near Toponas, CO

The conference ended at noontime on Saturday and I started back toward Phoenix. Phoenix is, of course, southwest of Denver, so naturally I headed northwest, toward the tri-point of UT-CO-WY. I-70 through the Eisenhower tunnel, past Vail, and then the detour – up CO 131 through State Bridge (a crossing of the Colorado and site of the State Bridge Lodge, which seems to host amazingly huge live-music acts for such a tiny place), Hayden, and Craig, where I stopped at the Safeway for supplies. Craig is about as different from Boulder as can be imagined – I saw many a large American pick-up with the bull horns on the hood and the gun rack across the back. Very nice folks all around (well, that’s like Boulder).

The long trip toward the corner from Craig took me through very little in the way of civilization – about 60 miles up CO 318 I found my campground, in the spectacular Irish Canyon, a "beheaded stream valley." Here, Vermillion Creek appears to have cleaved the end off of Cold Springs Mountain, an 8500’ mount that forms a good bit of the Brown’s Park NWR.