clones, moss face and john denver's ghost

day two found us waking up in a koa campground somewhere on the outskirts of grand junction, colorado. well maintained and peaceful the campground was a perfect distraction before the next driving leg began. over seven hundred miles had left me a bit road weary but more than willing to face what the day had to offer.

we backtracked about eleven miles to the small town of fruita, colorado home to the world famous mike the headless chicken. we payed homage to the statue of mike and began a fruitless search for mike tshirts. for a town that has built a thriving tourism business on the back of dinosaurs and headless chickens the whole missing tshirt adventure was about the only disapointment of the trip so far. i know tshirts can be ordered from the website but i had my heart set on an in town purchase.

next we visited the dinosaur museum on the edge of town. rather small but a surprising about of information on the entire species.

one thing that has surprised me so far is that in california there seems to be a mcdonalds on every other corner. for whatever reason in utah and now colorado there appears to be a wendy's in every one horse town while mcdonalds are not quite as frequent.

after lunch we began the long drive through the rocky mountains. the landscape had a certain beauty that was lost in the over development of everything. snow still clung to the upper elevations refusing to give up the last vestiges of existance.

we eventually came across the first of many mountain crawl traffic jams. turning a three lane road into a quagmire with anxious drivers cutting right and left. as we approached the sign man directing traffic i had to do a double talk as he appeared to have some form of scraggly moss clinging to his chin. some mean have beardable faces this man was just moss faced soul out of place. i should have takend his appearance has a fortelling of the rest of the day but as usual i ignored the clues.

it was just after passing moss face that i had my first clue that these were no longer john denver's rockies. each new town that has been built with the same clone planning that has gripped america for years. i expect it in la but not the rockies. town after town dominated by the urban clone villages.

the more we drove the more cloned villages we saw and the more angst was building from within.

i did however relish the joy of passing through huge tunnels blasted through the mountain face that appeared to stretch on and on for miles.

as we had suffered through many miles of the clone a techture. we chose to reward ourselves by ignoring denver and moving on.