Our trip to Roy, Utah

Our trip, as you may have read at the end of the previous page was interrupted by business, so now we will continue on the way. We left Denver at noon on our fifth day and since we had over 400 miles to cover we moved the trip along by not stopping anymore than we had to. So Sandy acted as photographer and snapped over 100 pictures through the front window in an attempt to record what was one of the most spectacular drives we have ever taken. It seemed that around every corner we were greeted with an entirely new and different vista. The colors of the rocks changed, the ruggedness of the cliffs changed so dramatically that at times it was as if we patched a film together from entirely different trips.

Our goal with this series of pictures is to try to give you the feel of what the 400-mile trip looked like. We are not going to clutter it up with text since most of the passes, peaks, tunnels, and other sights went by so fast that we didn’t note them specifically. Instead we simply enjoyed the view as we traveled SW along I-70 in the 104 degree heat. There are a few notes at the end of this page about our final stop today.

The one stop we made today was at the very end of our run. We took time to stop at Palisades, Colorado to visit three wineries. All three make their wines on site with locally grown grapes and offer tasting rooms. We pulled off I-70 where we took a couple pictures, the first being the scenery behind us and the picture below of the view to the west.

The Grande River Winery was our first stop. They allowed us to taste several varieties and of course we purchased those we liked best. Then if was off to find the Plum Creek Winery, and the picture below shows their grapes growing with the huge mesa in the background. We were told that irrigation, moderate winters, and the soil produce some wonderful grapes, and we found all of the wine to meet our expectations.

File the picture below under the category of "What’s This?"

Did you guess without looking? I doubt it, this is perhaps one of the most interesting welded sculptures we have ever seen. It is a large rooster and is made entirely out of junk pieces of steel of every description. The chicken’s tail feathers was the only portion I could see that did not appear to be a piece of junk that started life as something useful (think hinges, knobs, sprockets, etc). The last picture shows the storage casks at the Plum Creek Winery. The owners gave a personal tour of their facility and described the process as we sipped their wine, a perfect end to the day. We also visited DeBeque Winery (pronounced de beck) and then headed west to Grand Junction, Colorado for the night.