A drive through some of the most beautiful scenery you can imagine to reach the old mining town of Silverton, which is on a plateau surrounded by mountains. We drop down into the town, and the whole place is picture postcard 1900 houses, with the snow piled in the middle of the main street to clear the road. It was so surreal, snow all around with Sun beating down, air temperature was about 68F, and more skidoos around than cars.
The next leg after leaving Silverton was to be the best yet, we knew the road was open, because a Greyhound bus went the same way just before we set off. Occasionally there were crawler lanes, but space dictates that it not always possible so if anything was behind, it was a case of “hard luck”. The climbs were quite steep, and at one time we were down to 17mph for about 4 miles, but we made it to the top of Red Mountain at about 12000 ft.
We have run out of words to describe what we see, and will probably have to use the American expression of “awesome”, because that is what this mountain range is, and of course the icing on the cake is that we are seeing them at their best when they are covered in snow.
Finally started to descend and bottomed out at Ouray, turned the corner and in the middle of town is a hot spring. The opportunity would probably never happen again so stopped off for an hour, bathing in the natural hot water, surrounded by snow, traffic, steep mountains and the occasional Elk. Then a virtually flat road to Montrose.
Two reasons for coming here, to get into and experience the Rockies first hand, and the other to accept the invitation to visit Danny and Ginger. Way back in Texas Danny had fixed the bike, and we had all got on very well, it was like a prodigal returning to the fold. Lovely house with plenty of room to park the RV, even has a full hook-up at the side of the garage. A few bottles seem to become depleted, and I am afraid I cannot comment on the rest of the evening, it seems I have a mental block for some reason.
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