We woke up this morning feeling
clean and well rested. The hotel was humming with people at 8am. There are a
lot of firemen from surrounding states here to help out with the wildfires.
Some of them look exhausted because they have been here for two weeks fighting
the wild fires. Others are just now arriving to sub in for the weary workers
who are heading home. I spoke with a couple of them and it amazes me how happy
they are to do their jobs. They have worked hard and suffered some challenging
setbacks, but they both felt confident that the wildfires in western Wyoming
were coming under control. One of the challenges for us has been has been
trying to figure out where all the fires are and how to safely avoid them.
After much deliberation and math,
Mark and I decided that heading down to Utah to see Moab and the Arches doesn’t
make sense at this time. It adds too many miles and hours to our return trip.
So, we are heading Southeast today to Granite Colorado to a campsite along a river. Tomorrow will be one of our last
touristy things. We are going to do a family combination trip of Rock Climbing
and white water rafting.
Once I finished making all the
reservation for sleeping and playing, we packed up the car and headed out of
dodge, I mean Pinedale. This is going to
be another of those long rides in the Western states where the roads are wide
open with nobody around and no speed limit signs to be found. Because I made it
all the way to Yellowstone without even getting pulled over, Mark doesn’t want
to chance me gloating so he’s being a little conservative. Cars keep passing us
on the dotted lines, but that doesn’t sway him. He keeps a safe pace. A funny
thing happened though. One of the cars that passed us was gesturing upwards to
the roof of his car. After a moment it occurred to Mark that he was indicating
that our roof top carrier was open; ooops! It didn’t look like we lost anything,
thankfully. We’ll know for sure tonight.
Unfortunately, a few miles farther
down the road that same car was pulled over for speeding. Guess I should stop
picking on Mark ;-) Onwards through Colorado we went.
We were all starting to get a little punchy so we decided to stop and get some
dinner. Choosing the next available exit we got off in this quaint little
valley town. Very modern little town nestled in the mountains. It turned out to
be Vail! Too bad my brother didn’t still live here. We found a brewery with
patio seating so we could look out over the mountains. This town wasn’t quite
as busy as Jackson Hole; it had a quieter way about it. I’m sure the winter
months bring the crowds, but I’m glad we saw it in the summer. I could get used
to hanging out there. The kids were overjoyed to see people could bring their
dogs to restaurants. It kept them entertained while Mark and I enjoyed our
beer. I’m happy to report that we have done a remarkable job sampling local
beers throughout our trip. I took a picture of the kids standing in front of the brewery and texted
it to my brother with the “guess where we are tag”. He was happy to hear that
we were in his old neighborhood.
After dinner it was an uneventful
ride to the campgrounds. We pulled in to the grounds a little before 9pm. The
office was closed, but our key was taped to the door. I LOVE how trusting
people are in this part of the country. Knowing we were going to pull in late
we decided to get a cabin over a tent site. This turned out to be a great choice
for a number of reasons, most notably, the tent sites were very rocky and
staking down the tent would have been a big challenge. The cabin was very cute
and rustic. It had a full size bed and a set of bunks. The cabin was barely
bigger than our tent, with the exception of the ceiling height. But, it was
warm and met our needs.
By the time we settled in it was after 10am and we had
to plan to get up early for Monday’s activities. We have a full day planned
with rock climbing and white water rafting.
With alarms set for 7am and people
tucked in, we all quickly fell asleep.
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