goodbye . yellow brick road

Colorado Cool

With a solid eight-hours of driving ahead, I broke camp, and said my prayers and silent goodbyes to my beloved Kansas, the land that had treated me so unbelievably well.

The day promised heat. I refilled my water bottles, jugs and 5-gallon canisters and, satisfied that everything was locked down and packed right, set out wondering just what I would encounter along the way.

I'd been given some handwritten alternate directions by Stephanie, the ranch and feedlot owner (there was a life I briefly imagined) I'd met at the cafe. It was time to go off the beaten track, I decided, so I exited Route 70, which truthfully had become a bit boring and predictable and even a bit dangerous due to its monotony.

I knew I was close to the turnoff, so I stopped to gas up in Sharon Springs and stepped into Stephen's Restaurant to get some clearer directions. I ordered an iced tea (I love how in the Midwest you are automatically brought un-sweetened tea!) and a piece of apple pie. Pie, for some unexplained reason, had become my comfort food on the road.

There was a couple and their daughter behind me eating breakfast. I asked them where Route 96 might be. The man, in his cap and overalls, who was clearly was a farmer, gave me a smile. "Pretty desolate," he commented. "Nothing for but a hundred miles." He noticed my puzzled expression. "Where you headed?" "Pueblo," I told him. "Hmmm . . . got a map?" he said. I shook my head no. "Never should go anywhere without a map!"

I had to agree. I'd been relying on pure luck and my GPS up until now. The farmer, Gilbert Bussen, and his wife, Barb, inquired about my next stop in Colorado and we had a lively conversation about traveling. "Worried about you," Gilbert remarked. He went to his truck and brought out a somewhat dated map of Colorado. He handed it to me. "I want you to have this," he said. "You need it more than I do." I told him how much this meant to me and they wished me safe travels and off I went, stuffed full of pie and the last good vibes from the place of my birth.

That old map came in plenty handy later on.

I'd thought the last stretch of highway had been pretty lonely, but when I turned onto Route 96, I was on a two-lane road or what in the old days would have been called 'macadam' as it was a different surface from the slick asphalt of the freeways, darker grey and pocked with pebbles, patchy and uneven. It looked like it hadn't been driven in some time. I saw maybe two cars in several hours of driving. It was pretty country, grassy and level, but desolate just the same.

The road brought me way, way out into the puckerbrush. At some point I wondered if I'd been sent on a snipe hunt by the woman in Kansas, but true to her telling it turned into a much more scenic route the farther west I went. As the heat turned blazing, the fields burnt and scruffy, I wondered what the hell I was doing, where I was going, why I was going. You know, all the usual life questions.

A red truck came up behind me and tailed me for a bit. I had a bit of anxiety thinking that had he (I assumed it was a he) been some kind of axe murderer, he could easily block my passage and do me in. Out there, in the nothingness, I'd be a goner, and only Gilbert Busser and his family would have seen me pass.

I chuckled to myself thinking about how pickup trucks seemed to automatically have a gender. Something about the amount of dents and dust and sometimes even the color. Red=Men. Same thing applied to mid-life crisis convertibles, I supposed.

The man in the truck (my guess was right) wearing a cowboy hat passed me with a friendly Midwestern wave and slowly I settled back down, put the "pedal to the metal" as they say, and just surrendered to this lonely stretch of forgotten countryside. The radio crackled. I turned it off. There was beauty in that. The emptiness, the silence but for the slowed-down conversation in my own head, the sound of my wheels spinning their way west.

There was a sign ahead for Colorado Springs. I stopped at a corner stand and bought fresh peaches and tomatoes from a grizzled man who'd set up a table with just a few baskets of produce. I asked where the peaches and tomatoes were from. "These 'r from Illinois," he mumbled. "I try and get 'em in the county when I can." No matter. Both tomatoes and peaches were sun warmed and good and sweet and made several fine meals for me for the next few days. I'd pretty much stopped carrying any kind of meat, as it was difficult to keep and somehow I had lost my taste for animal flesh. In fact, it somewhat sickened me, so I was already on an almost vegan diet. Except for the pie. Good pie crust is made with lard. It's a universal law.

The road had suddenly become a real highway and somehow I felt a sense of loss of being back in civilized country. (This was a feeling that would repeat itself over and over, with greater intensity, the longer I traveled.) And then there, looming magnificently straight ahead, was a fine view of what I believe was Pike's Peak. My course veered me south and westward, that view disappeared, and before long I found myself in rush hour traffic in Colorado Springs, which I must tell you didn't delight me after an already long day of driving.

