April 20-21 Glenwood Hot Springs and Lakewood, Colorado
Driving east into Colorado, we found Glenwood’s sulphorous hot springs especially relaxing after the dusty hike through Arches. We had ascended in a snow storm through the Rocky Mountains. Freezing sleet fell on our heads as we soaked in the open-air pool, but we were oblivious, melting in the hot waters. It took a hearty dinner to restore our energy and our ambition to keep going.
Sulphurous Hot Springs
The next morning we crossed over the Continental Divide, stopping for lunch in Vail, where the slopes had closed for the season, so the tourists were gone. The snow stopped before we had to install our chains, but now the emergency roadside signs said the main highway to Denver was closed by a wildfire! The area has been suffering multiple years of drought. We managed to find our way past the smoky remains of the roadside fire, arriving at nightfall in Lakewood, the southern Denver suburb we had randomly picked out so we could avoid the city.
The dinosaur motif in our motel lobby should have tipped us off, but it took a while to figure out we had landed right next to Morrison, CO where the first Stegasauraus bones were discovered! We had stumbled into a mecca of dinosaur digs and archeology treasures. What a fabulous, unexpected joy to spend the next morning at Dinosaur Ridge, with its “Jurassic Time Bronto Bulges”, baby dinosaur tracks, and prehistoric mangrove swamp.
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Baby dinosaur tracks
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The first Stegasaurus
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By mid-day it was time to make our own tracks to Hays, Kansas, which I remembered as a wild west cowboy town. We left behind the stormy Colorado mountain peaks, and descended onto an entirely different landscape: the flat, sunny wheat fields of America’s Midwest.