Day Two – Fort Morgan CO to Vernal UT
Miles: 540
There wasn't much in Fort Morgan to choose from for breakfast so we headed to Loveland 70 miles to eat at the Loveland Breakfast Club. It turned out to be nothing special but it was good enough and we were on our way. It wasn't long until we were climbing US 34 up into Rock Mountain National Park. The ride from Drake to Estes Park was nice and traffic was starting to build but we were still moving quite good. Once we hit Estes Park and continued into the park traffic became pretty heavy. We understand people are trying to look and aren't in a hurry so we certainly dial it way back. We stopped at Rainbow Curve for a brief time to take some pics and quickly mounted back up and continued. Our next stop was Lava Rocks Overlook. The wind had picked up and it was rather cold at the 12,000 foot overlook. Again, we didn't stay long and were back at it. As we were coming back down we hit stopped traffic trying to get a look at a moose in the pasture below. It was good to see, but we didn't want to just sit there so we split lanes and forced our way through. I felt a little bad afterward, but who knows how long they sat there. It was a nice ride down to Granby, and we climbed back up to Walden and over to Steamboat Springs where we stopped for a cold one and some lunch. The venue was Storm Peak Brewing and it was a really nice place. It was only 2:15, so we were doing pretty well on time. The next 130 to the entrance of Dinosaur National Monument was fairly uneventful and non-descript. Pretty flat and not much around so believe me we took advantage and made the 130 miles in much less time than would have been predicted. We turned into Dinosaur National Monument where we were planning to make it to the end but if it wasn't anything great we weren't married to go all the way. It started out a little average the scenery was ok, but the road had that rough surface on it that loves is good at chewing up tires. The good thing was there wasn't a car in sight and the four and half miles to Plug Hat Butte took very little time. The overlook was really nice and we sat there for a good amount of time and soaked in the scenery. It was an easy decision to continue on and that is exactly what we did. We rode another 27 miles to the end of Harper's Corner Road that has a great overlook high above the Green River. There were several visitors at the end, and we had spotted a deserted overlook a few miles back that was the Echo Park overlook so we went back there for a stop. We were able to take a brief walk down to a really nice overlook and we enjoyed that for a while before moving on. The park is mostly in the very western edge of Colorado, but the road starts in Colorado goes into Utah and back into Colorado before coming to an end. We rode back even faster the final 27 miles was as fun as the first. In a short 35 miles we reach our destination in Vernal. We went to the Vernal Brewing Company for dinner. The wings were pretty good, the beer was very average, but the establishment itself was very nice and good service as we sat at the bar. Our hotel was nice and roomy and we took back some beer from the brewery for convenience and did our normal thing in the lobby.
