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| Arrival at Eagle River, CO |
Our trek from the St. George, Utah area to Colorado was an adventure in itself. We had been enjoying our improvisational route through the month of October and suddenly ran out of time to get to Littleton, Colorado, where Brent's cousin hosts a Halloween party every year. We were determined to make it there by the 28th, but leaving central Utah and heading over the Rockies in Colorado was a route that would take four days of solid travel. We passed some incredible stuff on the way but could only afford to stay a single night wherever we wound up after a day of travel. I regret that we didn't budget our time better, but the views were amazing.
When I last wrote, we 'd been in St. George, Utah for
five days. We enjoyed ourselves so much there that we lost track of time and
when it came time to move on, we HAD to get moving to make it to the Halloween
party a whole state away. We left St. George on Monday, October 24 and had a
reservation at Bear Creek Campground in Lakewood, Colorado for Friday, October
28-- the day before the party. We had over 600 miles to cover in three days of
driving. We would drive as far as we could each day and stay wherever we found
ourselves for one night each along the way.
We split town in St. George around noon on the 24th. We
try, we really do, to leave before check-out, especially with so much ground to
cover, but it is so, so hard for some reason! We figured we would just drive as
far as we could and knew that there were at least dozens of free BLM campsites
we could park in for the evening wherever along the route we wound up at
nightfall. When we left town, it started raining. It was so exciting-- lightning
and thunder!-- and a break from the 85 degree heat we'd been having in St.
George. We stopped at Home Depot and Camping World on the way out of town, as
well, thinking we'd finally bite the bullet on buying the Honda generator Brent
has had his eye on. With weather turning darker and colder, our solar panels
wouldn't keep our batteries charged as well and we figured the investment would
quickly pay itself off after a few more boon-docking excursions. We chickened
out of the investment and left town sans generator and even later into the day.
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| First sight of snow and I'm in flip flops. |
Change of plans. Let's see something before we leave
Utah. We had passed on seeing Zion in favor of lounging around the RV park and
its pool so we decided we'd see Bryce Canyon on the way out. We'd stay in the
campground in Bryce National Park. We traveled Highway 20 out of the St. George
area and our scenery quickly changed. From warm, red rock desert to massive
green colored rocks rising out of forest, we suddenly couldn't tell rock from
trees. It was still raining and we watched the temperature drop as we climbed
higher into the deep, gray clouds. Patches of snow appeared on the side of the
road and in the colder, shaded areas between adjacent trees. It was 45 degrees
outside. I glanced down at my flip flops and shorts, perfect attire for a rainy
St. George morning, and could do nothing more than giggle. Oh jeez.
We entered the Dixie National Forest and the Bryce Canyon
area-- hooray! There were no more sightings of snow patches, but it was still
chilly. The scenery quickly changed once we turned a corner. From behind the
massive black and green rock mountains appeared red hoodoos-- a real life
Thunder Mountain scene-scape right beside the road. We practically screeched to
a stop to pull over and take pictures. I swear the Wildest Ride in the Wilderness
would be rocketing toward us from around a towering stack of red rock any
moment!
When we continued our way along the highway, we slowed down to view a
warning: "13'6" Tunnel Ahead". Um... how tall is our rig again?
We pulled over and Brent climbed up top with a tape measure. I stood at the
ground and pulled the metal L-bracket to touch the asphalt. With a tape measure
(the only one handy) reaching only 12 feet, Brent had to do the old finger to
the 12-foot point and then raise the tape measure up from there for the
remaining height. His estimate: "Well, I'm getting maybe 13'2", and
that's considering the tape measure is arched a little bit." Um, Ok...
that's reassuring, right??
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| A Real Life Thunder Mountain! |
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| Aim for the middle! |
We steadied ourselves ahead and there it was--the tunnel.
It was an arch in the red rock and we were to drive through it. It looked low.
Oh my... We proceeded slowly and aimed ourselves for its highest point, which
straddled the yellow dotted line between our lane and oncoming traffic. Our
biggest concern was the AC unit, which creates our apex above the bedroom at
the front end. We braced ourselves for screeching, crashing, banging...
nothing. Gasp! We had made it! We darted back into our own lane just as two
oncoming cars were turning the corner from the other direction. They honked
their horns angrily and fists cursed at us from the windows. Do they have any
idea what we'd been through?? Oh, to be a belligerent little Honda Civic with
no fear of losing a chunk of rooftop to the landscape! Thinking we'd seen the
worse, we breathed again and exchanged relieved giggles only to turn a corner
and discover another low arch!
