Posts Tagged “colorado”

After moseying about the country for the past few weeks, Isabel and I realized the other day that we need to make it home, and fast. As is often the case, we find ourselves running late and scurrying at the last minute to arrive on time. Because of this, we need to make a beeline home. We did a pretty good job of putting some miles behind us today, but were foiled slightly by the switch from the Mountain to Central time zone. Not to worry though, we’re still doing okay. For some reason, the time zones have surprised and confused us during the entire trip. When flying, it’s easy to understand that your destination has a different time than your departure location. When driving, it’s much more disorienting to comprehend that it’s now 5pm, even though a mile ago it was 4pm… at least for us it is.

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Today was all about driving and trying to get as far east as possible, so I thought I wouldn’t have anything to report… but I do!

First of all, when we came into Georgetown, Colo., last night, we noticed a sign for a bighorn sheep “viewing area” in town. Before we left this morning, we went into the Georgetown Welcome Center to get the scoop. We really wanted to see a bighorn sheep to add to our collection of large wild mammals we’ve gotten to see on our trip. The lady at the welcome center told us they have this huge herd of bighorn sheep that live near the town, and she directed us to the viewing area (where there is information as well as pay telescopes) and also told us the next town over often enjoyed the pleasure of bighorn sheep standing in residents’ yards. Soooo, we were very determined, and after trying the viewing area and making two trips across a small stretch of I-70 and back, we were successful!!!

They’re kind of hard to see because they are the same color as the rocks, but these were relatively easy to spot because some dude had decided to double park his car on the shoulder of I-70 and walk straight into the herd with his point-&-shoot camera. Um… wild animals are dangerous?! But go for it, I guess. Anyway, because this guy had disrupted the sheep, they were walking around a bit, possibly in order to get the best angle from which to charge the guy and ram him in the chest. We didn’t stick around to find out. Instead, we drove to Kansas!

(I have to tell you that before we left Colorado, we visited the Colorado Welcome Center at Red Rock Amphitheater, which is a really interesting place where there is a natural amphitheater formed by rocks. We were hoping to find something quick and iconic we could do when we passed through Denver, but the guy we spoke with at the Welcome Center [who was very nice and quite enjoyable to talk to, but reminded Brian of Abe Simpson] had no suggestions whatsoever for Denver and instead told us all about a restaurant in Abilene, Kansas. He also had a lot of difficulty remembering the names of things; for example, he referenced “a big hole in the ground.” He meant the Grand Canyon. We loved him!!)

We made a stop in Goodland, Kan., to see this giant easel:

That easel is 80 feet tall. See Brian (who is 6′2″ tall) in the bottom right corner of the photo? The Van Gogh sunflower reproduction is 24 by 32 feet. Pretty awesome, Goodland, Kansas!

As if that weren’t enough, on the back of the painting, we discovered a bird condo.

See them??

The next highlight of the day was finding a place that had gas for $2.85 a gallon:

I haven’t seen numbers like that in a while. Other than that, the rest of day was mostly like this:

We’re now at the very, very lovely Econo Lodge in Junction City, Kansas, and I mean it when I say it is lovely here. Its loveliness is especially poignant tonight because we had to leave our first hotel, the “Red Carpet Inn,” because it was infested. I sure wish I were joking, but I’m not. That’s what we get, I guess, for trying to save, like, five dollars. Really, almost every place we’ve stayed in has been completely fine and at least clean; I’ve stayed in a lot of cheap motels in my life, and this is the first time I’ve actually had to get my money back and go elsewhere! But anyway, the Econo Lodge suffers no such problem, and we are clean, happy, and unafraid to use the shower. Plus, I think my heart rate is coming down from my near-panic attack in our former room. Hooray!

We’ll have another day of driving tomorrow. I can’t promise more bighorn sheep and giant easels, but you never know!

I believe we reached a new high today… 11,158 ft. high, to be exact. Between Vail and Georgetown, we passed through the Eisenhower Tunnel—the highest vehicular tunnel in the world and also the highest point of the interstate system. That was just a few miles ago, so I’m assuming we’re still pretty close to the same elevation. I can’t wait to drop down to a normal elevation. After the Rockies, it must flatten out, right?

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Our day began in Moab, where we had breakfast at Eklecticafe (a fun place with good food — another Utah haven with vegetarian choices, organics, etc. — we quite liked it except for some reason the girl at the table next to us decided to have an in-depth discussion with someone who worked there about her recent medical procedure complete with bloody, vomity details… kind of spoiled my appetite!!), then we visited Lin Ottinger’s Rock Shop:

(Scott, is this where the guy wouldn’t let you bring in your coffee??)

We went there because we had a coupon for a free dinosaur bone, which we got. Awesome! It’s our first rock shop trip (we’ve seen dozens along our route, but we’ve never actually gone into one).

Anyway, then we went into Arches National Park! It was very exciting!! We saw so many great things even within our relatively limited time. For example… the Three Gossips!

A place where an arch probably used to be next to Sheep Rock! (They all fall down eventually, you know.)

Check out Sheep Rock!! It was one of my favorites of the day.

Balanced Rock!

Windows!!

Double Arch!

Of course, the iconic Delicate Arch!

And Brian’s personal favorite of the day, Skyline Arch!

We saw one of the handful of whiptail lizards (the only wildlife we observed today) we got to meet on the short trail up to Skyline Arch:

Yay. We agreed that Arches was one of the most beautiful and interesting places we’ve been on the entire trip. We hope to come back and hike more of the trails!

