Driving Through the Mountains

Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Yesterday Frank and Bette were off to visit a childhood friend of Bette's who now lives in Utah.  We decided to stay at the RV Park and just get a few things done.  Then last night we spent some time with the Foulkes beginning our travel planning from Colorado to Pennsylvania.  There is so much we'd like to see but our time is running out so there will be a lot of long driving days sadly.

Today we did the first half of the drive through the mountains from Salt Lake City, Utah to  Golden, Colorado.  It is hard now to just drive and not take detours to see things nearby but time constraints are limiting our touring.  So it is we passed signs for the Tetons and Yellowstone and a few other interesting sounding places choosing to just make a beeline for Rawlins, Wyoming.

On our drive we were primarily between 6000 and 7000 feet above sea level.  In other words, it was an easy rolling drive with lots of plains bounded by mountain peaks  Some of this path along I 80 is what the pioneers traveled in their covered wagons.

Coming out of Salt Lake City we did pass through a fair number of mountain cliffs

But then shortly before we hit the Wyoming border, we began to see large expanses of fairly flat land

but always there were rolling hills sometimes close to the road 

and sometimes we were doing the rolling -- here we could see a whole string of windmills on a ridge

We saw lots of snow fencing

Outcroppings of rock like this were all over with interesting colors and lines

Long flat topped buttes were quite common too

These outcroppings were close to the road and straight up

Every once in a while we'd even see a small lake, river, or creek

This tended to look like one outcropping on top of another one like stacked blocks

And these looked like they had rock chimneys

And this one from a distance almost looked like it had snow on the lower level

Shortly before we arrived in Rawlins we started seeing more rounded peaks

Then in the late afternoon we pulled into the Western Hills RV Park, registered and set up just before a brief burst of very strong winds bringing a little thunder and a sort rain.

By the time we'd finished dinner the entire park was filled up with RVs all pulling off the road for the night just like us. Tomorrow we'll finish the drive to Golden, CO