Sept. 24 Kearney/NE - Denver - Glenwood Springs - Grand Junction/CO Total driving so far 2,328 miles / 3,725 km.
Grand Junction-on-google.maps
Sept.25 Colorado National Monument http://national-park-service-link
We started Saturday morning from Kearney and made a stop in Ogallala/NE, a town our newly won friends Diane & Bert in Chicago had mentioned to us. Its a few miles from Lake McConaughy (the locals call the lake ‘Big Mac’) and so it seemed perfect to continue Karin’s swim-across-America theme.
On our way to lake Big Mac we stopped at a rest area to check out a few folks hanging out there – turned out to be two couples of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I had a chat with them about their transition from Vermont, where they originally lived, to Nebraska many years back.
The swim was ok, we actually swam in the Lake Ogallala, which is situated on the other side of the dam.
Nebraska was kind of surprising in the bareness of its landscape. The land seems minimalistic, but also captivating that way.
Not minimalistic at all – the amount of small flies. You stop at a gas station and you fill up with both fuel and flies. Karin thinks the flies drive (literally) on the large herds of cattle you see everywhere. Big piles of manure seems to provide further evidence for the cattle-manure-flies hypothesis.
The drive through Colorado on I70 is beautiful. Feels somehow like being in the Austrian Alps, but the land is much drier and the grounds look really brown.
We stopped over in Glenwood Springs to have bite to eat and to see the well-known hot springs. It was in a way a shocking experience, the whole town seems to be one commercial tourist place. One is wondering how people who live and work there can have a normal life. I don’t think they have.
We arrived in Grand Junction late at 10:30pm and settled into our AirBnB.
On Sunday we went food shopping, then headed out into the National Colorado Monument Park.
The beauty of the Colorado National Monument area made us drunk … visually drunk. You can see this on the grin on our faces:
The most amazing steep red-rock canyons can be seen along the 26 miles long Rim Rock drive. Besides being short on gas and having to turn around, gas up and come back, it was totally mind blowing. Photography-life pure.
Sunday was a day how we had envisioned it before going on the Schnitzel Jagd journey…
The Great Schnitzel Jagd 
Great blogpost Peter! This one had me laughing from start to finish and I really don’t even think you were trying to be funny #visuallydrunk
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So, I agree with your observation of the Rockies. Beautiful, but very arid relative to the amazing alps of the Ost Tirol…can’t wait to head back there for some Kaiserscharrn!
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