Colorado

It was too hot and the sun was too bright in Cortez, but the Visitors Center there was quite useful. The little coffee place had good wifi and a passable decaf americano. Thus fortified, it is a mere 20 or so miles to Mesa Verde National Park.  I foolishly thought I would drive straight to the campground, pick out a spot and start relaxing, but life is not so simple in a popular national park.

National Park campgrounds with a formal check-in are the worst, and the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend is the worst of the worst.  The camp is by definition huge, or else they wouldn’t need a staff of employees whose full-time job is dealing with you. Because it is your federal government, they insist on giving each and every camper extremely detailed, you’d think idiot-proof, directions on a wide range of campground procedures.  So the check-in takes forever and creates a high stress level that is the opposite of what we’re all here for.  However, everyone is very nice. Well, everyone on the staff that is. There are a few meltdowns among us in the line of checking-in campers.  Anyway, once that’s done with, the campground is spacious and pleasant, and and I have the option three different hikes to take (as explained individually to each camper in line, sigh…).  I of course take the one labelled “Sunset”.  My third night in a row of an excellent sunset/moonrise hike, this time on the rim of the huge mesa of Mesa Verde, looking out over the Montezuma Valley.

Saturday (May 25)

Checkout time is 11am at our busy, busy National Park campground.  I drove back up the hill to the Service Center where I had a nice free shower (first since California!) and enjoyed their weak but free wifi (no phone bars, but there was wifi!) and had a nice chat with the day shift.  They have plenty of leisure in the morning, which is good for them since their afternoons are really hectic.

The first little town after Mesa Verde is Mancos. As soon as I got phone bars I asked Yelp for coffee, and it directed me to one of the most comfortable coffee places I’ve ever been to anywhere – Fahrenheit Roasters. The building looks like it was a 50’s era service station, a rectangular box with a large (30’x40′) covered area in front, where you could presumably pump your gas in the shade. This large, pleasant area is laid out with sofas and tables.  The barrista was cute and their coffee and wifi were excellent, making it a completely delightful place to hang out on a hot sunny day. Probably not so great on a windy day, but that was not today :)

Continuing on US 160 to Durango I had a really nice flashback. I am a road trip person because my mom was a road trip person, and there was one magic trip in the mid eighties where me, my mom and Martha did a wonderful three-generation trip together.  I remember very little about the trip (why were we travelling?, where were we going?, what else happened?), but seeing a particular stretch of motels along the road approaching Durango reminded me that we stayed at one of these motels, and Martha played with a local cat and she really did get Cat Scratch Fever (cue the music…).  I’m glad to have had the recollection, but now I’m bugged that I cannot remember more.

The apex of this trip is The Springs at Pagosa Springs CO – hereafter referred to as Pagosa Hot Springs.  That is as far east as I’m planning to drive. After this the plan is to go a little north then start heading back – the rest of the trip I’ll have to plan the setting sun how late I want to drive (ick).

In a bit of really bad scheduling, I’m gonna hit the busy resort in the middle of Memorial Day weekend.  It’s prohibitively expensive to stay there, so I’ve got a plan whereby I’ve booked a campsite for two nights (> 1 night, a rarity!) at the closest Forest Service CG (11 miles).  I’m hanging there now, planning a full day of partying at the too-crowded Springs tomorrow, then back here tomorrow night.

Sunday

Wake up, 11:15 – yuck. I randomly took a Zyrtec last night. I happened to see the bottle, I sneezed a few times today, so why not? I thought the charm of Zyrtec was that it didn’t zone you out, but this one little pill kicked my ass this morning. Hard to get the cotton out of my head and get motivated.

11 miles back to town, first stop Pagosa Baking Company = good place.  Green Chile soup + coffee + goodie.  Tasty, filling and all around excellent. Then on to the Springs. The senior rate for an all day pass is $42 – yikes!  But I did have fun!  Soak for a while, out to the van, back to hang out and read and soak, back to van for lunch and a beer, soak, buy a beer from them, soak and read, getting dark so soak and watch sunset and the swallows on the river, soak, shower, shave, shampoo and 11pm head back to the campground – a busy excellent day.

