An overview: Fuel stops; Tuesday Fallon and Ely, Wednesday Scipio and Palisade, Westcliffe Thursday, numb and dulled as background radiation throughout a hot and trying trip.

Wednesday left Wall with

Frog Pond filling after

a last breakfast and

AC which failed forty minutes out;

mid-nineties by Nixon.

By Fallon we realized that running with windows open, though stressful, was less life-threatening than the bugs-in-a-jar-in-the-sun effect, so continued that way for the dur-ation.

Austin then

Bob Scott Summit, a brief welcome windless respite for lunch,

then

more of the same to

Ely and finally the Border, 6:30 [still mid-nineties, but cool inside].

Morning,

east…

so east; Sevier Lake, Scipio, etc…

After Salina onto 70 and the Lone Tree exit* for dogs’ sakes,

Green River for ill-advised “fish tacos”**

and finally Glenwood Springs

for more fortuitous comidas in the [most welcome] rain, dogs welcome.

Thursday, last day, threatened closures turned to panic in the early morning rain after seeing eastbound traffic backed up for miles but once we turned around it turned out

to just be the Aspen commute…the pouring rain nonetheless made for sketchy beginnings

until the Interstate left the canyon around Gypsum.  We veered off onto 24, which

proved precipitous in its climb out of Minturn but after

an eventual circumnavigation of Leadville things became flat, increasingly unattractive

and holiday trafficked; Buena Vista, Salida for groceries, last gas in Westcliffe and, wrung out,

the Huerfano where after Linda got the utilities going and I carried in what I could

dear neighbors unloaded the weightier stuff as well as sweeping the house before leaving us to unpack and collapse by turns.  Despite all, still better off than last year…

{Quick question to anyone receiving these; when notified do you get image and text in your inbox or only text?  Should be both…like this one should have the Border Motel interior.  Need to know as I’m not getting them…}

 

*I’ve looked on several occasions; nary a tree, lone or not.

**Very decent battered cod which would have been brilliant as the fish in fish and chips but anomalous in a wettish tortilla with some exceedingly strange accoutrements.