After our snow adventure, Joe and I decided we wanted to see Coffeyville, Kansas on the way home to see the site of the Dalton shootout. The quickest way across to kansas cut across Colorado on some rather dubious roads. We decided to do it anyway and, with a full tank of gas (no services for well over 100 miles) we set out to cross Colorado. Late in the evening, after seeing nothing but fences and fields for hours, we saw a huge glow of lights in the distance. Soon we drove into La Junta, Colorado.
We thought we had entered the Twilight Zone.
La Junta is situated roughly in the middle of no damn where. Yet this speck on the map was brightly lit by streetlights. There were large buildings, major hotel chains, and restaurants. People were everywhere. There were theaters, movie and live. We saw ladies in furs and diamonds and real-live Rolls Royce automobiles driving next to us on the road. Mercedes Benz, Aston-Martin, and Jaguar were also common cars on the streets. We were convinced that if we looked on the right corner, we’d see Rod Serling laughing and waving. As they say today …… WTF !!!!
We stopped at a restaurant and went in to eat dinner. There we were in Levi’s work shirts and jeans and the place was filled with people in suits, tuxedos and evening dresses. We asked the waiter if we were supposed to be there, were we dressed ok, and he smiled and said sure.
We later found out that all of the fences and fields we had passed were huge ranches. The road we took in was used as a back access road to many of these million-acre ranches. La Junta was where the roads and the railroads met. It was where all of the obscenely rich ranchers in this part of Colorado went to hobnob, show-off, and talk business. We had walked into “Cattle Central” and didn’t even know it. We stayed the night just to say we had, and moved on the next morning. Still in shock over this discovery in the Colorado countryside.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Blue Light Means Snow Plow
My sister lived in Colorado for about eight years. When she moved there, she enlisted myself and Joe to help her move. I had a full-size van (the White Rabbit) and she had very little stuff, so it all fit into the van. We left with Joe and I in the van and my sister Connie driving her car and following us. She drove sooooo sloowwww that we had to keep slowing down and waiting for her so we wouldn’t lose her. This lasted until we hit the state line and then we’d had enough. We pulled over, put her in the van with me, Joe drove her car, and we got to Colorado without aggravation or incident.
After we dumped her stuff, we decided to take a couple of days extra and see some of the sights in Colorado. This had been planned all along and, since we were moving her in February, we brought along stuff to survive winter in the Rockies. To our surprise, they were having an exceptionally light winter and we were just cruising along. We saw Black Canyon of the Gunnison and then drove down to Silverton to spend the night.
Since it was not tourist season, Silverton was basically deserted except for a few locals. We found a motel and went to the office to check in. There was a sign on the office door, “In town for dinner. Back soon. Rooms are open. Pick one and we’ll get square later.” We found a room and moved in. Sure enough, about an hour later, the owner came by and we registered and gabbed a while. Like a majority of Coloradans, he was an import from another state. Sometime during this talk he looked up into a perfectly clear mountain sky and said, “Yeah. Looks like it might snow tonight.” Joe and I looked at each other and thought, “Yeah … right!”
About 4:30 am I was awakened by Joe kicking the bottoms of my feet while I was sleeping. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “Get up. We have to leave NOW!” I was still half asleep and asked him what the $&% he was talking about. He threw open the motel room door and there was a blizzard going on outside. There was already four or five inches in the doorway and it was snowing incredibly heavy.
We threw our stuff in the van and took off. Here were a couple of flatlanders trying to crawl through the San Juan Mountains, on a road we couldn’t see (but we could see the dropoff at the edge) in the middle of a blizzard. It took about four hours to inch our way to Durango. With our eyes shot and our minds exhausted, we stopped at a little restaurant in Durango for breakfast. The place was packed. We couldn’t figure out what so many people were doing there, but, it was a nice diversion. About halfway through breakfast some guy came walking in the front door of the restaurant and yelled “plow’s coming.”
The place emptied in minutes!
They weren’t stupid like the flatlanders. They were waiting for the plows to clear the roads before they attempted them. Joe and I looked at each other, took the hint, paid, and got the hell out of there and headed east.
