The Reunion Cabin

 Our cabin this year was quite different from last year, when we all three of us had cabin in the old section of the camp. This year ours is located outside the original camp, up above the camp the flank of the mountain, among the network of gravel roads where there are also many private cabins, and groups of camp cabins built among them.. 

Ours turns out to be brand new cabin, built in 2020, donated to the camp by a couple from Kansas, and located on the crest of a small rise allowing a view out both directions, towards the Trail Ridge to the north from the bedroom, and towards Teddy's Teeth to the south from the front porch. 

It was a magnificent week. I went hiking every day in the morning, using the networks of trails that that connect around the camp property, that follow the creeks, and allow one to directly access Rocky Mountain National Park in at least six different places.

I love the sound of rushing water. I love to sit and hear it coming down on the rocks and feel that air currents that are carried with it. 

J did the cooking. We ate very well. 

Big thing this year was the bears. Lots of bear activity, according to the signs posted in the parking lot of the main lodge, and also on notices on the refrigerator in the cabin. We were warned to take precaution. We neither saw nor heard any bear evidence during the week.

The private cabins around Sunflower were scenic in their own rustic ways. I wondered who lived in them. I was glad there were still many private cabins on the mountain, above the camp.

 Just above us along the dead end gravel road going uphill was another camp cabin, a big five-bedroom reunion cabin, as they call it, with its own parking lot. It's quite a spiffy mountain lodge. It was occupied when we moved in,. The people came and went in multiple cars, and played horseshoes int the horseshoe pit across the gravel road from our cabin.

Those folks moved out in mid week and it was quiet after that. The cleaning crew came and went but no one moved in. One late afternoon in the last part of the week I walked up and sat outside of the empty reunion empty in one of the big wooden chairs that are like the ones that are normally in the main lodge. It was a beautiful view through the shelter of the screen of the pines there with the sunlight coming through the trees, and a peek at nearby cabins on the next road over.

Hardly Anyone There

 Soon we were out north of Boulder on the golden flanks of the last foothills before the mountains give way to the plains, and then up into the canyon, through Lyons, where there was little evidence of the floods that destroyed it seven years ago. Then we went  up the winding road, many switchbacks, int eh valley of the St. Vrain River, until you come over the divide and began descending into Estes Park.

We take the shortcut back way, avoiding the town, which in a normal year would be a mess during the first week of August---the peak of the tourist season--but this year it would certainly be calmer. We take the short cut nevertheless, using the St. Mary's Lake Road, and go out onto U.S. 36 on the west edge of town by the country store and gas station that serves the campers and cabin residences like an informal town center.

The directions from the camp had said to call from town before coming into register. Check in will be curb side. We are not supposed to go inside the main building. So we call, and we are told simply to come up to the camp and go inside the building.

We follow the familiar road, and then turn into the camp on Association Drive, and make our way up to the parking lot of the main building. There are perhaps half a dozen cars there. Everything is sunny and bright but there is little activity. There are no groups this year. Only cabin dwellers.

My sisters' vehicles are not in the parking lot. I go inside, making sure to take my mask. As expected, there are signs mandating them at the front door. The front porch has been cleared off the nice wooden chairs. Inside the part of the main hall which was an informal lounge with chairs and tables has been cleared out. The floor is shiny and bare. The cafeteria is still in operation.

There is no one in line, but I have to ring the bell to get attention. There is plexiglass between me and the the attendant. Check in goes smoothly and quickly. I am given the keys---this year they are key cards instead of metal keys. 

I am shunted out by the side door, even though there is plenty of room to exit the front. The procedure must be followed. I walk past the cafeteria and the little general store, which is open but does not accept cash this year. 

Outside the building it is a wonderful day. It is a perfect summer. I can see the high ridge of the Rockies in Rocky Mountain National Park. There is hardly anyone there.

Boulder at its Boulderiest

 On the last segment of the driving portion of the trip, we stopped to buy groceries for the week. We detoured into Boulder and went to the Whole Foods that is part of the giant lifestyle center complex that replaced the demolished Crossroads Mall. Last year we went to Costco, but we deemed it better to avoid it this year, as we would not be preparing meals for the whole group on scheduled nights, as we had done in the past in agreement with my sisters. This year by mutual concession we were on our own.

The parking lot of the Whole Foods in Boulder was crowded. We got out in the hot sun. Everyone in the parking lot was wearing a mask. I kept my off until we reached the door, as I always do. There was a marked out to allow limited entrance, but fortunately the store was not too crowded and we were allowed to go directly inside and out of the sun. On the outside of the glass door, and on the glass windows next to the door was a quilt of at least twenty signs and announcements in various type faces, sizes, and colors. I barely had time to notice and read a single one of them before we went inside.

