During our stay in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, we had the chance to visit the NPS’s Wright Brothers National Memorial.  This is just a must see.  To visit the place where the brothers worked on their experiments and accomplished their goal of flight is something one must experience.

We arrived just in time for Ranger Dennis to give his presentation on what happened here and he involved the audience which made it much more fun.

Ranger Dennis gave a great demonstration on how the brothers designed the plane and how it worked.

This is the picture that was taken of that magical moment when the Wright Brothers made history.

This is a replica of the wind tunnel that they used to test the effects of lift and drag on over 200 wing shapes.

There is also quite a bit of local history and why the brothers chose Kitty Hawk for their experiments.

They first did numerous glider experiments right there…

…taking off from this hill where the iconic statue now stands.

You can also visit the very workshop where the brothers camped and worked.  This is a great place for all ages and definitely worth the trip.

In 1950, the Eisenhowers bought a farm adjacent to Gettysburg National Park.  They donated their home to the National Park Service in 1967 but continued to live there.  You cannot reach the Eisenhower Farm by car, but by shuttle bus from the Visitor’s Center.  Tickets cost $7.50 per person (annual park passes don’t apply).  We had never visited a president’s home before and this was a real thrill for us to experience Ike and Mamie’s home.

As you cross through the vestibule, this wonderful bronze plaque catches your eye saying “Bess This House”.  With the beautiful words:  “Bless these windows shining bright.  Letting in God’s heav’nly light.  Bless the hearth ablazing there.  With smoke ascending like a prayer.  Bless the people here within.  Keep them pure and free from sin.  Bless us all that we may be.  Fit O Lord to dwell with thee.  Bless us all that we one day May dwell O Lord with thee.”

The living room is filled with pictures, family heirlooms and gifts from important foreign dignitaries.

The Eisenhowers seldom used this room, mainly because Ike considered it “stuffy”.

The room they used more was the sun porch.  Here they entertained many distinguished guests.  The “footstool” between these two chairs is a camel saddle.

In his retirement, Ike wanted to farm and paint.  His paintings hang throughout the home.  In the corner of the sun porch is a painting he was working on at the time of his death.

It is a painting of the famous Scottish Culzean Castle.

The formal dining room was used for special family dinners and when dining with guests, but the Eisenhowers preferred to eat on tray tables on the sun porch.

This room is called “The General’s Room”.  It was Ike’s dressing room and after his 1955 heart attack, it was used for his afternoon naps.

Ike was allowed to decorate one room in the house, and here it is, his man cave.

This small building attached to this large barn is the milk house.  It was used as the Secret Service office during Ike’s two terms as president and then again following the assassination of President Kennedy.

Behind the house there is a rose garden, a tea house and a greenhouse.  The Eisenhowers grew vegetables, herbs and flowers here and had cookouts.

The tour of the family room and den are ranger led tours, then the remainder of the house and the grounds are self paced.  There is a set of activities for children to become a “Junior Secret Service Agent” where they can receive a patch and a certificate.  Return shuttles run every hour and visitors can take any one they choose.

When I researched which campground would be best for us to visit Gettysburg, I found Artillery Ridge Campground.  It’s right down the road from the Visitors Center and Battlefield.  They honor Passport America and Good Sam discounts and will combine them (separate days) in one stay.  They also provide you with coupons for free admission to the Gettysburg Diorama and Ghost Lab, just down the road as you reach the town of Gettysburg.  It is also a campground where people can bring their horses with excellent facilities for horses and their owners.  The place is very clean and the office staff is friendly, helpful and professional.  For these reasons, this campground has made it to our list of favorites.  There is an auto tour CD to play in your car as you drive that can be purchased at the Visitors Center.  The campground has a different one for rent for $5.  It follows the same route and we liked it just fine.

As recommended, we went to the diorama first.  We felt it was pretty well done and it gave us a good overview of how everything was laid out and what happened here, before we took the auto tour.

The Battle of Gettysburg lasted 3 days in and around the little town of Gettysburg.  It was the northernmost battle of the Civil War (which is often disputed because of a several skirmishes that were further north).

