ARIZONA BOUND

We left Jim and Judy's in Clifton CO about 9:45 yesterday.  We decided to take a different route this time on our way to Florence, AZ.  It is supposedly just 6.5 miles further than going through Moab but it is way longer time wise.  It is twisty, bumpy in spots and incredibly scenic.  There was very little traffic until we got onto CO Hwy 491 just before Cortez.  The canyon part on Hwy 141 is like being in a national park but without the crowds.
We spent last night at the Ute Mtn Casino RV Park and the place is nearly deserted.  The casino was doing a roaring business but there is only a half dozen RVs here.  It was nice to have the electric heater going overnight.  We were awakened several times overnight by the howling winds.  Still blowing this morning and it seems like it may be behind us on our drive to start.  We are planning on staying at Snowflake, AZ tonight and then a shorter drive on to Florence tomorrow.  Yesterday's drive was 340 kms (212 miles) and today we're looking at about 249 miles but should be way faster roads.  Then it will be about 161 miles tomorrow.

Our first rest stop

Second stop, this one for photos

Opposite direction from the above

Flume stop of interest, enlarging by clicking on the image will show you the flume hanging on the canyon wall.  You may also spot our motor home in the top right.

Aileen under the massive cliffs

This round rock looks like The Coliseum  

Dolores River

Closeup shows how the flume was attached.  The flume was put in to run water to a gold mining project in the late 1800's and several workers fell to their death during construction.  Since this area just had flour gold, using water pressure was unsuccessful and the operation went broke.

The highway is visible in the upper left

Still some nice fall colour showing in spots

Ute Mtn Casino hotel

Some artistic licence used here.  I blended three images in Photomatix Essentials then used the painterly 2 filter.  I liked how it brought out the warm southwestern colours.

Same thing here except I used the painterly 4 filter

Other than the two filtered images above, the rest of the night shots were taken with my Canon 6D full frame camera on a tripod and are just cleaned up in post processing.