Colorado Between the Passes

After two glorious, relaxing nights at the Surf Hotel in Buena Vista, we reluctantly checked out of room and took to the road again, going south in the sunny August sun of the Colorado mountains on US 24. We stopped for lunch in Salida, which Ginger had wanted to see as well. She found out it drier and not as much to her liking a Buena Vista. But the downtown was lively. At my suggestion we ducked into a used book store where we both spent over twenty bucks. They didn't have any Christie novels, but I found some useful historical books for another project of mine. Ginger bought biographies of Sandra Day O'Connor and the actress Melissa Gilbert, which she began reading that evening.

From there we climbed up over Poncha Pass and came down into the north end of the massive San Luis Valley, which opens wide like the pastures of heaven, with the Sangre de Cristo Range to the east. There are few more peaceful places in the world than the San Luis Valley. 

As usual we skirted the west side of the valley, coming into Del Rio, where one crosses the Rio Grande as it comes out of the mountains. Then we turned to follow the river into the narrowing valley to the west until we come to South Fork, where we made the obligatory stop for gas before climbing the road over Wolf Creek Pass.

It is always poignant to go over Wolf Creek Pass, as the last high mountain pass that we surmount on our way home. Colorado to me is all about the passes. So long as one is "between passes" is means that one must climb to above 10,000 feet to get home. Being in the high country is all about that kind of isolation from the world.  Colorado is perhaps the only place in the country where one can be embedded in the mountains that way. Even in a place like Oregon, one goes to up to high pass and then comes down the other side. There is no "between the passes" where one is in the midst of multiple ranges.

At the top of Wolf Creek Pass, I like to open the window and breathe the air at that summit because I know it will a year perhaps before I am at the altitude again. It is all down hill from there, literally. It is a poignant moment, as I said.