Good Bye Sulphur, Hello Dinosaurs

This morning it was very cold in Hot Sulphur Springs. Here's the proof:

Here's the view out the window.

We put on lots of our clothes and hit the road, that being US 40. After about 12 miles, we stopped for gas and put on more clothes. Shiver! But by noon, we were shedding clothes as it warmed up nicely. By the time we got to Vernal, Utah, it was downright warm.

The skies stayed clear blue all day and it was once again beautiful. Leaving the misnamed Hot Sulphur Springs, we entered a canyon. Along the river at the bottom of the canyon there is a rail line. Think of the quintessential wild west rail road and there you have what we saw this morning. Unfortunately, due to the narrowness of the shoulders and the multiplicity of curves there was no place to stop to take pictures. But the whole scene was just about perfect.

We had good curves right up the mountains, faster ones than yesterday's and the road was much wider, although still very enjoyable and easier. We went through Rabbit Ears Pass. Here are the namesake ears!

And for the third time this trip, we crossed the continental divide. The other times, it was not safe to stop for a picture, but this time it was.

We had less traffic than yesterday and were able to stop and take pictures fairly often. Ray put together some panoramas. This is outside our motel.

This one is on the way up to Rabbit Ears Pass.

We saw many motorcycles today, especially on the mountain. Who with 2 or three wheels could resist that road? US 40 between Hot Sulphur Springs and Steamboat Springs is a great road. Coming down out of the pass we quickly came to Steamboat Springs. The area around there is wonderful, full of wooded hills and green valleys. But we think, based on the kinds of cars we saw at the gas station and on the streets, that we probably can't afford a house there.

Once we left Steamboat Springs the road straightened considerably but became very hilly. There surely is not much out there. This one was taken at a historical marker not far from Steamboat Springs. It details a coal mine disaster in which 47 miners died. From the names listed, it looks like all the wage earners in several families died.


The further north and west we went, the drier and more desolate the land became. We thought parts of Nebraska and Colorado were deserted. This is worse. And for miles and miles, no sign of habitation.

This is pretty much what things look like, junipers and sagebrush and cows. The cows spread out quite a bit, probably because there isn't much to eat in any one place.


The land you see in the background suffered a wildfire back in 1988. You can see by comparison with the foreground that the land has still not recovered from that fire.


Just before you get to the Colorado/Utah border, the road curves around and ahead of you rises an escarpment. It's high, layered, weathered, striated, grooved, eroded, enormous and long. If the earth were flat and the creator made a wall to keep us from falling off, I imagine this mountain is what that wall would look like. It's called Blue Mountain and it really does have a blue tint to it, and for some reason the sky over it looks bluer too. We rode alongside Blue Mountain for quite some time.

Utah is more rugged land than Colorado. It's got washes, hills, rocks. When it's farmed, the farmer works the land right up to the toes of the hills. This is dinosaur country around Vernal and some of the hills look like sleeping dinos, like a giant stegosaurus laid down for a nap and never got up. The sharp rocks poke up out of the land and give the illusion of bones.

Today we went 239 miles. Tomorrow morning we're off to Marbleton, Wyoming. The road that way should be fairly curvy, we think. It goes through Flaming Gorge Recreation area.