On the Road Again

We are back on the road and I got so excited about what we have been seeing the past few days that I decided to start writing again.
John and I left Florida in May and returned to our home base in St.Louis.  Besides visiting friends, we did find a few new and interesting things to do- like visiting the mansion of the founder of Magic Chef stoves.  Also there were new exhibits at both the Science and History Museums.  We also got in one Muny Opera show.   I am forever impressed by St.Louis with all that it has to offer!
We left St. Louis in July to attend the Lohrmann family reunion in Colorado.  Fortunately our niece Heather and her spouse were able to find a resort with enough cabins to accommodate our large group, which numbered 69 people- from the ages of 3 months to 78 years.  The highlight of this reunion for me was that this was the first time when all eight of my living brothers and sisters attended.  We had 5 days of fun and fellowship, with one of the days spent at Royal Gorge.

 

From the resort (located near Salida Co.) John and I drove to Grand Junction, where our home was parked near the Colorado National Monument.  We have visited there before and I wrote about that park in a posting of Aug.21,2015.  Below is a picture of that park at sunset, from our home.

Part of the reason we decided to make another trip west was that John noticed on his map of the states that there were roads which we have not covered.  We had a beautiful drive out of Colorado into Utah.  John, however, did not realize that it would be slow going as we had several passes to go over on interstate 70.  It was all worth it, especially at Black Dragon Canyon.  An interpretive sign at the viewing area noted that we had climbed 1000 feet in elevation from the valley floor to the top of San Rafael Reef.   In that climb we had lost 50 million years in geologic time.  Sedimentary layers were deposited here 250 million years ago before the Permian extinction.  Pictured below are some of the red cliffs of the canyon, their color caused by the presence of iron oxide.

After leaving the canyon area we continued to drive through western Utah along the Sevier Desert which is marked by the presence of  large rock formations.

At this point of our drive a  rainstorm descended on us and we had lost our sunny day for a brief time.  Our stop for the night was at the base of the Wasatch Mountains near Provo.