It was so much fun to not only show Francisco a little more of the States, but to also see some places that I had never seen before. We got out of our routine and took to the road, headed west.
1. Our first stop was Glenwood Springs, CO. It’s historically famous for its natural hot springs, but I’d only ever seen the Fairy Caves. We arrived to our modestly priced hotel (that we mostly picked randomly off the side of the road) around 4:30 and decided to dip into the hotel hot tub and explore the town. We ended up at an Asian restaurant and ate way too much. It started to snow while we were sleeping and by the time I convinced Francisco to actually get up, we had to dig the car out of a few inches of snow. To start the day (and maybe get out of the snow for a while) we started with the Fairy Caves. I always enjoyed them because you get to take a gondola up to the top of the mountain -usually with a great view of the surrounding mountains. Unfortunately, due to the snow, the only view we had was about 10ft around the gondola. The caves were quite warm, though, and it was quite nice to forget about the snow for a while.
We tried out the famous Hot Springs in the afternoon, which were much more popular that I thought they would be during the tourist off season. The steam coming off the water made the whole experience pretty magical. Needless to say, we came back later that night to experience them at night (you can come back as many times as you want during the day). Francisco thought the water was a little too hot in the hotter of the two pools but I thought it was so relaxing! I’d definitely come back again. The snow falling also made it special, which of course is seasonal, but I’m curious what it’s like during the summer months.
On our way out of Glenwood the next day, the sun was shining and the sky was blue (but our car was still under a thick layer of ice and we say several new accidents on the highway from the icy roads). But after just a few short miles down the road, the mountains turned back to their normal red color and the roads were dry again. We were now on our way to Utah!
2. We passed the Colorado-Utah border before noon (I’m pretty sure, but this is all from memory, to there’s certainly a margin of error). And took a picture. Shortly thereafter we cut down toward Moab, UT. We took the scenic route which took us along the river and through some beautiful canyons. After having lunch in Moab and settling in to our hotel we headed back up to Dead Horse Point State Park (or more often known as the “Island in the Sky”). We went all the way -or almost all the way- to the end of Outlook Point, but headed back just in time for a beautiful sunset. I didn’t feel comfortable hiking in the dark, which was one of the reasons why I made us turn back, but it worked out for the best because we also got to see the full moon at it’s brightest and lowest in the sky. The 45 min. drive from Moab was one of the best little day trips we did -the views were simply stunning and with the low afternoon sun we got some great pictures (but it was hard to hike with the sun directly in our eyes, too). Once we were back in Moab, we decided to keep it simple for dinner and just made something in the little kitchenette in our hotel room. We ended up watching an old Brazilian tv show in bed and planning our next day.
We tried to get up early the next day, but that didn’t work out as well as I’d planned. But as Francisco tells the story, it was actually me who initially insisted on another 30 minutes (erm.. hour) of sleep. After packing up, we went back up to see some things in Arches National Park. It was bitterly cold, since the sun hadn’t warmed everything up yet, and we could only muster two short hikes before we threw in the towel and just decided to start on our way down to Mesa Verde. Full tank of gas and local drive-through coffee (actually really good!) we hit the road again. I did like the fact that because it was off season, nobody was on the trails with us. Okay, there were a few groups in the afternoon, but we didn’t have anyone on our trails in the cold morning at Arches.
***Due to constrains with time and patience I will end here and pick up again tomorrow (or whenever I actually end up having time). This only take you up to the start of day four into our trip, so there’s still so much to tell! ***
