GW's 2016 Wild West Road Trip: 28 Days, 7700 Miles, 8 States, and 10 National Parks

By Gary J. Wolff

GW’s 2016 Wild West Road Trip, taken August 15 – September 11, 2016, was without question the most magnificent vacation of my entire lifetime. As a minimum, it was definitely the longest... spanning 28 days, 7700 miles, 8 states, and 10 national parks. This eBook includes not only my story, but many trip photos and links to video clips.

The main purposes of the trip were to:

1) reconnect with old friends whom I was able to visit along the way,

2) revisit some of my favorite national parks, most notably Glacier National Park where I worked in the summer of '90, Tetons NP, Yellowstone NP, and Big Bend NP, as well as seeing some national parks I'd never been to before, e.g. Grand Canyon's North Rim (I've hiked to the bottom of the canyon twice from the South Rim) and Saguaro NP,

3) check out some of my former workplaces and abodes in Casper, Wyoming; East Glacier Park, Montana, and Phoenix, Arizona, and

4) revisit some spots where I've previously mountain climbed or camped as a boy scout in my MUCH younger years, e.g. Pinedale, Wyoming, the launching pad for my Sept. '79 ascent of Gannett Peak, Wyoming's highest; the Pecos River wilderness near Cowles, New Mexico, where my boy scout troop camped in the summer of '65; Bear Lake, Colorado, where my boy scout troop camped in the summer of '66; and Farragut State Park, Idaho, where I attended the 1967 Boy Scout World Jamboree.

In this eBook, readers will be treated to 87 photos and 34 links to my road trip video at YouTube. I sincerely hope you will enjoy reading this documentation of my 2016 summer road trip to America's Rocky Mountain States, and that you will find at least part of it informative or interesting, just as if you were taking the trip with me!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary J. Wolff
• Release date: Jan 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370812318

Gary J. Wolff

Gary Joe Wolff is a Tokyo-based university professor, corporate communications consultant, actor/model, and all-round nice guy. :-) From Houston, Texas, USA, Gary earned a master's degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas and worked 12 years as a registered professional transportation engineer before moving to Tokyo in 1991.For the past 21 years, Gary has taught both undergraduate and graduate engineering and science students in the School of Science and Technology at one of Japan's oldest and most prestigious private universities.Also, since first arriving on Japanese shores, he's served as a specialist in intercultural corporate training for Japanese engineers and managers in preparation for their overseas assignments, and has taught at over 80 different companies, schools, and agencies.In his free time thru the years, Gary has enjoyed mountain climbing and has scaled all of the 25 highest mountains in Japan. He has found living in Japan to be a truly fascinating and rewarding cultural experience, and claims to still have a few more books on his mind.Stay tuned to Gary's latest updates from Japan at GaryJWolff.com !

Book preview

Dang! I was hoping to try my hand at my first-ever enhanced eBook (with audio/video) so I could incorporate some clips from my 43-minute road trip video into this eBook.

But although some online eBook creators allow indie authors to embed interactive features like audio, video, hyperlinks, and image pop-ups into their eBooks, at the time of this writing, these features are currently available only on some 3rd generation or newer tablets and on free reading apps for Android phones and Android tablets.... and so are NOT available on free reading apps for iPad and iPhone, my mobile devices of choice.

Oh well, I'll have to give that a shot sometime in the future as the technology develops! As a fallback plan, 34 of the video links in this eBook will take to you to the exact minutes:seconds (00:00) timestamp in my road trip video at YouTube pertaining to the referenced text.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this documentation of what was without question the most magnificent vacation of my entire 6-decade lifetime. As a minimum, it was definitely the longest... spanning 28 days, 7700 miles, 8 states, and 10 national parks.

The main purposes of the trip were to:

1) reconnect with old friends whom I was able to visit along the way,

2) revisit some of my favorite national parks, most notably Glacier National Park where I worked in the summer of '90, Grand Teton NP, Yellowstone NP, and Big Bend NP, as well as seeing some national parks I'd never been to before, e.g. Grand Canyon's North Rim (I've hiked to the bottom of the canyon twice from the South Rim) and Saguaro NP,

3) check out some of my former workplaces and abodes in Casper, Wyoming; East Glacier Park, Montana; and Phoenix, Arizona, and

4) revisit some spots where I've previously mountain climbed or camped as a boy scout in my MUCH younger years, e.g. Pinedale, Wyoming, the launching pad for my Sept. '79 ascent of Gannett Peak, Wyoming's highest; the Pecos River wilderness near Cowles, New Mexico, where my boy scout troop camped in the summer of '65; Bear Lake, Colorado, where my boy scout troop camped in the summer of '66; and Farragut State Park, Idaho, where I attended the 1967 Boy Scout World Jamboree.

Here’s the route map as I laid it out in March 2016. It only changed a bit en route:

My road trip route, as laid out in March 2016 on Roadtrippers.com

If you have any questions or comments to share, or, heaven forbid, find any mistakes in this book, by all means please do give me a shout by clicking on the "Contact Me" button on my website, as I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Okay, let's get started. Fasten your seat belts!

Day 1, August 15, 2016, Houston to Big Bend National Park, Texas

Today’s mileage: 649

Cumulative mileage: 649

After Mom dropped me off at the Hertz rental car agency bright and early around 7:30 a.m., I hit the road ASAP, as the Monday morning rush-hour traffic was already atrocious and with a 650-mile drive ahead of me, I was anxious to get the heck outta Dodge.

Houston is infamous for its nightmarish traffic jams and this Hertz shop is located on West Loop 610, a 10-lane freeway which is generally regarded as the busiest freeway in the entire state of Texas with around 300,000 vehicles per day. WOW!

Day 1 was fairly uneventful because of the very LONG, 11-hour drive, including about 4 hours in a strong rain in and around San Antonio. But I was thrilled to see all the wind turbines in West Texas along Interstate 10, which as I recall were somewhere east of Ft. Stockton.

My stop for the night was Big Bend National Park, named for the big bend in the Rio Grande River which separates Texas from Mexico.

Mt. Casa Grande, Big Bend National Park, Texas

This was my 3rd visit to the amazing 800,000-acre Big Bend National Park, which was established in 1944 and has been named as an International Dark Sky Park, with the least light pollution of any National Park Service site in the lower 48 states. Too bad I arrived only 3 days before the full moon.

Arriving around 7:30 p.m. allowed