Lincoln Highway Conference 2014
Day 1
Special Relativity
Day 2
A Couple of Surprises
Day 3
Ruts, Rails, & Bricks
Day 4
Displayed Stuff
Day 5
Into Colorado
Day 6
Hang On Loopy
Day 7
Loopy Hang On
Day 8
LH Runner Up
Day 9
A Scenic Deviation
Day 10
One Last Loop
Day 11
Cut Off at the Cutoff
Day 12
Last Loop Redux
Day 13
Surprise!
Day 14
A Spike and a Spiral
Day 15
A Three State Day
Day 16
Go, Go, Geyser
Day 17
National Monuments
Day 18
Facerocks
Day 19
Keep Pushin' Till It's Understood
Day 20
Meat, Veggies, & Memories
Day 21
Dream On
Day 22
The Home Stretch
Before moving onto expressways for the last hundred or so miles, I had a locally brewed lunch followed by locally frozen dessert.
June 28, 2014 (day 21)
A Field of Dreams stop in the middle of a little US-20. Then a smidgen of
Lincoln Highway in the middle of a lot of US-52.
June 27, 2014 (day 20)
A not-quite-presidential library, a tall vegetarian, and a meat museum --
surprises all -- made my day.
June 26, 2014 (day 19)
This was pretty much a driving day with the Badlands on one end and the
Corn Palace on the other.
June 25, 2014 (day 18)
The sculptures are big and the roads are scenic in these parts. I took an
afternoon break on sawdust and finished the day at a big drug (There's
aspirin in there somewhere.) store.
June 24, 2014 (day 17)
For a day with no planned stops, I managed a couple of Classics.
June 23, 2014 (day 16)
I had problems with time and distance and didn't do all that well on
direction either. But I saw Old Faithful and enough Yellowstone to solidify
my belief in its awesomeness then stumbled in to a whole new state.
June 22, 2014 (day 15)
I exited Utah, sliced through a corner of Idaho, and ended the day in
Wyoming. There was plenty of good looking stuff, both manmade and
otherwise, along the way.
June 21, 2014 (day 14)
After a good breakfast and a pleasant meeting, I was off to the spike site
with a jaunt to a jetty tacked on.
June 20, 2014 (day 13)
This was presentation day with two speakers in the morning and another two
in the afternoon. The day ended with the awards banquet where I got a big
surprise.
June 19, 2014 (day 12)
Today's bus tour headed east from Tooele and eventually reached the Ogden
Loop that I drove on Tuesday. Though the road looked a little familiar,
the places where we stopped and being on a bus made it feel very different.
June 18, 2014 (day 11)
We were denied one of our primary targets but I got a second chance at
another and there was sunshine and great scenery all day.
June 17, 2014 (day 10)
It was a day of rain as I finally finished driving the old road past
Church Buttes and the Ogden Loop. The day ended with a conference dinner
and the promise of a better -- and earlier -- tomorrow.
June 16, 2014 (day 9)
I took the chef's advice and drove through some nice Wyoming scenery to a
one time boom town.
June 15, 2014 (day 8)
Some of the rutted road I drove today may have once been an official
Lincoln Highway alternate route or maybe none of it was. In any case, it was all fun
and led to a delightful hotel and a wonderful dinner.
June 14, 2014 (day 7)
I started off with a little sole searching then went off course to find a
repainted pylon. The day's big surprise was chatting with a leprechaun in
Wyoming.
June 13, 2014 (day 6)
I stayed with the official Colorado Loop to the center of Denver then
high tailed it back to Fort Morgan to pickup the unofficial Greeley Branch.
June 12, 2014 (day 5)
I drove to the outskirts of Denver on the short lived Colorado Loop of the
Lincoln Highway with a little DLD and a steampunk monkey along the way.
June 11, 2014 (day 4)
I covered quite a few miles on the expressway but still managed to check
out a couple of museums and revisit a Lincoln Highway icon.
June 10, 2014 (day 3)
I drove some new-to-me Lincoln Highway including some barely maintained
dirt and some well maintained brick. In between I visited a jail and a
railroad museum.
June 9, 2014 (day 2)
A pair of roadside attractions that I wasn't expecting followed by a pair
of roadside icons that exceeded expectations.
June 8, 2014 (day 1)
This was pretty much an all expressway day with a little exploring in
Peoria.
Prelude 2 - May 8, 2014
I have now plotted my route to the conference and it includes not only the
Denver and Ogden loops but the one through Omaha as well. Even with the
fixed dates of the conference, I could get there without much of a
schedule except there are a couple of historic hotels I really want to
work in and that means, to prevent finding no room at the inn, advanced
booking with a fixed arrival date. Nailing down a few nights scattered
throughout the trip did not leave much more flexibility than nailing them
all so that's what I did. I now have rooms booked for all but the first of
the nine nights I'll be on the road getting to Tooele. The historic
Plains Hotel in
Cheyenne, Wyoming, was at the top of my list when I first started thinking
of lodging for the trip. In addition, I've booked the historic
Park Hotel in
Denison, Iowa, the historic Elk Mountain Hotel in Elk Mountain, Wyoming, the
semi-historic motel at Little America, Wyoming, and a couple of promising
B&Bs. The return trips appears, at least for the present, to be more
spontaneous.
I've posted a locator map (button at right of title) that includes part of the return trip through Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore. Whether I actually stop at either place remains to be seen since I'm guessing they will probably be overrun with enough tourist to scare me off. Getting to Denison and home from Mount Rushmore will essentially be all expressway.
Prelude 1 - April 30, 2014
I seriously thought that, after the really big doings for the Lincoln
Highway Association's centennial last year, I might skip this year's
conference to let things like my bank account recover. Then they started
talking about entering the "forbidden zone". This particular
"forbidden zone" is the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah which has
blocked access to a portion of the original Lincoln since 1941. Tooele,
Utah, is where the 2014 conference will take place and the organizers
thought it likely that they could get permission to at least run a bus
tour into the heavily guarded area. So, since this could be my only chance
to see beyond the fences and warning signs, I decided to work it in.
I've registered for the conference and have my motel booked and I've some ideas for getting there and back. Those ideas need a lot of refining but I'm hoping to drive two other short lived alignments, Denver, Colorado, and Ogden, Utah, on the way out and visit at least one new-to-me state, South Dakota, on the way back.