Day 9: Straussburg CO to Moab UT

Monday June 20

We are on the road again, this time to Utah. Again we are traveling Rt 70 West. We pass by Denver and again we are struck by the magnitude of the mountains here. Each turn shows a new view and while its raining yet again on a travel day, it is gorgeous. We run into snow around the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel. This is a 1.6 mile tunnel through the mountain. Thankfully Scott is driving and deals with the steep grade coming out of the tunnel. There is a lot more snow on the western side of the tunnel as well. Looks like a good 2-3 inches of snow fell overnight. The views of the mountains with the snow cover is beautiful and it has pretty much stopped raining. The temperature gets down to 36 at one point.

We drive by Vail and other great ski areas and can see the resorts off the highway. The highway is following the Eagle River which eventually meets up with the Colorado River. Boy is it impressive. It is flowing very fast and is very flooded. As we move more and more west, the mountains tend to change in colors. We go through a period where the rocks are bright red and more dessertlike. I feel like we are approaching what I think Utah will look like. But with everything here, it goes back to being the rocky mountains. Now the rocky is gone and the Mtns. appear more sandy and seems to support some vegetation. There is no more snow anywhere to be seen and we are nearing 70 temperatures. It has been a chilly morning for sure.

Roadside Scenery

Colorado has numerous resort towns along Rt 70 with exits every 3-4 miles and varying gas and food choices. Without warning we hit the Utah border and there are no exits in site. All the rest areas are “no service” and we are running low on fuel. At the same time, we experience high pressure in one of the trailer tires. Scott thinks it is due to me driving too fast so we switch drivers and the psi immediately spikes to 88 and he pulls over to let out more air. From then on the tires seem fine but we have less than 75 miles of gas. Utah is completely deserted and barren looking, although gorgeous scenery.

Entering Utah!

We finally get fuel and turn onto US 191. Immediately we start to spot prairie dogs in the dirt. Scott and I spot them first and then eventually the kids each see at least one. Most of them are standing on hind quarters sticking up out of their holes. We pull into the KOA campground about 10 miles beyond Arches National Park and get to our site. With not much food and time, we decide to hit the Moab Brewery for dinner. Very disappointing; the food wasn’t very flavorful and the beer selection was bad. Two beers were sold out and 2 others were having issues with the kegs. But we had dinner and stopped for milk for breakfast. On the way home, sure enough in front of the camper we spotted a rabbit. Hard to believe we would find rabbits in the desert.