We made it through without losing so much as an antenna,
I'm happy to report. It was getting dark, though, and we needed a place to park
for the night. We passed through the gates of Bryce Canyon National Park well
after the sun had set and found the campground we had seen on our campground
apps: Sunset Campground, appropriately enough. Brent put on his long sleeve and
hopped out to read the signs at the self-check board. The campground was
closing for the season the next morning; campers were asked to vacate the
premises by 8am. At the cost of $35/night with no hook-ups, having to vacate in
a little more than 12 hours, and having had no sunlight with which to charge
our solar panels enough to keep the heater running through the night, we
decided... Eeeh, no. We backtracked in the oncoming darkness to a nearby RV
park and paid an astronomical amount for our hookups for the evening but we did
see a buck standing in the shrubs nearby by the light of our headlights and the
rain stopped just in time for us to set up without getting soaked.
The next morning, we actually got out at a decent time
and parked our RV in a nearby parking lot where the Bryce Canyon Shuttles sleep
for the night. It was large and vacant and we got the approval of attendants,
so we were good to drop the RV and head into the National Park.
We parked and made the small hike up to the ridge, where
we discovered a landscape of another planet. Thousands of fortresses of rock
poked straight up out of the ground in colors ranging from
powder white to rust
orange. Like castles built for another people, hoodoos towered their way from
the ground throughout the entire canyon. Otherworldly and spectacular, the
sight was unexpected and awe inspiring. It makes one wonder why this happens in
this one place only and so suddenly, when on the other side of the hills at the
far side of the canyon, the landscape returns to meadow and forest with no sign
that something so stupendous lives right next door. How amazing is our planet
that it creates these marvels and pushes them right up out of the ground in
isolated locations?
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| Us at Bryce Canyon |
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| Kailyn's sneaking in a little lunch while we continue to capture the moment. |
We took a lot of pictures, and Kailyn was a trooper. She
cried through a lot of our pictures because, though cozied up in her wrap
carrier, there was a cool breeze brushing past and she was not entirely
accustomed to the sensation. She wore a little crochet hat, but with this too
being a new sensation, she was not happy. A few parties passed by and marveled
at the little one, smiling that this was the youngest baby they had seen at
Bryce Canyon and did she know how lucky she was to be sightseeing so early in
life? I smiled back and rocked her, waiting for a moment to finagle the wrap
enough to give her what she wanted: milk. This definitely made her happy, but
now here I was trying to conceal bare breast while taking pictures and smiling
and other visitors who wanted to ooh and aah at the little baby. C'est la vie!
We have more than a few pictures at Bryce Canyon where I'm concealing a nursing
baby!
With the morning moving into mid-day and a lot of ground
to cover, we made our way back to the car for what would be a long day's
journey to who-knows-where. With destination of Colorado in mind, there was
still a lot of Utah to drive through and we were sad to miss it. Brent plotted
a route for us-- Scenic Highway 12--which was the slower but more appealing
route. It was the route that had gotten us to Bryce Canyon and we had only to
continue its path to see more of Utah and less highway.
Highway 12 led us through Bryce Valley and Henrieville.
Fall colors with huge rock face backdrops
were simply stunning. Farmhouses and
barns glided by outside our windows, field peppered with cows and horses. The
rocks walls surrounding us were a spectrum of colors: white, gray, black, pink,
peach, brown, sand. A rainbow of earth dropped at the base of a deep blue sky
and fields of rolling green grass is a beauty of nature. We passed through
fields backed by rock walls until we reached Escalante. We approached signs
that promised of petrified forests and ancient cave dwellings an easy hike way,
but the sun was dipping toward the horizon and we needed to set up camp.
We found a small RV park in Escalante with no phone
signal and terrible internet connection and parked for the night. Evelyn
tromped around outside with her little shovel, digging an eight inch wide and
two inch deep hole in the red earth. She lined it with gravel and told us our
fire pit was ready. What a little helper! We dined on salad and mac and cheese
and retired for the night with sights of an early morning and a day full of
travel ahead.
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| Some of what we were passing from the highway |
We awoke to the sunrise setting the massive rock mountain
that marks the end of the Grand Staircase aglow in a block of warm orange. A
chilly dawn turned to a promise of another warm day as we cleaned up and folded
in our slides. We got a fairly early start (for us) and were back out on
Highway 12 before 10 am.
