Best of the Best: Week 4

I know, I know, today is actually week 5.  I'm a bit behind the times here.  I'm trying my best to catch up! Hopefully, that will happen in the relatively near future :)

Best food:

We had pretty good Mexican food in Albuquerque.  I say pretty good because in NEW MEXICO, it should be phenomenal.  It was good.  But not phenomenal.  The best part, of course, was the bread, sopapillas.  Again, fried dough. Yum!

Best view:

The Rockies in Colorado.  At one point, it was snowing! Needless to say, at the end of June, snow is a beautiful thing indeed.

Best accident:
The Valley of Fire was really cool.  It was interesting to read about the history of the landscape, and piece everything together visually.  It was hard to imagine the entire landscape covered with flowing lava!

Biggest culture shock:
When we drove through the desert, it was literally 109 degrees.  We stopped at Wal Mart (literally the only store around for about 60 miles), and there were people outside in pants.  If there was ever a time to be in shorts, 109 degree weather was it. I started wearing shorts when it was 65 out.

He's not wearing pants.

Best overall
Colorado.  Yes, I know we were there for four days, but it still counts as one destination, right?  We got to spend time with family we don't get to see as much as we would, which is always nice.  Plus, we went to an awesome concert and got to explore the city and the outdoors. Yay Colorado!

Ashley National Forest and Flaming Gorge

After leaving Dinosaur National Monument, we made our way to my namesake, Ashley National Forest. On the way, of course, we found some diversions to keep us occupied.  This week, it seemed as though we spent more time discovering new things than actually doing the things we set out to do.  Our first stop was a beautiful reservoir in Utah. We climbed down some cliffs to get a better look, snapped some photos, then went along our way.

Our next stop, for lunch, was also along some pretty water.  While there, we saw a sign advertising hike-to fossilized dinosaur footprints on the other side of the lake.  We got sucked in, and about an hour and a half later, we had made our way down the other side of the lake.  We saw (maybe?) one footprint out of the hundreds that were supposedly there.  We're unsure if the water line was too high, or if we really just shouldn't go into a career in paleontology.  The five year old next to us didn't see any either, so that made us feel a little bit better.

A couple of hours later, we made it to Ashley National Forest. It was pretty high up in the mountains, and much cooler than the desert monument we had left behind.  It was nice to cool off a bit, and see some vegetation.  There were even fields of daisies! We decided not to camp there because the accommodations were definitely on the primitive side, and we were afraid it would be too cold at night.

We moved on to Flaming Gorge, which is actually in Ashley National Forest, but is it's own attraction.  There is a huge dam there, a ton of wildlife, and pretty water.  (In case you haven't noticed, I'm a sucker for pretty water. )  We stayed the night there before heading out early the next morning.  I, for one, didn't sleep too well.  It was the first time we camped in "bear country," meaning that bears roam the area.  Although Eric is convinced bears are his friends, I don't think they're all that fluffy and cute.  Luckily, we didn't see any bears, and were able to make our way back out to the desert stress-free.

The week before Vegas..sorry, guys!

Okay, so it's been over a week since my last post.  Sorry!!  For those of you who were hanging in limbo, just waiting for my next post, the wait is over!  Just kidding :-)  Anyway, we're not dead yet.  Unfortunately (or, fortunately?)  we have been completely without WIFI for the  past week (or electricity, for that matter) and have been unable to update you with our travels (gasp!).  Tonight, I will do my best to fill you in on the last week, and do "best of the best."  Tomorrow, with any luck, I shall finish the rest of the time up to, and including, Las Vegas. 

So, when we left off, I had just gone to a concert at Red Rocks in Denver.  Ray Lamontagne was fabulous, and we had a most excellent time with my cousins...

Denver

The next day, my cousins left for St. Louis, and we headed over to Eric's cousin's house.  We spent two days there, and had a blast playing hide-and-seek and exploring Denver.  The time we spent in Denver was really split: my cousins live in the suburbs; whereas, Eric's cousins live in the city.  It was nice to see both sides of the spectrum.

While in Denver, we went to the botanical gardens.  We took a ton of great photos, and got to see lots of plants that usually only live in the desert.  The gardens definitely gave us a taste of things to come, as most of our week was spent in the desert.  Eric also became our unofficial photographer.

On our last night in Denver, we met up with an old friend of Eric's for dinner.  We had a great meal, and continued to explore the city afterward. The coolest thing about Denver was the pianos all over the city.  Eric sat down and played a few, but there were many more.

Dinosaur National Monument

When we drove from Colorado to Utah, it literally snowed.  It was one of the most bizarre things I have ever experienced.  Fortunately, the snow did not last long, and did not get very deep, which made our trip through the Rockies pretty easy.

Dinosaur National Monument was a pretty crazy place.  Although we were not able to collect fossils, they were certainly in abundance.  We saw fossilized fish scales, and dinosaur femurs and vertebrate.  Unfortunately the "quarry" was out-of-service due to the previous night's rain, so we could not see the park's largest collection of fossils.  However, we did have a great time camping in the park.  Surprisingly, we are getting pretty good at cooking over a fire, and have actually made some awesome campfire meals.

Anyway, I am absolutely exhausted and don't want to cheat you out of a proper account of the past few days.  I am off to bed, and will update you in the morning. For now, we are safe and sound in Vegas :)

Valley of Fire, Albuquerque, and Colorado: Days 1-2

After we left Roswell, we drove to Albuquerque.  Although it wasn't a terribly long drive, we made a side stop at a place called the Valley of Fire.  It wasn't nearly as scary-sounding as it sounds.  The Valley of Fire is a place in New Mexico where a huge basaltic lava-flow drastically changed the landscape.  There are huge, black, lava flows for miles and miles.  At one time, I suppose the valley did actually look like it was on fire.  But, today, it just looks burnt!  It was another really cool accident that we never would have heard of.  I think that most of the fun in a road trip is discovering new things while travelling to the ones we have planned.

 

After finishing our drive, we arrived in Albuquerque a bit later than we had expected.  We checked into the Rt. 66 hostel, which was really more like a B&B.  Eric was really excited to be on historic Rt. 66, mostly because of the song, "get your kicks on Rt. 66."  We went out for some Mexican food, because if we didn't, I'm sure you'd all kill us.  Surprisingly, the food was kind of bland.  However, I will say it was definitely different than the Mexican food we are used to.  We were served sopapillas and potatoes with our food instead of tortilla chips and rice.  It was a nice change.

In the morning, we visited Petroglyphs National Monument.  Again, the black, volcanic rocks, dominated the landscape.  Fortunately, we had time to do a couple of hikes before heading out to Colorado.  The first was a hike up a hill to view some petroglyphs.  Petroglyphs are basically ancient Native American carvings in rock.  Our second hike was up two of the volcanoes that created the rock.  Neither one of us had ever climbed a volcano before, so it was a new experience.  The view from the top was amazing! On one side, there were mountains in the distance.  On the other side, it was completely flat.

The petroglyphs tell stories, but only the descendants of the artists know what they mean!

Volcanoes: they are bigger than they look.

After a great morning at the Petroglyphs, we made our way to Colorado to see my cousins.  After a long drive, we were warmly welcomed with washers, dinner, and fun!  It's been really awesome to make our way around the country and visit family that we don't get to see as much as we would like to.  

Yesterday afternoon, we took my cousin Beau with us on a hike through Castlewood Canyon State Park.  We were able to see the canyon from the top, as well as hike down into the canyon.  It was a lot of fun.  We did get caught in the rain, but it cooled us off after all that climbing!

Last night, my awesome cousins got us all tickets to see Ray Lamontagne at the Red Rock Amphitheater.  The venue itself is absolutely gorgeous.  It is set high up in the mountains.  You can even see Denver in the distance!  The concert was really, really good, even the opening acts were great.  Thanks guys!!