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This trip started out with an afternoon departure to
Colorado Springs. That would get us out of town while the
weather was good, and get us in a good position for a
morning flight out of KCOS. The reason this was
important was that our first stop of the day was going to
be in Leadville, CO (KLXV). Leadville is said to be
the highest elevation airport in all of the US, and the
3rd highest in the world, at an elevation of 9934'
msl. It's got a 6400' long runway, much of it that
went un-used by our RV-10. Needless to say, this was
an "Oxygen Required" flight for us flatlanders.
Danielle flew the leg into Leadville, and then leg 2 was a
quick climb out of the Leadville basin area, over a
mountain pass, on on past Aspen and Grand Junction to
Canyonlands airport (KCNY). She did great on the
flight with the high altitude landing and takeoff.
Below are a bunch of our pictures from the trip, many will
go without comment. Since Colleen wasn't able to go
with us on this trip, we replaced her with a stuffed
monkey. It works better for the Weight and Balance,
and Monkey Colleen didn't affect our C.G. very much at
all.
We had a couple of days in Moab, UT, with the first day
being spent driving around Arches National Park.
Once again we got a 2018 National Park annual pass.
I recommend you all just go ahead and get one if you
travel to the National Parks. Even if you only get
to one park, you get to support our great National Park
system...something that may be in more jeopardy given our
current political situation. It's something that I
highly value and I'll always get an annual pass from now
on, just to help support it.
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Interesting side trip: Not too far out of Moab you
can travel up a mountain where there are actual dinosaur
tracks on the mountain top. Very interesting little
place!!
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Day 2 we decided to try our hands at the rock climbing you
can do with Jeeps. It's dang cool, but beware that
any rollovers or major damage will result in you buying a
nearly new but wrecked jeep, out of pocket!!
We had intended to go to "Hell's Revenge". Check it
out on youtube. It quickly eliminated one body from
our jeep, so we backed down and skipped it. We had a
ton of fun at Baby Lion's Back, however. I really
can't believe these things can stick to the boulders so
well! After that we headed out to
Chicken's crossing trail, which was much easier, but still
intimidating. Although it's a 2 track path through
the mountains, it's anything but smooth and has definite
possibilities for rolling a few hundred feet over the edge
of a cliff. Tons of fun!
Below you'll also see some ancient Petroglyphs on some
rocks. There is a lot of this sort of thing around
the Moab area.
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Later on we toured Canyonlands National Park.
Canyonlands and Arches are two totally different places
within a few miles of eachother. Canyonlands reminds
me more of the Grand Canyon, with it's awesome big
scenery, which Arches is full of more localized attraction
type scenery. I caught a photo of this cool bathroom
at Canyonlands. Trust me, I'm not going to be one
who's much interested in using that floor-hole, should the
need arise.
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Departing KCNY, the plan was to fly to Cortez, CO, to see
Mesa Verde National Park. Turned out though that
they were all out of rental cars at Cortez, so we ended up
flying to Durango, CO. But, we had wanted to
swing by Monument Valley on the way, just to take some
pictures. Turns out our previous trip where we had
in improptu fly-by of Monument Valley was much more
satisfying. I highly recommend flying by Monument
Valley either in the early a.m. or near dusk, as the
shadows and lighting are much more spectacular than the
mid-day sun.
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Once we hit Durango, we jumped in our rental car and
blazed to Mesa Verde. This is a very cool drive, and
a cool park to visit. It's interesting how when
you're in Utah, you FEEL like you're in Utah. And
when you are in Colorado, you FEEL like you're in
Colorado. These states are really leaving an
impression on us after traveling around so many places, as
we are able to see the uniqueness of every area.
The Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings are really something to
see...take the kids!
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After getting some sleep after Mesa Verde, we launched for
home the next day...flying East over Colorado's Sand Dunes
National Park, through a mountain pass, and then home over
the plains. We did the flight at 13,500' for much of
the way, giving the girls a chance to try out the new
Mountain High O2 system I bought 2 years ago and we hadn't
used as a family yet.
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