From Denver to Salt Lake

Beginning the first leg of our California road trip, we left Denver this morning, headed west on Interstate 70.  Climbing through the Front Range, we crossed the Continental Divide at the Eisenhower Tunnel and entered the vast watershed of the Colorado River.  After dipping through the Blue River Valley, we crossed Vail Pass and descended along Gore Creek and the Eagle River to the Colorado itself.

Following the Colorado, we snaked down Glenwood Canyon and, just west of Glenwood Springs, cut through the Grand Hogback, entering the Colorado Plateau, a landscape of mesas, buttes, plateaus and cliff-lined valleys.  Passing Battlement and Grand Mesas to our south and the Roan Plateau to our north, we then drove along the Book Cliffs (Cretaceous in age), that rise along the north side of the Interstate from Grand Junction to Green River, Utah.  Leaving the Colorado, we entered Utah where the La Sal Mountains, a massive laccolith near Moab, loomed to the SSW; after crossing the Green River, just east of the Waterpocket Fold, we turned north on US 6 toward Price, Utah, passing formations of Mancos Shale carved by the Price River and its tributaries.

Beyond Price, the highway climbs onto the Wasatch Plateau where, at Soldier Summit (7477 feet), we left the watershed of the Colorado River and entered the Great Basin, dropping from the Plateau and through the Wasatch Range to the urban corridor of Provo and Salt Lake City.  Tomorrow, we cross the Great Basin on Interstate 80, headed for Reno and Lake Tahoe.

Go West, Old Man!

Though I did not visit the American West until I was 25 years old, I had imagined living there since my early teenage years; deep blue skies, colorful rock formations, mountain vistas and "exotic" wildlife beckoned from nature films and calendars, instilling a fascination with that region of the country.  When I finally visited, traveling through most of the Western States, I was hooked and eventually moved to Colorado at the age of 31.  Since that time, though I have family and many friends in the Midwest, my soul has never left the West, nourished by sunshine, dry air and spectacular landscapes; the fact that they come with spring snow and parched soil is of no consequence to me.

Today, my wife and I leave for our Colorado farm.  This time, our stay on the farm will be brief since we plan a road trip to Northern California, one of the few regions of this fabulous country that I have yet to visit.  The journey will take us across the Rockies and Colorado Plateau, through the Great Basin, into the California Cascades, down the Pacific Coast and through the heart of the Sierra Nevada.  We anticipate a wealth of majestic scenery, many species new to us and two weeks of adventure that will surely bring many unexpected and unforgettable encounters.

No doubt, there will be plenty of fodder for blog posts, which I hope to provide on a daily basis, but it may be impossible to adequately express the emotional impact of our journey.  Going home again, to many places yet unseen, is to heed the will of the soul.