When we left off last night we had made it from Orange County all the way east to the quaint little town of Richfield, UT. The trip was not without its
mishaps, but we covered those yesterday and were hoping for smoother sailing on Day 2.
With so much luggage packed for a long motor trip it was inevitable that something would get forgotten. No sooner had we loaded up our gear and set out for the freeway, than Jim had an aha moment remembering he had left his personal pillow back at the hotel. A lot of things in life can be written off without a second thought, but that wasn’t one of them. So back we went and brought the pillow safely aboard.
Our day plan was to traverse about half of Utah and most of Colorado, ending up east of Denver near the Nebraska border in Ft. Morgan, CO. Our unwelcome companion from yesterday—the Check Engine light—was still with us. Ugh! We made two attempts to get professional repairs, but neither worked out. So we’ll keep on going and get it addressed in Michigan—we hope.
On an ordinary day, this journey was probably quite do-able. But there was nothing ordinary about this leg of our trip. Even with all conditions optimal
it would have been a tough task to cover 500 miles in a day. With parts of I-70, the main artery linking our starting point with our destination, closed
due to rock and mudslides it was going to be darned near impossible.
Both of us have learned that you miss a lot if you don’t check out some of the local natural and man-made features of an area, i.e., get off the freeway.
So even though these small detours probably cost us the chance to reach Ft. Morgan they were worth it to see some fantastic scenery and local people
hawking their wares at two off-road overlook sites.
The first was a salt wash view area that had once been covered with a vast inland sea that had polished the stones smooth and created fantastic formations among the surviving rocks. Castle Valley was the result. Perhaps it’s hard to see but these boulders looked like something straight out of The Jetsons. See photos below and decide for yourselves whether our digression to view it was
worth it.
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Jim Ayres at Castle Valley Overlook. -
Amazing trees and fantastic rocks are everywhere. -
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Even more spectacular was the canyon below with its colorful rocks and geologic layers formed over millions of years. Arizona may have its Grand
Canyon, but Utah’s Devil’s Canyon (image below) is certainly its aesthetic
rival.
Skiers are very familiar with I-70 as it passes most well-known Colorado ski resorts, but this territory looks a lot different in the summer with gorgeous
green meadows, farms and ranches tree lined mountains and open skies.
A long detour around the problem I-70 rockslide area behind some large plodding trucks along U.S. 50 and U.S. 285 sealed our fate as far as not
covering all the ground we had hoped. But it enabled us to see the spectacular Blue Mesa Reservoir and related trout fishing streams, a worthy trade-off.
After covering around 500 miles again today, it was finally time to call it a night in the tiny Colorado town of Fairplay. It’s time for lights out until we hit
America’s heartland tomorrow.
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