Steamboat Springs, Colorado
October 4, 2020
Getting these posts a bit out of order due to being off the grid since Friday evening. This post documents my drive from Golden to Steamboat Springs on Friday. I wrote the text Friday night.
🤙🤙🤙🤙🤙
A pretty great day - other than not sleeping too well at the hotel. Have I already adjusted to sleeping in the tent/truck?
It was nice to have time this morning to organize the truck. After only a week. Perhaps I will apply “put it back where I got it” in my next life. It is quite helpful to have less stuff to deal with. It felt good to take a hot shower and to wash my clothes.
My hotel was in Golden which in turns out is near Morrison, Colorado. Why is that important? Red Rocks Amphitheater is located there. Hoping I could get a peek, I drive six miles. Turns out Red Rock’s is part of a Denver park. Along with perhaps 400 people, I walked into the venue. Wow. I need to go to a concert there. Very intimate.
I headed back to Golden to drive through the town. It’s a college town and home to the Coors brewery which is right there in the town. I thought Golden was going to be a town tucked away remotely in the Rockies. While they say it’s 12 miles from Denver, it sure seemed to me that they are effectively one now.
I need to comment on the well-being of the people of Denver. They were out em mass today cycling, running, walking. Red Rocks was full of young and old hiking stairs. I saw hundreds of cyclists scaling inclines that I would have had to get off my bike and walk up. I’m not a big fan of the word “very,” but it was very inspirational.
Google Maps told me my journey to Steamboat would be about four hours using blue highways. I was glad to avoid the rush of Interstate 70. As I wrote about in March, that road is a wonderful of engineering and construction, but the blue roads offer a lot of sights that those on the interstate don’t even know their missing.
My route took me on US 6 which followed a good size stream through a tight valley with walls of rock on both sides. If you are susceptible to motion sickness, this road would have set you on edge. Curves left, right, left. I then got on Colorado 191 — I remember because I was not prepared for what I would see on this road. In the towns of Black Hawk and Central City, dozens of casinos. These were old mining towns and to casinos apparently were the answer to their economic decline. It was so bizarre I didn’t even think to stop and take photos. In a demonstration of “reversion to the mean” the people I saw walking the streets offset the healthiness I saw in Denver.
I lost track of the other roads that bobbed and weaved around Interstate 70. Small towns - perhaps mining towns - that had seen better days.
Eventually I got into US 40 and what a treat that was. Dramatic views as the road climbed and descended and climbed and descended the Rockies. Colorado doesn’t see the use of elevation signs but my handy app told me I was above 10,000 feet a couple of times. Unfortunately it was an overcast day so my
photos aren’t as dramatic as they might have been.