Jack and I are headed home! We are driving down one of my favorite roads in Arizona: route 191. This road goes from I-40 all along the eastern border of Utah and continues south through the mesas of Arizona down into the mountains of Arizona. We just past the 500 mile marker and are surrounded by peach color earth, green sage brush and rounded rock that is actually petrified sand dunes.
This is now Navajo territory and there are small settlements every so often with little homes, hogans and trailers. Today we have a backdrop of very dark skies and distant signs of rain. Soon we will pass through Chinle, home of great weavers and Canyon de Chelly: a fabulous Navajo park with magnificent canyons, rock formations (like spider woman) and many interesting stories. We are now passing through the town of Rock Point and had to slow down. Good thing: a goat slowly meandered across the road.
But let me return to where we left off a week ago (August 2) as we left Durango and headed across the mountains!
Leaving Durango, we headed North across the San Juan Mountains to an elevations of over 11,000 feet with mountains over 13,000 feet next to us. This is beautiful evergreen territory with tremendous trees and tremendous drops over the side of the road. In the winter, this is wonderful ski territory. At the top, we pass beautiful lakes and very little sign of civilization. Then we head down. Down into Silverton, an old mining town that now boasts a small stop for the old time steam train.
Then, heading north again-and up- and then down- we head to Ouray-a larger mining town that now is a hot spring tourist destination. My memory of Ouray was driving there in my jaguar and using up my breaks heading down into town, fearful that I would be stuck in Ouray and not be able to drive on to Aspen! (Fortunately, my breaks cooled off and I was fine). The colors of the rock in this area are exquisite with orange, copper, bronze with the evergreen background.
Out of Ouray, we head north and then east across plains growing corn and alfalfa, coal mining towns (actively producing coal now) and fruit trees such as cherry and peach. Then our final ascent over the mountains that we will gaze upon from the other side when we arrive in Aspen, Snowmass and Basalt: the roaring fork valley.
We cross McClure Pass at about 8000 feet and watch Capital Peak and Maroon Bells at over 14,000 feet. Coming down into the Redstone area, we follow a creek that has magnificent red stone around it. One more hour of driving through increasingly settled (gentrified) valley and we arrive in Snowmass-our home for the Aspen Family business Gathering where we settle into work for the next 5 days.
Deer we met on the way to David's!
After the conference (during which Jack had the opportunity to golf) we went up to the mountains of Basalt where we had a great view of Mount Sopris and stayed two nights at the home of my business partner David Bork. His exquisite “log cabin” was our guesthouse while I worked Monday with a client on the same l00 acre “neighborhood”.
Tuesday morning, we took off to head home.
Our route yesterday took us west through Glenwood Springs, Colorado, along the Colorado River onto highway 40 straight west to the Utah border. The road passes through a beautiful canyon along the river. As we come out of the mountains, we hit the plains and open highway. Once in Utah, he take a favorite scenic bypass, route 128 that heads southwest to Moab, home of Arches National Park. Here we are in desert without much interesting to see geologic or vegetation-wise.…at least for a moment.
(By the way, as I write, we hit the rain~ the desert around us is getting covered with water, lightning is striking not to far away and the landscape now looks muddy and blurry).
Soon, the river appears in the distance—well not actually the river, but rocks, trees clustering along the rocks and ultimately we see the river that gives sustenance to the trees. The canyon deepens and the red rocks surrounding them give us hints that we are entering the Moab region with the most magnificent rock formations in the world. We continue to drive along this now breathtaking route surrounded by walls of carved red rock, the Colorado river (again) and green vegetation and farms. We stop at a small resort along the river, Sorrel Ranch, for a lunch along the river.
We had passed Sorrel ranch over the years, but never stopped. We found it to be quite a lovely property. The log cabin hotel units were situated on grass along the river. The guests, who largely came from Europe this year, enjoy horseback riding, rafting on the river or sitting by the pool. It didn’t seem very crowded at lunchtime, but we were told the guests are mostly out enjoying recreation.
After lunch, we continue to drive along the river and through the rock until we hit 191 in Moab, head south towards our stop for the night in Bluff. 191 as I mentioned earlier, is a great road. The diverse landscape we are about to see for the next 90 miles includes not only the red rocks, but open plains on which you can see forever, forested areas and outcroppings of rock close and far away. The color changes to grey or orange or brown. Not much in the way of towns—we stop at one “trading post” mostly to stretch our legs and visit with a woman in her 70s who is running the shop. She lets us know that the summer has been a little slow due to the price of gas. We press on to hit Bluff where a couple of favorite trading posts and our stop for the night await us.
We know we are getting close to Bluff when the open prairie changes into some large rocks, a slope downward through the rocks and voila! Cow County Trading post on the left and Twin Rocks on the right. Some years ago. I got to know the owners of both of these trading posts. Cow County is in an old adobe building (actually two) and has very old cars sitting outside as landmarks. Two years ago, we discovered that they served dinner and had fabulous food. Across the street at Twin Rocks, the owners-a family of 3 boys and 2 girls, have a larger building with the trading post and restaurant. The owner I got to know, Steve Simpson, is also an attorney. We chatted about family businesses and last year he called me to work with a client of his. So we had invited his wife and him to dinner while we were “in the neighborhood.”
Over dinner at the only other restaurant in town (a western style steak house) we learned that the other trading post we stopped at earlier today belongs to Steve’s parents and the woman we met was his mother! The motel we were staying at belongs to his sister and her husband. Talk about a family town!! As we visited, we learned that Steve’s wife comes from a long line of traders as well. However, today, the trading posts are really stores that buy products rather than trade for materials as had been the custom. We discussed the way of life where they live over the trading post, the kids learning to buy, sell and appreciate the quality of art they buy from the Navajo artists in the area. We chose to eat “out” so that they weren’t surrounded by family and employees in their own restaurant.
That was an enjoyable evening and was a nice way to end our voyage.
I have always enjoyed getting to know the families along the way and it was a treat to be able to deepen a friendship like this. We found out that they would be taking their kids out of school and traveling with them over the next year, schooling them along the way. The kids will be doing their own travelog, posted on the Twin Rocks website. Seems to be a developing literary genre!
And so, the skies are clearing, the temperature is warming up again and soon we will be home in Scottsdale where we will once again embrace the summer…
Ciao! Leslie
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