OK, okay, it was only 4,900 feet. But I moved the motorhome from South Park, nearly ten thousand feet above sea level, to Grand Junction, Colorado - about 4,500 feet elevation - when the snow began appearing up in the high country.
I normally don’t try to take pictures while driving the motorhome. It’s just too big to find a place to pull off the road. But just outside of Frisco, Colorado this awesome scene presented itself and there was a big place to pull over. I pulled into the spot.
The peaks, near to far, are Peak One, Tenmile Peak, Peak Three and Peak Four. The ridge behind Peak Four is Peak Five. Yes, those are the actual names. Paid subscribers received a full-size, suitable for printing and framing, copy of this image about a month ago.
There was another spot that I had planned on stopping at. Interstate 70 follows the Colorado River from a place called Dotsero all the way down to the state line. Along the way, it rushes through Glenwood Canyon, a deep gorge 12+ miles long cut into the Rocky Mountains. They claim that this was the most difficult stretch of the entire US Interstate system to build, because there isn’t room in that canyon for a four-lane freeway. The engineers solved it by putting the freeway on decks, one partly on top of the other. It is Oh My God I’m Gonna Die scenic, and they built a rest area right in the middle of it. I had only seen it once, on the road trip that changed my life…
… and we hadn’t had time to stop then. I had decided that I was going to see it again, on my way down to Grand Junction. I took only one shot there:
If you’re ever in that part of Colorado, take an hour out of your day and spend some time there. If I remember correctly, it’s called the Grizzly Creek Rest Area, it is very easy to get off and on the freeway, and you’ll never see anything like it anywhere else.
I checked in at the Grand Junction KOA, a park I highly recommend if you can afford it. They are one of the better KOAs in the country, and they are expen$ive.
For the next several years, Grand Junction would be my home base. I would winter there, usually at the KOA, and then roam all through western Colorado and southern Utah during the summers. I also made trips to Wyoming and New Mexico.
It was still autumn in Grand Junction. Pookie was happy.
I was happy too. Ever since passing through GJ some years earlier, I had always wanted to go back to Grand Junction to live. There is so much there to explore and see. And you’re going to see quite a bit of it in the months and years to come. Be sure to subscribe — free or paid — so you don’t miss anything.