In brief, these posts serve to introduce new readers — and reintroduce regular readers — to photos from the early days of this blog and, occasionally, to photos from days before this blog came into existence.

Although Colorado has amazing scenery, Utah gives it more than a run for the money. .

Today, I review a trip we took in 2006 that included Mesa Verde National Monument, Utah’s Arches National Park, back to Colorado’s National Monument, through Independence Pass, and back home.

The original post for these photos is HERE. In this post, I’m sharing the 157 photos from THIS Gallery.

Note: some are shared as large files so that interested readers can click and zoom in. Be patient since I don’t know how fast they‘ll load.

In the middle of 2006, I was still recuperating from 26 years of automotive-related work (I rejoined the workforce in September of that year), but Melisa had a part-time job at Williams-Sonoma.  Because of her odd hours and erratic work schedule, we didn’t have many travel opportunities.

But then she had a break on her schedule . . . a whole weekend off.