The auto tour takes you through the park by chronological events and you do get a feel for what transpired.  The CD is supposed to be timed with a 20 mph driving pace.  The park map has the auto tour route marked along with all the stopping points.  We did manage to get off track a little.  Coordinating where we were with the CD was at times challenging, but were able to get back on track just fine.

Metal detectors are not allowed.

There are monuments all through the park memorializing the people who gave their lives here.  Even though it was a war of brother against brother, it was a war of men fighting so that every human being in this country had the chance to live free and make a life for themselves.

Many of those young men fell on these fields.  In fact, the Civil War had more American casualties than any other war in America’s history.

The NPS is planting new trees as close to what was actually here at the time of the battle.  At that time, many of these fields were orchards.  The park service is working to restore the battlefield to how it looked in 1863 when the battle took place.

There were two colleges in the town of Gettysburg at the time of the battle, Gettysburg College and the Lutheran Seminary.  The auto tour takes you through the campus of the seminary, where the cupola (gazebo looking structure on top of the building) was used first by Union, and then by Confederate officers.  This dorm building was also used as a hospital for both sides.

The Visitor’s Center has a museum, a movie and a 360 degree cyclorama painting of the battle, as well as tickets for all kinds of tours.

Day 2 consisted of the fight for Little Round Top and Devil’s Den.  When you look at this terrain, you can just feel how hellish it all was. 

And then, on Day 3, the final day, a great dramatic crescendo… Union troops held this point on Cemetery Ridge. 

Confederate troops made a massive infantry and artillery assault on them with their goal being to reach this corpse of trees on the left.  This historic attack is known as Pickett’s Charge.

And this is the field that Pickett’s Charge crossed to reach that hill.  Although this battle is considered a draw, General Lee decided not to fight in the north again and tried stay on his home turf of the south.

From those who make a study of tactical warfare, to lovers of the strategy of the generals, to the legends of the Civil War era, to the ghosts who roam here, and the archaeology buried within the grounds, one thing that is hard to miss is that people are nuts about this park.

Soldier’s Cemetary

There is ALOT to see and do in Gettysburg and we’re having a blast…  Our Gettysburg story to come.

Just southeast of Cleveland is Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  It is a long stretch of land along 22 miles of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio.  It became a Recreation Area in 1974 and a National Park in 2000.  There is no admission fee to enter the park and dogs are allowed, must be on a leash.

Cuyahoga is a Native American words for “crooked river”.   The river flows from Cleveland to Akron.  The Ohio and Erie Canal was built and began operating in 1827 and was the major form of transportation until the 1860s when the railroad was built.  It connected Lake Erie to the Ohio River and was the first inland waterway to connect the Great Lakes with the Gulph of Mexico.

You can find out why the canal is no longer in use here.

Through our bug splattered windshield, you can see the Cuyahoga River is on the left (beyond the tree line), the towpath to the right (light dirt path), and the canal to the right of that just left of Canal Road, which we’re driving on.  Today, the canal is mostly dry with vegetation growing therein.

As seen in this diagram, Akron is much higher in elevation than Cleveland.  In order to lift or lower the boats to the proper elevation, a series of locks were engineered.

Locks were a series of water elevators where the water was manually regulated to raise and lower boats to the next level of canal.

 This is how a lock worked.  As shown in this model, a lock has two gates at either end that can be closed to dam up the water.  The gates have valves called wickets or butterfly gates that can let water through the lock to raise or lower the water level inside the lock.

A boat enters at one end with the gate at the other end closed.

Then the gate is closed behind the boat and the wickets are opened to let water in or out to raise or lower the level, thus raising or lowering the boat.

Then the boat is towed out of the lock and down the canal to the next lock.

Boats were pulled by a team of horses or mules that walked along the towpath like this.

The locks are numbered.  Lock 38 is at the Canal Visitor’s Center and is the only lock fully restored and functional.

It’s really cool to stand and see it to grasp the size of the lock and to get a feel of the importance of the history that went on here.

Today the towpath is a wonderful walking and biking trail.

The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway runs through the park and a Ranger suggested that the best way to do it is to ride your bikes down hill toward Cleveland and then ride the railway with your bikes back up to your car.  Information on the CVSR can be found here.

