Sunday, May 5, 2013

Centennial, CO


Ho hum, just another boring day driving across multi-colored landscape, sandstone canyons, and mountains.  Utah has some of the most beautiful and varied landscape in the world.  Huge mesas, wind and water sculpted land bring one awesome view after the other.  The Capitol Reef National Park is just south of this area and worthy of days of exploring – but not on this trip.  Crossing the Green River brings some green color into the beige, coral, pink and black landscape.  We passed many trucks and RV’s hauling ATV’s and dirt bikes to spend the weekend in the hills.  Moab is just south of I-70 and is a mecca for off-roading (where’s my Jeep when I need it?).

Crossed into Colorado  and here the Colorado River joined us (or we joined it).  Going through Fuita and Grand Junction, it’s interesting to see all the agriculture in the valley between the high plateaus.  Got our wildlife sighting of the day when a bald eagle soared alongside us .

Traveling on I-70 through the mountains, you can understand why this was the last portion of the Interstate System completed in the 1970’s.  It winds through canyons (at times it’s layered, one direction pancaked on top of the other).  The ski areas are transitioning from one season to another – still a lot of snow on the slopes,  but not enough for the ski lifts to be operating.  Vail, Aspen, Avon, Eagle are all between seasons – working on the golf courses which still had their greens covered with plastic tarps.

As we traversed Vail Pass (over 10,000 feet), it was snowing, but that changed to sprinkles as we dropped down into the Front Slope of the Rockies.  Arrived at Paul and Sandy’s around 4:30 and welcomed the end of the day with a glass of wine.  Paul’s flight from California was delayed out of San Francisco, so we waited dinner until he arrived home.  Fun evening.

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