Life is a Highway

The past couple of days have been interesting for sure. Yesterday was a day full of travel challenges. We left Durango and took what is called the Million Dollar Highway to Montrose, CO. This highway reaches an elevation of nearly 11,000 ft, has hairpin turns and drop offs and no guard rails. And we got to do it in the snow. At one point the temperature outside was 17 degrees and we were going 19 MPH. Plows had been out but it was still wet and snow covered at times which made you question how slippery it might be. Once we were out of the snow, it was beautiful.

Then we went to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP (still in Colorado). The wind was blowing so hard and it was brutally cold. Really couldn’t enjoy this park to it’s fullest and didn’t even go all the way through it because we were behind schedule and it was so cold.

So we headed to Moab, UT over a secondary road. Part way there, there was an accident which closed the road for 3 hours so had to turn around and take an “alternative route” over yet another mountain on a dirt road. So what was supposed to be an 8 hour day turned into an 11 hour one. I was sooooo ready to be out of that Jeep.

Today was the reward for all the trials of yesterday. We are in Moab and did Arches NP, which we have been to before. But today we did a 3.2 mile hike to Delicate Arch. It was challenging but so worth it in the end. I am so proud of Randy for hanging in there during the narrow part of the trail and making it to the end. (He struggles with heights). And, it was a gorgeous day. Love that there is still snow on the mountains (when we aren’t driving through it.). Mom always said when she traveled that she loved the snow capped mountains and now I know why.

Have been so blessed with seeing beautiful country and learning so much.

Leaving Moab tomorrow with no specific destination. Just heading toward Reno, NV as we are seeing my cousin there on Friday. No destination is the best kind of day. Thanks for your comments. We love them. And we are still looking for songs to add to our Road Trip playlist.

We’ve had a busy couple of days. From Salida, we decided to go all the way to Durango and spend 2 nights here.

We had it all yesterday – sun, sand, mountains, rain and snow. We stopped at Great Sand Dunes National Park. It’s hard to describe some of these places and I’ve run out of other words for beautiful and amazing. Great Sand Dunes is a huge dune area with some of the highest sand dunes in North America. And they are at the foot of the Santa de Christi mountains so they look completely out of context with their surroundings. You can see from the pictures that the people climbing them are just little dots compared to them. We went up the lowest one and allowed that was enough.

Today we went to Mesa Verde NP where the Pueblo Indians once lived in the cliffs. We were unable to go to the cliff dwellings. You could only do that with a Ranger tour and they didn’t start until tomorrow. We were able to see the dwellings from the overlooks and they had a very nice museum them. I think Randy read every exhibit so we wouldn’t have time for the hike I had wanted to do. From there we went to the 4 corners where Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona come together. Not much there other than to say you’ve been there. And we acted like the tourist we are and had someone take our picture. This was one of those “down days” where we spent 8 hours exploring and traveled about 250 miles round trip back to where we started

On to Moab, UT tomorrow. Check out the pictures below and drop us a comment if you wish by clicking the title of the post in the comment section.

We bugged out of Dodge early yesterday to get ahead of any tornado warnings. As a result, had no time to visit Matt Dillon or Miss Kitty. Got to Colorado and spent last night in Manitou Springs just outside of Colorado Springs. We did stop along the way to visit Bent’s Old Fort which was an important trading and resupplying spot on the Santa Fe trail.

Today, we had wanted to drive up Pike’s Peak (over 14,000 feet) but the last 6 miles were closed due to ice so figured if we couldn’t go big, we’d just go elsewhere. We were really disappointed in this but knew there was a likelihood we would not be able to go all the way to the top. We moved on to Royal Gorge and spent several hours there. This was a very pretty spot but somewhat spoiled by all the commercialism. I described it as tourist attraction vomit. There were Jeep tours, ATV tours, dinosaur tours, zip lining, bungee jumping, rafting tours…the list goes on and on. I just wanted to see something beautiful – which I did after I got through all the tourist crap. We took a gondola across the gorge and then walked back on the bridge. One of the most amazing things about this is it was built during the New Deal with workers working 965 feet over the river for less than a $1.00 a day.

Tonight we are in a neat little town called Salida.

Be sure to check out the pictures below.