Day-13 Jul-20-09

The phrase for today is "Nothing but pavement."

After our off-road trip yesterday, we decided that today we would try to stay on all paved roads.

So, let's get started. Today we made our way from Grand Junction, Colorado, back to Montrose Colorado, where will stay another 2 nights. We covered 235 miles in about 8 hours, including stops.

First thing in the morning, we headed up to Colorado National Monument Park. The park includes a huge plateau that rises far above the Grand Junction area. The main road through the park is known as Rim Rock Drive, and as it's name implies, it runs right along the rim edge of the plateau. There are a lot of hiking trails in the park, and we saw a large number of bicyclists throughout the park as well.

There were a few interesting tunnels on the way through the park. Nothing spectacular, but pretty neat non-the-less.

Here is a view from the rim up in the park. The area down below is Grand Junction Colorado. I am sure that this spire has a name (doesn't someone name all of them), but I don't know what it might be?? :)

A couple more views from the rim, overlooking Grand Junction.

In some spots, the rock walls seem to creep in on you. It's pretty neat to drive through.

After leaving the Monument, we headed off to visit Gateway Colorado. On the way, we saw the sign below. We have seen hundreds of these on our trip, but have only actually encountered ONE cattle heard actually standing in the roadway!

Gateway Colorado is somewhat interesting. There is basically NOTHING there, with the exception of a resort/spa, known as Gateway Canyons Resort. The resort/spa was established by John Hendricks, who founded the Discovery Channel. The resort/spa was built to blend in naturally with the landscape that surrounds it. The resort/spa includes a lodge, auto museum, and a small store and deli, oh yeah, and a spa. Visitors to the resort/spa can enjoy kayaking, off-road tours, fly-fishing, and horseback riding, and of course spa visits. Below is a photo of a portion of the resort/spa and the surrounding area.

My favorite feature of the resort is not the spa, but the Gateway Auto Museum. The museum is unique, in that it is laid out to tell a story about the automobile, and it's impact on our society. Interestingly, you start off by watching a short video made for the museum by Walter Cronkite (RIP).

The museum is very serious about it's visitors NOT touching any of the cars. The poor fellow below refused to listen, and they made an "example" of him for other visitors. :)

Here is a 1914 Harley Davidson that was part of the museum. You may not be able to see, but it has a "jockey shift", which is a lever near the gas tank, that the rider uses to shift gears by hand. This is unlike current bikes, where the rider uses their foot to shift gears.

The museum also included an original Indian Chief. Indian is America's oldest motorcycle manufacturer, and before going out of business, was also the largest manufacturer of motorcycles in the world. The Chiefs were made from 1922 to 1953, and included those trademark deep skirted fenders. This particular example was a 1948 model.

The museum houses some pretty interesting cars, including this Pierce Arrow. The Pierce Arrow was a luxury car/status symbol, and was often owned by famous stars, industry tycoons, and royalty.

The museum also contains a large number of cars from the "muscle" era. Below is a pristine example of the Plymouth Hemi-Cuda, a 426 Hemi powered version of the Barracuda. This Hemi version was made in 1968, and Plymouth only produced 50 of these cars. They were built for Super Stock Drag Racing, and they included a sticker that indicated the car was NOT street legal. The car was built with special light weight components, and they could post quarter mile times in the low tens, pretty fast for 1968 !!! Three of these cars were recently (2006) auctioned off at the Barret Jackson auction in Scottsdale Az., and brought anywhere from $200,000 to $280,000. In 1970, the Hemi-Cuda was available with Chryslers more widely available "Street Hemi", a non racing version of the engine. In 1971, Plymouth produced 11 convertible versions of the Hemi-Cuda. It is believed that 7 of these still exist, and they have fetched roughly $2 million each, at auction. Hart to believe that cars we grew up with would ever be worth so much.

The museum also houses a special room with only one car in it, the 1954 Oldsmobile F-88 Concept Car. This concept car was created under the direction of Harley Earl, who was the head of the "Styling Section" of General Motors in 1954. The car was considered very radical for the time period. It was created and shown at the General Motors Motorama, which was GM's traveling car show back in the day. Back in this era, General Motors had a rule, that all concept cars where to be destroyed after the Motorama events for the year were completed. Harley Earl, had other plans :) Rumor has it that the F-88 was smuggled out of the GM facilities part by part by Harley Earl !! The F-88 project was scrapped by GM due to the poor sales of the Corvette at the time, so the F-88 never saw actual production. Years later, the fabled F-88, which was supposedly destroyed per GM policy, showed up at the January 2005, Barret Jackson auto auction in Scottdale Az. !!! John Hendricks (the Discovery Channel founder) was there for the auction. The bidding went to a blistering $600,000 in just the first few minutes, and after the bidding war, the John Handricks took the car home for $3.24 million dollars, a record high at the time for any Barret Jackson car. It now sits in it's own showroom at the Gateway Museum.

After spending a couple of hours at the museum, we continued on our way back to Montrose.

Oh yeah, we succeeded at staying on only paved roads today!