Day 21 -- Rawlins, Wyoming to Silt, Colorado -- 216 Miles

Today we had just about everything we might want in a scenic drive: we had light traffic; we had mile after mile of green rolling hills; we had occasional sightings of rushing water sprinkled with rapids; we had incredible geology; and we had a place to mail a letter which we've been trying to mail for days. The only thing we didn't have was sunshine.

A lack of sunshine really puts a crimp in our ability to capture decent photographs. Sure, we can take a cow's protrait and use fill-in flash. The cow doesn't mind, but to me the photo still looks flat considering you took it out in a pasture.

I did manage to capture a "herd" of pronghorns today quite by accident. The creatures are so shy that they bolt at the mere hint of your presence. This time I eased to a stop on the shoulder and parked. Then I eased open the door and slipped out. At that point each and every proghorn perked up, looked in my direction, and waited to see if I was a threat.

There was no way around it, I wanted to get about fifty feet closer to capture their photo. So, rather than walk directly toward the herd, I walked more or less down the highway, parallel to where they were standing, being as nonchalant as I could. But almost in unison the herd stood erect, and began to ease away while never taking their eyes off me. The seemed to know that I was toying with them.

Naturally, I took what photos I could though I wasn't using the camera with the longest telephoto lens. The photos you see are but a tiny crop of a much larger shot, so don't mind the grain. But we've been trying to get a good photo this entire trip and today was the first time I managed to get close enough to capture a herd.

And that was the excitement for the morning. Bt the time our lunch hour rolled around, the sun had begun to peek through the clouds, but we weren't anyplace with something interesting to shoot. In fact, we were in the parking lot of the Walmart in the town of Craig, Colorado where we planned to do a bit of shopping.

Lunch and shopping over, we sought out and found Route 13 out of town and continued to head south toward our evening destination of Rifle, Colorado. We hadn't made any reservations, so we weren't sure where we'd actually end up, but the drive through the Danforth Hills was pretty breathtaking.

If you're a fan of geology, this canyon drive on Route 13 is certainly for you. Much of the terrain is sculpted from hundreds of vertical feet of layered sandstone. But a significant part of that layered sandstone has, over time, been bent and folded and pushed into nearly vertical strata, so that the layers of sandstone stand like soldiers shoulder to shoulder. Often I found myself silently cussing the fact that the narrow pavement and no pull-offs kept us from photographing what we considered to be some amazing after-effects of plate tectonics.

Sometime after lunch, for what seemed like the briefest of moments, the sun actually came out just as we were approaching a roadside history marker. We took that opportunity to stop, stretch our legs, and take a few photographs of our surroundings. The photographs here are from that rest stop.

About three o'clock today we finally rolled into the town of Rifle having no firm idea where we would find a camp. We knew there were a couple of state camps in the Good Sam guide. But that was about it. Since the gas tank was about half low, we rolled into the first station we encountered.

It was while I stood filling the tank that a young man rolled in on the other side of the pumps, got out, said hello to me, and began filling his tank as well. When we made eye contact again, I asked him if he knew of a nearby camp in Rifle. He said no, but he knew there was a KOA just seven minutes east on Interstate 70.

After I had finished topping up the tank, I got back in the cab and asked Concetta to look up the KOA on her IPhone, then call them and see if they had a space available. Since we were getting close to the Memorial Day weekend, we knew that space was going to become tough to get.

Thankfully, once again our luck held out, and the KOA had three spaces left, one of which they agreed to rent to us for just one night. Once we had arrived and went into the office to finish with the paperwork, I asked the clerk to put us on a waiting list in case anyone cancelled for Memorial Day. If we manage to get to stay here, we'll just use this KOA as our base of operations for a few days, and travel around to see the sights in this part of Colorado.

If no space becomes available, we'll just move on and trust that we'll find somewhere to camp over Memorial Day, even if it's in the Walmart parking lot. For now, we have an absolutely wonderful spot here in the KOA in the town of Silt, a map point which, until today, I had never heard of, let alone visited. But the camp is obviously well run as it's basically immaculant. The grass is cut, the spaces have concrete patios just outside your door, and the road noise from nearby Interstate 70 is pretty minimal.

But the most incredible thing about this camp is that it's located right on the banks of the tumultuous Colorado River. Just a stone's throw from our rig, one of the most famous rivers in all of America rushes by with all the careless abandon of that aquatic highway that John Wesley Powell first explored from end to end in 1869 and lived to tell the tale.