Wilson's final thoughts

I've made it back to Denver. 8,700 miles, 280 hours of driving, 14,000 feet in elevation change from the Pacific to Pikes Peak. Burned some gas, ate some burgers, got wet, got hot. Took a few pictures along the way.

Time to take stock of the last 50 days.

Return to splendour (and some teeth gnashing)

I spent my final few days wandering along the canyons, ridge roads and forests of Northern Colorado in the Roosevelt National Forest and the Rocky Mountain National Park.

The scenery is spectactular but, outside the National Park, it's also highly settled - a combination of old history where settlers hit the Rockies and stopped, laying down backwoods roots and new history where lots of new money simply buys a piece of forest, builds a house on it and comes to 'summer' or 'winter' here (Americans do love to turn nouns into verbs). The good stuff is only an hour or so from Denver airport so it's become a popular destination.

Compared to the wilder states I'd been through over the last 50 days, where similar scenery felt more open and less controlled, my frequently thwarted attempts to find parts that weren't privately owned or prohibited from parking/swimming/enjoying became quite frustrating. The constant stream of fences, private property (how does one feel about possessing wilderness?), 'no parking dusk to dawn' and 'fee required' areas really started to chafe, accreting a hard to ignore noise that my roadtrip was coming to an end and I would soon be returning to civilisation.

2 Doors Down bottomless fries burger - 17/25

After what felt like a thousand hours on the grassplains of South Dakota and Nebraska, I was jonesing for a decent burger.

A quick survey of the locals (including a pair who specialise in car repairs due to damage caused by frequent hail in these parts, yes really) uncovered 2 Doors Down, a dedicated burger diner/restaurant a short walk from my motel in the centre of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Their vibe is cool, fresh and genuine and they set out their stall early with a claim to have been "Flippin' great burgers since 2009".

Just like Gourmet Burger Kitchen back in the UK, you order from a blackboard menu at the front, take a number flag and from then on it's table service all the way. There's a few key differences though, the standard drinks fountain (soft drinks, coke, lemonade etc) is bottomless but, potato lovers, so are the fries. Whenever a member of staff wanders by they latch onto an empty looking vessel, spirit it away and return with more of the same. It's a gimmick, but a great one.

Stir crazy on the grasslands of Nebraska

There's a lot of grass in Nebraska. After a peaceful and picturesque overnight car-camp in the middle of it, the long long drive South East back towards Wyoming and Colorado began to take it's toll....

Interesting road name nose following part 3

This time towards something called 'Toadstool Geologic Park'. After negotiating a textbook 1/2 mile long train crossing and 11 miles of track spearing off into the middle of nowhere, I found myself arriving at this location straight out of a doctor who episode.

Sculpted mountains and windy caves in South Dakota

Can you spot the President in this picture?

At last, I turn South on the final side of the rough rectangle back to Denver where I started way back in June. The Black Hills area of South Dakota are a pretty fierce set of granite hills and dense forests, but aside from mountain goats their chief claim to fame is the home of Mount Rushmore.

You've got to admire the sheer hutzpah of the visionaries/crazies who conceived of the idea of sculpting a mountain way back in post-depression 30s USA.

Close encounters of the iconic kind

No visit to Wyoming would be complete with stopping by one of the most iconic natural / unnatural formations in the World. If you haven't seen Close Encounters Of The Third Kind go get it and see what Spielberg was up to before ET.

From storm clouds to fluffy clouds

My first day back on the road was a stormy start with heavy skies for most of the morning. As I headed out of the Greater Yellowstone area and onto the prairies of Northern Wyoming it was back to blue and some serious heat with it. Hotel for the night was courtesy of the Old Ten Sleep Highway, now replaced with shiny blacktop leaving it forgotten and empty as it wound it's way off into the hills.

Diggin' on human power in Wyoming

America loves the motor car (well in fact they love girt big trucks masquerading as cars), so much so that most touristy places I go end up with a 1/2 mile exclusion zone around the car park beyond which 80% of Americans will not walk.

This is A Good Thing because it means the application of a little human powered activity i.e. walking or, in this mornings case, paddling, results in accessing proper wildscapes without screaming kids, revving engines, yakking people or white socks pulled half way up to the knees.

The Bird 'Ghetto on a Good Day' Burger - 19/25

The more places I see, the more it reinforces how incredibly important personality becomes in a restaurant. Branded chains drown under a wave of greying conformity, no matter how brightly coloured their arches. Mom & Pop places should have personality oozing given their independence and owner/operator control, but too often they make no statement at all and end up just as grey and forgettable as the generica.

