We got up early in the morning and hit the road. We had to drive towards Grand Junction again to get back to I-70 but it worked out well. Our next stop was Rifle but it was raining there in the morning. So, to kill some time, we took a look at the Museum of the West located in the city center.
The museum itself wasn’t very large but it was very detailed and thorough. It had a lot of information about the Spanish expeditions into New Mexico and Colorado. Apparently, the native people of Mexico can trace their lineage back to the peoples that lived in these areas.
The Spanish, hoping to find more gold, started exploring these areas but didn’t find much. The mountains and rivers were very hard to pass. The story goes that the Spanish explorers would meet natives and the natives would already have Spanish goods with them. The natives would tell them stories about settlers that looked like the Spanish. The legend of the lost Spanish colony grew out of these experiences.
We got into Rifle around lunchtime and it worked out really well. The rain had just finished up so we drove through the town and into the state park on the other side. The main attraction here is Rifle Falls and it was a nice waterfall at the end of a two-mile hike.
It would have been nice to camp near the falls but there was no more availability. So we had to stay down the road at Rifle Gap State Park. The campsite itself was super nice actually. It sat just next to a man-made lake and the views of the distant mountains were beautiful.
That night was super cold though. Because it had rained most of the day it was difficult to get a fire going. We woke up in the morning and there was frost on the inside of the van walls! It was probably the coldest night of the trip. Erika was not very pleased with that. She’s from South America and isn’t used to that type of weather.