Headed west on I-70, beautiful day, fabulous scenery, with heavy, gusty winds.
One pass we went through recorded gusts of up to 80 miles per hour.  The TV news remarked that it exceeded hurricane wind speed.

Going through the Rockies is one of the most beautiful stretches of road I have ever ridden.
Curvy, very mountainous, with numerous little towns.

Today we rode through the Rockies.  This is one of the most scenic roads in the world.
We are high, 6,500 - 7,00 feet, and we're climbing higher.

 

The Eisenhower Tunnel on Interstate-70 is about 1.65 miles long.
Sitting at an elevation of over 11,000 feet, it spans the Continental Divide and is the highest point in the Interstate Highway System.
By going through the mountain, it saves the travelerabout 50 miles and almost an hour and a half compared with going around.

From the top, we headed down.  We passed many world famous names in winter sports and skiing.
The air is a bit chilly as we are at the snow line.

 


All along the highway, the engineers were able to simplify the route by tunneling through.
Not so spectacular as the Eisenhower Tunnel, but fun nonetheless.

 
The canyon is so narrow for a few miles that they built the Interstate one on top of the other.
Both are cantilevered bridges from the side of the mountain with the west bound lanes above the east bounnd.

All along, the road is just spectacular.  Really a treat.

The altitude must have gotten to me.  By the mid-afternoon, I was totally exhausted.
I had hoped that we could continue on into Utah, but with the next leg being 90 miles with nothing in between,
we chose to hole up in Fruita, CO and wait until tomorrow to continue.

In Fruita there is the Dinosaur Journey Museum about two blocks from our motel.
We walked across and since it was almost closing, they let us go through for free.
Along our journey, we ran into fossil sites.  I had no idea that dinosaur remains are so widely spread across the west.
Like the others we visited, this one had some fabulous displays.  Really interesting.
One non-dinosaur display had to do with earthquakes.  They have a floor plate that you can stand on and get shaken.
On the walls of this display were photos of recent large earthquakes.
It was fun but strange to see photos of the Loma Prieta damage in Los Gatos being displayed.
Unfortunately, since the ride of the day was so beautiful, we had exhausted the battery in the camera.
We took over 250 photos just today alone.  It came alive just enough for one more in the museum.

 I revisited this museum a in 2012 and took more photos.  Click here to see some of them.