Cortez: The Resistance, One Year Later

 It was still light when we got into the outskirts of Cortez, our destination for the evening, and easily found our motel, the Retro Inn, where we have stayed multiple times. It is a nicely run, well managed and remodeled classic motel on the eastern edge of town amidst other chain hotels. We tried other places but have come back to the reliable Retro Inn. A statue of Elvis sitting on a bench greets one as one drives up to park in the classic covered drive through by the office. 

The rooms all have numbers from the post war decades of the Twentieth Century, and each room has decor that reflects the pop culture of that year. Somehow we always wind up in the mid 1950s. This year we found ourselves in room 1955, which was decorated with posters of James Dean, whose famous movies were released that year, during his short career.

Cortez is the last stop on the edge of Colorado in the four corners. Unlike Durango or Mancos, there is little tie dye here. It is cowboys and, curiously, Indians, as it is the nearest town to the Ute Reservaton that occupies the southwestern most corner of Colorado at the Four Corners. Last year we were shocked, in a refreshing way, to find people disobeying the mask mandate, dining outside at the burger drive-in with faces uncovered. It was beautiful to see it at the time. I called Cortez "the Resistance capital of Colorado." Cortez came me hope that people were still sane. Now the revolt has spread far and wide.

This year things were a lot looser. The Retro Inn seemed almost back to normal. Last year there was no breakfast. This year they had most of it back, and one was not required to drop one's key into a vat of decontamination liquid upon checking out. We could even sit and eat together in the little dining room, where the tables are covered with a collage of images from Route 66.

It's a pleasant town and we always happy to be there. We have gotten a chance to see much of it, as we often go through going both ways to and from Arizona and Colorado.

The next morning, saying good-bye to the Retro Inn, James Dean, and Elvis again, we made our way through town and made our customary yearly stop at the the little airstream trailer that serves coffee by the highway junction at the edge of downtown, which bills itself as the "second best coffee" in the southwest. Like the Colorado Cherry Company, it is a place which feels comfortable as part of yearly journey.

Unfortunately visiting there at the western edge of Cortez, before we head out on to the highway towards the Four Corners, means we are on the edge of Colorado, and we have passed yet another gateway on the return journey home.

You would think that the Four Corners are simply lines on a map, but weirdly the land shifts drastically just beyond Cortez. One leaves the farming region on the high plateau near the San Juan, and the river valleys, and enters a bleak and dusty landscape populated by stray meager horses from the Utes, but almost nothing else. In those last few miles of Colorado, one feels as if one is leaving civilization altogether and entering a great wasteland. There is something purifying about it. Were it not for the fact that it means we are leaving Colorado behind, I would always feel uplifted by it.