Day # 54 - Grand Junction, CO

Originally we were going to push all the way from Moab, UT to Colorado Springs today. That was before I got so sick. I’m not so sure I want to go 400+ miles today when some of those miles are arguably the hardest towing miles in the country. The drive on I-70 from Grand Junction up and over the Rockies to Denver is a well known truck killer when you are towing. In addition to the steep climb, there are the cross winds that can push your trailer into another lane very easily. So, we decided to break the drive up into two days and stop around Grand Junction today. Hopefully tomorrow I will be feeling better and can tackle the trip over the mountains.

During our hike in Moab at the Copper Ridge Dinosaur tracks, Sarah found a billboard that listed all of the other dinosaur related activities in the region and she saw a Museum in Fruita, CO called “The Dinosaur Journey Museum”. She really wanted to stop there so Missy and I decided this would be a nice activity for today and we could stay in one of the many campgrounds between Fruita and Grand Junction, CO for the night.

So this morning we left Moab and headed north. My time in Moab was pretty frustrating. If seeing National Parks and hiking are things you enjoy, then Moab is someplace you really want to visit. But since I was sick much of the time we were there, it felt like I was a kid who had my face pressed up to the glass of the candy store window but could not go inside. The things I did get to do were great. So we will definitely be returning for another visit. I will say however, that it would be nice to be able to visit in the spring or fall. Moab is very dry and very hot during the summer. It is true that the parks are much less busy in the summer than the fall or spring. But the hikes would be easier, especially on kids, if the weather was cooler.

We stopped in Fruita to visit the Dinosaur Journey Museum. The cost was reasonable at $20.00 for the whole family. The museum is small, but they have several very interesting displays. And several of the displays use animatronics (robot) dinosaurs. They even had one that you could control using a joystick to move the head back and forth and the arms up and down. It was pretty neat and worth a visit if you are on I-70 at the western border of Colorado.

Another display they had was an Earthquake machine. All the kids thought it was great to “feel” how an earthquake feels and watch the display as the tectonic plates shift. I was less interested in the robot dinosaurs (I saw plenty of robots in my previous job) and more into all the fossil skeletons that had been found in Colorado. I guess I thought most of the dino-fossils that were found in America came from Wyoming and the Dakotas. But there are many archeological sites in Colorado too. I learned something new.

After 2 -hours we had seen the entire museum twice and it was time to go. After rides on the dinosaur in the gift shop we headed for one of the campgrounds in Grand Junction. Since we have stayed at so many KOA campgrounds during this trip, we had accumulated some bonus points good towards $25.00 off a nights stay. So I called the KOA in Grand Junction and they had a spot right across from the playground. It was a smaller campground than most of the other KOA’s, but it was clean, the people were nice and the girls liked being able to go to the playground on their own since I could watch them as I got the camper set-up. Tomorrow will be a long day for me, so I am heading to bed early.