August 29, 2015
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| Panoramic View from Molas Pass |
Today was Joe’s and my 44th wedding anniversary—the
years sure do fly by! Last year, we spent our anniversary driving from Ohio to
Michigan and celebrating at the first Michigan State football game of the
season that night. This year, we drove on an All-American Road from Cortez to
Ouray, Colorado. We have driven on some spectacular roads—my two favorites are
the Bear Tooth Highway from Montana to Yellowstone National park, and the TiogaPass into Yosemite. But the Red Mountain Pass is right up there with them,
emphasis on “UP there", at 11,018 feet.
I woke up this morning twice—once at about 5:30, and after I read for a little
while, I fell back asleep until about 8:00. I puttered around a little bit,
called my mother, and made plans for the day. We decided not to linger in
Cortez—we were here in 2007 on our first cross-country RV trip, and had both a great time and several intense adventures. So instead I followed up on some
research I had done in advance by calling the 4J+1+1 RV Park (what a name,
right?) in Ouray, to see if they could accommodate us tonight. It turned out
that they had a space for us, by the river, so I gave the lady my credit card
number, realizing that the way we dawdle, we might not make it by 5:00 as she suggested.
After that, we packed up and left Sundance RV Park. Our
first stop was literally across the street at the Colorado Visitor Center,
where we picked up a bunch of brochures covering our plans for the next few
days in Colorado. I also discussed our route with them—there are two routes
north to Ouray. Together they, plus a couple of other roads, form a “loop”
which are the San Juan Skyway. The thing
is, route 550, which includes a section called the “Million Dollar Highway”, is
reputed to be full of very narrow roads with tight twists and turns (no
guardrails!), whereas the other route, while also very beautiful, is “easier”
to drive. The lady at our RV park had told me that she literally could not
drive that particular stretch, between Silverton and Ouray, because of her fear
of heights, and that she’d seen people show up at her park literally shaking. However,
after due reflection—and remembering we got over the Beartooth Highway with Mo—Joe
decided that there was no problem, and Route 550 was for us. |
| We came from that road down there! |
So we set out east on US 160 . We passed the entrance to
Mesa Verde National Park, and continued on until Durango. There we stopped for
gas and then headed north on Route 550. It immediately began to climb, and I
calmed my nerves by concentrating on taking photos. Several times I just closed my eyes as we went around the curves, even though Joe did a GREAT job driving. We went through two passes,
both well over 10,000 feet high.
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| View of Coal Bank Pass, 10,640 feet |
The second one, the Molas Pass, was totally
gorgeous! We actually spent an hour up there, with me taking photos and Joey
and Cassie wandering in the meadow, before we had some lunch (it was already
3pm, we discovered in surprise.)
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| Molas Pass meadow view |
The road began to descend from the Molas Pass with some
quite nerve-wracking twists and turns until we arrived in the town of
Silverton. Silverton (and also Ouray) are both designated as National Historic
Districts, being full of well-preserved Victorian architecture from the late 19th
century when both towns were connected with the discovery of silver and other
precious metals, and the development of large-scale mining in the area. Since
it was already getting a little bit late, I probably would have just passed
Silverton, but we inadvertently took the turnoff to the main street, and it was
so charming that we just had to stop. We parked our RV and wandered down the
street, looking in windows and snapping photos (and Cassie was making friends
with people and other dogs.) Besides all the cute little touristy shops in the
vintage buildings, with the mountains for the backdrop, we came across a tiny
park filled with various kinds of musical instruments, all played with mallets.
There were hanging chimes, horizontal ones, and a fairly standard
xylophone-type thing. It was all a kind of participatory art piece, and I heard
someone saying that it was the work of a particular artist, who makes these
musical installations for parks around the country.
