We chose a different route than we usually take when we left Loveland last Monday. Our usual route out of Colorado involves Route 80 and 'Whyoming'. This time, we chose the more scenic I-70. And we can't remember when we've seen as much varied scenery in such a few days.
We drove past Denver and through the Eisenhower Tunnel near that mile-high city. This is the highest automobile tunnel in the world at over 11,000 feet. It goes under the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. Beautiful mountains and green trees lined both sides of the highway. We passed turnoffs to the famous ski resorts of Vail, Glenwood Springs, and Aspen.
On past visits to Colorado (pre-blog, even pre-camera) we made sidetrips to all those towns -- even stayed overnight at Aspen (in the off-season, when it's affordable). This picture is near Glenwood Springs; the mountain scenery is typical of most of the drive on this day. I-70 runs right through the canyon and along the Colorado River. We saw quite a few people rafting.
Some of the mountain passes were very slow driving, low gear. We stayed that night at Fruita (still in Colorado).
Tuesday, still on I-70, we crossed into Utah where we drove through some beautiful scenery that was in total contrast to the previous day. This was all moonscape-like rocky scenery, granite reefs and uplifts. Also in contrast to the day before -- and to add to the surreal feeling -- there were no services for over 100 miles of the Highway -- no signs, no old towns, no nothing, but the amazing scenery.
There wasn't even much traffic, although we passed turnoff roads that led to several National Parks (Arches and Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon, Capital Reef). We've been to those parks on earlier trips, most of them before we started to blog.
Wednesday morning we left I-70 and hopped on to Utah State Highway 21, which has to be the longest, loneliest road ever. Straight as a die for miles and miles. Scrub desert scenery all the way.
We had to stop a couple of times to wait for large dust devils (or small tornados) to cross the road.
Into Nevada, we got on Highway 50, which we have seen billed as "the loneliest road", but it definitely isn't if you've just come off of SH 21.
Since our Winter in Florida and the Low Country, we had almost forgotten how much space there is in the West. Mountains and lots of flat land under them.
If only there were water!
The differences between these three neighboring states reminded us yet again of how varied and beautiful this country is.
The actual on-the-road portion of our trips is not always this interesting . Sometimes the road is just a way to get where we're going. But for these three days at least, life was about the journey and not the destination.
We were happy that we chose this route.
