05/20/06: Day 7: On to Pagosa Springs
(I wasted too much time fighting with my website, so decided to go back to Day 6 and write up Canyonlands and Dead Horse Pt later. The big job will be selecting and processing a manageable number of pictures from the 300 or so taken by Karen, John, and myself. Fortunately, only about 100 are worth showing and describing).
After the third night in Jade and John's trailer up on the Colorado Plateau (most of which is in Utah), we are now driving off of the Colorado Plateau and heading eastward again.
After a nice brunch, and an introduction to the Pumpkin Carriage, their about-town 3-wheeler, we got on the road at 1:00.
The Pumpkin Coach, a Honda 3-wheeler tricked out with all the accessories is parked inthe "garage" at the back of their home. Backing it out is the hard part, especially because of the raised deck build because of the floatation tank that had originally been housed in there.
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Map of the route from Canyonlands (near Moab, UT) to Pagosa Springs, CO, with a scenic brief side trip to Dolores, CO.
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In the year of 6/6/6 (June 6th of this year), we had a chance to drive on old route 666, recently renamed in a fit of superstitious Christianity. Much like the Victorian prohibition about saying "Devil". Well I say that that sort of correctness can go straight to the Dickens in aitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks.
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South and east, with a short bight of route 666 (the 6th feeder highway for Rt. 66, but recently renamed to the less interesting 491). Back into Colorado. We zipped past Cortez because the Silver Bean was closed for the weekend, and past Durango, where the Silverton line was smokily being guided into its parking spot for the night. You can read about and see pictures of our previous stops in these places here.
Karen took this picture of the scene along the road. I also took snaps of fields of cows and such with the moutnins behind them. I missed the shot of the big llama farm, but maybe I'm llama'd-out.
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We stopped in Dolores, CO more because of the pretty drive up there than its reputation as an old center of the arts. It is also one of the loci of train entusiasts. This odd item of trainiana originally was driven by a Pierce-Arrow inline-6, but now has a more modern engine from the 1930's.The local train museum is small, but well focused on its local scene. They are trying to get the right-of-way back to run a tourist line up to connect to the Silverton through another legacy canyon route. The sticking point is some of the townies who now hold the land that the rails once ran through.
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We took a scenic side road to Dolores, CO, but otherwise, a fairly direct route to our destination. It was a nice drive back up into Colorado, and we stopped in Pagosa Springs so that we could experience sulphuric waters of the hottest natural hot sping in the world. Tomorrow.
You can find out more about the springs themselves here: www.PagosaHotSprings.com