I didn’t plan it this way, honest. I didn’t know the wildflowers would be so beautiful this time of year in the desert. I mean, I know in a general way that they’re supposed to be beautiful in Arizona, but I’d never heard anyone raving about Colorado and Utah wildflowers before now. They were so beautiful in Mesa Verde that I ended up buying a wildflower field guide before leaving the park, and they were pretty as we drove up through southern Utah to Moab. Today we went to Canyonlands National Park, and they crowded the roadsides. These are silver…
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We’re staying in Moab one more night. There’s so much to do here and we decided it was worth it. Not only is the scenery devastatingly gorgeous, there’s pretty good food to be had – I think there must be a lot of foodies that relocated here for the recreation and stayed to start restaurantes. Last night we ate at the Center Cafe which turned out to be a little oasis of good food, wine, and ambiance off of the main touristic drag. Tonight we tried the ultimate test of a town’s cuisine; we went to the local Chinese restaurant.…
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You know, for a hotel/motel that seems to cater to the outdoorsy/mountainbike/cool dude demographic, there sure seem to be a lot of screaming kids and barking dogs. There’s a big deposit for pets in the room, which someone seems to have paid, and I’m not sure but I think the screaming kids and barking dog are all in the room next to us, which adjoins ours and thus has no soundproofing to speak of owing to the connecting door. All I’m saying is there’s a whole lot of squabbling, screaming, and barking going on. David says they’re in one of…
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Okay, this was worth the scary adventure that got me to this point. This is Cliff Palace, most famous of Mesa Verde’s ruins. It’s reached by what I suspect is a deliberately difficult approach path consisting of metal stairs going down, then funky handcut steps in the stone set in narrow rock channel, then by climbing a ten-foot ladder. These physical obstacles overcome, the reward is being able to stand where people lived 800 years ago and wonder where they went and why they left. The archeologists are working out the whys and wheres now; it appears they migrated south…
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I’d add photos now, but don’t have time to crop them down to a manageable size to upload. We’ve hiked a lot in the past couple of days; yesterday we headed to the Bear Lake trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park and hiked to Alberta Falls, where we met a couple that were setting up a virtual geocache. We chatted with them about that for a while, then tried to go on to Mills Lake, but there was too much snow on the trail. As it was the trail was mostly snowcovered to Alberta, so we were pooped and called…
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We’re in Boulder – not a lot of time on the clock for blogging. Will be uploading a LOT of pictures later.
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CTG is unhappy with his seating arrangements, and doesn’t get to go out on hikes, either. He gets to stay back in the room when we go out for gourmet meals, too. Not too happy a camper is Crash Test Goofy, but then he’s only along for the ride. Sending pictures to the blog is interesting, but not easy to do without a few more things set up in advance. Also, damn Verizon and their stupid added advertising text. That’s the first thing that’s going to get macroed out of existence as soon as I get some decent access. Tonight…
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Big Horseshoe/Fall River Road 40.24N 105.38W 8671ft What an incredible day — we had a great drive in from Grand Island and made good time, in spite of getting off I-76 too soon and taking an extra 10 miles on the 2-lane highway. We listened to :NPR again on various public radio stations. When they faded, started to repeat or played yesterday’s programs, we stuck CDs in the player — the RAV doesn’t have one and the Silver Beast does, so that was a treat. We got into Estes Park at 12:30 or 1:00pm — much higher average speeds were…
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We’re moving. Tonight we’re in Grand Island NE which was probably an important stop on the pioneer trail, but now it’s the junction of two highways, a lot of hotels, and a river. We started late this morning (me, my bad, didn’t get much done last night and dinked around blogging). But anyway, we’re on the road and think we’ll arrive in Estes Park tomorrow.
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Road Trip! Crash Test Goofy says goodbye to his pal MooPunk before leaving for two weeks on the road. CTG will not be driving on this trip because his license was suspended long ago, because frankly his record was shockingly bad. Strangely, no one was ever hurt. Crash Test Goofy will try to send photos of himself from the road, possibly with latitude and longitude information and short, snappy updates. Okay, that was interesting. My first attempt at getting the moblog to work, and it sent to the main entry. I thought when I set it up that it would…