After a good nights sleep we hooked up the trailer to our TV and towed the short distance to Scotts Bluff National Monument. Scotts Bluff has scientific interest from a geological standpoint as the north face shows more geological history than any other place in Nebraska. It's also the second highest point in Nebraska (which tells me Nebraska is a wicked flat state) but our reason for visiting this NM is it's connection to the settlers movement west via the Oregon, California, Mormon, and Pony Express Trails. The settlers could see Scotts Bluff from miles away as they were traveling through the high prairie and after days and days of the same scenery it must have been a pleasant
sight for them. As they traveled through the bluff it became a bottleneck and they needed to have the wagons go through in single file which caused deep ruts in the landscape which can still be seen today, 160 or so years after the wagon trains went through. The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) built nearly every structure at the Scotts Bluff National Monument in the 1930's - the summit road, Saddle Rock Trail, the visitor center, the maintenance barn, and a residence now used for administration. The summit road is the most spectacular of their work with three tunnels carved through the rock and the way it was designed insures it cannot be seen as you view the mountain from the ground so the mountain appears untouched. Leon and I viewed the short slide show in the visitors center about the trials of the settlers on the Oregon/California/Mormon Trails and then walked through the exhibits to build upon what we learned from the slide presentation. I got the mother lode of national park stamps here as all of the settler wagon train trails run through this park, I got 6 stamps for one visit! Outside of the visitor center we took the 1/2 mile trail to view the ruts left by the settlers wagons, it was amazing to me that they are still there! On the way back we took a peek at the display of the types of covered wagons that settlers used and we were both surprised at how small they were. We ask a ranger about the ones we'd seen in western movies from our childhood and he told us those were later period wagons used by freight companies to move goods west. Man! If we can't trust Hollywood who can we trust? :-) Before leaving the park we took the shuttle up to the top of the bluff where we had an excellent view of Chimney Rock in the distance. The ranger who drove the shuttle provided us with additional details about the settlers and the America Indians who called this area home, it was very enlightening. We hit the road about 11:00am as we had a 4 to 5 hour tow to Estes Park in Colorado. As we were arriving in Estes Park, right at the point where the road grades became steep we lost our trailer brakes! We pulled over and tried to troubleshoot without success so we carefully towed into Estes Park to secure a campsite. We checked with a ranger at Rocky Mountain NP who informed us all NP campgrounds were full (not a surprise) so we were forced to select a private RV "resort" just down the road from the park. It was everything I dislike about private parks: Big, crowded, noisy & expensive. It was rally style parking! People who had slides only had a foot or two between them and the next persons slide. Awful! And Estes Park has grown too, and not in a good way. It's a giant tourist trap now which is not how it was when we visited in the late 1980s. Oh well, sometimes you cannot go back again. As I was too tired to cook dinner we went out to a local Mexican joint which was a disappointment. Not a good end to our day.
After a good nights sleep we hooked up the trailer to our TV and towed the short distance to Scotts Bluff National Monument. Scotts Bluff has scientific interest from a geological standpoint as the north face shows more geological history than any other place in Nebraska. It's also the second highest point in Nebraska (which tells me Nebraska is a wicked flat state) but our reason for visiting this NM is it's connection to the settlers movement west via the Oregon, California, Mormon, and Pony Express Trails. The settlers could see Scotts Bluff from miles away as they were traveling through the high prairie and after days and days of the same scenery it must have been a pleasant
sight for them. As they traveled through the bluff it became a bottleneck and they needed to have the wagons go through in single file which caused deep ruts in the landscape which can still be seen today, 160 or so years after the wagon trains went through. The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) built nearly every structure at the Scotts Bluff National Monument in the 1930's - the summit road, Saddle Rock Trail, the visitor center, the maintenance barn, and a residence now used for administration. The summit road is the most spectacular of their work with three tunnels carved through the rock and the way it was designed insures it cannot be seen as you view the mountain from the ground so the mountain appears untouched. Leon and I viewed the short slide show in the visitors center about the trials of the settlers on the Oregon/California/Mormon Trails and then walked through the exhibits to build upon what we learned from the slide presentation. I got the mother lode of national park stamps here as all of the settler wagon train trails run through this park, I got 6 stamps for one visit! Outside of the visitor center we took the 1/2 mile trail to view the ruts left by the settlers wagons, it was amazing to me that they are still there! On the way back we took a peek at the display of the types of covered wagons that settlers used and we were both surprised at how small they were. We ask a ranger about the ones we'd seen in western movies from our childhood and he told us those were later period wagons used by freight companies to move goods west. Man! If we can't trust Hollywood who can we trust? :-) Before leaving the park we took the shuttle up to the top of the bluff where we had an excellent view of Chimney Rock in the distance. The ranger who drove the shuttle provided us with additional details about the settlers and the America Indians who called this area home, it was very enlightening. We hit the road about 11:00am as we had a 4 to 5 hour tow to Estes Park in Colorado. As we were arriving in Estes Park, right at the point where the road grades became steep we lost our trailer brakes! We pulled over and tried to troubleshoot without success so we carefully towed into Estes Park to secure a campsite. We checked with a ranger at Rocky Mountain NP who informed us all NP campgrounds were full (not a surprise) so we were forced to select a private RV "resort" just down the road from the park. It was everything I dislike about private parks: Big, crowded, noisy & expensive. It was rally style parking! People who had slides only had a foot or two between them and the next persons slide. Awful! And Estes Park has grown too, and not in a good way. It's a giant tourist trap now which is not how it was when we visited in the late 1980s. Oh well, sometimes you cannot go back again. As I was too tired to cook dinner we went out to a local Mexican joint which was a disappointment. Not a good end to our day.
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