Given our tragic familiarity with the route, we set off towards our next campsite with cautious confidence. After grabbing a few luscious local peaches on the way out of Palisade, we once again made our way westward along I-70, through Grand Junction, and towards the second stop on our journey, the James M. Robb - Colorado River State Park in Fruita, Colorado.
As the name implies, the park is situated along the beautiful Colorado River which provided us with some great views on our evening strolls.
However, the Colorado River was old news to us by this point – been there floated that. We were on to bigger and better things, and nothing in the Grand Junction area is bigger and better than the Colorado National Monument.
This place was absolutely amazing, and we simply couldn’t believe that neither of us had heard about it before our visit. If you ever find yourself driving through Grand Junction along I-70, we highly recommend taking a quick detour along the Scenic Rim Rock Drive which runs along the edge of the canyon that makes up the Colorado National Monument. Each bend of the road brings a seemingly endless parade of giant stone pillars into view, all of which can be easily photographed thanks to an abundance of pull-offs along the drive.
Although James M. Robb – Colorado River State Park ended up being a perfectly fine campsite and a generally lovely stay, I believe this stop suffers in our memories due to its proximity to the unimaginatively successful initial leg of our journey. Afterall, Palisade Basecamp is hard for any RV park to compete with, and even to this day, 6+ months into this journey, we still consider it one of our favorite campsites.
Of course, we were also really roughing it in Fruita compared to our stay in Palisade. Although we still had water/electric hookups and a paved site complete with a shaded bench, we had to endure the long weekend…. without sewer hookups! Fortunately, we managed to survive through the weekend and after packing up our things, dumping the tanks, and saying goodbye to beautiful Colorado, we were onto our next state and our next stop in Moab, Utah.