After all that, we left Arches and went up to I-70. I think we better get used to looking at this sign:

We’re going to be seeing it quite a bit over the next few days as we head home. When we first decided to go on this trip, we thought we would be able to enjoy a leisurely drive both out west and back east. Of course, we didn’t really count on getting sick in South Dakota!! So, we have to be back by Saturday at the latest so I have a few hours to recover before I teach on Sunday. Fortunately, Arches didn’t take as long as we had allotted for it, and we were able to eliminate a couple of other places we had hoped to visit on the return trip. In a way, I think it’s fitting that Arches was our final planned destination before heading home, since Utah started it all for us!

We drove through Utah and entered Colorado again before the debate started:

Tonight we’re in Georgetown, Colo., at the “uniquely western-themed” Super 8. It’s a perfectly nice place, but the woman at the desk acted like she was doing us a huge favor by honoring our reservation (and we all know how I feel about sub-par customer service). Hopefully we won’t become ill from the secondhand smoke fumes seeping from next door into our non-smoking room! Lovely!!

We’re back in Utah! As you may know, Isabel and I are quite fond of Utah, so it’s always great to come back here… even if the last time we were here was just four days ago. We had to drive west to get to Moab, and I believe that will be the last time we drive west during this trip! Woohoo! No more evenings driving towards the sun. Here’s the log.

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We got up this morning in Cortez and drove to Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is famous for the many ruins of cliff dwellings (structures used as homes, communal areas, ceremonial places, etc., built into the sides of cliffs) of the Ancestral Puebloans in the 12th and 13th centuries. It takes quite a while to get into the park (probably about an hour); the visitors center is about 15 miles from the park entrance, but because you have to drive a bunch of switchbacks and the like, it takes quite a while to get there, and then the cliff dwellings themselves are beyond the visitors center. So on our drive out, we enjoyed the diversion of seeing a deer convention:

There are many, many cliff dwellings within the park, but only a handful are actually open to the public. To see most of the major sites, you have to buy a ticket for a ranger-guided tour at the visitors center. We were able to get tickets to two different sites: Cliff Palace and Balcony House. Cliff Palace was first!

Cliff Palace is really interesting and beautiful. We had a great guide who was very passionate and informative. No one knows for sure what exactly went on in the cliff dwellings or why they were abandoned, but they think that Cliff Palace was probably used primarily for ceremonial activities due to the very large number of kivas (rooms used for religious rituals) in the site.

In order to get in and out of these sites, the Ancestral Puebloans apparently just scaled the cliffs with their bare hands. We didn’t have to do that, but we did have to climb a series of ladders and the like to get in and out of Cliff Palace. It was a mere preview of things to come!

Our next tour was at Balcony House. To get in there, we had to climb this 32-foot ladder:

Eek. It wasn’t too scary, though, as long as we followed our guide’s advice to look straight ahead (never look down!) while climbing. Anyway, this site was a residence for two families. At Cliff Palace, you stand around at an overlook of the site before taking the tour; not so with Balcony House (to see the whole site, you have to go to another trail), so it’s quite a bit more difficult to photograph, but we did our best!

Getting out of Balcony House was quite a thing. The guide (accurately) called it the “Indiana Jones exit.” First we had to crawl through a narrow tunnel:

(That’s not Brian, by the way; that’s just some bloke. Sorry, British guy we secretly photographed!)

After that, we had to climb more ladders and then scale this rock thing where you have to place your feet in toeholds and hold on to metal chains on the side so you don’t fall off the cliff (!!):

The fear and the high altitude just made the whole thing more intense, but we both survived!

After we recovered from that adventure, we went to Spruce Tree House, which is one of the few sites in the park where you can take a self-guided tour:

(To reach this one, by the way, we just had to walk down a paved trail… no ladders or rock scaling required.)

At Spruce Tree House, there is a reconstructed kiva with a roof and everything that you may climb into, which was very interesting:

We had a lovely meal at the Metate Room Restaurant inside the park and then left Mesa Verde and drove back through Cortez while enjoying this beautiful sunset:

Then we headed back into Utah — normally I would have a photo of the Utah welcome sign for you here, but it was so dark by the time we reached it that I couldn’t get a decent picture, but it looked just like this one:

Now we’re at the charming Days Inn in Moab, Utah, and we’re ready to enjoy one more national park before we have to start the journey back to DC. Check back tomorrow!

For being in the desert, we sure have seen a lot of rain. Today the storms hit on the drive from Flagstaff to Four Corners. Yesterday it was on the way to the Grand Canyon. I thought this area was supposed to be dry! The interesting thing about the terrain out here (fairly flat) is that you can see the thunderstorms from miles away. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to avoid heading into said storms because there’s only one road.

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We left Flagstaff this morning and drove on what I believe will be our only tiny stretch on Route 66:

Initially we thought we would travel more on 66, but things just didn’t happen that way.

Anyway, we made a quick stop at Sunset Crater National Monument on our way out of town. It’s a very interesting park where a volcano erupted as recently as the 13th century. Apparently there used to be a trail up to the actual crater, but it sustained significant damage from hikers and had to be closed. You can still take a short trail around the base of the crater, though:

While we were there, a ranger pointed out that we could see a snowstorm happening on the mountains in the distance:

We didn’t have any snow, but we did run into some very dark clouds and some rain as we drove through Arizona. We saw some really pretty scenery!

Then we arrived at Four Corners Monument! This is, of course, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah all touch corners. Nice!

With that, we were able to add two more states to our list:

After the rain and clouds today, we caught some truly amazing rainbows, too:

Now we’re at the lovely Days Inn in Cortez, Colo. Tomorrow: cliff dwellings!!