October 26 on Highway 12... this was one of my favorite
drives yet. We climbed and dipped, pushing our poor truck to the limit. It
roared its way along and pulled our heavy home behind it along curves
and hills
better suited to a small and sensible sedan. We crawled through the bottoms of
deep canyons. Soft rock walls around us, painted in red and green, curved over
and around creeks and rivers. We turned a canyon wall to discover a coffee
shop, of all things. When we read the sign, "Kiva Koffee House", I
thought it was the name of a sight to see from a view point. It was, however,
and actual coffee shop off the side of this winding highway in the middle of
seemingly nowhere (it always makes me wonder where people live who operate
these kinds of places!), with simply breathtaking views. The canyon dipped deeper
into a tree filled gorge beyond and a river could be heard though not seen
traveling there in its path. The canyon continued on, completely covered in
Fall-colored trees, its walls rising up in an orange and rust colored backdrop.
Brent had navigated the truck and trailer up the little road leading to the
Koffee House only to discover there was nowhere to turn around, so we carefully
backed our way out on to the highway again in a fortunate absence of other
vehicles. I snapped some pictures of our massive trailer dwarfed by the rock
walls around it before jogging back to my door to hop back inside.
The Calf Creek area was beautiful. We drove next to a
river, momentarily driving the bottom of the gorge. We could look up to see
hundreds of feet of red, orange, and peach rock face billowing straight up to
the flatland above, having the appearance of liquid that had hardened in its
place and left soft, pillowy looking rock in its place. Lush green brush and
trees mingled with red, orange, and yellow leaved trees. We passed RV parks
nestled in the canyon right next to the river, but signs warned that rigs over
25 feet were not recommended.
We climbed and climbed and twisted and turned, tiptoeing
along highway edges from which I could peer straight down hundreds of feet down
canyon walls only feet away from the asphalt's edge. We reached a high point of
8500 feet and found ourselves overlooking endless spans of canyon-scarred
rock-- deep and impressive ancient merging of rivers that created massive
grooves in the earth in Y formations. We were looking down and out over an
expanse of land that rivaled the Grand Canyon in its spectacle but possessed no
more label on the map than "National Forest". We continued on and
only miles away we would find ourselves in completely different landscape. Once
again, we were surrounded by farmland and sprawling pasture. Signs warning us
to watch for open range cattle appeared on the roadsides and endless pine trees
laid out before and around us.
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| Three ancient rivers can be seen connecting here! Look closely at the meeting of each gorge. |
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| Rolling hills of wintry birch trees |
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| Evelyn with Capital Reef rising out of the landscape behind her |
There is something so enriching about getting out of the
car after traveling and talking with others. Everyone is on their own journey
yet united in our paths crossing however briefly. A couple pulled up behind us
in their motor home. We learned that they were from Florida and had traveled much of what we had
seen as well. Everyone on the road is happy and friendly. How could they not
be? Everyone is at their best when they're traveling, aren't they? We took
pictures of each other in front of the view and said our farewells, knowing
that night was approaching and we would need to find somewhere to park again
for the night.
We descended the highway from the summit, closing our
drive through the valleys and canyons with final encounter with cows, this time
meeting free range cows face to face. We slowed as we turned close corners in
canyons, sharing the tight road space with cattle who scaled small walls to
escape our path. They watched us with wide eyes under long eyelashes, and we
smiled back from only feet away as we rolled past.
The canyons of Utah were behind us, but the rocky
mountains of Colorado were soon ahead.
We stayed our last night in Utah at Green River State
Campground, where we were one of only about 6 campers and enjoyed the open
space. We enjoyed a campfire that night and awoke to a
golden sunrise sparkling
through the yellow leaves left in the trees around us. Evelyn and I walked the
dogs to the river, trespassing onto the neighboring golf course to snap some
pictures of the river with train bridge crossing over. When we got back to
camp, Evelyn spotted some kids and spent the morning with today's "best
friends", riding scooters and collecting leaves. I talked with the girls'
mom and learned that all three of her kids attend online school in Utah! Brent
talked to the girls' father and grandfather only to learn that they would be
riding their ATVs from the campground that day onto trails where dinosaur bones
can be spotted jutting from the rock! Evelyn's new friends' grandfather writes
a riding feature for the local paper. Brent seriously considered staying for
the day and renting a Razor to tag along with them, but we had ground to cover
and a date for a party to meet, so we exchanged numbers and went on our way.
