On day 4 of our journey we traveled from Grand Junction, Co. to Estes Park. After searching on the web a bit I discovered that the city was named Grand Junction because it sits at the confluence of the Gunnison and Colorado rivers. This is Colorado wine country and mesa country at it’s best. The Colorado National Monument is 23,000 acres of rock formations, arches, windows, canyons and exposed layers of earth, most of which we didn’t get to see as we had a long way to go this day. Shortly after leaving GJ, traveling I 70 east through the mountains, we drove through beautiful canyons following the course of the Colorado River. This is big and majestic country. There’s definitely more to see here than we got to see.
Several of the more famous ski resorts in Colorado lie not too far from I 70 as it makes it’s way from Grand Junction in the west to Denver in the east. We stopped briefly at two of them. The first was Aspen, definitely home to the “beautiful people”. Carol and I felt a bit out of place to say the least as we mingled with the skiing crowd at the foot of Aspen Mountain Ski Resort long enough for me to drink a cup of Starbuck’s coffee and to take a few pictures, most of which didn’t come out due to a malfunction of my camera (GRRR!) It was a beautiful sunny day and the ski hills looked spectacular. Aspen was also the home for much of his life of John Denver, famed folk/country singer/songwriter. The resort had a “John Denver” feel to me.
After leaving Aspen we continued on to Vail, located right next to the interstate. Vail was the favorite ski area of President Gerald Ford and he has an amphitheater named after him here. After a brief drive through we continued eastward on I 70 and crossed the Continental divide through a long tunnel before leaving the relative ease of interstate driving and once again following a snow plow over snow covered mountain passes on Colorado back roads ending our journey on day 4 at Estes Park right next door to Rocky Mountain National Park.