Click on a photo to enlarge it.
The rain kept us awake all night as it pounded against Winnie, but we still got up early and Kirsten made a chocolate
cake and some cinammon rolls whilst Helen wrote 2 weeks diary on the computer. Check out time was noon and at 11am a
ranger came by and asked us if we wanted to stay an extra night. We told him that we would be leaving at noon which
we did, except we had forgotten to put the clocks forward to summer time so it was actually 1pm when we left. No
wonder the ranger had given us a funny look!
After stopping at Dead Horse Point for a quick look at the view in the rain, we drove down into Moab to do the
laundry, shopping, went to the library to use the internet and filled up with water and emptied our grey water tank.
We didn´t finish until 5-45pm so we only had time to drive a short distance along the Colorado river and find a BLM
campground at Big Bend. The next day, we continued the lovely drive along the river as it meandered between a canyon.
We drove into Grand Junction, Colorado and went to 2 visitor centres. We swopped some books at the second one and a
very nice lady gave us a tip for free camping on BLM land. It wasn´t easy to find but we got there eventually and
parked up right underneath the flight path for all the aeroplanes!! Some were really low! The next day was mainly
spent sorting out Helens tax forms, making phone calls, receiving faxes and using the internet. We also found another
free camping spot in Fruita (about 9 miles west of Grand Junction). Unfortunately, we were parked on dry mud and at
2-30am after hours of rain we had to get up and move back into Fruita and parked on a supermarket car park for the
rest of the night!
We drove to Colorado National Monument and got a spot at the campsite. Then we walked to the visitor centre and
watched a good slide show on what there is to see here and then went for a short walk along the canyon rim.
On Friday 9th April we drove along the rim road through the Monument, stopping at various lookout points on the way
back into Grand Junction. From there we drove north to Dinosaur National Monument, over a high pass. We´d had
sunshine in the morning but it rained most of the way up to the Colorado side of the Monument and as we drove
towards the rim viewpoint, it started to snow! The campground was closed, so we had to drive back through the
heavy snow and poor visibility and then go into the Utah side of the Monument, where we found a free spot at the
campsite.
The next day was Helen´s birthday, so Kirsten took her to the dinosaur quarry so that her old bones didn´t feel
out of place! Most of the dinosaur fossils had been dug out between 1909 and 1924, but the museum was built around
a wall of fossils that was a river bed 150 million years ago. The bones were buried under silt and sand and raised
through geological processes into a near-vertical wall.
Afterwards, we drove north over a high pass in the snow. We thought about turning round as it was absolutely
freezing and the road conditions were really bad. At one point, a pick-up truck overtook us and sprayed snow and
ice all over Winnie and covered our windscreen. Kirsten was driving and couldn´t see anything until she finally
managed to find the windscreen wipers!
As a birthday treat, Helen got cheesecake with strawberries and cream plus a full hook-up for the night so we could
have hot showers. We realised we hadn´t had a shower for 2 weeks!! We didn´t smell though as we used the old
fashioned way of keeping clean - hot water bowl wash. We also had to keep the heater on as it was below freezing
overnight. Our grey water hose suffered from the cold and broke in two the next morning! Fortunately for once,
Kirsten didn´t get the smelly water all over her.
On Sunday, we drove north into Wyoming, heading for Grand Teton National Park and it was extremely windy going over
a high pass. About 20 miles before the National Park we managed to find a lovely free campground in Bridger-Teton
National Forest where the trees sheltered us from the wind and we had the place to ourselves. Wonderful!
