June 2014 - Moab

No not yet, first we started out in Denver with Pat following in the truck. The motorhome is getting on in years and complains about climbing big mountains towing that large truck behind, so, we’re giving her a break. So, off we go climbing from our 6,000 ft elevation to over 10,000 as we head west and yes, we came eye level to some snow lines along route 70. But everything went well and we stopped in the town of Dillon and reconnected the two vehicles to continue our trip to Moab.

If we pushed, we could probably make the trip in one day, but hey, we’re retired! So, we chose a state park a few miles east of Grand Junction for an overnight that was quite restful.

James M Robb State Park

We pulled into the campground just north of Arches National Park a little before noon, so after a quick lunch we were off to explore the arches.

As with most of the National Parks we started in the visitor center with “the “ film, which is always informative and gives us an idea of how to plan our exploration. With my limitations, all of our exploring was done by vehicle, so we were able to do the park in an afternoon. 

Courthouse Towers

Our first stop, the Courthouse Towers were just a sight to behold, although no arches, we just enjoyed the view, followed by the three gossips.

Three Gossips

 There were other stops and views, but I don’t want to overdo my stay, I’ll just do some highlights such as the balanced rock.

Balanced Rock

 Looking up, I just kept imagining what would happen if they got a little shaking going on, you know, like an earthquake? Well we finally got to see an arch when we came across the Sand Dune Arch.

 

Sand Dune Arch

 Named that because there are some petrified sand dunes nearby. We then saw Delicate Arch.

 

Delicate Arch

 It looks small, but we are a long ways from it. We then got down to the nitty gritty with lots of arches when we went into an area known as Arches Cove.

Cove of Arches

I know we zipped through this park in an afternoon, but the views were just awesome, the colors just blow you away. They say there are over 1,000 arches in the National Park (I think they are including the ones that have collapsed), but here is the last of my pictures taken from our campsite back into the National Park. (you can make out a couple more arches)

View From Our Front Window

 Well that was day 1 ½ getting to Moab and ½ day visiting Arches, now we’ll give you a full day in Moab, eh? Today, we will start out along the Colorado River looking for some Petroglyphs and find some we did. 

 I did a little photoshop to put them together, but here is an example of some of the Indian art we found, a bit hard to make out I’m afraid. After a stop in town for a yarn store and lunch, it was off to Canyonland NP and Island in the Sky.

We skipped the movie this time, (it was a repeat of the one at Arches) and went on to the views.

We did take many more pictures, but to tell the truth, it’s much the same. To capture the breathtaking beauty with a camera is just so hard, I thought I would just take the two best and present them to you and hope that someday you will get a chance to come here yourself to experience it first hand.

I wonder what the percentage of Utah is that is National Park? This is just the northern section of the park, you have to drive around through the town of Moab to reach the southern entrance. We’ll save that for another day. We knew we could spend days here in Moab and still not see everything we wanted to and to that we had returned to the rig and were sitting down trying to decide if we should extend another day when we got the phone call that Pat’s Aunt had passed. So, instead of extending, we made arrangements for a flight back to NJ for Pat from San Francisco and moved out the next day.

Stay tuned for the next installment Boulder Dam, oops they did change that to Hoover Dam didn't they.

June 2014 - Denver

Not really Denver, but Ft. Collins. With the truck on the fritz, Bruce & Bernie picked us up at the campground and off we went to the zoo in Ft. Collins. This was no ordinary zoo for this zoo had dinosaurs and other creatures one does not often come across. 

Swetsville Zoo  Fort Collins, Colorado with Bruce in the center

 We’ve been wanting to come to this place since we moved into our park in Texas and met Bill Swets one of the owners. Bill is the creator of this little whimsical zoo and has created some creatures that also live in our Texas park. We knew Bill was scheduled to be in Texas running our park there, so we were surprised when we found him here at the zoo and were delighted to get a personal tour. The unfortunate part of the story was that he had to come up early to deal with the spring flooding which was threatening his property.

Cache la Poudre River flooding the zoo

 Although a good 1/3 of the park was under the rising waters from the Cache la Poudre River receiving the snow melt from the front range of the Rockies, we were able to view a good portion of the park. This was once Bills farm and as he pointed out, they’re squeezin’ me out, with Walmart across the street to the northwest, and Costco on the western side of his property, soon he’ll give up the whole kit and caboodle.

swimming upstream

2 old dinosaurs

After bidding aduie to Bill, our day in Fort Collins was not done. We found the Benson Sculpture Gardens in a neighborhood of Ft. Collins. There were many Sculpture and these are just a few:

And yes, the crows are sculpted.

The day was delightful and we stopped for ice cream on the way out. The town was not to be out done by a couple of parks and presented this sculptor on the street next to the ice cream parlor.

 

Somehow I seemed to have missed getting a picture of Bernie in this blog, oh bother, maybe next time. Monday came around and we put the car into the shop, and sure enough they had it ready for us Tuesday Morning with new bearings in the front, a new U joint in the rear and lots of servicing to the drive train with a nice whopping $$$. I guess we can’t complain, with 140K driving and another 60K+ pulling the service was needed. The rest of our stay in Denver was more visiting with Bruce and Bernie, a quick howdy to one of my high school chums a round of golf and dinner with my cousin’s son Blair, which makes him my cousin once removed, eh? We met at a restaurant called steakhouse 10 in Denver, which if you go prepare to have some great food and service but also prepare to pay. Don’t worry Blair, you were worth it.

That was our 5 day stay in Denver, tomorrow we get ready to attack the mighty Rocky Mountains and pass through the Eishenhower Tunnel, ta ta.