West - Day Twenty-One - July 13, 2005

I got an early start today to head to Dinosaur NM before turning south to ultimately get to Cortez. Dinosaur NM has a spectacular canyon area with gorgeous vistas. The quarry was another 30 miles down the road in Utah. I decided not to go that far and am glad I didn't since it took me 9 hours to get to Cortez (428 miles) as it was. The weather this day in western CO was scorching hot. High temperature was 101F in Grand Junction. From Dinosaur, I drove down route 139 which I think rivals route 50 in Nevada as the loneliest road - I started counting cars along the way there were so few of them.

After crossing I-70, I followed route 50 south to route 550 which took me back up into the mountains again through Silverton and Durango. Big thunderstorms darkened the skies in the Durango area and west to Cortez. I stopped at Mesa Verde NP to buy tickets for the ranger-led hikes to the cliff dwellings in the morning and then headed to the hotel and dinner. For those who are interested, I was working my way through my third book-on-tape - "1776" as read by the author David McCullough.