We’re running late. It’s already 6:15 a.m. when we are getting back on the freeway. Why the rush? We are trying to get to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, which is about 1,200 miles (2,000 km) from home. Our first stop this morning is 383 miles (616 km) from this overpass. Time to move quickly.

The trip of the “Western Edge” appears to be a theme here as we are just to the west of Colorado Springs, Colorado, when we arrive at Garden of the Gods, our first stop. This free-to-visit park was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1971, and should you find yourself driving up the middle of Colorado one day, you should drop in.

If we had the time, we’d be out there on that wagon for a hayride.

Our visit to Garden of the Gods was brief, but we did get a great impression of the place.

Anybody who knows us knows that there was no way we were going to pass up on the opportunity to visit a national park, even if it meant we’d have to drive through midnight. To dip our toe into Rocky Mountain National Park was only going to add about 100 miles (160 km) of driving, which sounded easy peasy to us, too, and so up the mountain, we strode.

Out in these mountains, the Colorado River is born, which makes possible the abundance of food, life, recreation, and prosperity that many people enjoy from around the globe. Without the snowfalls in the Rockies, our lives in Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California would be vastly different.

How lucky are the people of Earth that America’s 18th President, Ulysses S. Grant, established Yellowstone National Park? He was followed by our 26th President Theodore Roosevelt, who was one of the park system’s greatest supporters in giving to all of us these pristine, undeveloped treasures that we can experience in the way nature has shaped them without the heavy hand of man who has often been less than kind on our environment.

To the west are mountains, mountains, some desert, more mountains, and the ocean, and to the east, the Great Plains for as far as you can go, sort of.

While to the north is Wyoming and beyond that are parts unknown to the two of us, though we are willing to go into that void to see for ourselves just what is there.

And what we find is the golden sunset of perfection and you need to know that we had to bask in this beauty as long as we could because these two travel cheapos are on the hunt for a motel and not just any motel.

We scored with that vintage kind of flair that lets you know these rooms have not been renovated since 1974. The great thing about this carpet is that it doesn’t matter how many people before our arrival have bled, ejaculated, vomited, urinated, defecated, blew snots on, or rolled around with open sores on the carpet because that’s all lost in the pattern. No, we do not travel with a black light, as knowledge is not power when you are only interested in saving money.

These types of bed covers are a kind of Russian roulette where you just want to close your eyes before pulling back the corner. Then you have to decide if you really want to count how many pubic hairs are on the sheets and pillows. Almost worse is when you realize there’s no blanket underneath it and that this thing is going to be lying right on top of you. Our favorite moments, though, are when we finally do lay down, and gravity pulls us into the developing black hole at the center of the mattress that hardly qualifies as being such, as it is more a membrane funneling us into the center of the universe known as the “pile of John and Caroline trying to not roll onto each other.”