First stop was our corner gas station. Looking back we wonder if this is what jinxed everything. This is the scariest intersection. we cross our fingers and say hail marys everytime we go past this place, beuse the crazy going in and out is deadly.
Adam____________> our friendly pirate friend.
the car is packed. full.
We stopped for Pizza in Idaho Springs. Beajous makes a decent gluten free crust.
back on the road, this picture doesn't, like most here, do honor to the quality of sun set. i think i took this coming out of Eisenhower tunnel.
We hit Eagle around 9:30. stopped for booz and groceries. after some confusion and new housing developments, we found the road we were looking for and headed for the campgrounds. We choose this campground because it was supposed to A. never fill up. B. has a cave to explore. C. a ghost town. D. hiking trails that take you to a lake. Sounds great right?
Full. all full. over 30 campsites. looked like a wonderful place to go, and maybe we will another time. By the time we got back down the mountain and into town in was 11pm.
Friday night, spent at the AmericInn in Eagle. we found out that there was both a brew fest and rodeo in town that weekend. as we were to later realize, it was rodeo weekend in all of western Colorado.
the hotel had a swimming pool and free breakfast. that that at least was a plus.We had our mildly trusty campsite book with good descriptions, and Adam bought a map of Colorado. [we didn't bring one because we were going down i-70 and going one place. who needs a map?] this was a good move on Adam's part, we later realized.
We headed for a place South of Grand Junction, on the way to Gateway. stopped for firewood- at several different places. apparently when you are in areas near where you would actually use firewood, it is near impossible to find, unlike, say central Denver, where you can get all the firewood you want.
we headed to a Bureau of Land Management camping area called Domingez [sp?]. We went up the gravel switchback, and back down the gravel switchback [all the while questioning if we could do it in reverse the next morning.] The campground was beautiful, set in a red stone canyon, in a grove of cottonwoods, next to a stream. the Colorado southwest at it's finest.
we went hiking! [before returning to lounge and nap.]
Adam had a new and giant tent. it had a zipper slot for electrical cords. and another small round opening, that i thought was a dog flap, but it turned out to be fore reaching a drink out of your cooler with out leaving your tent.
FIRE! and head lamps, and potatoes and sausages and liqueur. Adam is also the only one smart enough to bring a chair.
The next morning we packed up and headed out around 10. Surprisingly enough we did make it back up the switch back and headed for Delta. Instead of heading back up through Grand Junction and strait for i-70, we decided to take the more scenic rout through Delta to Paonia, looking for a small brewery called Revolution Brewing. we had some of their brew last year in Ouray and found it to be amazing. They were, unfortunately, closed. we continued on to Redstone where we stopped for Lunch and the Redstone Cafe. food was good, but soon people were poring in. Turns out there was a mud slide just out side of town, meaning we were not going to be able to continue through to Carbondale and up to i-70. also meaning that we narrowly missed being in a mud slide due to stopping for lunch.
From here we have two options. A. take 2 hours and head south across to Crested Butte and on to Gunnison. putting us at 5 or 6 hours from Denver, at least, since its now Sunday and there is always traffic getting into Denver. or B. we go south and take a different pass over the mountain that puts us back on i-70 just west of where we would have come out anyway. According to our map book, option B looks like the better plan. Oh yeah, i forgot to mention. it's raining. and has been since Delta, more or less.
This option "B" turns out to be 50 miles of gravel roads. 3/4 of which are amazingly beautiful giant Aspen groves and meadows full of wild flowers- and free range cows. every so often we see people camping or whatnot, so we were not entirely alone up there. at some point towards the end we hit the road change. due mainly to change in land ownership. this road is not nearly as well cared for. the gravel is mostly gone or just on the sides of the road and what is left is fine dusty dust. or it would have been had it not been six inches of slick mud. and what could be better than slick mud? going down a steep switch back in slick mud. yup. we slid sideways most of the way. and hopped the remaining gravel on the edges would be enough for us to get traction and not slam into a dirt wall. at this time it was probably great that we had the car seriously weighted down with people and stuff. and it was also good that we had 4 wheel drive.
I didn't think to take more photos here. really i should have.
We came out in Silt. where we were detoured over to Glenwood Springs, due to a mud slide and a tanker that was too tall hitting a bridge. Finally made it to a gas station, where we exited the car as fast as possible.
I would like to say that the story ends here, with us getting on i-70 and heading home. But NO. We headed through Eagle as fast as the speed limit would allow, only to hit the breaks and join the 30 mile line of cars trying to get past Vail. OK. we didn't know if was 30 miles. first we heard that it was 5 miles. but after 2 hours and moving maybe a mile, we turned around and headed back to Eagle for Dinner. thinking we could get on Hwy. 6 and go around the traffic, we also promptly came to a stop and say in traffic for several hours. after some calls home we heard that a tanker had flipped at noon and there was 15 miles of traffic. at this point it was 10pm and we had been traveling for 12 hours. We headed back to eagle only to find all of the hotels full and then back to Glenwood Springs. We had breakfast Monday morning at a Bavarian Bakery, where we leaned that there was 30 miles of traffic and another mud slid on Hwy. 6. To make our trip more fun, all road construction resumes mid morning on week days. we left our camp site at 10 am on Sunday and arrived home to Denver at noon Monday.
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