Colorado

Mesa Verde, cliff dwellings

Mesa Verde

Leaving Mesa Verde as the storm rolls in

Backlit by lightning

Micro Brewery in Durango

Downtown Durango

Letting off steam in Silverton

Durango train steam into Silverton

Well, you're the lucky one, we all wanted to be engine drivers

Silverton 

The Rockies from the Million Dollar Highway to Ouray

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs

Surely Banksie hasn't got this far, Colorado City

I persuaded a gullible Texan to help me topple the balancing rock

Came across this fellah on my morning run

Our Arts and Crafts B&B near Manitou Springs

Colorado is probably the state I had most wanted to road trip. It has it all: the Rockies with four national parks, skiing at Aspen, Vail, and Breckenridge and it has the most active lifestyle in the USA with the commensurate healthiest population. The entire state is above 1000 metres so an ideal environment for aerobic training. All this and a reputation for some of the best microbreweries and a fairly radical take on life. But after a couple of weeks in Utah and Wyoming, it seemed like an anti-climax returning to Colorado. A state which enjoys 300 days of sunshine a year but was overcast and rainy for the five days we were there. We did not have a chance to witness the Rockies which were lost in the clouds.  It still provided a grand tour and, if anything increased my resolve for a more leisurely visit.

After leaving Moab we headed south-east uncertain about our next destination, we had no accommodation booked and had decided to play it by ear. Should we drive to Arizona and visit Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, which we had visited a dozen years ago, or make for Mesa Verde instead? After breakfast in Moab, we decided that we would head down to the Needles section of Canyonlands and then maybe drive towards Four Corners where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. But on reflection, there would be nothing there but an intersection of lines of latitude and longitude on a map. Heavy storms were predicted for Arizona so we decided to aim for Durango, on the basis that Bob Dylan had sung about it and it seemed to have a lot of accommodation.

We emerged from Canyonlands as the heavens opened and I took the forest road which climbed up to 10,000ft. It was like driving through a waterfall with no other vehicle on the roads and a soundtrack of whooshing wipers behind the distant claps of thunder. Eventually, we dropped down to Monticello, where we stopped for some gas and to buy coffee to calm our nerves. The road from here had more familiar landscapes of rolling countryside; no dramatic red sandstone cliffs or mountains, just small-town America. The road across to Cortez was bean bean-growing country with well-cultivated fields and long vistas into gentle landscapes.

Time was not on our side and, as we pulled up in Cortez at 4:30pm, I realised that it would be pushing it to visit Mesa Verde National Park but the alternative would mean a return trip back from Durango of 90 miles if we left it until tomorrow. Fortunately, the Tourist office had lots of good advice and they provided a map and highlighted all the points to stop on a 3-hour trip around the park. We then had a 40-minute drive to reach the park and a good 25 miles to the cliff dwellings which are the central attraction. Mesa Verde translates into English as "green table" which is a good description but there are some deep gorges that provide the sites for the cliff dwellings.

The climb up to the Mesa Verde plateau was like visiting a lost continent. We managed to take in all the important stop-offs, the advice from the tourist office had been apt and concise. Mesa Verde National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States and was designated in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect some of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in the world. It is small as National Parks go at just 81 square miles but features numerous ruins of dwellings and villages built by the ancient Pueblo people or Anasazi. There are over 4000 archaeological sites and over 600 cliff dwellings.

The Anasazi inhabited Mesa Verde between 600 and 1300 AD. They were mainly subsistence farmers, growing crops on nearby plateaus or mesas. Their primary crop was corn but the men were also hunters, which supplemented their food supply. By the year 750AD the people were building mesa-top villages made of adobe and in the late 1190s, they began to build the cliff dwellings for which Mesa Verde is famous. These are structures built within caves and under outcroppings in cliffs - including Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in the USA. The mesa is now extensively forested and seems to have a microclimate of its own.

