In search of the continuous road trip
Well, hello! It’s been a while. Where were we? Chicago. Right. We’re not there any more. We were there a little over three years. We had hoped to pull off a bit of a gravitational slingshot maneuver — swing through the metropolis one more time …
I was really looking forward to returning to Colorado and exploring a few more mountain towns. Here’s where we stopped and what we liked: View Larger Map Grand Junction Grand Junction, even though it’s right next to Colorado National Monument, doesn’t feel like a Colorado …
As if Aspen couldn’t get any better, we drove out of town over one of the coolest passes of the trip — Independence Pass. Why is it awesome? Well, the US Pro Cycling Challenge just biked over it (full route). The road from Aspen narrows and …
We didn’t think we’d like Aspen. We were expecting affluent assholes, pretentious pricks, and spoiled schoolkids. We were expecting Telluride. Telluride feels like it’s uncomfortable with its rich-town status. It asserts that its mine is still open, that it’s a working-class town. Which is bullshit, …
I keep having this recurring nightmare: Paul and I are standing on the edge of a canyon. One after the other, we fall in. Paul falls in, then I fall in. I fall in, then Paul falls in. Over and over. Sometimes we fall in …
Crested Butte isn’t the most accessible town. If you want to arrive via dirt road, you have some options (in the summer). If you want to stick to pavement, you’ve only got one choice — Highway 135, up the valley from the south. Maybe it’s …
I’d made my peace with saying goodbye to the desert at Dinosaur National Monument. Then we made a last minute swing through Colorado National Monument and my composure was shaken; my closure was ruined. You know how it is: you’re moving out of town and …
Man, I was so excited to be back in Colorado. Even the billboards were excited for us to arrive — “Real beer is worth the drive,” they proclaimed. Soon we’d be able to buy Fat Tire beer, Lisa’s favorite. Our first stop: Dinosaur, Colorado. We checked …
Yes, Dinosaur National Monument has dinosaur bones. The best bones have long been removed and placed in museums, but they’ve left a few in place to illustrate the amazing forces that made these bones find-able in the first place: first, lots of animals and dinosaurs died in …
I’m unsure now of the chronology of it, but somewhere between Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, and the Four Corners, we visited Mesa Verde on one of the road trips of my childhood. I also remember stopping to visit a friend of my parents in Newport Beach, California. …
I first visited Mesa Verde as a kid and I loved it. I wasn’t sure it would be worthwhile to return, but we’ve got the time and the campground has free showers, so we decided to go for it. Visiting a place as an adult …
These are three of my favorite black and white pictures from the ones I snapped while driving from Durango to Silverton. Evidently I stopped taking pics in Silverton. Good thing Lisa was on the case.