Jeff & Ruth Touring with a Trailer

 11,000 miles after we started we arrived at our starting point in Eugene. The last 3 days were spent visiting the Pralls for 2 nights followed by a night camped at a rest stop.

 Summer liked Arches National Park so much after our 3-hour visit that we had to return. The landscape is surreal with arches, fins, pinnacles and weirdly shaped red rock formations galore. Summer wanted to climb everywhere. 

 Summer showed her climbing skills on Double Arch. We also toured North and South Windows and hiked a primitive trail around both. 

 We cruised through Colorado to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and found a very impressive canyon. The black walls are super tall and the canyon is super narrow. A treacherous river winds through the bottom.  We stopped to take a picture of a mule deer along the road.  Later, as we drove through Colorado we spotted dozens of tarantulas walking across the highway. 

In Colorado we visited a curious natural oddity. Over millions of years the wind has carried sand from nearby mountains and depositing it in a certain location in a valley, creating the largest sand dunes in America. The dunes are encircled by seasonal creeks and vegetation.  Summer had fun sliding down dunes on her seat or rolling down countless times. She and Ruth earned Junior Ranger badges.  We could see a few hikers who had climbed to the top, but that was a long way. Many others brought snowboards to slide down the hills.  Our camp site was a bare spot on BLM land. It's near the highway, level and far from anyone or anything. We liked it.

 Next stop, Strataca Salt Mine. That tour corrected all my preconceived notions about salt mines. We took a lift 650 feet down to a massive complex of rooms carved in the salt deposits.  Then we drove a long way through Kansas with the wind blowing hard making towing a trailer difficult. We even had a few minutes of driving rain. We were glad to arrive at our campground, and that it was past the thunderstorms, although looking back we could see a brilliant  lightening show.

 We toured the Mormon Trail Center, aka Winter Quarters. It has lots of great exhibits. One of Ruth's ancestors is buried nearby so we visited the grave site, although it no longer has a marker. Next stop was Topeka, Kansas at the Brown vs Board of Education Museum. We learned things we didn't know about the fight to end segregation. The fight was fought in Topeka because it really did provide equal schools for "colored" children. But Thurgood Marshall argued that forced segregation always teaches children that they are inferior.  Very Nice Kindergarten Classroom for African American Students  Summer earned another Junior Ranger badge. 

 We watched General Conference until noon, and then set off to tour Nauvoo some more. In the Family Living Center we learned to make candles, rope, rugs, barrels, thread, fabric, bricks and bread. The blacksmith shop is next to the site of the home of Orin Woodbury, one of my ancestors. There we learned about horseshoes. At the wainwright shop we learned about wagon building. We visited the Lucy Mack Smith home, built by Joseph Bates Noble, one of Ruth's ancestors, the Brigham Young home, and the cultural hall. We caught another show by the missionaries. Then we walked around the temple before driving to our next campground in Iowa.