On The Road Again

We had a good visit with Jenn & Jason and their family for about a week. We left Burley on 31 August. After leaving town, we decided to detour our trip to Colorado and go through Pocatello and along US 30 over into Wyoming. We stopped at the Oregon/California Trail Center in Montpelier. That was definitely worth the visit! We drove all the way to Fort Bridger and camped next to the fort. We had a good visit to the Fort and we took a day trip the next day and drove over to Flaming Gorge. We drove along the western side of the reservoir. It was a pretty drive and we saw several herds of
pronghorns (one had at least 50 in the herd!) After driving all morning, we ended up in Green River for lunch. This hill sits above Green River and really dominates the Green River valley. Its a pretty area of Wyoming, both Ft Bridger Valley and Green River Valley are green with trees (not usual for southern Wyoming.) When we left Fort Bridger on Wednesday, we drove I-80 to US 191 and drove along the eastern side of Flaming Gorge reservoir. Driving this way we even got to drive across the dam. The road wasn't as good, but there was a lot more color in the rock along the
road. When we got to Vernal, we decided to go to the Utah Museum of Natural History so we could see all the disasour statues and rocks with leaves and insects imprinted in the rock. It was a good visit and a beautiful drive into Vernal. The drive from Vernal into Price was really pretty too (the last time we went on this drive we not only had Jenn and Loriann with us we had snow on the road! No snow this time, but the leaves were beginning to turn already! Price to Fruita, Colorado was not really what we would

call pretty, very remote and not a lot of change in scenery. We
didn't know when we made reservations that we would be so close to a national monument, but found out fast! We got to drive through the Colorado Mesa National Monument and it was really beautiful. This shot is an aerial shot of part of the mesa (if you look really close you can see the road, it runs right along the edge of the mesa!) It was only 23 miles, but a very slow drive with lots of stops. Yes, we'd do it again.

This is an artsy shot of the Mesa.

Howard won't pose, so I take candid shots!

After driving the Mesa we drove over to Paonia. That's where my Grandmother Horton's family was from. It's a very pretty valley and a beautiful drive.

On Monday we left for Colorado Springs on I-70. These are pictures of the stacked freeway along the Colorado River. Beautiful!

Our first glimps of the Colorado Rockies. We drove up to the summit at 11,992, through the really long Eisenhower tunnel and down the eastern side of the Rockies to Colorado Springs. We'll be here for about a week. Hoping to visit lots of stuff while we're here. There's lots to see!