Grand Junction, CO to somewhere near Boulder, CO
Ok it's day three and we've made it to just north of Boulder, CO where were spending the night with a friend of Angie's. A great house but a bit out a ways from Boulder. Have been treated to a great dinner and marvelous hospitality, a six star rating in my book.
The drive from Grand Junction was to take us about 4 hours but do to weather and weekend traffic I took us a bit more then six. Most of this stretch was through the grasslands of west Colorado up into the crayons and river basins of the Colorado River, then up into the Rocky Mountains and across the continual divide before descending back to the flatlands around Denver and Boulder.
We followed Interstate 70 for much of this leg, which parallels the Colorado River for the most part. It looks like a great place to spend some time unfortunately not his trip.
We started out looking for a hardy breakfast after out experience with dinner the night before. Again we were challenged at every opportunity. The Coco's restaurant our GPS said was just down the street wasn't. Trying to find any thing but fast food was problematic as well. So we did the only thing we could and got the hell out town.
About 40 minutes up the road and after a couple of misguided attempts at various watering hole, we stumbled onto Shonney's Family Cafe in the town Parachute. This was one of those local color places that most travelers miss I'm sure, but we had one great breakfast. This was about 10:00 but lasted us the rest of the day except for an occasional Starbucks stop. If we can have just one of these adventures a day along the way wouldn't it be grand.
I've never driven over the middle of the Rocky Mountains as we did today. It was great going through the canyons and up to the summit at Vail, ~10,500 ft. The ski resorts were impressive and full weekenders. We're thinking this might be a place to come back for an extended stay.