The towpath runs through the quaint little town of Peninsula.  We saw alot of visitors park their bikes at this place to have lunch, or a snack, or a nice cool beverage.

There are many, many interesting historical structures to see along the Towpath Trail.

In the early days of the canal, the house at Lock 38 was a store, tavern and dance hall, earning it the nickname “Hell’s Half Acre”.  It tamed down to become a General Store, and is now a Visitor’s Center and Museum.

It was really neat to see in little windows the original 1820s workmanship and structure of the house.

Then we drove south to the Everett Road Covered Bridge.

What a wonderful structure this is.  In the 19th Century, it was one of over 2000 covered bridges in the state of Ohio.  They began to be replaced by iron bridges in the 1880s.   Now it is the only one remaining in Ohio’s Summit County.

The great flood of 1913 damaged the bridge and closed the canal.  Repairs were made to the bridge and it remained until a spring storm in 1975 destroyed the entire bridge.  This is an historical reconstruction of the bridge, built in 1986, with funds raised by school children, local residents, government agencies and private organizations.

There’s a path leading down to the creek and Angie enjoyed a quick dip in the peaceful cool water.

Everett’s Road Covered Bridge, by J Boyle, 2012

We entered Rocky Mountain NP at Estes Park, CO, which is the eastern side of the park.

 The park road to Alpine is closed until Memorial Day, so we headed for Bear Lake.  Unfortunately, the road to Bear Lake is under construction for the next two years.  Expect delays, but, with scenery like this, it isn’t too much of a chore to sit and look while waiting in line.

The elevation we climbed had an effect on all sealed items in our truck.  This is what happened to the bag of chips we picked up on the way to the park.  Luckily we opened it before it exploded, LOL.

As we passed Horseshoe Park, we caught sight of a herd of Yellowstone Elk grazing in the meadow.

Released here in 1913 because they had been hunted out of this area, this herd comes down to Horseshoe Park every spring to mate.

The Rocky Mountains stretch from Mexico to Canada.  They actually rose three times, over a period of 200 million years, eroding down between each lift.

The most recent was over 55 million years ago, with subsequent sculpting by glaciers.

The Rockies used to be like Tibet, a high plateau.  A complex series of techtonic plate action, subduction and glacial erosion has created the terrain we see today.

Here are a few Rocky pictures.

We visited two Fremont Indian Petroglyph sites along the park road auto tour, one at swelter shelter and the other by the Morris Cabin.

The first site we visited was a Fremont Indian Shelter from about 1000 years ago nicknamed Swelter Shelter.  The Fremont were north of the Ancestral Puebloans in what is now Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Colorado.  They lived at the same time period (700-1300 AD) but were distinctly different.  They made and wore leather moccasins instead of sandals, they made a different type of pottery, and they made figurines.

 Their pictographs and petroglyph humans had triangular bodies and their arms and fingers were more distinctive and artistic. 

I don’t know about you, but some of their humanoids looked kind of alien-like to me.

 The Fremont were an adaptive people.  They hunted, foraged for nuts and berries, and grew crops like corn and squash.  They built granaries called Moki Huts to store their food and their houses were pithouses.

 The theory is that because they could farm here, it allowed them the time to create these elaborate depictions.

This is the second site.  It is near the Morris Cabin.  The desert varnish seemed a little darker here and the rock redder.

The art was spread all around the cliff face and it was fun to look and find them.  Some were really high up.  Can you see it?

Here it is!

Some were pretty ornate and may tell a story.

When archaeologists are digging and find ancient settlements and items, they look at what they have and try to discern the category in which these people fit, categories set up according to what findings indicate how a certain group normally lived.  Not alot is known about the Fremont, probably because they were so adaptable, they were hard to discern. 

Around 1300 AD they suffered under the same long drought conditions as the Ancestral Puebloans and, just as the Ancestral Puebloans did, abandoned their settlements and moved on.

It is believed that the Fremont may have relocated to south-central Idaho, to Nebraska and Kansas (as ancestors to the Dismal River Culture), those in southern Utah may have moved south and joined with the Ancestral Puebloans in the Four Corners area.

