Entering Colorful Colorado. First Stop: Steamboat.

After 483 days, we crossed into Colorado. It’s always good to be home.

En route to Colorado we stopped at Dinosaur National Monument’s Quarry Visitor Center near Vernal Utah. Dinosaur straddles Utah and Colorado so it was a fitting final stop on this long road back to the Centennial State.

At the monument, we took the shuttle bus from the Visitor Center to the Quarry Exhibit, not caring to hike the uphill one-mile path in 95-degree heat under blazing sun. The shuttle is quick and deposits you outside the Exhibit building where you can view approximately 1,500 dinosaur bones. The “logjam” of dinosaur bones was caused by the drought-induced death of many dinosaurs in a riverbed here and the death of more when the river returned with torrential rains, drowning some of those who remained here and sweeping the bodies down to this spot. Paleontologist Earl Douglass first discovered eight tailbones of a sauropod here in 1909. The first quarry exhibit opened to the public in 1958.

After taking in the incredible fossil exhibit, we rolled across Utah’s desert and into the rolling hills and ranchland of northwest Colorado as a thunderstorm raged to our north, sometimes pelting us with rain in the final stretch. But it was the rainbow’s arc over the ski trails of Steamboat that left a final lasting impression as we wrapped up the road trip with our return to Colorado and rolled into Steamboat Springs.

The Ute Indians used this area as a hunting ground and both the Ute and Arapahoe tribes came here seeking the medicinal remedies and spiritual hot springs located here. The name Steamboat Springs derives from early 1800s French trappers who thought that the sound of the springs was the chugging of a steamboat engine. Homesteaders first arrived here in the 1870s and 1880s. The town was formed in 1900 and the railroad arrived here in 1909. Norwegian Earl Howelsen came here in 1910 and brought skiing and ski jumping to the area. Tourists came by rail for both skiing and to visit the hot springs.

We’ve stayed here several times over the years. Once in the mountain village and twice outside of town at the Holiday Inn Express. There are no hotels (that we can find anyway) in the town itself (there are a few motel/motor-inn options). This time, we went for the mountain village again. The sounds of the last of the migrating hummingbirds serenaded our daily walks up the path of the Zig Zag ski/mountain bike trail. The lingering but waning summer’s wildflowers still hanging in there for a last gasp.

The town itself, perhaps assisted by Steamboat’s distance from Denver, still maintains its rustic mountain town feel with a plethora of good restaurants to choose from and great little shops in which you can kill a few hours. We chose, this time, the Creekside Cafe, which we would strongly recommend. Reservations recommended on a nice day.

With a touch of fall in the air, we slipped away towards home and a long stretch of time in Colorado, thankful for taking the long way home and excited to reunite with friends in the Rocky Mountains and along the front range.

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