Colorado Springs didn't seem of much interest to me, judging by the businesses on the roadside, although there were some notable sights like "The Garden of the Gods" nearby and I of course knew that the real face of a place couldn't be judged from the freeway. Originally, I thought I'd stop and camp near there, but it was just enough off track to keep me from settling in. Pueblo would put me within striking distance of some of the hot springs I hoped to visit in Colorado. On I went.

The Marina at Pueblo, Colorado

Pueblo.

Pueblo seemed a shabby border sort of town. Pay day loan places, pawn shops, oily auto repair stops, greasy spoons. It made me uneasy, but soon enough I was turning into Pueblo State Park. I'd had high hopes of continuing to swim in the reservoir there, but alas the beach was closed due to some bacteria count. I saw plenty of people kayaking and waterskiing, though. I imagined that out in the middle of the reservoir, everything was cool. I just had to find a way to get out there.

My reserved campsite was disappointing and dreary. Just a patch of cement beside a bedraggled bush, with a water pump a distance away, but it did have a view of the reservoir and the mountains encircling the park. Campsites, I noted, were packed together like sardines. There were few campers there now (it was a Thursday), but the camp host assured me that it would be a full house come the weekend. They were completely booked. I knew I had gotten the very last campsite, so I felt pretty grateful to have a place to land for $25. And, they had hot showers. Whoo Hoo!

I was pretty exhausted and night was coming on. I decided to test out actually sleeping in my van and to set up camp the next morning. The reservoir sparkled tantalizingly beyond until a huge RV pulled up and pretty much blocked my view. My decision to sleep in the van turned out to be a good one, as just about that time a horrendous storm blew in, with zig zags of jagged lightning that tore up the whole sky, pouring rain and what I was later told were 40 mph winds that rocked the Zen Gypsy Van back and forth all night like an unstable cradle.

In my haste to move things around to make room for my sleep nest in the van, I somehow pushed my guitar case into the front windshield. Crrrr-aa-ccck! Damn. I knew it would cost about $400 to replace the glass, and I worried that the whole thing might disintegrate in the coming storm. This turned out to be a pointless bit of anxiety as the next day I drove into Pueblo and found a "Windshield Angel" who spent an hour or so patiently patching the five cracks that spread out like a sunray on my windshield and reassured me that it would be just fine. Natasha (who was the glass artist) and her husband, Jason Heifner, at Act Fast Glass were as sweet as could be, and only charged me $50 for their fine work. Wow.

I stopped at the grocery and picked up butter and eggs and some more tomatoes and returned to my campsite to find that yet another storm was rolling in . . . this one even more dramatic than the last. As the rain poured down, I sat and listened to "Blue Highways" by William Least-Heat-Moon on audio book on my laptop and worked on my blog until about 10:30 pm when exhaustion and the rain finally lulled me to sleep.

The whole time in Pueblo seemed like one disappointment and minor disaster after another. I was in a foul mood. I just didn't like it here. I didn't like the guy next to me who was blasting his country music. I didn't like the dust and the threat of rattlers. I didn't like the marina store that gouged me for $3 for a small bag of ice. A friend I met in Colorado later described it as, "the armpit of Colorado." With apologies to people from Pueblo, I had to say that I agree with that description. Despite its stark and stunning landscape, and the obvious benefits of the reservoir, Pueblo was just not my cup of tea.

I did meet a nice couple, though, with their baby. She happened to be from North Carolina and seemed happy to see a face from home. They filled me in on the area and I was sorry not to get their names, as they were very helpful. Some conversations, however, were just destined to go unnoted. There were many people I talked to along the way who were quite wonderful, but didn't particular impress me to write about them in any significant way. And others, whom I immediately bonded with and wished I'd had the time to get to know better.

In its defense, the restrooms/showers at this park were fairly good . . . the water nice and hot (and free, some parks charged for showers). This seemed a luxury after my campsite in Kansas, that had only cold water. I took a long shower to shake off the dust, and maybe TMI, shaved my legs for the first time since I'd been on the road, and felt almost human again. But I was still in a funk that I just couldn't shake.