 These are the figurines previously mentioned.  They are called Pilling Figurines and are on display in the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum (you can see my visit to the museum here).  There are eleven of them and they were discovered under a rock overhang in 1950 by a man with the last name of Pilling.

 It is estimated that they were made 800 to 900 years ago.  They made from unbaked clay and are in matched male and female pairs.  There is one lone female that does not have a male.  Makes one wonder what happened… Did it break into dust?  Was it not made yet and they had to leave?  Did someone carry it off somewhere?

If they could talk, I’ll bet these figures could tell an amazing story.

Dinosaur National Monument stretches across Utah and Colorado.  In 1909 the first dino bone was discovered by Earl Douglass and in 1915 the dinosaur fossil beds were declared a national monument.  The boundaries were extended in 1938 by President Woodrow Wilson to include the canyons of the Green and Yampa Rivers.  There is an entrance an Visitor’s Center on either side, but they don’t connect.

The dinosaur quarry is on the Utah side near Jensen, Utah.  This is the Green River.  It helped carve the canyons of this park.  There is a Green River, Wyoming and a Green River, Utah.  That’s because it starts in Wyoming, meanders into Colorado (in this park) and then through Utah, where it becomes the chief tributary of the Colorado River.

150 million years ago, there was an ancient river here also.  Dinosaurs came here to drink.  But when a terrible drought occurred, they came to drink but there was no water and they perished here.  When the rains finally came, floodwaters carried their bones downstream.  At some point, exactly where this quarry is, there was a dinosaur bone log jam.  As the bones were covered up by sand and mud, and later millions of years of layers of debris, those bones became fossilized in rock.  That layer with the bones is what is now known as the Morrison Formation and it is part of the Jurassic Period. 

Later, these layers of rock were uplifted and tilted during the process that formed the Uinta Mountains 60 million years ago.  Then erosion worked its magic to sculpt these foothills and uncovered the bones that Mr. Douglass first saw.

The Quarry Exhibit Hall is built right into the actual wall where the dinosaur bones lay. 

This is the second building to protect the dinosaur bone log jam wall.  The first one was built in the late 1950s.  The soil it was built on sunk and the building developed cracks and it was closed in 2006.  Work began to rebuild the Hall with supports going deep into the rock for stability.  It was just reopened in 2011.

The wall is two stories high and there are two levels to the viewing hall. 

In comparison to the wall, there are small exhibits just at the right level for pint sized visitors.

 There are even bones that everyone is invited to touch.

Being carried by the river, the bones became jumbled up, but there are a few groupings.

This is a group of Sauropods (Apatosaurus and Diplodocus).

A Stegosaurus group.

This is a nearly complete Camarasaurus skeleten.

There are bones from seven different types of dinosaurs in this dino jam.

Do you see the criss-crossed bones?  That is a Diplodocus Scapula on top of an Apatosaurus Femur.

Here are a few more pictures from the Visitor’s Center and the Dinosaur Quarry.

And so we entered the Navajo Reservation on UT 163 and came closer to the towering monoliths.

We weren’t sure whether this park was part of the NPS system or whether it was private.

We soon discovered that it is a tribal park, owned by the Navajo.  National Parks and Golden Age passes cannot be used.  Fee for entry is $5 per person with children under 9 yrs of age, free.  There is a visitors center, museum, hotel and a restaurant.  The park is open year round.

The park road is a 17 mile bumpy dirt road with a steep incline back up to the visitor’s center.  We needed our 4wd.  We did see visitors use cars/trucks/jeeps of various types, but the Navajo run tours for those who do not wish to drive… and they sure looked like they were having fun.

 The map was great and extremely helpful.

There are Navajo houses called Hogans.  They are made with natural materials and are still used today by Navajo elders for ceremonial purposes.  This is a female Hogan, mainly because of its shape.

This is a male Hogan.  Mainly because of its cone shape.  It can be erected and torn down quickly, so it can be used for temporary shelter.

And this is the inside of the Hogan.

Just have to say, we found this park experience absolutely incredible.

Now for some Monument Valley pictures…

East an West Mittens

Three Sisters

Elephant Butte

Balancing Rock