Day 5 - Wednesday, March 23 - Fruita, CO to Las Vegas, NV

March 23, 2022

Starting mileage: 78722 Starting time: 8:00 am
Ending mileage: 79052 Ending time: 4:45 pm
Travel mileage: 330 Travel time: 9:45 hours (including time change to PDT)

It was only 27 degrees with heavy frost on the car this morning, but perfectly clear skies.

Before starting on our journey to Las Vegas, we decided to take the Rim Drive in the Colorado National Monument which was only a couple miles from our hotel. This slowly winds back and forth up the canyon wall to the mesa at the top, then meanders for 20 miles back down to Grand Junction which is about 10 miles from Fruita.

The scenery is quite spectacular with the road going through narrow passageways and switchbacks, with overlooks to the Colorado River below. At the top there was a visitor center which wasn't open yet but we went on a short nature trail from the parking lot. On the way down, we were very lucky to get the photo below of Bighorn Sheep. They don't seem to be particularly afraid of people as one was eating grass right by a bunch of people by an overlook.

The Colorado River in Fruita is pretty small - you could throw a stone across it in most places. Strangely, when we were in Yuma, Arizona just before it goes into Mexico, you could probably throw a stone across it there as well as so much water has been taken out along the way.

Driving on I-70 across Colorado and into Utah the landscape is pretty desolate, just dried sagebrush and stubby dried grass. We saw Black Angus cattle grazing along the highway and wondered what they managed to eat and drink.

In one place we saw a large solar farm which must have had solar panels that were supposed to track the motion of the sun as 99% were pointing to the sun and a few errant panels were pointing in random directions.

The scenery in Utah was really spectacular with tall sandstone cliffs in a variety of colors, white, yellow, red, brown, purple, gray and almost black. There are all sorts of interesting rock formations. We stopped at a number of the scenic overlooks to take photos. Many of the mountains and the north-facing slopes are still covered with snow.

Much of the way the speed limit is 80 MPH and even so, many cars passed us like were were standing still!

Just at the Utah - Arizona border we passed down through the Virgin River Canyon which has very high steep sandstone walls.

Just after we entered Nevada, we saw Joshua Trees along the road which was surprising as they are in very few locations such as the Sonoran and Mohave deserts. We saw them before in the Joshua Tree National Park.

I think a great auto route would be from Denver along I-70, then down the I-15, then visit Bryce Canyon, Zion and the Grand Canyon. We saw these on previous trips.

The traffic was horrendous in Las Vegas but we eventually made it to the hotel and got our room at the Paris Hotel and Casino. We had dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant here 10 years ago as a special treat - we probably won't do it again tonight.

Gas price: $4.45 in Utah