As John Denver first sang in 1972:
“And the Colorado rocky mountain high
I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky
You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply
Rocky mountain high”
We woke up to another gorgeous day in Colorado, but last night was a different story. It got really, really windy. I mean SO windy that the RV was actually rocking a little. I couldn’t sleep, because I was scared. The wind was howling, and the RV was rocking and I was afraid it was going to blow right onto it’s side, or get carried away to Oz and land on a wicked witch!
I guess it often gets windy up in the mountains, I’m just not used to it! Anyway, we left GOLDEN TERRACE SOUTH RV RESORT and headed back into town, for breakfast and a little shopping! We ate at a place called THE COTTAGE INN, which was the closest thing to a diner we’ve seen since New York, but more than half the menu was Mexican food! It’s so strange, because there are SO many Mexican restaurants in Colorado, and the non-Mexican restaurants have Mexican food on the menu!
After breakfast Eric dropped me off at an antique mall in Golden called “The Antique Mall” (how clever!). It was great! Tons of collectibles to look at, and lots of costume jewelry. The only problem was, most of the jewelry was more than I could afford, or just priced much higher than I thought it was worth! It’s funny to think that fabulous jewelry in my shop was much cheaper than in a one-horse town in Colorado, but I guess I always knew my prices were low. That’s why I had so many devoted customers. Right, girls?
While I shopped there, Eric went to a bicycle shop and bought some body armor he needed. He’s going to be doing a lot of mountain biking in the next week and wants to be prepared.
After Eric was done, he came to The Antique Mall and he helped me find two nice, inexpensive pins, so I was happy!
Then, we hit the road for Fruita, Colorado, our last stop in Colorado before hitting Moab. We are staying at MONUMENT RV RESORT – “Stay and Rest Where the View’s The Best!” It is just two miles from the Colorado National Monument and right across the street – literally – from the National Park where Eric is going riding tomorrow morning.
We only stopped for gas, but it was a really fabulous drive, because the snow-capped Rocky Mountains were all around us for the first hour, and we had beautiful mountain views for all of the four hours. This was the drive Eric dreamed about when he was driving straight for 100 miles through flat terrain with corn fields on either side of the road. This was a curvy, mountain road with steep inclines and descents, canyons, mountains, streams, tunnels that ran right through the mountains and the Colorado River rushing by.
We arrived at MONUMENT RV RESORT and immediately drove into the town of Fruita for dinner. The town is very small and the only restaurant we could find that was open (besides a Mexican Restaurant) was THE END ZONE, a sports bar, where Eric got to watch the football game while we had some surprisingly great salads (his with crab meat and mine with seared ahi tuna). We finished off the meal sharing a piece of cake called “Chocolate Confusion.” I think they gave it that name because there were about 5 different kinds of chocolate in one cake. Delicious!
Eric is looking forward to a great morning of mountain biking and then we will go explore the Dinosaur Discovery Museum (which is also, conveniently, right across the street), the peach, apple, cherry, plum and pear orchards in the area, or the antique shopping in Grand Junction (the downtown Main Street Shopping Park). There are tons of other things to do, so there’s no telling how long we’ll stay here. Only time will tell!