In any endeavour where you want to have people take away positive memories and experiences , you can't do that unless somebody somewhere in the organisation puts a big old stake in the ground and says This is what we are about. It doesn't have to be complex (it's usually better not) or be grand, but as long as you have something concrete to hang your business, band or restaurant off that's what matters and it's what will lift you out of the murky depths of average.

The Bird had it in spades for me. It's an idiosyncratic pub just South of Jackson, Wyoming. Opened in 2010 by two New Yorkers via Berlin it's become the #1 Restaurant on Tripadvisor in Jackson (all this I found out after the fact as I was tipped off by some locals from my namesake town earlier in the day when I enquired 'who makes the best burgers around here' and got told, "Hands down, The Bird").

A Wilson got to Wyoming before me

After the magnificence of Yellowstone, I was prepared for a duller landscape, but immediately below Yellowstone lies the Grand Teton mountain range and national park so there was no let up in the jaw dropping scenery. In Winter this area becomes one of America's prime snow destinations, but seen under Summer skies, there's a whole other life to be had.

Sulphur and furry backsides in a still active caldera

It could only be Yellowstone National Park. One of the few places in the US that have never been fenced or farmed it's also one of the first National Parks and treasure trove of just about any kind of geographic feature you care to name. Plains, hills, mountains, canyons, forests, lakes, rivers and marshes all sit inside the 40 mile wide caldera left behind by massive volcanic eruptions 2 million, 1.2 million and 600,000 years ago.

Much of the park is basically sitting inside the crater of a supervolcano ready to go off beneath it. The magma close below the surface results in extraterrestrial surface features like acid burned basins, sulphur spewing vents and superheated rainbow coloured pools caused by all the geothermal goings on.

Big Jud's Double Rodeo Burger - 13/25

Big Jud's is a small chain of Idaho burger joints whose chief claim to fame is the 1lb Burger and multiples thereof, as seen on Man Vs Food. Call me a wuss but, I didn't fancy ploughing my way through one of those bad boys (1lb of beef isn't a problem, it's the 1lb again of topppings, sauces and cheese that puts me off) I compromised and went with a Double Rodeo Burger (basically an onion ring, bacon + homegrown BBQ sauce, layered twice as it's a double).

Experimenting with roads and kites

I have found Idaho to be harder than any of the preceding states to sniff out places to overnight in, or at least the options feel limited because so much more of the state is given over to fenced off ranch land. Maybe it's a relic of the fact that early settlers got this far and couldn't face the depradations of the Oregon Trail further west so simply set roots on this side of the Cascades. Either way, I've had to work harder to find the good stuff. Having said that, when I have, the results have been entirely worth it.

From baking to freezing in a thousand year old lava tube

Day 4 finds me moving further East across the middle of Idaho. After a brief stop at Silver Creek for a dip it was on to the Craters of the Moon National Monument: a massive lava field stretching for miles across the plains. Thousands of years old flows have solidified and in places left behind lava tubes and caves you can climb or walk in. It was amazing how cold they were just a few feet below the baking hot surface.

More photos from Craters of the Moon

The only human in 100 square miles

On the way back down from the mountain forests of Sawtooth, the peaks gradually lose height, the trees thin out and the landscape starts flattening back to plains and rolling hills. A little real map planning had a small road, ID46 leaping out at me to link back to the US20 East. Halfway down the road, out of the corner of my eye I saw a tiny sign for 'City of Rocks Road' pointing off to a winding track to the West. Game on.

Chipmunk fishing in Sawtooth Forest

Day 2 in Idaho finds me traversing the deep twisty depths of the assorted National Forests of Challis, Boise and Sawtooth. The forests don't seem as dense from the road as in Oregon, but there was a lot more evidence of Forest Fires leaving behind dead blackened or sun bleached blasted trees.

Hotel, schmotel - car camping is the way to go

Coming down from the misty Oregon mountains and continuing inland towards Idaho, the first signs of high desert plains began to appear with horizon spanning rolling hills of sagebrush. For the early Oregon trail travellers, trying to reach the West coast going the opposite way, the contrast between sagebrush track plains and deep canyon dense forest would have been harsh, if not deadly in winter.

All quiet on the Western Burger front

The keener foodies among you (no names no pack drill Beef), might have noticed a distinct lack of Burger updates from last few weeks. Fear not, I am still attempting to ferret out the good stuff, but of late it's been a pretty poor showing with only distinctly average fare presented. I took an executive decision (because hey, it's only me, it's my damn blog and my mission) to only write up the good stuff as no-one remembers that which only hits the giddy heights of good enough.

