From Denver to MoabOctober 31, 2016On Monday, October 31, we left Denver about 6:40am to drive to Moab with a plan to visit four National Parks and one State Park. We made it smoothly onto Interstate 70 west with the help of the GPS on Brenda's phone since the Garmin GPS doesn't include the Denver metro maps. Moving along on I-70 at about 8am we encountered some snow on top of the mountains before we reached Georgetown. We were a bit surprised since everyone was talking about there being no snow yet. We stopped at a pullout about 8:20 just short of Georgetown to look at this attractive lake.
According to wiki, Georgetown was founded in 1859 as part of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. It is in what is called the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Although founded during the gold rush, the town experienced its greatest growth and prosperity during the Colorado silver boom of the 1880s when it rivaled Leadville to the west as the mining capital of Colorado. We stopped briefly in the Vail, Beaver Creek area, mainly in memory of Jeff's experience there. There was no snow on the mountains at this time, and we recall that Jeff was in snow before this date in the year that he worked out here.
The four-lane highway continued on sweeping curves through the geologic formations which now were a mixture of sandy-colored and red rock structures. We reached Glenwood Canyon a little after 10am. We stopped at a rest stop to have a more careful look at the extraordinary road structures they built to follow the Colorado River through this canyon. The two structures for the expressway were shaped in various ways on one side of the Colorado River and the railroad track was on the other side.
At about 11am we encountered some thundershowers and were blessed with a nice rainbow against the hills. For the next hour, until about noon, we drove alongside the Colorado River at some distance judging by the trees we could see outlining its course. About that time the road entered a flat area with this huge wall to the north of us. The dirt road goes out to the collection you can see, which appeared to be two camping trailers surrounded by tanks and junk.
They had set up a viewing area on top of a hill, so I went up to see what I could see. Swinging around toward the north, there were more plain sandy-looking humps that extended far into the distance. Having moved some distance to the north, this view of the roadway is more toward the southeast and you can see the expressway at the right end of the photo. What struck me here is the extreme barrenness of the middle distance formations. The westward view was of a gulley which obviously carries water at some times. One final view roughly to the northwest, and I believe we have characterized this area of Utah, which I found quite attractive. After driving another thirty minutes across the open desert of Utah, we were running beside this train in the distance. Another reminder that we were in a different world - imagine taking a long train across this desert. We stopped at Thompson for gas, not knowing what the gas supply would be like off the interstate. Shortly afterward when we were nearing the turnoff to Hwy 191 south, the character of the rock changed dramatically. We were seeing white and red rock, with column structures that contained both.
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