| Bye bye to the Beehive State and back to Colorado. |
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| The last national park would be Colorado National Monument. |
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| I took a picutre of the sign at this site, but a reflection of sunlight made it unreadable so I can't just write what it said. What I do know is that the Redland Fault runs through these rocks. |
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| Another Balanced Rock. |
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| Down there is the Colorado River and beyond is the Grand Valley. |
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| If you are fed up with canyons and rocks and such, you may want to skip ahead. |
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| The tall skinny thing is Independence Monument. |
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 I kind of think the Colorado National Monument is stealing names from other parks. First Balanced Rock and now Grand View. |
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| I spent some time here looking for coke ovens, figuring that there may have been some historic nineteenth century ovens somewhere down there. But this is called Coke Ovens Overlook because those formations look like beehive coke ovens. |
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| Upper Ute Canyon. See that large chunk that looks like it fell off of the canyon wall? Well, it is called Fallen Rock. What happened is that water gets into cracks in the rock and when it freezes it expands, enlarging the cracks until the rock breaks down. This giant piece didn't topple over, but slid down more than a hundred feet to rest on the debris slope below, where it has likely stood for thousands of years. |
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| Red Canyon, a favorite of communists everywhere. |
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| Cold Shivers Point overlooks Columbus Canyon. It is probably named that because it must give you cold shivers looking over the edge. If I were standing where this fellow is, I would have called it Piss My Pants Point. |
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| The interstate runs along side the Colorado River for a good while. |
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| Different parts of the country have
their own beauty, but there is a reason I have taken so many driving
trips out west. I had intended to see the Dotsero Crater, but once I saw the rough road getting there, I opted against it. I don't think I missed much. |
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| Eagle Ridge Lodge in Eagle, Colorado was the lodging for the night. |
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| Not much to it. Kind of in need of a refurb. |
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| I got a small pizza and a root beer and
brought it back to the room. The pizza was quite good. Oh, and Eagle is at 6,601 ft. |
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