Day 4 — Denver to Moab

As we got ready to leave Denver I was still feeling conflicted about the "people vs. places" issue. And so I jumped at the chance to visit this friendly dinosaur and let the kids pose with him.

Of course the dinosaur was at the gas station where we were gassing up, so it was pretty easy!

I haven't figured out yet why the kids' favorite thing to do is wash the windows??? I am sure they would not be so happy to do it at home.

Every other time we've driven to Utah we've been told that it's just as quick to drive through Wyoming as through the mountains of Colorado. It's usually been more convenient for us to go through Wyoming, so that's what we've done. This time I decided that we were going to drive through Colorado, and I loved it. What a beautiful trip! I was laughing at myself about how much I'd enjoyed seeing the rock walls along the interstate before this point. The mountains were incredible and amazing.

I was surprised to see so many dead trees on the first part of the trip. Now I need to find out why the pine trees are all dead in this part of Colorado.

We saw some interesting houses. One that was on top of a small mountain and I promise you--I am not exaggerating--was shaped like a spaceship. One that was shaped like an igloo. And one that looked exactly like a prison. There are some people out there with odd house ideas!

Josh pointed out that the recession appears not to have impacted Vail. There were several huge building projects going on. We enjoyed watching the cranes at work as we drove past.

Rachel was fascinated to see the mountains with ski runs on them.

Speaking of Rachel....

On the 3rd day of our trip someone asked Russ how we were doing. He told them that we were either fine or dead on the side of the road, but that he hadn't heard from us.

I felt bad, but the truth is that most of the time this trip didn't lend itself to communication. There was always something going on--listening to a book on cd, (I got 14 from the library--I think we will only get through a few, but at least we'll have a big selection!) listening to music, or (my personal fave) nap time and a quiet car.

And when none of those other things were happening, the chances were pretty good that a conversation like this one was going on:

Rachel: Are we in the desert?
Me (trying to talk loudly enough to be heard in the back of the car): No, we're in the mountains.
Rachel: Are these Utah Mountains?
Me: No, we are still in Colorado.
Rachel: Well then why are there Utah mountains in Colorado?
Me: These aren't Utah mountains, they are Colorado mountains.
Rachel: But Josh told me that these are like Utah mountains.
Me: Well they are more like Utah mountains than they are like North Carolina mountains. But they are still Colorado mountains.
Rachel: When will we be in the desert?
Me: In a couple of hours.
Rachel: Where is the desert?
Me: A lot of Utah is desert. In fact your cousins live in a desert.
Rachel (with horror): Why don't they move to the mountains? Do they like living in the desert?

At that point I declared any conversation about the desert off limits for a very long time.

At lunch we stopped at a rest stop to make sandwiches & eat.

(Aren't they adorable??)

We had planned to have a quick lunch, but it turned out that the rest area was right beside a lovely river with some nice rocks along the edge. So of course we had to go wading a bit.

The little kids were all afraid they were going to get leaches (I'm not sure where that came from!) but they overcame their fear and had a good time. It was such a hot day that the cold water felt great on our feet!

I had assumed that the beautiful part of our drive was done at this point, but what came next was even better. Huge rocky cliffs covered with pine trees. (All living & beautifully green in this area.) A river running alongside the road, and a tunnel through a mountain too. It was delightful.

Eventually we did reach the desert, and boy was it a desert. And then we went further into the desert on purpose. But more about Moab later!