We hired a car with cruise control. Oddly enough it got better mileage with my poor foot pumping the accelerator/gas pedal than it did with the cruise on. I figure that the cruise is all the time up, down, up, down and never just sitting in one spot. It felt like that....
Anyway, we drove down the I25 to Denver then around Denver to Colorado Springs, through the Garden of the Gods, up and around a "back way" to a waterfall (no parking! We couldn't even pay our $5 to see a waterfall, dangit), then a late lunch at a lake. The demographics of Colorado Springs are different to Fort Collins (ie I saw lots of Hispanics and blacks - Fort Collins is awfully white - I'd like to find some friends who aren't white cos they often have a different take on life).
Off we went to Canon City (that has a ~ over the n) and Royal Gorge. $23 per person to walk across the bridge. You are kidding me! OK, so you get to ride on the carnival stuff too but we just wanted to go out on the bridge. Let me put that another way, Nathan wanted to go out on the bridge, Lynne is too much of a wuss to get anywhere near the edge. Can you spell vertigo?
You want pics? I have to choose and edit them yet! We only took about a thousand pics on the weekend. Each place will have to have its own post I think.
We stayed in Salida overnight at a random motel that just so happened to have a fridge and microwave. Here starteth the rant.
Back 'ome, all motel rooms come with the basics. What we call the basics are:
- a bed (duh!)
- a tv
- a bathroom and accoutrements (towels, soap, shampoo, etc)
- coffee and tea making stuff (ie a kettle/jug with instant coffee sachets, tea bags and sugar plus cups and saucers)
- a small fridge (we call them bar fridges)
Imagine our surprise when we discover that many motels in the USA do not have tea and coffee making facilities (they either have a coffee dripolator or you have to go to the lobby) and fridges in the room! What are they? Why do you need to keep anything cold in a fridge? You can buy *anything* you want from our overpriced fridge in the lobby! Except I can't because I have to have a different diet from 99% of the US population, so all that wheat based crap and the milk? Poison! And if you are travelling and want to keep stuff cold overnight so you can have it the next day?
So our motel was not the flashest but at least we could keep stuff cold in the fridge... and heat dinner up in the microwave. Salida's Safeway doesn't have a great selection of GF/DF foods but I got by.
On we went to Gunnison. Nathan had a lovely lunch at a nice little cafe/bakery. The lady at the tourist bureau helped us decide not to go to Crusty Butt (Crested Butte) but so we instead pushed on to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The landscape around the area is fascinating - we are well out of what I think of as Rocky Mountain scenery (big jagged mountains) and into mesa/butte country. DH made many bad Jar-Jar Binks references - mesa hungry! mesa sesa mesa! etc etc. This was all very new territory for us (the landscape, not the punning. Punning is normal). Very different to look at. Very very dry.
Oddly enough, the Black Canyon is up on a plateau that is higher than the local area. We had to drive up a large hill to get to it. The river cuts right through the plateau. Weird, huh? It is certainly worth a bit of vertigo for those of us inclined that way....
By the time we were done at the canyon, it was after 4pm. I drove a LOOOOONG way yesterday. 430 miles, and about 370 of that after 4pm. We got home at 11pm, and with very little speeding (it is hard to not speed whilst flogging down the I70 - there are many steep hills and I had a very new hire car whose brakes I didn't want to ruin). We had thought the holiday traffic would be terrible on the I70 and I25 but guess what? We were so late that it was fine! It was as light as I've ever seen it. Now we know the trick - get home so late everyone else has already gone home. Only it wrecks poor aged bodies the next day....
1 comment:
That sounds beautiful!
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