Tuesday, April 13, 2010
We debated on what to do and which way to travel today... weather conditions, travel times, places to stay, etc. Some areas were calling for rain, others snow, others were nice. We finally decided to head out, and take I-70 west to 24 south to 12 south, which is a (very!) scenic route. As soon as we left, we saw the most concentrated gray clouds and could literally see the streams of rain reaching the ground ahead of us. Before we got to it, we pulled over, put our gear in dry bags, and buttoned ourselves up. We hit a little rain, but nothing bad at all. We saw all different types of desert mountain landscapes... white, some like the painted desert, which is like greenish, pinkish bands of color, some dark gray, some black, everything. We ate lunch, then checked in at a visitor center and the man there told us that we were going to hit Boulder UT next, and pointed in the direction of another patch of darkness, and said it was snowing there! We debated again, but then decided to go for it. We were heading up and up the mountain, and it does start to snow! Nothing crazy, and the temp was still about 40, so it wasn’t sticking to the ground, so we kept going. I was being very, very careful around all of the turns, and it was a little nerve wracking, but exciting at the same time. Summit at 9,500 ft, and tons of packed snow on the sides of the roads. We started heading down, hit a little more snow, but then finally... here comes the sun, dada da da! We quickly stopped at the Anasazi State Park Museum, decided it was time to call it a day (left at 10:30am and it was already 5:00pm) so we checked into a cute little place down the road. While checking in someone told us that we just had to go down this road to check out the scenery. He wasn’t kidding! Totally secluded road that twists and winds it’s way in between giant tall cliffs of red rock. Again I was a little nervous at parts (all of that turning and going up and down steep hills) so I just went slow, and that helped to see more anyways. We never would have thought to go down there if it wasn’t for that guy, goes to show how nice it is to get good advice from the locals.