Saturday 16 June

Up really early - woken by Les’s phone which he’d forgotten to put on silent. We had breakfast by 8am and set off soon after.

Today promised to be a very straightforward drive simply continuing all the way (about 230 miles) on US 40. To start with we drove through Vernal which turned out to be much bigger than we’d imagined. We carried on through interesting but not spectacular scenery.

We stopped at a viewpoint while we were still in Utah. While we were there a family drew up (grandparents, parents and children) who we’d seen at breakfast in the motel. It was obvious that the older man was extremely knowledgeable about the geology of the area. We got talking and discovered that he was a geologist by profession and that he’d worked in UK for a few years. He knew our area very well and talked to us about Swanage and Durlston Castle.

Carrying on we stopped in Dinosaur to go to the Colorado Welcome Centre. We were the only people there and spent a long time talking to the lady on duty and enjoying a free coffee. She explained that Vernal had tripled in size since she moved to the area in 2000, due to the energy boom (oil, gas and coal). Now that these industries were suffering from oil price falls, depression had hit the town and businesses were closing. The recent increase in oil price seemed to not to have had any effect.

There was a long stretch with almost nothing on the road. We eventually came to Craig. Again this is quite a large town. We’d gone past all the usual suspects when suddenly we found ourselves at the start of a one-way system. Just next to this was a City Market and we managed to make a left turn into it. We decided to buy some food for tomorrow’s breakfast and tonight’s meal. We also bought a roll each for lunch, abandoning our earlier plan to drive back to the Subway that we’d seen on the way in. We stopped in a layby a few miles outside Craig and sat in the car and had lunch.

It was then just a case of carrying on along US 40. When we got to Steamboat Springs we were faced with a diversion sign and a big queue of traffic. It turned out that they’d closed Main Street for a rally of Ford Mustangs. Luckily we were able to turn into a side road and park and then walk the few yards to see all the cars. It was mid afternoon and they were starting to pack up but there were still lots of them there. After a walk round and a quick visit to a country store (Stetson, boots, etc) we shared a sorbet before carrying on. Luckily just as we made our way into the huge queue out of the side road they reopened the main road and so we were able to get straight on our way.

It was a fairly steep climb up over a pass after leaving Steamboat Springs but the descent on the other side was long and gradual. We stopped at Wolford Mountain Reservoir for a quick photo opportunity and then didn’t stop again until just before Hot Sulphur Springs where we managed to get some photos of the Colorado, which is in its upper reaches here.

Our motel is tiny but nice and we were able to park right outside the room. This was lucky as the rain had just started again. It’s not nearly so hot here and it hasn’t got much above 20c all day. It was down to 12c as we went over the pass coming out of Steamboat Springs and it also rained quite hard. We were quite pleased to be following a slow moving lorry on that stretch. The rain has also left the car looking a bit cleaner.

When we checked in there were some other people just parking and we noticed that they were English, so we had a quick chat. They were also doing a long tour and they came from Bideford in Devon and claimed to know Wareham quite well.

Ate in the room again. Really nice honey & ginger glazed salmon from City Market plus the usual salads and bread, etc. After eating we discovered that we could get Rocky Mountain PBS on the TV and we were able to watch an old episode of As Time Goes By and then Midsomer Murders.

Discovered that it was raining quite heavily.