I'd reserved three days here and I almost, almost bolted. Since I'd already paid ahead, and didn't have reservations until Monday, I decided to tough it out and try to have a better attitude. Some other neighbors told me about a beach where the rangers wouldn't bother you. They were going to the water the next day and invited me along. I had a quick visit with them there, as the wind was hellacious, so I spent some time back at camp reorganizing the van and my food. I was heading to bear country after this and didn't want to take any chances. Even lotions, creams, even sunblock, would need to be put into tubs. I whittled the two coolers I had on board to just one with perishable food. The other I packed just with ice, water and a bottle of vodka. I figured if the bears needed a cocktail, more power to 'em!

Some things are best left to memory. That night Pueblo had one of the most sensational sunsets I was to witness during my travels, with sunrays spreading out like a corona of coral fire from the stars to the mountains. It was so beautiful that I could not even bring myself to photograph it. Truly magnificent and a great reminder to me that this was what it was all about, this exultation, this endless and impossible joy that is nature.

However, I had a feeling that after this dismal interlude I was really going to enjoy my next stop in Pagosa Springs. The next morning, I packed up and took off. "Pueblo," I said out loud to no one, "Eat my dust!"

The San Juan River at Pagosa Springs

Pagosa Springs.    

As I pulled away from Pueblo, I felt an instant sense of relief. I never was able to shake the bad feeling that hovered over me there, like a desert storm cloud. As the landscape went from arid plains to rolling countryside, flanked by happy yellow jerusalem artichoke blossoms and later, real sunflowers, and hills of pale wheaten grass, to mountains studded with pencil thin conifers, my heart was refilled. So much green after the dull desert palette seemed like food for the eyes. I was replenished the further I climbed up in the San Juan Mountains, with sparkling creeks and breathtaking waterfalls abounding. It was all I could do to keep my eyes on the road.

Turning off of Route 70 to 160 took me through charming Western towns such as Alamosa, and before long I arrived in the village of Pagosa Springs, on the banks of the San Juan River.

I could easily have camped nearby, but I planned this stop as a treat for myself for making it more than halfway across the US and booked a night at Healing Waters, an unassuming hotel in the middle of town that promised on-site hot springs, and, for the first time, I would sleeping in a real bed instead of my tent or van. There was a fancy spa just across the street that I'd researched, also a public bath house that charged $22 a day. The spa looked luxurious and lovely online (and was also twice the price of the place I booked). Same water, logic told me. And my choice was a good one, my hotel, the original hot spring, was the place the locals frequented.

The healing waters of the hot springs, which issue up from wells deep beneath the ground, were noted for being composed in varying amounts of sodium, potassium, magnesium, silica, chloride, fluoride, minute amounts of arsenic (which still had healing qualities), boron, iron, lithium, manganese, sulfate and zinc.

The hotel had a full-size outdoor pool that bubbled with this slightly sulfurous spring water as well as separate "hot pools" for men and women that were "clothing optional." There was also an outdoor public hot spa. The mostly elder women I met at the spa were bronzed and wrinkled beyond belief. They had beatific smiles, deep smiles etched into their faces that told me that their life here must be good, very very good.

I imagined the scenario would be a bit different at the luxury spa . . . it was where the couples on romantic holidays and the singles from the city stayed . . . but I immediately liked this particular place for its lack of pretense, its relaxed family vibe. Everyone was in t-shirts and sandals and I had no desire to have to get dressed up. Everything, including my room, was simple. And that is what I craved just now in every aspect. In a way, it was almost strange to be among other people. I spent a dreamy afternoon soaking and swimming in the spa pool, then thought about trying the hot pool, which I'd been told was 108 degrees or sometimes higher.

The hot pool was a stone crater gouged out of the ground, enclosed in a building with a separate room with benches and a changing area. When I entered, most of the women were stripped down, half asleep on towels covering the benches. There were a few sighs of contentment, but otherwise an unwritten, almost holy silence.  

To immerse yourself in this temperature of water is an immediate shock to the body. At each glide through the pool, the heat intensifies and encloses you again, so you soon find that if you stay still, and shut your eyes, sinking down to the base of your scalp, you are in a womb-like stasis, stripped to essence and vapor, your entire life, every worry, every trauma, every memory melting out of you until you are like a one-celled creature like an amoeba, floating in a simple, thoughtless, exquisite universe.

Life altering, that.

Despite its healing qualities, you could only stay in this temperature of water for up to five minutes before becoming light headed. A sign recommended five minutes in, twenty minutes out to cool down. It was a labor to climb out and I clung to the steel rail near the steps into the pool like an ancient, thoroughly sotted drunk.