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| Evelyn making friends with Emma, her new pen-pal. |
The flatter lands of Green River turns to rocky hill
again and before long we found ourselves on Highway 70, the mountain highway
with a sense of humor. I thought I'd seen towering rock face to this point, but
nothing compared to the soaring gray rock walls of the Rockies. I had to push my face to the window to see the tops of the
gorge walls next to us. We followed the rushing river that had carved these
walls and climbed and climbed. The truck growled its way up the steep ascent at
a roaring 35 MPH. I chanted "I think I can, I think I can" and found myself
grasping the seat in front of me with white knuckles. Poor truck!! We passed
quaint mountain town we wished we had time to visit. Glenwood Springs looked
especially inviting, built into the mountainside around the highway and
sprawling into the valleys running perpendicular to it. It was clearly a
village whose roots were planted in mining, and historical buildings had been
repurposed for modern tourism, yet I spied a Target from our view on the
highway and thought this might be the perfect blend of old character and new
amenity to be enjoyed. We thought the same thing too late and were soon too far past Glenwood
Springs to turn around and stay for the night.
We traveled another 20 miles or so to Gypsum, where we found an off-highway RV park near the Eagle River to plant ourselves for the night. We took the RV park owner's advice and had dinner at the bowling alley in Eagle, Colorado, another mountain town whose roots were planted in mining. The lanes were downstairs, underneath the rest of the strip mall above. The lanes were split into a
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| Dinner at the bowling alley-- not too shabby! |
In the morning, I walked the dogs to the nearby river and
Gretchen trembled and shook in the 40
degree chill of the morning. I stretched
and breathed in deep, filling my lungs with brisk mountain air. The sun was
just sending its morning glow from beyond the other side of the mountain tops.
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| A brisk, lovely morning alongside the Eagle River |
The drive on our final stretch of the I-70 was the most
punishing on the truck but rewarding for us. The truck groaned and roared and
we passed the famous ski resort town of Vail. We marveled at the city block
expanses of hotels and resorts and gaped at the steep and plentiful trails of
ski runs that still sat naked in wait of their first snow of the season. We
reached the highest point our truck has carried us yet, 10,600 feet, The Vail
Summit. The rest was downhill, for the most part, and we passed gold mining
ruins and mines still in operation. Some old wooden mining building and rigs
looked like they were crumbling from the hill
on which they were perched;
others were newly refreshed and adorned with signs welcoming tourists to visit here,
where the Gold Rush began-- Idaho Springs and Argo. I wish we could have, but
our deadline had arrived and by that night we would be camped on the other side
of these mountains.
Some of the views along Hwy 70 through the Rockies:
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| Some of the runs awaiting the season at Vail, CO |
Some of the views along Hwy 70 through the Rockies:
Highway 70 neared an end, but not before it jovially
warned us: "Truckers, don't be fooled! Four more miles
of steep grades and sharp curves!" and "Truckers, you are not down
yet! 1 1/2 more miles of steep grade!" What a friendly highway... with
more runaway truck ramps and warnings to check brakes than I've seen in my
entire 40 years of California driving experience.
Before we knew it and before my white knuckles had time
to fill with blood again, we were out of the mountains and flat land lay out ahead of us. Just like that. We passed
Thunder Valley race track and were there-- at Bear Creek Campground. We had
made it through canyons and mountains, had passed quaint towns and mountain
villages, and were here... in flat, dry prairie. I'm not going to lie, I was
disappointed! It wasn't what I'd envisioned! My long sleeves and jeans were
nagging at me in the sun-glazed 78 degree weather. Flies buzzed around us as we
set up. What had happened to the charm of the mountains? The friendliness and
splendor of Utah? It was all literally behind us, and here we were in what felt
essentially like home and not in that good sense. We did, however, enjoy
spending time with family while in the Littleton area. A Halloween party,
pumpkin carving, and trick-or-treating with family was well worth the journey. Still,
by the time we got to our destination, we had this sinking feeling that we knew
we couldn't ask the truck to take us back to most of those places-- we had
asked enough of our old pal in making it through those climbs even once. We had
missed our chance.
This is the good and bad of traveling. We learned we need
to plan better, whenever possible. We also learned that while it is uplifting
to have deadlines and goals, the restriction they place on the spirit of whim
is a very real thing. It felt, to us, the honeymoon period with our Great
Adventure had somehow ended. The lifestyle would be setting in while we were in
Colorado. While there are great things to see and new things to do, and while
everything is new and exciting in its own way, we couldn't help but feel that
we had somehow unknowingly passed the adventurous "beginning" and
were now settling into "real life" on the road.
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| Farewell, honeymoon phase! With pit stops like this one, though, I welcome our new reality! |
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