YEAH! We're out of Utah!

1=Red layers


2="S" curve we rode

3=WOW! Rock formations

4=Road drops off

5=Rock layers pushed up by plate tectonics

6=Red rocks similar to Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas





7=The Egyptian look in Utah

8=Our first view of Colorado=green










9=Colorado River & 'green'...Yeah!!

v:We have arrived in Grand Junction, Colorado. It is green here...unlike Utah and the places we've been for the last week. Amazingly, Utah is really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter...according to locals. When it rains, the water runs off in torrents because the ground is so very hard. Curt and I are getting comfortable with 103 degrees...it must be time to be home. Utah is beautiful in a desolate sort of way, with multi-colored plateaus and cliffs that have been beaten by the winds for eons. There are deep canyons that give the Grand Canyon a run for its money, and also deep ravines building into mts. Some of the plateaus looked like they had Egyptian carvings all along their top ridges. At one point, we were at about 8200 ft and that wasn't even the mts they told us about. We did the up-down-turn around stuff, but Curt said it wasn't as bad as others he's driven - I'm riding, remember. The 105 - 86 temp swings really do a number on you. On this stretch of road, we've seen more breakdowns than any other area because of the long, long climbs and the 5-6% grades. There must have been 20 rigs off to the side. One trucker said, on the CB, that he had blown an engine. We did get some cloud cover for a few hours and it even rained on us. We didn't stop to put on our rain gear. It felt great! No one lives between Salina and the CO border, except for Green River. We didn't even see a bird.

We had barely crossed the CO border when we came over a pass and spied a gorgeous valley with 'green' and houses and square fields and big trees. WOW!! A whole different world.

M I N N E S O T A the land where nothing is allowed, sure looks mighty fine right now.

More later

The Sore Butts