The next morning Dave got up first around 6:30. I heard him get out of the tent and tried to ignore it and keep sleeping, but slowly revived anyway. We packed up camp quickly and hit the road by 7.

The rest of the trip was simply driving, ironic since it was Earth Day. We stopped and got breakfast food in Bluff at a Sinclair gas station. I highly recommend their breakfast burritos. We drove under cloudy skies most of the day, passing through Cortez, Durango, Pagosa Springs and Walsenburg. The mountains near Sand Dunes National Monument were snow capped, cloud crowned and beautiful against the first blue skies we had seen most of the day.  We arrived in Colorado Springs at around 4, and I stayed only long enough to say goodbye to Dave and his mom. 

Driving north, a serious thunderstorm slowed things down, then I got stuck for over an hour on a 6 mile stretch of I-25 near 225, south of Denver, where incredibly serious construction is underway (named after a dinosaur for crying out loud). On top of that, a multi-car accident had slowed traffic to a crawl down one lane. Once past that, traffic flowed smoothly all the way to Fort Collins. The first order of business upon reaching home was showering. The first few shampoo lathers didn’t take, so I had to repeat several times. Always satisfying to make shower water brown isn’t it? I called Andra and we got together and discussed our respective trips. She had me convinced for over 30 minutes that the huge new tattoo around her ankle was real, letting me freak out a bit before admitting it would rub off in 10 days. 

Now I’ve reached the end of the narrative for this trip, having had almost as much fun writing is as doing it, like reliving the whole trip in all its details. As I finish this off, it is cloudy, drizzling and about 40 outside. The vermillion sandstone cliffs above Rainbow Bridge are hard to picture clearly. These trips never last long enough.

References
Hassell, Hank. 1999. Rainbow Bridge. Utah State University Press, Logan UT. (A very fun book to read!)
NPS (National Park Service) 2002. Glen Canyon, Official Map and Guide.