As we headed back the skies darkened and we watched a thunderstorm pass to the north, the skies heaving and sparking with alarming power. We dropped down to the plain and drove the last 40 miles to Durango. For the first time on the trip, we were lost. I had driven pretty well to the hotel using the street grid as a guide but we asked directions from a local and were sent across the river in a flow of traffic that included a psychopath in a truck behind me. He wanted to exceed the speed limit and for me to do the same. He cut me up and we had angry words that detracted from the generally good experience of driving in the States. We had to retrace our steps to find the hotel, which was smack in the centre of the town, pretty well where we had been before being misdirected.

It was after 9pm as we headed out to find some food. A nearby diner Steamworks Brewing doubled as a bar and microbrewery and served good food and excellent craft beers. I got into a conversation about the beers, the blackboard gave the date of brewing, the alcoholic strength, the bitterness and darkness of each brew. I asked for an explanation of this system of classification and then chose the beer that would be nearest to my preferred style; the rules worked and I enjoyed a pint of Third Eye pale ale. As we were about to leave at 11pm, the manager invited me to visit the brewery located in the heart of the throbbing establishment. It was strange to tour the facilities and hear about the source of barley and hops inside the glass walls that were surrounded by a large bar/diner. Over a hundred customers were enjoying the products of the brewery as they cheered on the Sunday night American football game that was being broadcast live.

By dint of taking in Mesa Verde the day before we had some spare time and spent a couple of hours in the morning strolling around the vibrant town centre of Durango. It is a university and tourist town so has retained a semblance of prosperity that is missing in most town centres. We had been wakened in the hotel by the whistle of a steam train leaving for the excursion to Silverton, a steep climb into the heart of the Rockies. We decided to take the same route and were surprised at the elevation reached, 10,970ft by the road over the Coal Bank and Molas passes. Aileen had her eyes closed as we climbed ever upwards on the highway with drops of 1500 feet on our side and massive juggernauts coming down the hill and threatening our road space. The descent into Silverton was equally traumatic and prompted us to take a break in what is a semi-derelict tourist town.

As we arrived the second steam train of the day was pulling in and the couple of hundred passengers tumbled out to explore this former mining town that looked like a stage set for the Wild West. We made a tour of the remaining shops, had a coffee and filled up with gas before tackling the next stage of the highway through the Rockies. I asked at the gas station whether the road was as steep as the road from Durango which had frightened my wife.  They laughed and explained that this was the really scary section and suggested that I blindfold Aileen for the next section. I didn't pass on this information and a few miles up the road she hunkered down and closed her eyes whilst we travelled ever upwards to a height of 11,018ft over the Red Mountain Pass. It was in the cloud and it did have a dangerous feel about it but fortunately, there was little other traffic on the road, which also goes under the moniker of the million-dollar highway.

The small town of Ouray had a touristy feel to it and we stopped for a late lunch. Thereafter the roads became less spectacular and we travelled through Montrose towards Gunnison where, after several hours of steady rain, we decided to call it a day. We found a hotel and a restaurant that served a wholesome meal for $12 and also had some good beers on draft. It was heaving with students and locals taking advantage of the cheap meal night and gave the impression that in small-town America living costs have outstripped wages since the recession.

The next day we had decided to get to somewhere near Colorado Springs and visit the Garden of the Gods or take the cable car up Pikes Peak. Unfortunately, the weather remained bleak but we found a spectacular Arts and Crafts B&B and then had the afternoon to explore the Garden of the Gods. In the evening we found an exceptional Italian restaurant before retiring to an empty house with features and facilities that were quite outstanding. 

We had to plan for our final day and decided to travel to Denver via the Castle Rock Outlet Center. As always with these places, you can waste a lot of time but we had hardly looked at shops during the road trip. We continued the journey in the late afternoon and immediately became entwined in the 5-lane rush hour traffic jam heading to Denver. It took us an hour and a half to complete the 35 miles to the airport hotel. Our magnificent circular road trip in the west was over, we had covered over 3000 miles and after a final night, we dumped the car at the airport and caught a flight to New York on 9/11. It seemed that flights were less full than usual on this date. We were reminded that our daughter was flying back from the States after a summer vacation as a student on this date in 2003 and had been held up in Washington by the attacks.