May 27-31, 2017 Palisade to Carbondale, Colorado

Back to Colorado!

We are parked at the Meadery of the Rockies, another Harvest Host.

Wine tours in a horse and buggy at the Meadery. We tasted at the Meadery and three wineries. Lots more here, but that was enough for one day. Henny Penny’s dad with John, and a close up of what he is made of.

Wine Deer, We also tasted Smokey Butts BBQ sauce, the park in Palisade is called the Peach Bowl, this is a big peach growing area, and Wine is Happiness. After that we went to dinner at the Palisade Brewing company and tasted beers.

We moved to Island Acres State Park just east of Grand Junction. Peaceful place, kind of a lawn chair kind of day. The swim lake.

The fishing lake at Island Acres. Then on to Carbondale. Here are Martha and Pete with desert, Martha’s ice cream cone matches her vest!

We were at a BBQ at Gigi’s. Here is Martha, Gigi and her daughter Juniper. Later on, John with the Chili dog in the hot tub.

Today we hiked on Red Hill in Carbondale. John and Martha with Chili dog running to keep up.

John, Martha, Chili dog and Bailey overlooking Carbondale and Mt Sopris near Mushroom Rock.
Martha took this of me and all my available baskets. Plus the one in my hand is the current one I am working on,.

John cooked a yummy shrimp BBQ for Jim Jim's first dinner as a retired guy. Today was his last day of work FOREVER!

  

May 25-26, 2017 San Rafael Swell, Utah

It was supposed to be cooler today, only 85. It ended up being closer to 90 and partly cloudy.

We had a little rain last night. Cool clouds with the storm. We decided to hike Old Woman Canyon today. John got the directions from the internet. It said the trailhead had a fireplace. ?? Well it did, there was no sign of a building ever being there, so no idea what is up with it.

There were flowers all over. Huge bushes of these big sunflowers. Also these red centered flowers too. There were supposed to be two petroglyph panels in this canyon. We found the first, the two bottom photos are what there was. We left the map in the car and had only GPS points in John’s GPS. We hiked up this canyon, it was really hot up on the slickrock. We did not find the other panel and came back.

Interesting rock formations on top. Yellow flowers, odd sand deposition in this spot, cool lines in the rocks and a collared lizard.

John found this white rock in the fireplace. He picked it up and turned it over and it said go naked on the back. Heaven forbid, there are hula hooping cows ahead-it must be bad because there is a flashing light and orange flags! Another yellow flower. When we got back it rain pretty hard, then the sun came out and the slick rock was shiney. 

The storm clouds after they passed us. Sunset was brilliant. 

Windy today. We hung out, then in the afternoon we hiked in the canyon next to the campground. Orange flowers and a couple odd looking rocks.

The San Rafael Swell out the car window on the way to Green River to have dinner at the famous Ray’s tavern.

 The wind had so much dust in the air that the light was cool. And a Green vista.

This morning there was the white 5th wheel on the right  in front of us and the brown motorhome to the left behind us, getting too crowded. Sunset. 

Sunset and Seed heads, cactus flowers and needle and thread grass.

This motorhome is parked near us. Too much, 4 slides, one with a deck of it and a TV satellite.  The deck does not look very stable. Our microwave/convection oven has not worked well since we got the bus and it finally bit the dust. We can’t microwave or bake. Good thing we are almost to Fort Collins, we can get it fixed there we hope. 

May 24, 2017 Crack Canyon, San Rafael Swell, Utah

93 degrees and sunny today, another good day to go into a narrow , cool, shady canyon. We chose Crack Canyon. Very beautiful  5 mile hike.

John in the first narrows. The canyon then got deeper and wider.

The rocks shapes and colors were phenomenal. Holes within holes, tonsillar holes, textures.

More narrows and deeper.

Narrow, deep and full of gigantic rocks we had to climb around. Lunch in the cool shade above the gigantic boulders. 

The view looking back from lunch. Not as much shade as we had hoped, until we are back in the narrows.

Narrows with some water in the bottom. We had heard that this canyon was a difficult one, with lots of hard drop offs. There were three dry waterfalls we had to climb. Not too bad, even I could climb them without a rope. No not as hard as we had heard.

A confusion of shapes and colors. There was so much to look at it was hard to just keep hiking.

Back near the first narrows. John is in both of these photos as a tiny figure, this was a deep canyon. 

More lines, colors and wild shapes.

The Crack Canyon Trail head. John said he thought many of the designs on the canyon walls looked like figures, then I saw them everywhere. Some real pictographs in Temple wash on the way back.

 Lots of flowers in the wider sections. Vetch, gilla, asters and prince’s plume., lines, shapes and rain clouds, something you don't want to see when you are in a slot canyon and an antelope back at camp.