Day 12 -- Happy 4th of July!

We barely made it out of our hotel in Vernal. The whole town was lining Main Street for a big parade!  It probably would have been interesting to see (no doubt a few dinosaurs involved!) but we had some distance to cover. 

Started out at 3500 miles along the Dinosaur Diamond scenic byway from northwest Colorado to Grand Junction.  Many prairie dogs scooting from their town of holes to the town on the other side of the road made for some swerves and beeps. 

A dry, rocky sagebrush area with many natural gas and oil pipelines. Probably fracking, too, like in Utah. Did see some antelope, so elegantly colored. We joked that it looked like where Old Ben Kenobi lived, and half expected a Tuskan Raider to pop up!   

The scenery got greener with more trees as we went along. Wheat and corn fields outside Grand Jct, the miracle of irriga-tion. But as we turned west on interstate 70 into southwest Utah, it seemed like everything dried up. 

Made a brilliant decision to take a back way around Arches National Park, our destination. Followed the Colorado River encountering vastly varied rock canyons. 

Stopped for lunch in the "shade" by the river (it got up to 112 today!) We waded a bit, and Jarad played his pipes. Don't you love his cowboy hat?!

Much of this countryside is open range, no cattle fences. I just commented how we'd never seen one in the road when...

(Taken from the driver window!)  Finally made it to magnificent Arches.  Vast red rock vistas of a scale the mind cannot comprehend. So I'll just post a few pics...

Jarad will post more I'm sure...