And that's what I did, several times over, that day and the next. One woman I did talk with said that she did this up to twenty times a day. I had a hard time imagining that, as I was completely spent after my short time in that water, but she was the picture of health. She'd been coming here almost daily for years, she said. I tried to imagine for myself what that would be like, and quite frankly, couldn't. It was just too good!

The open air hot tub was just as meditative. I sat on the edge and dabbled my toes in the water and looked around at the greened mountains surrounding me. I had a nice conversation with a fellow spa-er, Bob, who filled me in on the drive to Ridgway, reportedly a white-knuckle affair for part of the way. This reminded me to have my brakes checked when I got to Durango.

I'd thought to spend a night in Durango, several hours away, but I had no reservations, and once I settled in at Pagosa, I immediately booked a second night so that I could rest up a bit for the remainder of the journey. I showered, wandered over to The Bear Grill, a low-key pub, ate one of the few meals I didn't cook over my camp stove, had a glass of wine, sampled the green chili (which was delicious and a local specialty), then hit the hay.

I rose early to hike one of the many trails behind the hotel, keeping an eye out for bears, which had been reported in the area. Have I shared that I have an unnatural fear of bears? That the mere mention of bears conjures up something so primal, so hair-raising and terrifying to me, that it makes me physically ill? Why? I have no idea. Maybe a sinister teddy bear somewhere in my distant past. I guess something about getting my scalp torn off by a huge claw or my arm gnawed to a ragged bit of gristle and bone has never appealed to me. Go figure.

My walk, regardless of thoughts of annihilation, was quite refreshing. I didn't go far, but climbed to where I had a panoramic view of the town. I sang out loud as I hiked as a precaution, and rattled my spork against my water bottle from time to time. I'd forgotten my bear spray, oh lordy, but thankfully there were no bears. Not a track. Not a scat. Ahh.

The Purtiest Cottage in Pagosa Springs

I walked around the back side of the town for a bit, as I wanted to get the flavor of what the residents did. On that walk, I met stopped in front of a log cottage that had a pretty wildflower garden. The owners were a delightful couple and I enjoyed my time talking with them. They were retired and building a house on the mountain, which certainly spoke well of the environs. His wife and I were wearing the same shoes, which both of us found somewhat hysterical.

Shoe Soul Sisters!

I also discovered a neat dojo on the same street (and this one's for you, Meadow Moo!) that would have been an interesting stop if it had been open.

Peek into the Pagosa Dojo

Back in town, I had a great bacon, eggs and avocado breakfast at The Rose Cafe. I spent more money in Pagosa on lodgings and food than I had on ten nights in the state parks, about $250 total (have I mentioned that I've been on a budget of $30 a day, plus gas?) but I enjoyed myself immensely. I stopped to photograph the cool truck I saw outside of a sporting rental place. If I'd had one more day, I would have let the sweet and informative guy at Pagosa Outside take me tubing down the river. Alas, it would have completely blown my budget, but it may well have been worth it!

Totally Tubular!

The San Juan here at Pagosa wound and gracefully gurgled through the town with small rapids kicking up sprays over the rocks here and there. People picnicked and played happily on the banks right up until dark, I noted. I had to remind myself that I was now in The West. There were a lot of Texans in this town for some reason and I must say that the men in the west have this kind of rugged, Robert Redford handsomeness that can only be acquired by really being in the outdoors. I'd almost forgotten that at one time in my life I'd had an obsession with cowboys. But that, as they say, is another tale . . .

The Absolutely Adorable Couple from Denver
Rosemary and Kristian Strubb

Antique Store in Pagosa Springs

I met Lori and Jay Powell at The Rose Cafe where I ate breakfast one morning and Rosemary Strubb and her husband, Kristian, who were originally from Denver but now lived in Texas, while walking through town, where just for fun I window shopped and poked into antique shops (one had an entire basket of Texas license plates). It might have been fun to collect something like license plates from each state I've visited, but so far all I've taken aboard are a few art pieces and . . . rocks. They seem to me to embody the soul of each place, so I try to gather a few pebbles as I go.

As my token evening glass of wine kicked in, I considered what a fine time I have had here in Pagosa . . . already a great memory. Some of the route tomorrow promises to be easy. When I reach Durango and begin my climb into the mountains, well, that will be another matter.