April 2015
Our "new" friends in Page, Arizona gave us some good suggestions as to which way to drive to Grand Junction, which was around 700kms. There was plenty to see and of course we wanted to see it all so we left really early, crossed into Utah
and got to Monument Valley (an old favourite) in good time.
There was a John Wayne movie on the TV the other day, The Searchers, and there in the background was Monument Valley. Love it!
We turned left just past Mexican Hat, a small town that probably got its name from the rock near it...looking a little like a Mexican Hat, onto Utah State Route 261 in San Juan County.
We were on our way to Natural Bridges National Monument, but our first distraction was a gravel road with a sign to Valley of the Gods. In true US style there was no distance so we had no idea how far the road went or where it went, but it was a beautiful drive and we ended up back at Mexican Hat after an hour or so.
Back onto State Route 261 and we got to Moki Dugway,
which was a predominantly gravel road
with steep switchbacks and great views.
But as we got to the top we found another gravel road to grab our attention (again no distance) and we ended up at Muley Point with great views out to Monument Valley and into Goosenecks State Park.
We eventually arrived at Natural Bridges National Monument which was ok but we have been spoilt with Utah's other amazing sights. How snobby have we become!
It was getting late and we weren't even halfway to Grand Junction, but the road took us through Moab, Utah which is surrounded by huge rock walls, arches, fantastic rock formations....and that's what you can see driving on the highway.
We took the familiar Hwy 128 from Moab to Grand Junction stopping every few minutes
to watch the sun go down over the the stunning landscape.
Fisher Towers was our last stop. We had been here before and loved it. This time it was just as beautiful..
but photographers had set themselves up to take sunset photos and didn't appreciate us daring to encroach on "their area" with my iPhone5 to take photos. How precious!
We finally made it to Linda's place in Grand Junction, grabbed some Taco Bell and enjoyed another great catch up with her. She is so accommodating to us and has always made us feel welcome and comfortable. She gave us a suitcase for our gear to take home as well as some cardboard so Stuart could make a box to bring the huge wrought iron sun we had bought home. It was sad to say goodbye to Linda, but we hope she and John make their way over to WA one day.
Back on the I70 the next morning to Denver and snow.....Colorado never disappoints.
We were staying at Connie and Bill's house for a few days (they were in Florida visiting family) while we exchanged hire cars, and did a bit of prepacking/weighing/rearranging/weighing so we knew how much "stuff" we could still buy without having to pay excess. Between us we had hardly brought anything over from home, so we still had a few kgs we could purchase!
(We also dropped Stuart's snowboard boots and his hand luggage bag at a cobbler to be mended thinking it would be cheaper than doing it in Australia. Unfortunately not....$8 per eyelet. He was going to replace each eyelet but it would have ended up costing him more than the boots did in the first place. We explained that we would be back in 2 weeks to pick them up (on our way to the airport to fly home) and could they have it ready, but when we did pick them up, unbelievably they hadn't mended our hand luggage bag and we had to wait while they did it. Fortunately we had given ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport.)
Anyway after a few days we left Denver to begin our last 2 weeks in the US and another adventure.
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