Utah: Colorado

After finishing Dinosaur National Monument, I drove to Dinosaur, Colorado, where I stopped at a kitsch shop and looked at souvenir rocks and herbs and such before getting an ice cream and driving on. The owner said Labor Day was his last day open; after that he'd work in his garage and generally hang out. He said winters didn't usually get below 30°, which sounded really attractive until he added "except for that one winter when it got down to fifty below and everybody's pipes broke".
From there it was Route 139 down the western side of Colorado, through an area more verdant than Utah; mountainsides actually had trees rather than scrub. One part looked like our farm--creek gulley with water trees, grassy flood plain, hills with dry trees--except it was five to ten times the scale of the farm.
There was a slow climb up to the top of the Douglas Pass, then a long winding descent, like Bent Mountain's switchbacks except with a wider road and more shoulder space, so rather less of a feeling of "if I stray a few feet I'll go over the edge and plummet into squish".
At Loma I turned west back to Utah, driving on I70 across a plain, or enormous valley with mountains bordering on the distant north and south. In the distance I could see one lone mountain rising above everything else, with bluffs at its feet and a storm at its head--LaSal Mountain.  But that was a long way away, and in between, vast barren stretches. How did anyone look out across this landscape and say "Yeah, let's try to cross that, because who needs water anyway?"
Finished the drive at Green River UT, about 230 miles for the day.