Held Up in the Mountains

STATE VISITED: Colorado

AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! I left my computer in the lovely Grand Hyatt in Denver. The charming people in security have promised to UPS it to me, but the way we're moving around, there's no easy place to have it shipped to. So they're sending it back to New York. Meanwhile I have to use Tom's computer, which is much cooler than mine. Niiiiiiice.

Well, when I should have been packing my computer, we were having one last walk around Denver, while Bob took care of some phone calls back to the office in New York. That's when we found the Brown Palace Hotel, which has one of the coolest lobbies I've ever seen -- a nine-story atrium with a stained-glass skylight at the top, and wrought-iron railings around all the balconies overlooking the atrium. Awesome, especially considering that it was built in 1892,, way before the Hyatt Corporation started slapping garden atriums on all their hotels.

Near the elevators I was fascinated by a facing pair of murals, one depicting travelers arriving by stagecoach, the other showing them descending the steps of an airplane (albeit a 1940s-era plane). The more things change...




We hit the road at (ahem) 10:30 (those pesky phone calls) and headed due west on I-70. I kept snapping pictures to show how the mountains grew taller around us, mile by mile -- the scrubby brown hills were overtaken by pine-shrouded peaks, and eventually granite summits with patches of snow.


We never got quite high enough to have snow around us -- I don't think they build highways that high -- but we did get over 10,000 feet in places. As we first hit the Continental Divide at the Vail summit, our ears popped -- and so did a bag of Tostitos we had in the back seat.

Back east we have roadside signs warning to watch out for deer crossing. Out here, the signs alert you to look for elk and bighorn sheep. No actual wildlife sightings, however, except for some jackrabbit roadkill, a pair of deer waiting to cross the highway, and one scared little bunny trembling by the road's verge.

We went a little out of our way so we could see Vail, the chi-chi ski resort, all tricked up to look like a mini-Gstaad. There were cyclists all over the place (they've laid out a nifty bike path), and some people lounging by pools and eating on the outdoor patios of restaurants, but nothing like what I imagine the crowds must be in ski season. It's a little precious, I must say.

We turned off the interstate just past Vail -- ignoring the commands of Ms. Garmin, that interstate-obssessed minx, who wanted us to go all the way to Grand Junction -- and started our day's odyssey down two-lane mountain highways, where the towns are few and far between. The next sizeable place we came to was the poetically-named Leadville, where fortunes were made in lead mining in the 1880s and 1890s. The main downtown street is still lined with substantial stone buildings, and wide enough for quite an impressive gun shoot-out, like in the movies. All the place needs is hitching posts in front of the saloons instead of parked cars.

We had lunch in the Golden Burro Cafe (with the adjoined Brass Ass Bar). Here is a picture of Hugh enjoying his Coke with an improvised extra-long straw. Note that the rest of us at the table do not get to have straws with our drinks; Hugh commandeered them all. Ah, well, let's indulge him, he'll be going away to college soon.

Several miles south of Leadville, we turned west again on US 50, which runs through the Gunnison River Valley -- a truly spectacular stretch of mountain landscape. For a while, the river frisks along next to the highway, twisting and turning through the mountain meadows. Eventually, though, it widens into the beautiful Blue Mesa Lake, which runs for a few miles. At the bottom is a dam, and below that the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a national park that we wished we'd had time to hike around. That's the trouble with this cross-country agenda -- all we can do is skim the surface. On the other hand, when you think that just two days ago we were rolling through Kansas wheatfields, the compare-and-contrast aspect of this odyssey is amazing.

We stopped for McFlurries at a McDonald's in Gunnison, which seemed more of a viable town than Leadville -- a bit of historic downtown left, but lots of motels and restaurants and even a college in town, Western Colorado State.

In Montrose, we turned south on Highway 550. I hadn't realized that this road -- a route we picked for convenience's sake -- was the fabled Million Dollar Highway, which I wrote about in 500 Places to Take The Kids Before They Grow Up. It's named that because it cost a million dollars to build, back in the 1880s or whenever, to serve a string of mining towns during the gold and silver rushes. The section from Ouray to Silverton is incredibly scenic -- and one of the scariest drives I've ever had to drive in my life. Hairpin turns and switchbacks, at intense altitudes, with no guard rails -- now I regret that I recommended it to readers. (I'm glad I dropped it from the second edition.) And I had the bad luck to be the driver on duty for that stretch of road, with some serious backseat driving from my co-driver. Do you know how hard it is to accelerate uphill when you've just had to slow down to 10 MPH to get around a sharp curve? I'm just glad we weren't trying to cross that pass an hour later, when it was beginning to get dark.

Around 7:30 we pulled into Silverton, another of those historic mining towns, though one with a bit more pizzazz than Leadville. We're staying at the Wyman House Hotel, built in 1903, a lovely late Victorian hotel that's now a frilly bed-and-breakfast. Not our usual hotel fare, but that's the only type of hotel they have in this town. Well, I guess we can sleep in brass bed with flowery wallpaper for one night.