Cadillac Ranch and The Big Texan

Travelling through Texas is often quite daunting as the state is so BIG! It normally takes us two days just to skirt through the top part towards Louisiana. Yet, there is so much to see in Texas and better yet, so much to EAT!

This time I wanted to stop at a few places in Amarillo as we made our way through.

Cadillac Ranch is basically a sculpture made of Cadillacs that was built in 1974. The cars are embedded in the earth in a field just off the interstate (here), which makes for easy access. You get onto the side road, pull your car off to the side, and enter through a fence and walk out onto the field until you reach the cars. If you have dogs this is a great location for them to stretch their legs- on a leash of course!! They even encourage bringing spray paint to graffiti the cars! So fun! We didn't have any spray paint, but the cutest little boy offered us his can. 

After admiring the graffiti, we stopped for some lunch at the Big Texan Steak Ranch. At the Big Texan, they have a 72 oz. steak and if you can eat it, along with shrimp cocktail, a baked potato, salad, and a buttered roll, in under an hour, you get it for FREE! 
This challenge emerged in 1962 after the owner brought a bunch of tables together and told a group of cowboys that he wanted to see who could eat the most 1 lb steaks in an hour. The cost for the competition was $5 and whoever ate the most got the entrance fee waived. 
One cowboy took the lead when he ate 2 steaks right away and then requested a shrimp cocktail and baked potato to be served with his third steak. By the end of the hour this cowboy had eaten 4.5 steaks, the shrimp cocktail, baked potato, salad, and a buttered roll. The full history is available here. 

We so wanted to eat in, but the weather was scorching hot and there was no way we could leave the dogs in the car during the meal. I went in and ordered some food to go. When I got outside we found this eating area called the doggie coral that was fenced in with a picnic table, so we let the dogs wonder around and ate our lunch... in the scorching hot weather. It was fun and the food was very good. 

The Big Texan is basically a little old western community. In addition to the restaurant, they have a hotel, casino, shopping, brewery, and RV ranch. It is very unique! 

These two pit stops made for a great travel day! There is so much to see in Texas and one day we will spend the time exploring it all. 

-S

Up Next: Florida

Great Sand Dunes National Park

When Zach and I were in Yellowstone, we purchased the annual national park pass. We wanted to try and get as much use out of it as possible. The American the Beautiful Pass is $80 and grants you unlimited entrance into national parks and recreation areas for the year. Entrance per vehicle into most parks averages around $30 per vehicle. So if you are planning on visiting at least 3 national parks in a year or going to the same park at least 3 times the annual pass is worth it! Plus we live right on the border to Montana and like to visit Glacier National Park when we can, so this pass really saves us money! 

On our way to Great Sand Dunes National Park, we took a detour to the Royal Gorge Bridge in Canon City, CO. This is America's highest suspension bridge! Unfortunately, it costs to walk across and it is NOT dog friendly. If we were going to walk it, we would have wanted to do it together, instead of having to take turns so someone could watch the dogs. We could still appreciate it from the parking lot though! 

When I heard about Great Sand Dunes National Park, I really didn't think that such an expansive area of sand dunes would be all that great, and really didn't think it would be as big as I had heard. WRONG. I was so wrong on both accounts. 

When we first caught a glimpse of the sand dunes below the Sange de Cristo Mountains from a distance, they looked like a mirage, and I was a little skeptical about their professed majesty, but the closer we got the more we were blown away by their magnificence. 

The sand dunes were formed by water and wind, and as water evaporated, sand was left behind. As the wind pushed the sand towards the mountains, it can to a stop and started accumulating.

During the warmer months Medano Creek forms from melted mountain snow, providing relief from the hot, dry conditions present during the summer. Unfortunately, it dries out as the summer heat prevails. 

This is one of the few National Parks that is dog friendly. We took Zoey and Kona out and started traversing the great sand dunes, until we were all too tired and hot to go any further. 

This may not look all that magnificent, but search for the little black dots at the base of the dune... those are people!

Hot dog

Sand tornado 

I promise Zoey comes on these adventures too. I normally walk Kona and Zach walks Zoe.

Doesn't the sand look fake!

After spending some time at Great Sand Dunes, we decided to go out in search of a hotel. Along the way, we kept seeing signs for Zapata Falls, so we decided to check it out. So the road up to Zapata falls is pretty awful. Like I feel like you should only be able to drive a truck or quad up this boulder scattered road. We took it super slow and I kept telling Zach that my awesome Explorer could handle it. I put the Explorer in Sand Terrain Management Mode and let the SUV work its magic. It was a pretty bumpy ride, but we made it to the top no problem. Ok slight problem- all the bumps caused Zach's throbbing headache to only get worse. 

This was the hiking trail, but just imagine the road looking like this with bigger rocks and a larger surface area. CRAZY!

View from the Zapata Falls hike

Since Zach stayed in the car with the dogs I had to run up the trail in search of the falls. Unfortunately, once you get up the trail you have to wade through some water and maneuver over slippery rocks in order to get an awesome view of the waterfall, which I didn't have time to do. It definitely made for quite the adventure! 
-S

Up Next: Cadillac Ranch and the Big Texan! 

Garden of the Gods

Garden of the Gods was a dream. If you like hiking and super cool rock formations that shoot high into the sky, then this is the place for you! It's also free to visit! Bonus! This park is also dog friendly as long as you keep your dogs on a 6 ft. leash. They even have an off the leash area here. 
Garden of the Gods is located in Colorado Springs, CO and was only a 15 minute drive from our hotel, regardless we woke up bright and early so we could get to the park before the crowds did. It was an absolutely beautiful day and aside from a few early morning bikers and runners we were there alone!
There is a scenic road that leads you through the rock formations and plenty of opportunities to pull off the road and take pictures or hit the trails! Which is exactly what we decided to do. 

