After gassing up in Dolores and grabbing some road snacks, we hit the road north towards Telluride. Not two minutes later, we were stuck behind a tractor. Not a tractor-trailer. A tractor. Like for farms. Cruising along at 10 mph, a line of cars and trucks was quickly coalescing behind a farmer who steadfastly refused to look behind him. A half mile later, he finally let us pass and we steadily climbed up into the mountains through the villages of Stoner (I’m not kidding, check a map) and Rico towards the Lizard Head Pass up at 10,222 ft. From there it was downhill (relatively) past the impressive Ophir Needles to Telluride, a place where my family will never ski because we’re not millionaires. Yet.
It was about this time that we hit more construction and a pack of nutty cyclists who were going the opposite direction, up the road towards the pass. They would not be the last nutty cyclists of the trip. It was a little after Telluride that Murph declared the need for a pit stop in the near future. One problem of driving through the wilderness is that such a thing is not always possible. There were 15 miles left before Ridgway, the next village of any appreciable size. It was an eternity. And of course, once we got there and Murph dashed for the ladies’ room, there was a line.
Disaster averted, we pushed on towards the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. It was about 1 PM by the time we got there and we spent about a half an hour looking around in the Visitor’s Center area before we headed for the only real trail of any length in the park at the end of the road. From High Point at the end of the road it seemed to be a short walk to Warner Point, which looked back into the canyon. We set out and didn’t really bother with any gear, water or anything. I even wore flip-flops. It didn’t take too long to make it to the point, where the views were amazing. Looking northeast, we could clearly see the diabase intrusions cutting through the metamorphosed Paleozoic and Proterozoic basement rock on the north side of the canyon. I climbed a little promontory of rock near the end of the trail to get a better look and get some pictures that could scare the crap out of my mom. 
We headed back to the car and realized upon our return that we’d been gone for nearly an hour. We decided to curtail the remainder of our time in the park in favor of a quick exit and a mad dash for Boulder. So two quick overlooks later we were on our way. We stopped off for a late lunch and made a quick call to Crinus, who was our hostess for the evening and needed to be informed of our later than expected arrival. It was 3:30 at that point and looked like we’d be hitting Boulder around 9:30. She gave us directions to rt. 93, the road leading up to Boulder, and asked us to call once we hit that road, about a half hour from her place. We drove north, hitting I-70 in the middle of the Glenwood Canyon, one of the most beautiful tracts of interstate in the country. Murph was finally starting to feel better after really not having a good time for most of the day. We hit Vail for our next pit stop, which boasts a 3450 ft. vertical and 5289 acres of skiable terrain serviced by 34 lifts. Yes, we must ski there. As we climbed towards the 10,666 ft. Vail pass, we noticed a bike trail paralleling the highway. Yes, there were nutty cyclists on it. The sun started setting about the time we hit the continental divide through the 11,700 ft. high Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels.
Yet again breaking our ban on nighttime driving, we pushed on until we could see the lights of Denver ahead of us. We took the exit for rt. 93 and headed up towards Golden and Boulder. I called Crinus and got the last few directions to her place. “Sounds great, Crinus. I guess we’ll see you in a half hour. Bye!” I hung up the phone.
“Holy shit! Did you see that?” Murph yelled.
“No, what?” I had been looking down at the phone in my lap.
“A deer just ran across the road!”
“Whoah.” I looked straight out of the front windshield.
The next seconds seemed to take a few minutes to elapse. I only saw the second deer coming from the left side out of the corner of my eye, but I knew what was happening. Murph saw it about the same time. We yelled obscenities. The deer crossed the left lane of traffic. Murph swerved right, braking hard. There was a thump and a crash as the windshield shattered with the impact of the deer’s head. Murph pulled off the road and we both took a deep breath. We seemed to be in one piece. Thankfully it appeared that the deer had only sideswiped us, so we had no deer guts in our lap.
The windshield was definitely screwed, but we had no idea about the rest of the car. I grabbed my flashlight and walked around the front of the car. The deer was surely dead, but looking back behind our car I couldn’t tell where it had ended up. The oncoming traffic blinded me and I was more worried about the state of our car anyway. The front of the car was spotless, except for the innumerable bugs we’d killed in the course of week of driving. The windshield was smashed in the bottom corner and a few cracks snaked their way across the driver’s side. The left mirror was dangling off the driver’s side door. There was a dent in the door. A small tuft of deerskin was hanging from the front edge of the door. However, apart from all that, the car was OK. It was certainly drivable, just not by Murph. When I got back into the car, she wasn’t doing too well; the nausea was back. Since we really didn’t know what else to do, Murph called her rental company and talked to someone who explained what we were going to do in the morning. It was clear that she was in no state to drive for the remainder of the evening, so I got back out of the car and headed for the driver’s door. Not wanting to see the damage, she shimmied over to the passenger seat while I opened the driver’s door and got in. The dent made the door hard to open.
I called Crinus to explain. Crinus suggested pub food and beers. We assented. A half hour later, we were in Boulder at Crinus’ place. We dropped off our luggage and piled back into the deer damaged car to head to the bar. MarcusBrody, Crinus’ husband, was there already, leading trivia night. We grabbed a table outside and imbibed and ate to our hearts’ content. Once we were sated, we returned to Crinus and MarcusBrody’s apartment, where Murph and I took over their living room. It was kind of a long day and now we had some bureaucratic bullshit to take care of in the morning. We weren’t looking forward to it.
Day’s Score:
Drinks: 4
Miles: 480
Maximum Elevation: 11,700 ft.
Roadkills: 1 (deer)
Potential Future Family Ski Trips: 1 (We can’t afford Telluride)
1 comments:
Ski vacations get cheaper when you know someone in the overpriced town. It's how we skied in Aspen when I was little even though we couldn't afford toys for me.
Reassess the costs of Telluride after I've found a place to live and made a few connections. :)
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