Moab to Glenwood Springs

It's goodbye Utah, hello Colorado time! So we headed out of Moab and hit the highway for Green River. Soon we were cruising along Interstate 70; all things considered not a bad interstate. It's much quieter than the I80, and doesn't have those **** head high barriers on both sides preventing you seeing any scenery, and it was quiet.

Many moons ago I remembered stumbling across a ghost town out this way, so I was curious if I could find it. My maps weren't much help, but I remembered it being around Cisco, UT. So I pulled onto the old highway when I saw a sign for Cisco, with the intention that I'd stop there and ask if there were any ghost towns around. Haha. This is what greeted me at Cisco:

Think I've found my ghost town! We weren't the only ones here gawking at the town; another car stopped and asked us what on earth had happened here. To expand a bit… the whole "town" of Cisco looks like some kind of junk yard. There are busses, trucks, trailers, pickup trucks, trailer homes, RVs, and just general rubbish everywhere. A kid's toy bike (missing half its wheels) sits forgotten on the main road. Fences are falling down and a dead refrigerator sits where most people would have a letter box. There is some life here; a few sheep and a fairly neglected (but still well fed) horse, and I saw some people leaving a trailer home in the back of a section.

Apparently Cisco was busy enough, until the I70 bypassed the town and it completely dried up. Even the general store here looks closed. I did however notice an ET grade satellite dish next to one of the homes; I suspect the dish was worth more than the entire property.

The not-very-welcoming general store.

A sat dish large enough to run the SETI programme.

Views along the main road.

Welcome to Cisco.

So that was Cisco. Wow! There was a lot of life coming from the railway side of the town though; the Union Pacific have moved in en masse to renew some ties (sleepers) along a 50 mile patch of line. So this is where the massive train of yellow and white machinery was headed that I saw a few days prior. What really amused me was that some of the yellow machines had trailers with porta-loos strapped on. And there wasn't just one either; I saw two porta-loos on wheels.

The mucked around a bit to get onto the mainline, then headed off. I had a quick chat to the crossing keeper; apparently there are 200 guys in this crew! No wonder they need special UP busses to get them all in and out!

The portaloo express

I watched them head off then hit the road for Colorado. One last glimpse of Utah desert:

(Probably another thunderstorm building in the distance)

The crossing into Colorado was amazing. We were driving along, crested a hill, flashed past a "Welcome to Colorado" sign, a we-wear-our-seatbelts-here sign, and a $1000-for-littering sign (dang, was only $100 in southeast Utah). But at the same time the scenery changed; it was like we had crossed a line drawn in the sand; this side would be Utah, barren and desolate, and the other side would be Colorado; undulating with little trees. Ok the difference wasn't that major, but after a week of desert you tend to notice little things like trees! It was short lived though and we were back to flat land when we entered Grand Junction. I straight away say a train with an ex-Burlington Northern loco on the front, and staked out a spot to catch it but it never arrived. Onwards through Rifle and Silt; wasn't as amazing as I thought. We were travelling down a canyon, but it was pretty boring as far as canyons went. We took a detour along Route 65; saw the "scenic route" turn off along I70 and thought "sure, sounds good" and started making our way up to Grand Mesa, the largest flat top mountain in the world or something. Didn't quite get there; got to the Powderhorn Resort and had a look out over the scenery (boring and gray, thanks Mr Thunderstorm) but did see a chipmunk, so much excitement ensued there.

Got quite lost coming back, my GPS doesn't understand U-turns so would route me 10 miles down a back road to do 3 left hand turns when a single U-turn would've done. Ended up at Mesa (just Mesa) and had an ice cream while we watched the world go by. Was surprisingly busy; every few minutes someone would pull up, stop in the middle of the road, leave their engine running, run into the post office or general store, and amble back out. Then they'd meet a friend and they'd both stand there chatting while their pickup trucks sat there gobbling gas. Yes it was that kind of town.

Drive out was interesting… the sky was getting dark and I passed this:

Pretty amazing lighting here. Storm lighting if ever I saw it. We finally got back on the right road for the I70. I was driving along and turned a corner and thought the truck ahead of me was spraying dust or something; but as I rounded the corner there was a deafening roar as we hit a wall of rain. We literally in 5 seconds went from a few drops to wipers-on-full and having to reduce speed to 10mph it was that heavy! I did a U-turn (poor GPS) and went back to see if it was still there; it was, though not quite as sudden. Pretty amazing. So we drove along in a torrential downpour, lightening and thunder all around. Was very fun!

Back on the I70 the rain died off and the odd rock formations of the De Beque Cutoff Road disappeared and we were soon in Glenwood Springs. We fairly quickly ended up in their (infamous) rush hour traffic on our way to the info centre. Seems there aren't many camp grounds around so we chose the Affordable Inn which turned out to be a hotel with hotel-like prices ($US80 inc tax) but the lady at the desk was very nice and she taught us all about nickels and dimes. The toilet had a "sanitized for your protection" band of paper tape over it, so we had a little ribbon cutting ceremony where I said a little speech and officially declared the toilet open, and proceeded to open the lid. Well you have to get your thrills where you can! I then had to fix the toilet because it was doing an infinite flush, but luckily I'm a kiwi and we know how to fix things. After that it was off for a meal. What I thought was a classy Mexican restaurant turned out to be classy Mexican fast food chain, but it was still nice and I had the biggest burrito I've ever seen.

Back at the hotel we did the laundry; had to ask the nice reception girl to change our notes into quarters and then bought a box of laundry powder with 3 quarters, 2 nickels, and 15 pennies. When I walked past later she was still busy putting the coins into the right bit of the till; poor girl! Had a very good nights sleep, was dead quiet after the cacophony of Moab campground. And the wireless even worked. Had planned to have a look around Glenwood Springs that night but was so tired we didn't even get that far!