Travel from Fruita to Gunnison

On Sunday, we moved campgrounds from Fruita (James M Robb Colorado River State Park) to Gunnison (Thousand Trails Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch).

We stopped for fuel before leaving Grand Junction -- I got this picture as we were leaving the Love's fuel stop -- the cliffs of the Colorado National Monument to the west.

Another view of the Colorado National Monument

We were driving east on US 50 and the part of Colorado just east out of Grand Junction was very desolate - little housing, very dry, very barren. We drove through a few small towns -- one of them was Delta, Colorado. I didn't take pictures, but there was an interesting business in town -- it had what-looked-like big white concrete blocks in their yard and a huge crane -- I looked it up and found pictures online...

Big white blocks in the yard -- what are they???

Another view of the blocks in the yard with a view of the big crane on the right side

We couldn't imagine what those blocks might be -- I found the name of the company and found out that they are a marble processing company: https://www.coloradostonequarries.com/plant/

In 2021, Colorado Stone Quarries opened their own Marble Slabbing facility, approximately one hundred years after the original mill in Marble started processing the columns for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Our state-of-the-art factory extends over 40 acres. A warehouse of approximately 140,000 square feet hosts the best Italian technology and machinery to cut and finish our blocks. Here they will be processed into slabs, tiles and cut-to-size blocks. 

 It turns out that this is Yule Marble (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_Marble) -- 

Yule Marble is a marble of metamorphosed Leadville Limestone found only in the Yule Creek Valley, in the West Elk Mountains of Colorado, 2.8 miles (4.5 km) southeast of the town of Marble, Colorado. First discovered in 1873, it is quarried underground at an elevation of 9,300 feet (2,800 m) above sea level—in contrast to most marble, which is quarried from an open pit and at much lower elevations.

The localized geology created a marble that is 99.5% pure calcite, with a grain structure that gives a smooth texture, a homogeneous look, and a luminous surface. It is these qualities for which it was selected to clad the exterior of the Lincoln Memorial and a variety of other buildings throughout the United States, in spite of being more expensive than other marbles. The size of the deposits enables large blocks to be quarried, which is why the marble for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, with its 56-long-ton (57 t) die block, was quarried from Yule Marble.

The interesting things we see as we are driving!

Pictures that I took while we were driving --  

As we got further east, we saw more green.

We ended up in a canyon with steep cliffs on both sides.

We eventually got to a spot where we could start to see Blue Mesa Reservoir.

We had to cross a bridge over the reservoir -- "Smile, Carl!"

Looking east up the reservoir

We arrived at the Thousand Trails campground by about noon, and got checked in. Much cooler temperatures!