Day 14, Part 2: Friday, May 5th, 2006
Moab, Utah to Fort Morgan, Colorado

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North of the Paradox Valley, I inadvertently head back into the Canyonlands when I drive Colorado's Highway 141 to the far-flung town of Gateway. The road follows the Dolores River the whole way, as it cuts through mile after mile of gigantic red cliffs. In spite of its ethereal backdrops, the road is not marked as scenic in any way on my road atlas map, for some unknown reason.

The dearth of tourists and traffic in the area makes me think that I ought to come back here some day on my bike.


When I finally get to Gateway--40 miles north of the nearest town--I find that it hasn't exactly caught up with the twenty-first century.

On the other side of Gateway, the highway leads in the general direction of Grand Junction, as it follows something called Unaweep Canyon. The rocky heights surrounding the road suddenly change from sandstone to granite.

This strange creation stood guard by the gate of the ranch where I took the picture of the canyon above.

I keep driving down the road until, at one point, I see a couple of old guys at a scenic turnout, talking to each other by their truck. I drive past them, but, about a minute later, my curiosity gets the best of me, and I turn the car around so that I can join them at the scenic turnout. After parking behind their truck, I get out of the car to take this picture. Before I can even press the shutter button, though, one of them starts talking to me.

"Where you from?" he asks. When I tell him I'm from Indiana, he starts asking me where I'm headed and what I've seen. He seems unhappy that I've driven out to California--even though his son apparently lives in San Diego--so I start talking to him about the place in which we find ourselves instead. A sign by the turnout claims that the ruined house in the picture is called the "Driggs Mansion", and the outcropping of stone is "Thimble Rock". There's a black-and-white photograph on the sign that shows the house when it was newly built, and it describes how an easterner had come here with his wife to live in it, many years ago. The wife hated the place so much that she forced her husband to take her back home after only living here for three weeks. The house has been abandoned ever since.

"I can remember when the house still looked like that," the old man tells me, as he points to the picture on the sign. "Really!?" I ask, somewhat amazed. The guy backs off from his comment a bit, worrying out loud that he's revealed too much about his age. I then wonder out loud how stone structures like that--and the ones in Rhyolite, Nevada--could disintegrate so quickly.

It's only at this point that the old man's friend begins to talk. He points to a grove of trees down the road and claims that he used to live there. Back in those days, he'd often hear vandals at night, breaking off pieces of the "mansion." Each rock they took from the house would come off with a loud snap, he says.


At some point in our conversation, I get the urge to take a picture of my two newfound friends, but I can't work up the courage to ask them if I can do so before they get back in their truck and head on down the road. Undeterred, I catch up to them a few minutes later and take a picture of them from behind, as they drive up to Grand Junction.

Eventually, the old guys turn off the road and leave me alone on the road to Grand Junction. Once I get there, I stop to take a picture of the rippled cliffs north of the city.

I spend the rest of the day making my way through the Rocky Mountains. Having made it to I-70 without encountering any thunderstorms, I quickly grow tired from the monotony of the interstate and decide to pull off in a town called Parachute to take a nap. There I am flagged down by a pair of small-town cops, who give me a speeding ticket for driving 37 in a 25 mile-per-hour zone. I'm so tired and dazed when they ask me for my license that I inadvertently hand them my credit card instead. Luckily, they're nice enough not to charge me with attempted bribery when I do so. :-)

Once I wake up from my nap, I drive the Neon through a series of tough mountain climbs to get over the Rockies. At the end of one tunnel--near the Loveland Pass--I even encounter a few snowflakes.

Which only get worse...


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