Herewith the scores on the doors so far. The calibration is holding steady, with GBK firmly mid-table.

Joint	Score	Total	%
Fish & Farm	20	25	80.0%
Ford's Real Hamburgers	16	25	64.0%
Cherry Cricket	19	30	63.3%
GBK	15	25	60.0%
Crown Burger	17	30	56.7%
True Grit	13	25	52.0%
Boss Hog	15	30	50.0%
Polkers Gourmet	11	25	44.0%

From 3,000 years old to 33 million years old

Yesterday was a bit of a geology field trip day. I spent time in the various units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in mid-Oregon and drove through a barren black lava field up near Mount Washington.

The John Day Fossil Beds are a geologically significant area due to the many layers of rock exposed through erosion that document a 30 million year period in the planets's evolution. The place is crawling with fossils and paleontologists as a result. The coloured layers are caused by different minerals in the volcanic ash that formed them and because of the dry climate have remained essentially unchanged for multi-millions of years.

My own private America

Dolpin or Bedouin ancestors, you decide

Oregon Coastline

Quick post of some shots I took on my trip up the Oregon coast featuring some beautiful beaches, dangerous guillemots and enviable property. I had two days of brilliant sunshine followed by 2 days of fog and rain, so got the timing just right. This coast is a lot more accessible than California, which was either too rugged or too built up for my taste. Sections of this trip reminded me a lot of the North Cornish coast. All it needed was a pasty to make the day perfect.

Oregon Coastline pictures

Random Americana

For those that like sort of thing, I'm keeping a little scrapbook of Americana snaps here

Get off the map and stay off it

Spent 4 days touring round the depths of the National Forests of Klamath, Shasta, Trinity and Lassen, a huge area of mountains and forest taking up most of Northern California. In the process, I have become adept at snaking out awesome spots to overnight at, preferably with a river close by for morning dips. Had some epic drives, which completely blew Sat Nav Lady's mind (or maybe it was the canyons, fog, switchback roads, deep forests). I lost count of the number of legal U-turns she was desperate for me to make to force me back onto main roads. The more she does it the more I relish ignoring her..

In which I visit Endor

Do you ever have those moments when something seems to reach into your brain, grabs a fistful of consciousness then yanks you out of your meatware to really appreciate where you are or what you're doing?

As I'm an old geezer who remembers turbo buttons on computers and the gently glowing 66 that meant you were a player, I get it frequently when holding a modern mobile phone; the sheer computing power stacked into something so small, the array of things it can do. Camera, calculator, diary, video camera, music player, organiser - and it makes calls too. Take yours out now and really think about what it's taken to put all the stuff in the palm of your hand. If you don't find yourself thinking isn't technology amazing, you're not concentrating hard enough.

Rocks with bubbles

Quick post of some shots I took off Salt Point State Park with amazing sandstone bubbled formations A.K.A. 'Tafoni'.

More Tafoni rock pictures

My first sniff of the 'real' Pacific

Technically, scrambling about below the Golden Gate Bridge should count, but somehow the fog and grey-ness that day didn't feel real. As I travelled North from San Francisco, climbing through Mount Tamalpais state park got me some fantastic above the clouds views and then later sheer distance from fog trap of the bay at Point Reyes seashore got me proper Pacific up close.

Like many things I'm finding on this trip, it's the little things that can catch you out when you shift cultures to another country. For example, if you ask for a side order of something in a restaurant in the US, you'll often have it delivered as an appetiser, rather than as, you know something on the side with your main dish (go figure). On the roads, you can turn right at a red light if it's safe and overtake on any side on the freeway. The point I'm making is that some stuff you take for granted or do automatically in one place, can have dire consequences in another.

I love the smell of antique nukes in the morning

First day out of San Francisco and a cold-war relic caught my eye. In the late 50s and early 60s the US built a network of 280 'Nike' Missile sites, dotted around the major strategic bases and population centres (Nike after the greek goddess of victory - the sneaker gods hadn't been invented yet). Whilst initially the missiles in these batteries were conventional high explosive, as the Cold War deepened, they were soon replaced with nuclear warheads...

Fish & Farm 'Secret Sauce' Burger - 20/25

Fish & Farm is one of those restaurants within a hotel, in this case the Hotel Mark Twain in downtown San Francisco. It came to my attention as a winner of a San Francisco burger shoot out in 2009. Could it still cut the mustard?

Made it off The Rock

For much of its history, Alcatraz was actually a military post, one of the first fortified bases on the west coast in fact. Today it's a strange combination of ruined buildings, landscaped gardens, seabird sanctuary and tourist ghetto.

