Rock Arches in Arches National Park, Photo by M. Fischer
(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog … Drive to Utah
The first weekend in May, Deborah and I left Greeley and drove an hour south and east to the Denver Airport. Our son and daughter-in-law arrived on-time from Seattle, and we scooped them up in the cave-like arrival area of the airport and then blasted back out into the sunshine. We headed west on the freeway and started our trip to Moab, Utah.
This drive to Moab from Denver goes across some great extremes in physical landscapes: the Denver airport is on the western edge of the High Plains. Its surrounding, dry, sandy terrain is as flat, and as hypnotically monotonous as can be imagined. The original vegetation of scattered sagebrush and juniper has been mostly replaced with irrigated agricultural fields, and many of those fields have, in turn, been more recently replaced by clusters of condominiums and cookie-cutter McMansions. People are filling all of the open spaces around here!
The Interstate (I-70) drops down a little bit from the edge of the Plains and crosses the densely people-packed, rolling terrain of the Colorado Piedmont. Blocks of warehouses and expanses of oil and gas refineries and storage tanks are separated by clustered nodes of fast food restaurants and gas stations. The traffic is tightly packed and going by insanely rapidly! Finally, the Interstate rises into the equally people-packed foothills of the Rocky Mountains and then starts to climb up an exploding, exponential altitude curve as it goes up the east face of the middle section of the Rocky Mountains.
Photo by Bidgee, Wikimedia Commons
The mountains!! Flashes of slopes covered with trees race by as you drive on at speeds once thought to be instantly fatal for human beings! In the early 19th Century, “experts” cautioned people against riding on trains at 25 or 30 mph! The unnatural speed, they contended, would cause irreparable damage to your brain and, probably, stop your heart! What would those experts say about racing along in tiny, mostly plastic boxes, at 75 mph? What would they even say about plastic?
My guess is that most of the blurred, passing trees outside my car windows are lodgepole pines, but I know that there are also mixes and patches of spruce, fir and some other pine species all along the way. Dense stands of aspens that vary in size from a few dozen to several hundred trees, are just leafing out and are glowing softly green above their white-barked trunks. The aspen clusters are surrounded by the incredibly numerous pines. Unfortunately, most of those the pines are gray, needless, and dead or dying.
The on-going pine tree apocalypse is all around us. As I wrote in Signs of Spring 11 (May 13, 2021):
In Colorado alone 70% of the state’s 1.7 million acres of lodgepole pines have been damaged or destroyed by mountain pine beetles (MPB’s). MPB’s in Colorado are estimated to have killed a total of 3.4 million acres of pines! One in fourteen of all of the trees in the state are dead primarily from the activity of MPB’s! Standing, dead trees in Colorado forests have increased 30% since 2010 to a total of 814 million trees.
Driving over the Rockies on I-70 is like watching this pine tree extinction roll by on HD-TV!
We cross the Continental Divide at Loveland Pass through the Eisenhower Tunnel (elevation11,158’). When this tunnel was completed (first tube opened in 1973 and the second tube in 1979) it was the highest tunnel in the world and remains to this day the highest point in the Interstate Highway System and also the system’s longest mountain tunnel (1.7 miles).
Vail from I-70. Photo by S, Martin, Flickr
From the tunnel we head on to Vail Pass. High fences are visible along the sides of the highway. These fences are designed to prevent (or, at least, inhibit) animal access to the Interstate. The Vail Pass section of I-70 crosses through the Eagles Nest Wilderness area which is part of the White River National Forest. There is abundant wildlife in this region including mule deer, elk, moose, black bear, mountain lions and even a breeding population of Canada lynx! The fences attempt to direct wildlife to safer crossings via underpasses. Currently, three more wildlife crossing passages (the “Vail Pass Wildlife Byway” project) are being proposed to insure the continuity of and safe passage between the rich wildlife habitats on both sides of the Interstate.
Driving through the Vail Pass, we see skiers still using the slopes at Copper Mountain. The snow, though, is visibly thinning and becoming discontinuous on the mountainsides. When we return on our return leg (May 14) there are no skiers on the mountain.
We stop in Vail to have lunch. We got some delicious sandwiches in the nearly deserted town. The cobblestones and winding streets are obviously intended to resemble some small ski village in the Alps. We pick up a realtor guide to look at while we eat. The small, three-bedroom condo for only $7 million dollars stands out as a bargain that is hard to pass up!
Photo by S. Skrzydio, Wikimedia Commons
While we eat at our outside, patio table, five, black-billed magpies perch on the patio railing and closely watch us. Two crows eventually join them. The magpies take turns hopping over to the left-over plates on the table next to ours. They very specifically grab hunks of cheese out of the half-eaten salads. They are very orderly, but the magpies have obviously explained to the crows that they are not to join in on the smorgasbord. I wonder why there are crows here instead of ravens? At this altitude, I would have thought that ravens would have replaced crows. I bet the magpies would have to stand aside if there were hungry ravens about!
The final, mountain section of I-70 is one of the most spectacular stretches of road I have ever seen! If my father (a civil engineer) had been with us, I am sure
I-70 through Glen Canyon. Photo by P. Pelster, Wikimedia Commons
that he would have gone on and on about the brilliance of the engineering that made the highway’s passage through the narrow slot of Glenwood Canyon possible: the tunnels, the viaducts and the cantilevered roadways! As it was, though, I just soaked in the unbelievable scenery and heart-stopping vistas!
It is important to note that “Glenwood Canyon” here on the Colorado River in western Colorado is not “Glen Canyon.” Glen Canyon is further downstream, although also on the Colorado River, in southeastern and southcentral Utah. Glen Canyon was the site of a large dam (the Glen Canyon Dam) that was constructed in the early 1960’s.
The dam flooded Glen Canyon and created the huge reservoir called Lake Powell. Edward Abby, in his book Desert Solitaire, wrote about a float trip he and a companion made through Glen Canyon before the flooding. His vivid descriptions of the canyon and all of its natural and archeological wonders easily made the case that the loss of Glen Canyon was a crime both against Nature and Humanity! Also, the ongoing, rapid evaporation of Lake Powell in these recent decades of extreme drought only makes the dam and the loss of the canyon seem all that more pointless!
Driving out of the mountains we enter a new physiographic region: the Colorado Plateau! And, through the haze of a raging dust storm, we get glimpses of the red, layered sandstones that we’ve driven so far to see!
(Next: the Colorado Plateau!)
Thanks for giving us a glimpse of your Utah adventures, Bill. We look forward to hearing about the Colorado Plateau next week. Enjoyed the Red Spot story, too–almost as much as Ari! I planned to prune our overgrown stand of lilacs a few weeks ago, but was told in no uncertain terms by some house finch parents to leave the lilacs alone. A cardinal couple is also insisting that the honeysuckle overtaking a fence is off-limits to humans for the time being. We’re keeping our distance, but watching for fledglings. Such fun!