Donkey’s day of glory

We’ve got some other things to write about that we need to get though as we’ve spent the last five days in Colorado, but I wanted to write this one up while its still fresh in my increasingly unreliable mind.

Chan and I left Durango, Colorado this morning to make our way across to Colorado Springs, which is where we are now. En route, we popped into Silverton (remote and largely unchanged mining town – we’ll write about there later) to get some info from the visitor centre about the various scenic routes through and around the mountains in the direction we were going.  Ultimately we decided to take the Alpine Loop ‘scenic route’ through the hills.   It features several ‘ghost towns’ of previous mining settlements and some rather spectacular views.

Looks simple enough

Now, I’m no fan of the great white donkey we’ve been driving around these past few weeks, but it is notionally an off-road vehicle, so we thought we’d drive on up through Engineer Pass (a phrase historically not associated with me) and on to Lake City before re-joining civilisation on paved roads.  Just prior to Animas Forks, the signs recommend that you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle with high road clearance.  I figured our bullshit 4WD-SUV crossover wagon -designed for mounting the kerb next to the ATM and dropping off the kids on the hatch markings outside school - probably qualified.

Then we noticed what everyone else was driving:

 
Triumphant hard rock anthems playing in background

Versus:

Sad trombone plays

When we rounded the first couple of corners and saw the up-‘till-now dirt and rock road had turned into a series of greasy boulders and several thousand feet sheer drops, I admit it was squeaky bum time.  But to be fair to an otherwise boring and thoroughly abused nag (4100 miles and counting), it did really well. Evidently Jeep know how to do the off-road part, according to the otherwise toss reviews this vehicle gets. True, we got particularly familiar with the smell of burning clutch on the way up and similarly toasted brakes on the way down, but we got up there with aplomb.  Hurrah for the donkey!

Commence photo-dump:

         
We were looking down on snow. What is this madness? 


For reference: Ben Nevis is 4409 ft.

And today’s variety of roadside mammal that told me emphatically to fuck off was the Yellow-bellied Marmot.

 
“I will cut you”

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Heute gingen wir versehentlich ein Offroad mit einem ungeeigneten Fahrzeug. Ich ärgerte auch ein Murmeltier.

"It's only 40 miles away so we might as well take a detour"

Further to my last post in which I kept you all enraptured with my geekiness, I thought I would explain that we do know where we are sleeping each night (and most stops are more than one night) but we tend to decide en route any activities on the day we do them or sometimes the night before. The 500+ mile stints have caused us to lose a bit of perspective on distances, though. Somewhere that we have just read about in a pamphlet or been recommended by a local is suddenly "just down the road" when it is less than 50 miles away. Sometimes it has worked out:

Chimayo

This little place in New Mexico is apparently the "Lourdes of America". Chimayo has holy dirt which you rub on places that hurt and it gets fixed.  Not sure how I feel about charging $2 for holy water or $3.50 for holy dirt but I'm sure the chapel needed a new roof or something. It was very nice little place though. Very relaxing and on holy days they do reenactments which look very good if you are into that sort of thing. So if you are in the area it's worth popping in.  G says the espresso there was terrible and the coffee shop owner tried to sell him a wood carving for $4500.

Four Corners Monument.

So there is one place in the USA where 4 states meet (for those not familiar with the US check out a map and all the straight borders between states): The Four Corners Monument:

C - "We'll pop over to Four Corners for dinner."
G - "Why are we going again?"
C- "Well we can be in four states at once, there is a thing on the ground"
G- "And this is a thing that people do, is it?"

Well it certainly was a thing. It is situated on Navajo land and is a monument on the ground.

I do think it is quite cool. But not $5 per person cool and we didn't get a dinner either (the overpriced indian fry bread trailer was closed). But we were in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado all at the same time (but although it is the recognised monument, it is apparently 2000 ft out according to official surveyors).

So sometimes the result of these 80 mile detours is that I have to be quiet for at least 10 minutes whilst G has his Grumpy McGrump Grump face on.
 
(We had Pizza and then he was happy again.) 

On the dusty road

So we have now done over 3500 miles in the Jeep (AKA The Donkey). To give you some context Liverpool to New York is approx 3300 miles.

We wanted to experience the diverse landscapes and history of this country (we are in state number 8 now). The routes helpfully identify scenic overlooks, historical markers and lots of other things which we pull over to digest and click away. Lots of the "pull-overs" are linked with each other, telling a story as we drive with the result that we are learning an awful lot about this country.

Throughout Idaho, Montana and Wyoming we followed the story of the Nez Perce Tribe who did not want to give up their ancestral lands and move to a reservation. In 1877 they were pursued for over 1100 miles by the US army as they tried to get to sanctuary in Canada. After a 5 day battle they surrendered a mere 40 miles from the Canadian border.

We have also been following the adventures of Lewis and Clark (No not the one with Mr Cain). Captain Lewis and 2nd Lt Clark were commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to take a group of Army volunteers to map and explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. So map and explore they did for over 2 years and were the first Americans to see Yellowstone and Montana. It really brings home how "young" parts of this country are and how vastly different its history is to our own.