Really fun day, but back at the campground I realized I left my toiletries, then a couple of minutes later I opened my glasses case and yikes! no glasses! :(  I have identified a structural problem for me. Once I put in my contacts, I don’t need my glasses anymore (duh), so if I’m doing this in a strange bathroom, it’s way too easy for me to just leave the specs on a handy ledge I set them on and walk away.  My eyes work fine, I won’t need the glasses till the next time I remove the contacts, I pick up the glasses case, and don’t notice that the glasses aren’t in it.

There had been some question whether I would go forward on a two-day unexplored route to Orvis, or would backtrack well-trod roads to Durango thence north on 550 in one day.  The glasses thing kind of settles it.  I must drive back to Pagosa, and it would be really annoying to cover these 11 miles for a fourth time coming back.

Monday

Tummy is gurgling, which turns out to be the start of a really bad tummy day. I take my morning walk to the pit toilet, then ten minutes later the gurgling urge is again so persistent that I decide to drive from my campsite to the restroom and finish up my morning stuff there. It’s either that last piece of chicken from too many days ago, or I’m getting something.

Breakfast at the Pagosa Bakery again. It was great again, but my tummy let me take no joy from the excellent food – sadly for me.

I DID get my glasses back!  Yay Springs and yay me and yay benevolent world!  Did not get my shaving stuff back, but that’s easily solved at the supermarket.  I thought I would be getting food and beer also, but I could not so to speak, stomach the thought…

I repeat in reverse the pleasant but boring drive to Durango. There I turn north on US 550 for the epic drive to Orvis Hot Springs.  Up up up to one 10,000′ pass, then down down down to the valley floor, then up up up to another, then down down down to Silverton, which looks like it’s straight out of a movie set, then up up up to our third 10,000′ pass of the afternoon, then the descent to Ouray.  I tried to enjoy the spectacular scenery, but most of my mind was looking for the next public restroom.  I pulled off at both summits for the great views, but ended up instead crawling into the back of the van and sleeping for 1/2 hour.  yuck.

There were many signs proclaiming some kind of major post-mining habitat restoration heading down to Ouray.  Looked interesting, wish I cared today. I did stop at a spectacular waterfall next to the road.  Ouray is a charming, interesting town, and Ouray Hot Springs – a large, public swimming pool kind of place at the south end of town is definitely alluring to me, but I’m headed to the hippy nude-y place 20 miles down the road.

I made myself get into those tubs, and indeed I started feeling a little better. In the little Orvis kitchen I boiled some water and had a bowl of Trader Joe’s miso soup and some cheese and crackers, and went to bed about 9, glad for the day to be over.

Tuesday

Morning at Orvis.  The place is organized in a not very convenient way, but I really like it anyway.

Ahh, tummy trouble WAS only a one day thing, whatever it was.  My new favorite theory, supplanting the bad chicken theory is that I picked up some kind of nasty amoeba(?) from one of the hundreds of people with whom I shared a tub of warm water yesterday.  So that is another consideration when deciding to go to a hot springs resort on one of the busiest days of the year. Not only is it physically crowded, but your chances of sharing a tub with a person of poor hygiene goes up dramatically, and furthermore, the standard tub sanitation procedures are way over-taxed by the sheer volume of people.

Anyway, I seem to be back to my semi-chipper self ready to resume my same old trip habits, as if yesterday never happened – woo!!  So, free Orvis coffee with a yummy nut bar I got at the health food store a couple of days ago. Then fiddle for an hour or so, then on to Ridgway (who dropped the “e” in Ridgway??) to eat breakfast at the stylish place I ate breakfast three years ago. Food still doesn’t taste as good to me as it usually does, but at least I have an appetite for it!

Yesterday’s road, 550 south of Orvis was spectacular and tiring.  Today’s route, north from Ridgway is easy and boring.  Super wide-open spaces, cattle country, fracking country.  550 merges with 50 and goes straight through the middle of three good sized towns – Montrose, Delta, Grand Junction – then a few miles of interstate (first since Arizona!).  I am now in Utah.