A week in a geologic roto-tiller (I)
So what is a "geologic roto-tiller"? Well, that's the colorful description applied to the terrain of Yellowstone National Park by a reference work that I'll get back to later (and recommend). Emily and I spent most of the past week at Yellowstone, seeing extraordinary things and meeting extraordinary people, and I will report on the trip at length. This first installment, however, simply deals with getting there, which was not as straightforward as it might be ...
A quick geography tutorial for those not fortunate enough to live near Yellowstone (including yours truly, although we're working on it). This oldest, and IMO greatest, of national parks is tucked far into the northwest corner of the state of Wyoming, spilling over the state line just slightly into the neighboring states of Idaho and Montana. It's about 700 miles from our home in New Mexico as the crow flies. However, one cannot travel there via crow. Between Yellowstone and our home lies a great deal of wondrous and fearsome terrain -- mountains and canyons in north central New Mexico right close to home, the lofty jumble of the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, remote canyon country in northwestern Colorado and Utah, and finally, yet more canyons and mountains in Wyoming itself, including the justly famous Grand Teton National Park. One does not -- or at least should not -- take travel through this countyside lightly. There are basically three ways to get from here to there: go over it (flying, which wasn't feasible on this trip), around it (via the not-very-interesting Interstate highway system through the western fringe of the Great Plains to Denver and then diagonally across some of Wyoming's less interesting scenery), or through it.
We chose the "through" path for the trip north. (Side note: it would be nice if the PTB at WTE would build in a map-making, or at least -showing, capability so that routes could be shown here, rather than either described or kluged in from some map-making site. One picture of a map may not be worth quite a thousand words, but it'd still be an improvement on what I'm about to write.) The first part of the drive was straightforward, leading to and through the pleasant little mountain town of Durango (Colorado), where we paused for an adequate if unexceptional dinner at the Aspen Cafe on the road north -- American-meets-Mexican, routine stuff, but convenient and friendly. In a harbinger of things to come, we came close to losing our car(!) here. Durango is hilly, as one might expect from its location, and this restaurant sits atop a small hill with a steep drop-off right at the edge of its parking lot. The dumb fool driving into the lot (and I do not refer to my wife) didn't notice that the parking spot he chose was missing its little bumper, pulled forward, and durn near drove off the edge before noticing that something was amiss.
I wish I could show a photograph of the next leg of the journey, because it lay across one of the most spectacular mountain drives you'll find anywhere: US highway 550, the "Million Dollar Highway" connecting Durango and the tiny town of Ouray, where we spent the night. Unfortunately, we drove this stretch at night (which is a hairy experience because of the twists and turns in the road, but at least you don't see the depths of the chasm you're driving beside...) and in mediocre weather to boot, so we didn't do any photography. For a sense of what it's like, check out the Web Site du Jour: http://www.coloradobyways.org/ByWay.cfm?byWayIDpar=SAN20011203091122, describing the San Juan Skyway of which the Million Dollar Highway is the most famous part. After a night at the pedestrian but entirely satisfactory Ouray Chalet Inn, it was on to the north, where adventures described in my next blog entry await. One photo from this stage as a teaser, of the beautiful "Fourteener" (mountain with a summit elevation above 14,000 feet) Mount Sneffels rising above Ouray:
Mount Sneffels
Emily and I climbed this puppy almost 25 years ago, when she was pregnant(!) with our first child -- but that's a story for a different blog.