So, to demonstrate that driving is part of the adventure too:

And a few of the views from the overlooks or just the side of the road:

Incidentally, the longest we have gone without seeing another car is is 60 miles/50 minutes (and that was at 4 in the afternoon).  It's a big place, that America.

Santa Fe

So, on Saturday we made another 560 mile jaunt (all of these big drives have been 560 miles, give or take, which is just about the limit of my driving attention.  So thank you, cosmos) across some more desert to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

It’s mildly cooler than Nevada -but then so is Venus- coming in at a balmy 28°C, but with enough humidity to not desiccate low-flying sparrows.

Hasn't quite lost it’s novelty yet, but we’re getting there

We’d heard quite a lot about Santa Fe with regards to it’s culture and food (certainly in comparison to the casino-polluted cultural vortex that is Nevada) and we were rather looking forward to having a gander. It is definitely a very individual place, as the buildings -new and old- follow the Spanish/Pueblo Indian style of architecture.  Broadly equivalent to the enforced mock-Tudor of Chester high street if it wasn’t shit. 

They don’t have a WH Smiths though. Your move, New Mexico

We caught the market in the Plaza, where there were a couple of hundred stalls selling every possible variation of carved Jesus and other local crafts.  You do realise something about yourself when you find yourself pondering the merits of a hand-carved $100 chopping board.  I reckon it might not’ve fit too well with our baggage allowance, though.  

All the wooden crucifixes in various degrees of horrific detail a man could ask for

Food-wise, they are all about the green chile around here.  I came here looking for a green chile cheeseburger and there is fearsome local competition among the local restaurants to produce the definitive example.   

Behold all ye mighty and despair

I managed to inadvertently eat green chile for three successive meals, including the above beast. I approve, and so does Gaviscon.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Santa Fe war heiß, aber erträglicher als Laughlin. Die Leute da kochten alles mit grünem Chiles. Das gefiel mir aber nicht so viel meinen Bauch.

Top Geysers

We’re a week or so beyond Yellowstone, but I just wanted to say a few words on geysers, since G covered the beasties.

There are only a couple of places in the world where you can find geysers:  Yellowstone Park is home to more than half of them (other places are Chile, Russia, New Zealand and Iceland), which was a surprise. I only knew of Old Faithful and that other one that has been polluted by the coins (and although pollution is of course really bad we all secretly think it is improved).
Apparently when tales of the geysers were first told back in the East they were disbelieved and it was the presence of the geysers not the wildlife which led to Yellowstone becoming the first national park.
Beneath Yellowstone lurks the Yellowstone Caldera which is a cauldron caused by the collapse of a super-volcano and which is the source of all the bubbles and eruptions. I’m told an eruption is not likely (maybe in 100,000 years)  but when it does come it will be near apocalyptic for life within dead far and will have a significant effect on the world climate. Yellowstone is the biggest supervolcano in the world and when it last erupted 2 million years ago it was about 10,000 times as big as the 1980 St Helens eruption. Beneath the park is a giant pulsating chamber of magma which is 6 miles deep and 55 miles by 20 miles. There are also about 1000 to 3000 earthquakes every year (Now re-read this paragraph imagining Morgan Freeman narrating and try to restrain yourself from rushing out to Tesco express and stocking up on bottled water and tins of sardines).



The history of Yellowstone is a history of learning how to manage a National Park and –more importantly- how the idiocy and selfishness of the public cannot be underestimated. Old Faithful, for example, used to have a cone on the top but visitors broke bits off to take home and now it is gone. One of the geysers has stopped working because people threw their handkerchiefs into it to watch them erupt out, and then they threw rocks in and now it is blocked up with frickin rocks. People have also climbed into the geysers for a warm sit-sit, brain not thinking about the source of the hots until the split second before they got fried to a crisp (like in one of Pierce Brosnan’s finest vehicles: Dante’s inferno).

I wish I could say that we have moved beyond all of that but the advent of smart phones and selfie sticks has brought a whole new shade of stupid. I witnessed a guy trying to take a closer picture of the geyser by pushing the phone over it on the end of a selfie stick- not sure he really wanted a $700 iFried but obviously the brain was on vacation too.
We stayed at the Old Faithful Inn which is home to Old Faithful who erupts every 90 minutes (give or take about 10 minutes). 

So where are these 400+ geysers? Everywhere! Lots of them are in areas that you can walk through for a few miles and see several but others are just happily bubbling away at the side of the road.  Pretty they are but it was, on occasion, like being on the edge of the bog of eternal stench.

         

Hot springs create different water temperature environments. As the water gradually cools it creates lower temperature environments ideal for different species of algae and bacteria- the different colours represent different species each requiring a different temperature environment



Geysers are hot springs that periodically erupt. They are then grouped into two categories cone geysers (narrow openings/ vents which act like a nozzle spouting water) and fountain geysers (water collects in a wide opening/vent before and during eruption)

          

          

The hottest of Yellowstone’s geothermal features are fumaroles (steam vents).They rapidly boil away what little water they contain and release steam and other gases forcefully (and often noisily) from underground.



And finally not forgetting the mudpots:

These make exactly the idiotically amusing noises that you would expect.