Day 1: Colorado Springs to Green River, Utah

For the past four summers, we have taken a family road trip to some amazing places in Colorado and around the American West including Rocky Mountain National Park, Ouray, and Yellowstone National Park (we may backtrack sometime and post blogs about those trips). When we began thinking about a destination for this year, it made sense to somehow honor the 20th anniversary of our wedding and perhaps revisit some places we had seen in our first years together.

We have fond memories of two trips: an epic drive from Houston, Texas to Portland, Oregon in 1991 and a quasi-honeymoon trip to Northern California in 1993. We’ve always been bothered that we didn’t spend more time in San Francisco in1993, so decided to make it a focal point of this year’s trip. Add to that an array of spectacular national parks to which we’d never been and we had the makings of an epic adventure that honored two decades of our life together and promised new experiences for us, as well as for Kenny and Sam.

After much research, web surfing, suggestions from others, discussion, and vigorous debate, this is the round-trip route we chose from Colorado Springs to San Francisco:



And now a disclaimer: A trip with personal visits is a trip with multiplying expectations and imposed scheduling obligations. That can be an immensely enjoyable experience, but is a different kind of trip than the one we needed. So with apologies to our dear friends in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, we chose a journey free of visits except with Blake’s cousin Shawn and his family in Carpinteria, California.

Our itinerary was based upon finding a variety of experiences in many different landscapes. We also sought a combination of tent camping, hotels/cabins, apartment rental (in San Francisco).

Here’s the itinerary we established:

July 26, Fri.
Colorado Springs to Green River, UT
6 hours
Cabin rental

July 27, Sat.
Green River, UT to Ely, NV
6 hours
Hotel

July 28, Sun.
Ely, NV to South Lake Tahoe, CA
6 hours
Lodge

July 29, Mon.
Lake Tahoe, CA to Yosemite NP, CA
4 hours
Camp

July 30, Tues.
Yosemite NP
Camp

July 31, Wed.
Yosemite NP
Camp

August 1, Thu.
Yosemite NP to San Francisco
Apartment


August 2, Fri.
San Francisco
Apartment

August 3, Sat.
San Francisco
Apartment

August 4, Sun.
San Francisco
Apartment

August 5, Mon.
San Francisco to Carpinteria
6 hours
Shawn’s

August 6, Tues.
Carpinteria
Shawn’s

August 7, Wed.
Carpinteria to Las Vegas, NV
5 hours
Hotel

August 8, Thu.
Las Vegas, NV to Grand Canyon NP, AZ
5.5 hours
Camp

August 9, Fri.
Grand Canyon NP to Durango, CO
5.5 hours
Either hotel in Durango or camp at Mesa Verde NP

August 10, Sat.
Durango to Colorado Springs
5.5 hours

The hours listed each travel day are approximate drive times between camping or lodging stops – they don’t account for stops along the way, of which we had planned 3-5 each day. All total, we drove over 3,560 miles.

This blog will cover each day of our two-week trip, on which we experienced fantastic landscapes from natural to urban, and amazing art from ancient to contemporary.

Day 1: Colorado Springs, Colorado to Green River, Utah





On the morning of July 26th, with our dogs in the thoughtful care of friends, rental car packed up, 70+ hours of music, and Blake feeling that six months of eager anticipation and planning had finally come to fruition only to be weighted by the angst of work, we headed west.

Colorado Springs sits on the high plains just east of the Rocky Mountains; so going west, our drive passed through foothills and semi-arid valleys before crossing the Continental Divide at 12,095 feet above sea level at Independence Pass. This is one of our favorite places in Colorado. We stopped to have some lunch in the woods on the west side of the Pass, but were quickly chased away by thick hordes of mosquitoes.





Independence Pass. Picture by Blake.

Desert begins to dominate the landscape as you get into western Colorado and Utah. It is, however, no less magnificent than the alpine high country of the Rocky Mountains.




Entrance to Sego Canyon, Utah. Picture by Blake.

Our first stop in Utah was at Sego Canyon where there are some amazing groupings of ancient petroglyphs and pictographs on the canyon walls. There’s an old schoolhouse at the canyon entrance. The art history nerd in Blake finds interesting contrast in the fact that both this rural Utah schoolhouse and Pablo Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon were made in 1907. A bizarre and arbitrary confluence of cultures ensues in the brain.



Thompson’s one room school, est. 1907. Picture by Blake.



Looking north out of Sego Canyon. Picture by Sarah.



Sego Canyon Pictographs. This is one of many groups of images. All together, the images at Sego Canyon were made by multiple American Indian cultures over a period of about 3000 years. Picture by Blake.



Fremont culture pictographs and petroglyphs. Sego canyon’s oldest images are the red painted figures at the top. Sadly, many of these amazing images have been vandalized with inane scraping and scribbling in recent years. Picture by Sam.



Sam and Kenny at Sego Canyon. Picture by Sarah.