RV trip part 5: more of GRC and the next drive

Continuing with August's RV trip, we left off in the last post at Green River Campground in Dinosaur National Monument. We only spent a single night there, but it was a great one as the stresses of driving and difficult deadlines were pretty much over for a while.

I showed the long views (mountains and such) last time, so today I'll focus on what I saw in the campground itself. The up-close stuff that I love so much.

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I'll start with this wonderful plant that surely is related to cleomes or Polanisia dodecandra?

I saw it at the DNM visitor center too:

I love it! (Can anybody ID it?)

So do the ants apparently:

Speaking of ants...

...there were loads of them at the campground!

They left us alone though. I couldn't resist dropping a crumb or two near one of the nest holes to see how long it took them to find it. (Just 2 seconds)

I already mentioned the lizard in the last post...

...but there was also a cute little bunny (jackrabbit?) hanging around:

Yes, it was eating dry cottonwood leaves. Seems unpalatable but I've eaten dry Wheaties before, and it must be pretty much the same thing.

Down by the river was this wonderful silvery plant...

...which I realized was not a good thing...

...since it was probably the invasive Tamarisk. (This sign was at the edge of the campground)

Pretty though!

Lots of scouring rush there too:

And these yellow blooms were everywhere around the campground:

Cool brown wasps that kept turning away from me:

Others loved these flowers too:

And the texture again, I can't resist...

Who takes photos of stumps on vacation? (who doesn't?)

We were only at Green River Campground for about 18 hours, but it was fantastic! (Very clean, quiet, decent privacy, ultra-dark sky. It had restrooms with flushing toilets too. Highly recommended!)


So in the late morning on August 23 we left GRC and headed out to our next destination: North Fork Campground (near Meeker, Colorado). This was going to be a nice, short drive of only 2.5 hours!

It started with a bit of backtracking -- something I hate doing on trips -- as we took highway 40 back east. We then took county road 61 (I believe) south to get to 64, and this is where things got a bit weird again listening to Google.

You see, 61 is a gravel road. Or dirt. Or some mixture of gravel and dirt and maybe some asphalt. It is not a smooth road, especially in an RV. Twenty or thirty minutes seems a lot longer when your vehicle is shaking and rattling the whole time! (The grate on our stove worked itself loose and fell onto the floor on this road.)

Looking at the map later, it seems that a better choice would have been to take 40 to 64 back at Dinosaur, CO. I'm assuming that taking 61 saved 5 minutes so that's what Google recommended. Is there a "avoid unpaved roads" setting that I missed?

Anyway, 64 heading east was quite nice with lots of curves and decent views. After some time we drive into a storm system, and my wife only started taking photos once we got closer to the campground:

This was after things had already gotten more green. Western Colorado is dry!

We drove along the White River for quite a while...

...which was somewhat exciting at first because we knew the campground was next to this same river. It's a long river though.

We knew we were getting closer when we started seeing more Aspen groves:

And then finally (that was a long 2.5 hours!)...

 ...we knew the campground was just a few more miles away.


That's where I will pick things up in the next post.

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