting friends of my plans. Two originally signed on to go with, but one cancelled, so it ended up being my friend J and I taking this trip. J drove her car which was fine with me.

The Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands - A Tiny Vacation to Dinosaur Land

Got myself some fine new luggage mostly from Target,
pretty and just the right sizes,
so Sock Monkey & I can start to hit the road together.

I'm ready to get out of town again. This was the first of several upcoming short trips to a number of places. This time it was a driving trip in my little green car with my friend Jan Mi. We went east up into the Uintah Mountains to the small city of Vernal. We left on Saturday and returned on Sunday. The reason for the trip now was to attend the annual spring concert of the Uintah Basin Orchestra and Chorus. Two members of the Z family, who are friends of ours, were playing and singing.

The Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands. She Visits Places Where Nature is Awesome

So, Bears Ears is a GO. Thank you President Obama. I'l be writing you a personal note about this soon.

Meanwhile it's time to finish up this whole series. I drove right by Bears Ears this fall on the way to Natural Bridges. Next time I'm headed that way I hope I can visit both.

Natural Bridges is not terribly far from Hovenweep. You can easily see both places in one day unless you do a lot of hiking. It was a very early monument, the first one in Utah established by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908.

The Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands. She Visits New Mexico and Utah Places where the Ancestors Hung Out

After 4 days in the big city, time to head home

After Albuquerque I stopped at two places in New Mexico the first day and one in Utah the second. I deliberately decided not to attempt Chaco Culture because I read on the website about how difficult it is to drive there. I knew my car was up to the task, and it had not rained for some time so the road would have been dry. But I thought about whether or not I really wanted to drive over 70 miles round trip on dirt washboard roads, and decided, nah, not this time. I'll see if sometime I can't find a guided tour group that takes you there in a bus or van.

The Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands. She Visits Some Places Where the Ancestors Used to Live in Arizona

Flagstaff claims three national monuments within its radar.

First of all, I had no idea how many places there are where you can spend time checking out ruins of the places that the pre-Columbian people of the Four Corners region built. I know about Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon (where I have not yet been, but I will get there!) But it turns out there are many, many places protected by the federal government, state governments, tribes and sometimes no one at all.

The Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands: She makes a Plan for a Road Trip

We had a long and glorious autumn this year.
This scene is driving up Cedar Canyon in southern Utah.
The colors were just shimmering which the photo can't show.

In early October I took my first big retirment trip. I took a road trip through northern Arizona, north western New Mexico and southern Utah that lasted 12 days. If I had just been moving the whole time, I probably would not have taken 12 days, but the kernal that began the trip was an accreditation site visit at the College of Nursing at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.