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| The Road into Silverton |
We didn’t do much to help the Silverton economy until Joe
spotted a store which had batteries and data cards for cameras. I had been a
little concerned that a couple of days ago, my batteries ran out. We thought we
had plenty of AA batteries, but it turned out we didn’t! Luckily, we’d bought a
gift and bought a small package of batteries to go with it, so I used those. I’ve
had batteries on my shopping list since then. Then last night, just as we hit
that extraordinary sunset, my data card read “full”. I took most of my sunset photos
last night on my cell phone. Here I was,
about to begin driving the “Million Dollar Highway”, and God forbid my data
card would be full! So I went in and bought both batteries and a new data card.
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| Joe and Cassie enjoy Silverton's Main Street |
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| Harmony Park (Joe is playing at left) |
As soon as we left Silverton, we began going up and up and
UP again, and the roads became a lot more winding. We have gone over hairpin
turns before, but you never really get used to them. The scenery, however, was
as advertised—gorgeous. So I refused to look at the road too closely, and got
out my camera. Wouldn’t you know it, the data card was FULL! I was SO VERY glad
we’d picked up that second card!
It is only about 25 miles or so between Silverton and Ouray,
and I probably took about 3-5 photos/mile. I’ll just put a bunch of them up
here—there’s no point in trying to describe it! But when we got to the Red
Mountain Pass, that is when all bets were off. As with last night, we’d timed
it perfectly—it was about 5pm and the sun was low enough to bring out all the
reds in the rock face. That, and the fact that the mountain was spectacular,
ALMOST distracted me from the fact that the road was insanely twisted. I think
we went down most of the way in 2nd, if not in 1st, gear.
There were S turns and looping turns and hairpin turns and it was completely
crazy—one set of turns had a 10 mph speed limit, it was so twisted and
difficult to negotiate! Luckily, at the end of the worst set of twists, there
was a big turnout for a scenic overlook, so Joe could park Samantha, get out,
and really SEE the mountain. Man, it was incredible!
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| Red Mountain |
From there we drove the rest of the way to Ouray—the road
was beautiful, but not nearly as scary most of the rest of the way. There were
two scenic overlooks that we could not stop at, because they were on the other
side of the highway (where the cliff was dropping off) and on curves with
double yellow lines. I didn’t envy the people on the other side of the road,
however…. Near Ouray there was some construction and there was one section with
a single lane, and there was NOTHING on the other side of the concrete barrier.
The people going UP at that point were going to be looking down the side of a
cliff the entire time.
We came down into Ouray at about 6pm, and found our
campground without much difficulty. Ouray, like Silverton, is a lovely little
Victorian town. The reason I chose this RV park, however, was entirely due to
its location. It is right on the river; it is about two blocks from the center
of town; and it is only a 5-10 minute walk to the town’s Hot Springs Pool,
which is a public facility making the most of the fact that Ouray sits on
natural hot springs. The Hot Springs Pool is like a big swim club with several
pools of varying temperatures, plus a lap swimming section and a shallow
section for young children. There’s also a massage facility right there, and a
fitness center on the second floor of the bath house.
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| Ouray |
Our campsite is RIGHT on the river, and I mean ON it. Or
rather, OVER it—our bedroom (the back end of our RV) is hanging over the edge.
Our neighbors are as close as they were last night (these town-located RV parks
are always quite stingy on the size of the individual sites) but we should have
the sound of the river lulling us to sleep all night.
Anyway, we ate an anniversary dinner of grilled lamb chops,
grilled romaine lettuce with a yummy dressing, and mashed potatoes. Then we
quickly washed up and walked to the Hot Springs Pool. The facility is very
nice, but it was pretty noisy and crowded—I guess being Saturday night, that’s
not so surprising. We enjoyed our soak very much—it was a great ending to a
great day—but we had to agree that we preferred the hot springs that we went to
in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, back in 2011.
After about an hour, we got dressed again and walked slowly
back to our campsite. Now I have about a million photos to go through to
illustrate this blog! I’m hoping to sleep in tomorrow, though. We are waiting
to hear from Ben and Miriam to finalize our plans for the next couple of days.
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