It's true, you can walk around San Francisco

They (no, not 'They', just 'they') say San Francisco is one of the few American cities you can walk around. I put that to the test today on a grand 15 mile navigation encompassing Haight (+ Memphis Minnies to fuel up), the Presidio and Golden Gate bridge. I can exclusively reveal I am knackered and my feet could stop a zombie at 40 paces.

Meet "Cardio Mario"

Meet Cardio Mario. I met him whilst walking down Pacific Avenue, just down from the Presidio. He was out for his evening jog. I was marvelling at the architecture when he stopped and spent 20 minutes sharing with me the goings-on on what transpires was Billionaires Row, the most expensive street in the city.

From Larry Ellisons spat with his neighbours about trees blocking his view, to Sean Penn's alleged prediliction for using champagne bottles to test the theory of gravity from his roof, Mario had it all.

Mario isn't the only slightly strange thing out here. There are flocks of parakeets flying about and a strange species of molochian hobo that seems to be invisible to the rest of the populace. They walk up to trash bins and then enthusiastically mine them for aluminium cans which are then fastidiously crushed on the spot and added to their collections. I may follow one and see if I can find the mother nest.

Updated photos from 'Frisco

Polkers Gourmet Burger - "The Mexican" - 11/25

Just down the street from where I'm staying in San Francisco, the magic words are writ large above the door; Polker's Gourment Burgers - Polker because I'm on Polk Street. Well, it would be rude not to.

A Michael Jackson tribute, fireworks with naff narration, the scent of Mary J...

..it must be July 4th in San Francisco.

14 (mostly) white guys called Foreverland pulling off the best of Michael Jackson. Several thousand people on the grass of Aquatic Park, some smoking meat based items on BBQs, others smoking matter more vegetable in nature, both combined scents permeating the atmosphere. Nicely bombastic fireworks display, but diminished by overly naff intro speech and over-loud backing Americheese music. Still, crowd seemed to enjoy it. Good times.

Pause for thought - lessons learned and tunes rocked

I've made it 'Frisco. Took a few pictures along the way.

A useful time to pause and take stock on the last 2000 miles or so.

Ford's Real Hamburgers, Sacramento - 16/25

Ford's Real Hamburgers is a classic counter style diner in the suburbs of Sacramento, hiding behind a Starbucks. The joint came to my attention from a recommendation in Jamie Jensen's Road Trip USA as a "truly great old burger place".

What is it with me and lakes?

Lake Tahoe sits square across the Nevada/California border. 22 miles long, 12 miles wide and 1,000 feet deep it sits over 6,000 feet above sea level. Crystal clear waters, framed in a mountain basin surrounded by pine forest, make a spectacular setting. Now my official route says to stay on the US50 around the South of the lake, but as always, the long way around looks way more attractive. Pretty much as soon as I turn North, the views of the rock strewn shore get me itching for a little swimming excursion.

Another day, another dune - but this one had eyes

After I took this video, I settled down to watch the stars come out. The skies are massive out here, there's no light pollution becasue the nearest towns are so far away. About the only familiar constellation I could identify was the big dipper/plough, but the sheer volume of stars is pretty mind blowing. Usually there's too much crap in the atmosphere to pick out much, but when there's so little cloud, it's pretty much a straight line for those ancient photons to hit the back of your eyeballs. The Milky Way is clearly visible as well. As we're edge on to the galaxy, looking through it from the rim of the spiral arm we're in means the sheer density of stars gives a cloudy effect. My poor old Panasonic Lumix FT2 wasn't quite up to the job but plenty of others with better gear can show you what I mean.

Up on the crest of the dune it's very peaceful. It takes about 2 hours for the last of the sun's light to completely vanish from the sky so it's an unhurried process. I was lying flat on my back looking directly up into the stars and enjoying the gradual change in the velvety black night and deepening violet of sundown. So relaxing in fact that I dropped off and fell asleep, waking suddenly at about 2 in the morning.

In the heart of conspiracy country

At 110 million square miles, Nevada is about 20 million square miles bigger than the UK, but only has a 30th of the population, and most of them are concentrated in a few larger cities. No surprise that US government (hereinafter referred to as They) own/manage about 90% of the land and use it as the military's private playground.

Welcome to the Hotel Nevada

I'll say one thing, there's no shortage of rest areas and basic unmanned campsites about in which one can park up and snuggle down. This night's room with a view was at the Hickison Petroglyphs - a site of prehistoric paintings and marked rocks - about 15 miles East of Austin, Nevada.

