Metro to Newcastle Airport, short flight to Paris, long flight to Atlanta, short flight to Denver. Picked up the hire car, and here I am!
(My example to all aspiring travel bloggers...don't sweat the small stuff.)
Right now I'm in Grand Junction and it's pretty nice. It's big enough to have all the amenities, but it's also sufficiently small that you can hear the cicadas chirping on Main Street. The all-American suburbs - quiet tree-canopied streets with wide sidewalks, raised timber houses, ancient rusting Dodges and Lincolns parked between the pick-up trucks - are only a couple of blocks away. Main Street itself contains only independent locally-owned stores, with not a big-chain logo in sight. You can still go to Starbucks or Walmart if you really want to; you just have to head a little way out of town. It's an example which many other cities would do well to follow.
Random fact: in this valley the roads were originally named according to how many miles they were from the state line between Colorado and Utah. The roads were meant to be laid at whole-mile intervals from the border. But there were some fields and orchards which nobody wanted to spoil. The inevitable result was expressed variously in fractions and decimals, leaving us with (for example) 27 3/4 Road and 11.5 Road. I'm not kidding.
After leaving Denver I initially drove south to Alamosa and spent a night there. Walking between motel and bar, I crossed a deserted bridge over a modest little river, about 20 metres across. I did a double take when I saw the sign: 'Rio Grande'. It rises in Colorado. The last time I saw that river was in Texas last year, where it's rather bigger and serves as part of the border between Mexico and the USA.
The drives south to Alamosa and then north to Grand Junction were both very long but full of stunning scenery. See photos below. I was greatly entertained by some of the road signs along the way, such as 'Correctional Facility: Do Not Stop For Hitch Hikers' (um...okay) and 'Speed Checked By Aircraft' (really?
really?!) Other than me driving and enjoying the view, not a whole lot has happened so far. I've had one short hike, in Great Sand Dunes National Park. I say 'short', but climbing a 750-foot sand dune at 90 degrees F is not exactly easy going, especially when you start at 8,000 feet above sea level and there isn't too much oxygen to be had. The descent was great fun, though: the slippy softness of the sand, so frustrating on the way up, means you can just run and indeed
bounce all the way down; there's almost no strain on the knees, no risk of turning an ankle. It feels like walking on the moon.
Obviously I've been trying out the local beers and some of them have stood out. Here in Grand Junction the Rockslide brewery have done well with
Cold Shivers Pale Ale and
Raspberry Wheat. The latter could well be that very rare thing, a unisex beer. In Alamosa, the San Luis Valley brewery served up
Hefe Suave (unfiltered, weirdly clear in the glass, but nice) and
Alamosa Amber (pleasing malty taste to offset the hops).
Incidentally, all my beers so far have been bought with the dollars so kindly presented to me by my former colleagues at the CQC. Thanks guys. Love you all. Now get back to work.
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| Great Sand Dunes National Park, from the top of the tallest dune. |
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| Mountains and sand. |
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| Mostly sand. |
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Blanca Peak (14,345ft), seen from highway 160.
Eagle-eyed readers will note that I couldn't be arsed to get out of the car before taking the photo. |
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| The Rio Grande, somewhere on highway 149. |
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Edd vs Food #12
Spicy chicken burrito, from the Cascada Bar & Grill in Creede (pop: 403, elev: 8,799ft)
Nothing spectacular to look at. Hey, I'm just getting warmed up. |
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Weminuche wilderness.
The peak in the far distance is about 30 miles away. |
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| Another view from Highway 149... |
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| ...and another. |
