Hi to all of our Easterner friends. I heard Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, address a graduating class of law students a few weeks ago. His advice was to do less whining and to be a good friend to our family and neighbors. I liked what he said and hope to follow his advice. Starting now, I will try to write only whine-free Emails.
Today, we started on our trips to explore the mountainside. We followed the recommendations of the tour books, Welcome Center people and, of course, Jim McKinney, my friend at UC. But before we set out, we stopped at Jodi’s Breakfast and Lunch Room on the main street to get a sack lunch for the road. Jodi is the small, energetic owner who seems to have a loyal following – several different groups of young people came by and were greeted with lots of kisses. The young man in the kitchen had a long ponytail and hustled from counter to stove and back. Our sandwiches had the “works” for the salad part, which included onions and avocados.
We drove in the direction of Lake San Cristobal, the second-largest, naturally formed lake in Colorado. One of our destinations was Sherman, a deserted mining town. It was a half-mile from the fork in the road, and I turned right following the arrow on the faded sign. Little did I know that I was heading for Cinnamon Pass, and the road took me higher and higher. I saw that the half-mile had turned to four miles and we obviously had missed the mine. We were on what is called a “shelf” road, which means that it is carved out of the side of the mountain and resembles a shelf. It was about one and a half car-widths wide. Eventually, we found a spot to turn around and came back down (in keeping with my new no-whine policy, I will say no more).
The next challenge was to drive up a “4-wheel” rated road leading to another mining camp named Carson (mining in the 1890’s was mainly for silver). The tour book said it was “easy 4 wheel drive” so it seemed a good place to try the Subaru off (regular) road. After traveling a short distance, Edith spotted our first deer only a short distance from the car. The road got more-and-more rough, with large rocks appearing between the tire ruts in the road. I avoided the rocks as well as I could, but the bottom of the car started to scrape against them. There are many Jeeps out here that seem to have the clearance needed for this class of road (for our next trip, I’m putting big truck tires on Edith’s Buick), but the Subaru doesn’t make it. I am going to have to get in touch with Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) and tell him those Subaru commercials need a little editing!
We took some footage on David’s video camera. Edith took pictures of us coming back down the mountain road. I took some at a beaver’s dam and home (we saw quite a few of these). And, of course, we took pictures of the mountains. There’s a saying in the mountains: “take only pictures and leave only footprints”. Today, Edith saw her first wild Columbines. Well, she got the second part right (there’s now something flattened between the pages of the Subaru owner’s manual).
By the way, we ate our sandwiches at a picnic grove by the lake. They were great. When we got back to town, we ate in the cabin and walked into town for an ice cream. There was a gorgeous rainbow between two of the mountains (in the direction of the lake, Jim). It seemed the perfect ending to our day in the mountains.
More tomorrow,
Carl