On the Road: Pueblo to Grand Junction, Colorado (Summer 2009)

Crossed the Rockies today, from Pueblo to Grand Junction, by way of Independence Pass--a very pretty route recommended to me by my waitress at lunch, at Twisted Cork Café, in Salida, which has a pretty historic core. The cafe had been recommended by the people at a winery I pulled into on the spur of the moment as I was leaving Pueblo. The café turned out to be quite good.

Clearly, serious wine is being made in Colorado. Most of the grapes appear to come from the area around Palisade, just east of Grand Junction. I tasted a good Cabernet. Here they have the great advantage of being able to grow vinifera grapes, rather than the hybrids wineries are forced to use in places like Missouri. Twisted Cork Cafe is itself associated with a winery. I tasted their wines as well. Again, solid, including an interesting raspberry-flavored Merlot. Sounds odd, but it was surprisingly good--a merlot with 10% raspberry wine blended in. Not my thing really, but I'm glad I tried it.

The road took me north, through Aspen, which turns out to be a smaller town than I imagined--clearly a ski resort. It has the look of places like Whistler. The aspens along the road approaching the town were beautiful. I stopped along a marshy area to look for birds, but saw only chickadees. I HEARD a lot of birds. That has been a frustrating pattern on the return leg of my trip from California to Ohio. Maybe I just got very lucky on the way out. Birds were everywhere. Lately, I can't seem to see any.

Independence Pass takes you over the continental divide at 12,095 feet. It was hard to breathe at that altitude and I experienced the headache and ringing in the ears I know from skiing at high elevations. The car was having trouble, too--very little acceleration. The thin air made me dizzy, but the wildflowers were beautiful. It was refreshing to see a variety of plants again after the endless corn and roadside weeds of Kansas. The terrain on I-70 at the end of the day, between Rifle and Grand Junction was right out of an old western--banded rocky tablelands and canyons.

On the Road: Oakley, Kansas to Pueblo, Colorado

Made it to Pueblo, Colorado today, which isn't at all bad, considering I worked until around 2:00PM. Gaining an hour as I passed into the Mountain Time zone helped. Before leaving Oakley, I stopped in at the local fossil museum. There are signs advertising the place all around town. It turned out to be in a corner of the library, on the edge of town--a small collection of fossils and rocks not very well displayed. The woman at the museum seemed to feel the most interesting thing to see was not the fossils but the "art." The art turned out to be garishly colored pictures embellished with things like fossilized shark vetebrae for tree trunks and the like.... I'm afraid it wasn't worth the detour.

Then I headed out toward Monument Rocks (chalk formations in the middle of the plains), which would have been interesting I'm sure, but they turned out to be seven miles down an unpaved road. I decided to save the time and wear on my tires.

I headed west on Highway 40, through Sharon Springs and into Colorado by way of Cheyenne Wells and Wild Horse. I then took SR94 straight through to Colorado Springs before diverting south to Pueblo. Eastern Colorado was rather flat and uninteresting, like Kansas, but eventually the terrain got hillier. Just west of Cheyenne Wells I passed through a town called Firstview. I imagine that from here the rockies first come into view as you head west, but the sky was dark and I didn't see the mountains until the following morning. Much of the drive across eastern Colorado was spent outrunning huge electrical storms that were a bit scary. I think I would have felt safer in a car with a hardtop. I got lucky. My route headed between two big thunderheads and then by driving very fast, I put the last of the big ones behind me. I have no photos to post today, because there wasn't much worth photographing. I would have photographed the storms, but wasn't really equipped to.