Colorado National Monument, Colorado

May 31, 2026

The scenery didn't disappoint as our travels took us up and over the Continental Divide at Monarch Pass and through several picturesque areas on our continued journey across Colorado.

The forecast called for rain, but we were treated to a fair amount of blue sky instead.

Into the mountains we go!

The view from Monarch Crest

It was all downhill from here.

A yak ranch!

Curecanti National Recreation Area

The rain eventually came, as promised.

The quaint town of Delta

Didn't know any small appliance stores were still in business!

Our home for the next 6 days was James Robb State Park near Grand Junction, Colorado. It proved to be a very pleasant stay while we visited Colorado National Monument and the surrounding area.

The campground was quite nice.

On several nights, we walked to the small lake for sunset.

The next morning, we headed to Colorado National Monument--the wall of red rock that we could see from the campground. We partook in a few short hikes and some scenic driving.

As you can see from the GPS, the road up was very twisty with dramatic dropoffs.

A family of bighorn sheep!

A view of Independence Monument

The Coke Ovens Trail

Looking down from the road to where we had just hiked. (If you zoom in to the lower center of this photo, you can see a railing surrounding the overlook that was the terminus of the Coke Ovens Trail.)

Another short trail off the main park road

The next day, we decided to ride a portion of the Colorado Riverfront Trail that leads to Grand Junction. Compared to the scenery of the national monument, we were a bit let down. Plus, it was pretty hot--low 90's that day.

This was probably the most scenic part. A lot of the trail went through industrial parks which weren't particularly photogenic.

Grand Junction had an RV park with permanent Airstreams and tiny homes. We weren't sure if people lived in them, or if they were just rented out.

The "beach" wasn't the most inviting we have seen.

An American avocat

Another nice sunset that night

On Friday, we made our way back to the opposite side of the national monument for a hike on the Devil's Kitchen Trail. Random musing--We've noticed over the years that there are lots of places of interest in the country that have names that include "Devil": Devil's Lake, Devil's Bathtub, Devil's Kitchen, Devil's Tower, Devil's Den...etc. The guy sure gets a lot of press!

Devil's Kitchen Trail

Julie's favorite quail--the Gambel's Quail

We took the entire road through the park this time around

Julie liked the cloud in this picture.

The rest of the time was spent doing boring life stuff (laundry, bread-making, grocery shopping) and going to a Toyota dealership to check out cars for our next life post-truck-and-trailer. We sat in a RAV 4 (our current top contender), and Julie was just grateful to be able to see the road over the front snout of the car (not really a possibility in our truck).

More sunsets:

On our way to church, we were mildly bummed to learn that we missed the "Mike the Headless Chicken Festival" in nearby Fruita:

On Sunday morning, suddenly almost all our neighbors started leaving. Did they know something we didn't? After a while, we noticed Airstream after Airstream streaming in (😉) to take their places. It felt a little bit like an alien invasion. Or like we showed up to a party but somehow missed the fine print mentioning the dress code.

Which one is not like the others???

That's all for now--next stop...Arches National Park!

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