The only ones on the trail! 

So pretty- almost prehistoric like

So happy to be out on the dog friendly trails.  

We love Colorado and feel like it is the perfect state for the outdoor adventurist. Garden of the Gods has a great Visitor Centre and provides the opportunity to mountain bike, hike, and rock climb. For more information check out their website here for park info and a map of all the trails. 

We will definitely be back to Colorado Springs, as we didn't even skim the surface of all there is to do here. 

-S

Up Next: Great Sand Dunes National Park

Yellowstone National Park

Prior to even thinking about this trip, Zach and I had been wanting to travel down to Florida to visit his family and see friends. However, I had been covering a maternity leave in a dental office that was supposed to last until December 2018, so it wasn't realistic for us to go on a month long vacation anytime soon. Come April, my in-laws were in need of staff for their seasonal business and there just didn't seem to be people looking for work, so Zach and I discussed what we should do. We love working at the restaurant, but I didn't want to flake on the maternity leave position either. After lots of thought and discussion, we decided that it was actually in our best interest to go to Waterton to work for my in-laws. Their season is from May-end of September, but we were able to score the month of May off before we had to start working!! We decided that this would be the perfect time to travel down to Florida. So, after helping get things set up in the restaurant, we started our trek down south.

We decided to take our time travelling down considering we had a whole month off. We left Waterton around noon and planned to make it to Bozeman, MT. Up until we crossed the border we didn't feel like we were actually lucky enough to go on a month long vacation across the states, until the border patrol man joked with us about how lucky "us Canadians" are with being able to take so much time off work! It was seriously the easiest border crossings of our lives. After that we hit the big sky, Montana highways. We stopped for lunch in Helena and got some good old Panda Express! Sooo good!

After eating our lunch, we took the dogs out to use the washroom, Koni got out of the car, did his business, so Zach walked around with him for a few more minutes before settling back in the car, while I waited for Zoey to do her thing. As I was walking around with Zoey, mama's boy Koni, jumped out the car window and made a run for me and Zoey!! It's a good thing he generally sticks pretty close to us, because the highway was right next to where we were walking.

Later that night we got settled in to our cozy Holiday Inn Express, which was located right beside a Costco and a TARGET! For me, this was when it really set in that it was time to relax...and shop!!

The next day we headed to Yellowstone National Park. We entered via Gardiner and headed straight to Mammoth Hot Springs while on the Grand Loop tour.

It was so cool to have bison just chilling downtown, with no cares in the world!

This rock is supposedly called "The Devil's Thumb"

It's so cool to see such unique geological formations so close to home. Mammoth Hot Springs formed   over thousands of years as hot water dissolved limestone, then cooled and deposited calcium carbonate/reformed limestone. 

Continuing on the Grand Loop, we made our way to Roaring Mountain. 

Roaring Mountain is formed from volcanic rock and is one of the hottest parts of Yellowstone. Steaming fumaroles formed over the years that created a distinct roar, that has now mellowed to a slight hissing sound! 

Our next stop was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and where we saw Artist Point! 

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was formed by the Yellowstone River via years of erosion. We had a beautiful view of the Lower Falls from Artist Point. 

Our next stop was one that we hadn't planned to make, but we saw a sign for the Black Dragon Cauldron and had to take a look. Unfortunately we weren't able to hike all the way up to the Black Dragon because dogs aren't allowed on the trails. However, we were able to get some really cool pictures of some bison near Mud Cauldron. 

I think buffalo is one of my favourite animals! They look prehistoric, but have evolved to live in the now. The Mud Volcano area is really acidic and has the classic rotten egg smell that is caused by hydrogen sulfide. 

My absolute favourite part of Yellowstone is all of the hot springs! You can see steam vent from the roads and driving the Grand Loop provides so many opportunities to pull off and see all of the springs! 

Zach hiked along the Fountain Paint Pot Trail and was able to see some really cool hot springs and mudpots, both of which are great reminders that we were in an area with active volcanic activity.

Silex Spring

My favourite part of the trip to Yellowstone was wandering along the Midway Geyser Basin pathway. It is so crazy to me that all the vibrant colours are a result of bacteria. The thermopiles change colour according to the temperature of water they reside in. 

Starting on the trail you see all the run off from the hydrothermal pools into the Firehole River. 

Runoff from the Excelsior Geysor

Continue up the path, I took a right and headed toward the Opal and Turquoise Pools. This was a good way to start the path, as it slowly led up to the mesmerizing Grand Prismatic Spring. 

As you walk along the board walk, it looks as though you would be able to walk along the ground between each pool, but there are signs strictly telling people to stay on the path as the ground temperature is just way too hot. 

Pictures just don't do this spring justice! 

The final pool was the deep blue Excelsior Pool. 

After exploring the Midway Geysor Basin, we decided that we would quickly drive over to Old Faithful, because what's a trip to Yellowstone without seeing one of its most famous landmarks. 

Unfortunately we just missed the eruption. We decided we didn't want to wait another hour or so for the next eruption as the dogs had been patient all day while we took turns exploring different areas of the park that they weren't allowed to go near. We grabbed a bite to eat in West Yellowstone and continued on to Jackson Hole!

All in all we had a blast at Yellowstone and would definitely visit again! 

-S

Next up: Jackson Hole, Garden of the Gods, and Royal Gorge.