Flat can be Fabulous

As I left the environs of Salt Lake City, the landscape started to settle down into long open plains and scrub-strewn desert punctuated by fins and fingers of mountain ranges that funnel and squeeze any need for corners out of the roads. Crossing the ancient now (mostly) dried out Sevier Lake bed West of Delta was beautiful as the marshy waters lie still in the windless air, mirroring the skies above.

The Crown Burger - 17/30

The Crown Burger came to my attention via the always entertaining Man vs Food show, in which intrepid food journo Adam Richman travels the US in search of outrageous food challenges and great places to eat (think Extreme Fishing with Robson Green, but with food). Crown Burger is basically a small chain of fast food restaurants around the Salt Lake City area. Their speciality is burger topped with a fistful of hot pastrami...

Zen and the art of Route Planning

Heading west from Moab towards the Pacific, the idea was to follow the "loneliest road in America", the US50, A.K.A. the backbone of America. It snakes its way across what would have been the orginal frontier of the Wild West through prospecting boom and bust towns, classic plains and mountain ranges emerging into suburban California.

The 40 mile detour I'll never regret

Travelling down US191 towards Canyonlands National Park, my eye was drawn to a sign labelled 'Needles Overlook'. The Needles are one of Canyonlands most famous areas, stuffed with fins and spires, so I thought it would be worth a look. When I turned off at the indicated point, I was met with a sign saying Needles Overlook, 20 miles. No prizes for figuring out that's a 40 mile detour there and back...

Things in the distance are bigger than they seem

One thing that keeps hitting me is the sheer scale of this place.

The long way to Moab

One of those occasions when turning the sat nav off (I never tire of shouting at sat nav lady that it's 'calculating root' not 'calculating rowt') and following my nose proved inspired. I should have just sat on US50/I70 freeways and pointed West. Instead I took the long way round, travelling down US141 through a small place called Gateway, then heading across the Paradox Valley into Utah.

From mountains to red rocks

Leaving the high mountains behind after my long trip up the Million Dollar Highway, I arrived in Grand Junction to a different world. The temperature difference was massive for starters. From the air-conditioned comfort of my car I had no idea how hot it was until I got out to get some fuel (body + car). Even late evening when I arrived the heat just hit me like a wall. With no nice shady spots or lakes to hobo camp out in I caved and booked into a motel with air con.

What 2000 feet straight down looks like

Day 3 finds me teetering around the edges of the deepest/narrowest canyon in North America. Black Canyon National Park is just east of Montrose in Colorado. It's hard for the eyes to get a handle on just how far down the floor of the canyon is. At it's deepest it's 2000 feet down. How deep is that? You could get get the Empire State building in and still have 500 feet of headroom....

More Photos on Flickr here

Million Dollar Highway

A number of legends exist around how this stretch of US550 came to be known as the Million Dollar Highway. There's a huge history of gold and silver mining in the area so one story has it that men who built the roads linking the crucial mining towns of Silverton and Ouray discovered lumps of precious metals along the way and made themselves millionaires. The other story is more closely related to how perilous the road itself is to travel given the twists, turns, height and consequences of getting it wrong. A visiting VIP was heard to remark that "you won't get me going back down that road for a million dollars".

The True Grit Burger - 13/25

The original True Grit featuring old bandy legs himself was filmed in these here parts, so eating lunch at the bar of the honorific True Grit cafe in Ridgway surrounded by images of Mr Wayne seemed too good to miss.

Who needs a laundromat when you have a lake?

Lake Haviland, about 20 miles North of Durango was my second overnighter and proved to be a brilliant little spot for some swimming.

The Boss Hogg Burger - 15/30

Driving through the resort community of Pagosa Springs (most people who live here have 2 or 3 homes) my eye was drawn to an establishment going by the name of Boss Hog's Restaurant & Saloon. Walls were covered in dead heads and antlers and the menu comes as faux antique olde worlde newspaper. Locally reared Burger + Bacon avec Frings et BBQ sauce was duly ordered and, as I'm now coming to expect, arrived deconstructed with the salad to one side. Usual condiments present.

40 miles in a straight line

Next stop after the Pikes Peak was the Great Dunes National Park, nestling in the San Luis Valley - a desert basin between fingers of the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains. After the eye candy of mountains and massive vistas where 1 inch on the horizon equates to 38 miles, hitting the desert plains was educational.

A scholarly history of the mighty burger

The learned Guardian newspaper has weighed in on the topic of the mighty burger. This great article traces the burger's modern roots all the way back to the late 1800's and a mittel-european love for steak tartare...

What a difference a day makes

From this:

To this: