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| rocky mountains |
The trip.You never know how large a country is until you travel through it. We did not dilly- dally around. Doug drove the whole way, eight hours and more a day. We went from MA , to Conn.,through NY and PA then Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Oregon. From MA to Indiana the landscape was similar to New England. There are thousands of trucks on the highways, moving stuff from one end of the country to the other end. Billboards on the roadsides advertising everything, lots of farms, everything big and spread out. The landscape leveled out. We came to the prairies. Then it was wide open space, land not used and big farms, many wind mills, for energy. It seemed to take forever to get through Kansas. It is level but we were 4 thousand feet above sea level. There was some snow on the ground in Kansas.
From Denver down to Utah the landscape was dramatic. Driving through the Rockies was spectacular, closed in, steep rock formations, climbing, climbing, winding eleven thousand feet, snow, mist, overcast so mountains could not be seen clearly, still a fabulous drive. Then decending , steep grades. Doug had to drive in low gears. We went through Vail the fameous ski area. It took several hours to get through the majar part of the mountains. We drove along the Colorado River. The Rock formations were cilfs dropping down to the highway. We went through Glenwood canyon, still folowing the river. That night we stayed at Grand Jct. and the next day went to Moment and Archers National Parks. You know how much I love rocks. No picture can decribe the feeling standing beneath or looking up and out to cliffs hundreds of feet high. The color of the rocks especially in late day sun with the shadows was magnificent. Every corner we went around was o my god, look at that, the wonderful shaps, towering up, marching across the horizon. At Archers we had to hike out to Delicate Arch, a three mile round trip. I am not in great shape and it was all up hill to the arch. I had to rest along the way but I made it, and it was worth the hike. There were a lot of people hiking even babies in carriages and small clildren, all doing better then me, although I did not see many old people on the trail.The park is huge and we saw a small portion of it. You need days to see all the special arches and named rock shapes. That was the highlight of the trip and I am glad we saw some of it. We drove on through more interesting rock cliffs and then the land flatened out in Idaho and eastern Oregon. We crossed the mountains, stopped to see some waterfalls and then on to Eugene. So that is it in a snapshot.
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| Glenwood Canyon |
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| Glenwood Canyon |