Later J told me one of the signs had advised the use of gloves while inside the store. We had seen a few customers wearing them in the aisles. 

"Boulder at its Boulderiest," I said, in the car, as we drove north out of the city past Iris and Jay Rd. 

The Haunted Pass

 After three nights we left Crested Butte and drove south out of the valley back to the main highway at Gunnison, then headed east on US 50 and it slowly climbs up the top towards the high Rockies. It was a busy day on the road. Many folks heading the same direction. We stopped and let them pass us while getting gas just before the ascent over Monarch Pass, then went up the road into the high meadows and then along the mountainsides as you approach the summit of the ridge.

We stopped at the top of course. How can one not stop, at least going once a year, just to keep abreast of the changes.  The parking lot was mostly empty. 

This year the tacky throwback souvenir shop and hot dog cateteria, the kind one pines to discover on the archetypal roadtrip, was mostly unchanged. The cafeteria was rearranged. J said the book section was mostly gone. The maps were still there. 

Otherwise it was deserted but for a few people and us. It felt a little haunted, as if from a Colorado that never took off and prospered.

I saw no hikers coming in after reaching the pass, as one does in a normal year. 

Bribery in Crested Butte

 We stayed three nights in the Elevation Resort hotel in Mount Crested Butte, descending down into town for most of our meals. We quickly learned to navigate the side streets to find a parking spot near the restaurants on Elk Avenue. The town became to seem familiar after a day or two. On our last morning, we got recognized by the local owners of the bagel place in the alleyway. "It's the opposite of Scottsdale," I said to J, as we ate our bagels on chairs outside the little hut in the alley.

My main accomplishment during the stay was climbing to the top of the Crested Butte ski area, at least to the top of the main chair lift, which was about a two thousand foot climb up to around eleven thousand feet. I hadn't started off that morning thinking I'd climb to the top, but after meandering halfway up the mountain on the dirt roads, and consulting the map, and I decided to push onward. I had to ration my water. Towards the top each step seemed to take all my effort. The last chair lift down from the top was at two o'clock, and as I came within view of it, I looked at my phone and saw it was ten minutes to one. I became convinced that the phone was still on Arizona time, even though I knew that was absurd, and thus I had only ten minutes to get to the chair lift, if I didn't want to walk down the mountain. Ten minutes seemed like not enough time to go the last quarter mile. It turns out of course I had an hour to spare.

The next question was whether I had to buy a ticket at the bottom to ride the chair lift down. That would be awful. Thinking about all this I got flashbacks to climbing in the Transylvanian Alps in 1985. Those were the great adventure times of my youth, so it was good flashbacks, even though it was caused by lack of water and fatigue.

I was prepared to bribe the guy at the ski lift to let me ride the chair lift down without a ticket. I had a twenty dollar bill folded up and ready to go. In Romania it would have worked in the old days. It turns out I didn't need to bribe him. No ticket checking going down the mountain. It was wonderfully steep and gave a great view down along Gothic Road towards the Elk Mountains, the high peaks nearby, which are among the great snow ranges of the Rockies. Aspen is on the other side. I managed to make it down the mountain without fumbling my iPhone trying to take a picture. The picture turned out to be blurry. Foolishness to try. Who cares about photos. I don't have any from mountain climbing in Romania. The memories are better.

The Miracle of Durango

 In the morning in Cortex, no breakfast service at the motel. The breakfast room was cleaned out and empty. No coffee service either. Snack bags available, one per guest, with granola bars and water.  To check out I had to drop my room key into a bucket of water that presumably had bleach or something in it. I forget something in our room, and have to go back and fish the keyt our of the bucket, grabbing four incorrect keys before I find the one to room 1956.

We went downtown for breakfast at a drive-up/walk-up coffee shop in an Airstream trailer that advertises "second best coffee" in the West. We go inside with our masks, into the tiny trailer and order breakfast burritos and hot drinks and pay with a swiped card on the terminal, where they turn around you have to sign with your finger tip and indicate the tip. Tipping is less pleasant this way.

We ate outside on the table. A couple other cards drove up and ordered too. Then we get on the road and head over to Durango, which is about an hour's drive. We park in downtown in the metered spaces in the alley while I go inside to Jean Pierre's bakery on College Street. I stand in line with my mask at the bakery counter. Lots of people waiting for a sit-down table, inside and out. At the counter I order the usual selection to go---a couple plain croissants, plus pain au raisin, and some filled croissants. 

We eat the pain au raisin. I pick at mine while driving north through downtown Durango and heading up the old glacial valley, so lush and green, first with ranches in the valley, and then giving way to forests as you climb to the first of several passes you have to cross in the San Juans. Now I feel like I'm truly in Colorado, when I get up to a high pass.