BLUE LIGHT MEANS SNOW PLOW!
We had to stop before we went up to Wolf Creek Pass and put chains on the van (required). Luckily we had brought some anticipating a problem like this. We had put them on in a dry run back at home at everything worked fine. When we tried to hook them up in the snow, they appeared to be too short. They wouldn’t go around the wheels. We stood flabbergasted. Then it hit us. We had gone up several thousand feet in altitude from home. The tires had expanded from internal pressure. We checked the pressure and, indeed, it was high. We let out some air to make them normal and the chains fit. We crawled through the pass.
On the back side of the mountains, the skies cleared and, within a few miles, the only sign of a snowstorm was the foot of snow on the van roof. We stopped at the base of the mountains for gas in a little station. The owner came out and asked if we had seen a red jeep off the side of the road a few miles up. We said no. He said his son had called him because he had run off the road “again” and he’d have to take the tow truck up later to look for the car. We wished him luck and took off. When we started the van to leave, the radio was on, and we heard that Wolf Creek Pass had just been closed because of an avalanche. We’d decided that was enough adventure for this trip and headed home.
After we dumped her stuff, we decided to take a couple of days extra and see some of the sights in Colorado. This had been planned all along and, since we were moving her in February, we brought along stuff to survive winter in the Rockies. To our surprise, they were having an exceptionally light winter and we were just cruising along. We saw Black Canyon of the Gunnison and then drove down to Silverton to spend the night.
Since it was not tourist season, Silverton was basically deserted except for a few locals. We found a motel and went to the office to check in. There was a sign on the office door, “In town for dinner. Back soon. Rooms are open. Pick one and we’ll get square later.” We found a room and moved in. Sure enough, about an hour later, the owner came by and we registered and gabbed a while. Like a majority of Coloradans, he was an import from another state. Sometime during this talk he looked up into a perfectly clear mountain sky and said, “Yeah. Looks like it might snow tonight.” Joe and I looked at each other and thought, “Yeah … right!”
About 4:30 am I was awakened by Joe kicking the bottoms of my feet while I was sleeping. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “Get up. We have to leave NOW!” I was still half asleep and asked him what the $&% he was talking about. He threw open the motel room door and there was a blizzard going on outside. There was already four or five inches in the doorway and it was snowing incredibly heavy.
We threw our stuff in the van and took off. Here were a couple of flatlanders trying to crawl through the San Juan Mountains, on a road we couldn’t see (but we could see the dropoff at the edge) in the middle of a blizzard. It took about four hours to inch our way to Durango. With our eyes shot and our minds exhausted, we stopped at a little restaurant in Durango for breakfast. The place was packed. We couldn’t figure out what so many people were doing there, but, it was a nice diversion. About halfway through breakfast some guy came walking in the front door of the restaurant and yelled “plow’s coming.”
The place emptied in minutes!
They weren’t stupid like the flatlanders. They were waiting for the plows to clear the roads before they attempted them. Joe and I looked at each other, took the hint, paid, and got the hell out of there and headed east.
BLUE LIGHT MEANS SNOW PLOW!
We had to stop before we went up to Wolf Creek Pass and put chains on the van (required). Luckily we had brought some anticipating a problem like this. We had put them on in a dry run back at home at everything worked fine. When we tried to hook them up in the snow, they appeared to be too short. They wouldn’t go around the wheels. We stood flabbergasted. Then it hit us. We had gone up several thousand feet in altitude from home. The tires had expanded from internal pressure. We checked the pressure and, indeed, it was high. We let out some air to make them normal and the chains fit. We crawled through the pass.
On the back side of the mountains, the skies cleared and, within a few miles, the only sign of a snowstorm was the foot of snow on the van roof. We stopped at the base of the mountains for gas in a little station. The owner came out and asked if we had seen a red jeep off the side of the road a few miles up. We said no. He said his son had called him because he had run off the road “again” and he’d have to take the tow truck up later to look for the car. We wished him luck and took off. When we started the van to leave, the radio was on, and we heard that Wolf Creek Pass had just been closed because of an avalanche. We’d decided that was enough adventure for this trip and headed home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)