Colorado Done, Utah Begun

Again behind on the blogging. We sped through the rest of CO in 4 days - stopping at Maroon Bells near Aspen, driving over Independence Pass to Buena Vista, staying at a campsite in Gunnison, before spending a full day at Black Canyon - both north rim and south rim. We got caught in a fun rain storm while in the south rim, that cut our sightseeing short. We then continued to Ouray, stopping for the night again at a KOA. We enjoyed a chat with the pancake cook - who has spent most of his life traveling, including 11 years around South America once he bought a sailboat. He was quite supportive of our travels.


We then went to Mesa Verde, seeing lots of deer throughout the park and even a gray fox. We drove late into the night during a lightning storm that was fun to watch from a safe distance, to make it into UT in the dark.

We woke up this morning seeing it for the first time and it was clearly a different landscape. We drove 10 more miles to get to Moab, where we stopped at the Visitor Center to get info on our next couple days. We went into Arches - and it was amazing! We did a 5 hour hike through Devil's Garden and are now resting after finishing a couple smoothies in a cafe in town. We're hoping to check in to the Lazy Lizard hostel (highly recommended to us) and doing another hike through Arches.