We come down into Ouray, where we stayed a couple years ago, but this time we just drive through It seems to be lively. Lots of tourists on the streets in the late morning. Then we descend out of the mountains down into the western slope and go up through Ridgway, then Montrose, where we turn east on Highway 50 and drive an hour or so up the sloping valley to Gunnison.

Then we turn off US 50 and head north on the road to Crested Butte, where I have never had occasion to visit before, as it is down a dead end in the mountains about thirty miles off highway 50. Our hotel that I booked online is not in the town of Crested Butte itself---the old mining and cattle ranching town in the floor of the valley, but up on the side of the mountains in the ski village, which only dates from the late 20th century---Mount Crested Butte, it is called. 

The ski village there is a plainer, more accessible version of the ski villages around places like Aspen and Telluride---"new" towns built next to older ones. But somehow I like it a lot more, because Crested Butte is so sleepy and less glamorous than those other places, and so the ski village feels oddly like a throwback to the Colorado of the 1970s---lower key and more no-frills family-oriented.

Our room is in the main ski lodge at the bottom of the ski slope. Of course it is out of the winter season. It was easy to book. But everything feels especially shut down. There is no food service a tall. Housekeeping is an extra charge now. We agree that this is the wave of the future, like the way airlines started charging for bags. Now hotels will always charge for housekeeping.

Our room isn't ready at the ski lodge, so we have to kill time going into town. We park near the main street of old Crusted Butte. The main street---Elk Avenue--- is partially blocked off because of the shutdown so the restaurants can put their tables outside. The main street is swarming with tourists. From the license plates it seems like almost everyone is from Texas. 

We eat dinner indoors at a pizza place that J finds online, right on Elk Avenue. They put us in a seat by the window. It is a relief to pull off our masks when we sit down. We eat pizza and look out at the Texans walking up and down the street. Masks mandatory in the car-free outdoor section of Elk Avenue. Almost everyone in compliance with the signs.

The next morning we eat the croissants from Durango and discover to our horror that they are not real croissants. The baker who worked there, who knew how to make real croissants, must have left. They are simply the kind you get in most of America. I feel sad for this and then realize how amazing it was to have found real croissants in the middle of the Colorado Rockies, and that one cannot really expect to fin them in a place like Durango. It was a miracle that was short-lived.

In the Rebel Capital of Colorado

Scottsdale. Left later than planned. New neighbors threw a party, keeping us up. Out the door by 8. Get on the 101 and head north on the Interstate.

Flagstaff. Stopped for gas and drive through Starbucks.

National Forest Road north of Flagstaff. Visited J's folks while they were RV camping in the National Forest

We love crossing the Navajo Reservation  It's an amazing drive. Very special this year because of events. 

Entire res seems shut down. Signs along side roads for visitors to keep out.

Kayenta. Biggest town on the res. Hotels there were taking bookings.No bathrooms open in the entire Navajo Reservation. People using the side of the road. No food apparently available. Guests being told to eat at the deli in the gas station? Total breakdown of the system.

Four Corners. Shuttered with a tribal police car at the gate to keep people out. We have a conspiracy theory that the real intersection between the states is not at the top of this fine flat bluff overlooking the San Juan River but on the side of one of the steep cliffs, and they happened to relocate it for convenience sake long ago.

Ute Nation. The land itself is the barest in the lower forty-eight. By the time you get to the Ute Casino you feel like you are approaching civilization again. You come into the valley and there are farms. Colorado is well run.

Cortez. The first real civilization since Flagstaff. We check into our favorite motel, which is a renovated old motel on the good edge of town (towards Mesa Verde). The motel has a theme of years from the late Twentieth Century. We got the room 1956, which had a picture of Elvis Presley above the bed.

That night we eat a park-around-the-edge drive-in burger place. Very crowded. Hardly anyone wearing masks except person of undetermined gender with purple dyed hair in an Subarus with California plates. Everyone else acting in defiance of the state order, grabbing some normalcy. Who knew that Cortez was the rebel capital?

Quail Season, Little Rain

This year the heat is hardly giving us a break. The monsoon arrived, as a technicality, even before we left for Colorado in early in August, but it gave no rain to many parts of the Valley, including here, until after we got back in mid August. Last week it poured for a good hour straight after dark, but still early enough to enjoy it. The aroma and the wind were marvelous.  For a couple mornings the smell of rain greets you as you come onto the porch. But that has been the sum of the rain. The heat is unabated. It is perhaps one of those years that people talk about, when the heat stays long into the autumn.

The ironwood is unmoved in the creek bed. I see no rabbits now, but rather the flocks of Gambel's quail, and occasionally a road runner, which makes the day feel special to see one.