Cottonwood RV Park, Idaho Springs, CO, to Monument RV Resort, Grand Junction, CO:  I was up early this morning and putzed around until Mike got up.  We left at 10:30 and Mike started driving.  I would have been okay driving I guess.  It wasn’t too bad.  We continued west on I70 and went through several tunnels—the longest being the Eisenhower Tunnel.  After Vail the landscape changed to a more desert environment and soon we were dwarfed by huge mesas.  We wanted to find a place to stop and fuel up and eat.  But there are no truck stops west of Denver.  Don’t know how the truckers do it.  We finally stopped at Glenwood Springs to check out a Shell station there.  They did have diesel, but we had to go down the road and turn around in order to enter the station in the right direction.  That was fun.  We finally got turned around, gassed up and left the station and turned around in a mall parking lot so we could get back on I70.  A beautiful part of the drive was through Glenwood Canyon.  The Colorado River runs through this canyon and it gets so narrow in places the eastbound lane of I70 is underneath the westbound lane.  And the river is roiling right now with all the snow runoff.  I70 really sucks through Colorado.  The bridge transitions are horrible and every time we hit one of them I was afraid we’d have a blowout or worse.  I looked in the mirror at one point to check and realized the right tail light had been knocked off and was hanging by some wires.  We stopped right away at a rest area and put it back, but it ended up getting knocked out again.  We never did find a place to eat and change drivers, so Mike drove all day.  Thankfully, it was only 4-1/2 hours.  We were in our park by 3:00.  Tomorrow will only be a 2 hour drive to Moab.  We’ll be there for about 10 days.

 

Lots of snow still up there.

Entering the Eisenhower Tunnel.

Starting to see more red rock.

Going through Glenwood Canyon.

Right along the roiling Colorado River.