After days of nothing but rocks, we ascended into a lush green forest in the sky.
A name change for the Rockies may be in order. If you’re looking for rocks, stay in Utah. That state has all the rocks you will need in many lifetimes, in every size and shape. As you drive east from Moab, the red cliffs and slickrock domes gradually give way to a flat, copper-colored desert, then a slightly greener plateau. You link up with the Colorado River — which is looking a little sad these days — as I-70 squeezes into Glenwood Canyon.
It’s hard to tell exactly when, but at a certain point, you realize you’re not in the desert anymore. There are still rocks, but they no longer protrude out of the bare ground in alien formations. Instead, they tower over the road. And they are no longer covered in sand and dust, but lush forests. Utah might as well be a million miles away. You’re in the Rocky Mountains now.
We decided to cut down from the main interstate toward Aspen, deep into the alpine landscape. An old friend of mine is working the summer for White River National Forest just outside the famous ski town. He was kind enough to show us around for the evening. The forest is home to the Maroon Bells, which are apparently the most photographed mountains in the United States. Now, I can understand why.
In the valley below the Bells, the wildlife has gotten acclimated to visitors. Foxes sit a few feet away from picnic tables, waiting for someone to leave food behind. Geese say hello to young children. The deer in Iowa will freeze or bolt at the first sign of human beings. Here, they hardly bother. Enjoying one another’s company in the cool mountain air takes priority.
Aspen is adorable, by the way. If we thought Sun Valley in Idaho was posh, we hadn’t seen anything yet. The wooden, ski-town aesthetic dresses up luxury clothing and designer watch stores. No structure may exceed the height of the trees, keeping the mountains front and center.
A thunderstorm chased us out of the forest for the night, but the region needed some rain. It kindly refilled the nearby streams for our next day of driving. We were told we must not jump into the Devil’s Punch Bowl — a popular yet deadly stone pool carved out by the Roaring Fork River — so we just strolled along the shore.
Again, these Rocky Mountains don’t appear terribly rocky. The town of Aspen is named after the tree. Linked together as one entity by a sprawling network of roots, Colorado’s aspen trees are among the largest living organisms in North America. Each tree is a genetic clone of its neighbors, so all of them change colors with the seasons at exactly the same time. Had we come in autumn, they would have been a warm red and yellow. In the early summer, we had to settle for a twinkling green.
Classic pine trees are the other masters of the Rocky Mountains. They are, however, susceptible to avalanches.
The highest elevations in Colorado are in the mountains along Independence Pass. True to its name, it passes over the Continental Divide, which runs through North America. Here is a glimpse from a winding curve in the road with a fairly steep drop.
Even in the summertime, it gets cold enough up there to sustain traces of snowfall. It’s difficult to breathe up there. My eyes watered, and my ears did not appreciate the air pressure. Still worth the climb.
Walk down the trail a bit toward the mountainside, and you can try to absorb what you have traversed to reach such great heights.
My apologies to the Twin Lakes; we could only manage a drive-by. Still, they did their darndest to try to make us stop and sit on the beach for a while.
We had to pause in Leadville, one of my late grandmother’s favorite small towns. What a strange mixture of liberal living toward conservative ends — clearly a crunchy, hipster enclave. We stepped inside an outdoor apparel shop with the only in-house textile mill I’ve ever seen. Witness the worn faces of reshored American manufacturing.
We were due in Denver, so we had to push forward. My mother quickly discovered that it was a mistake to let me drive the last leg. Apparently, the high altitude causes car brakes to not work so well unless adjusted — and the brakes on my California sedan certainly were not. (I had never before seen a designated stretch of sand pit for runaway semitrucks to careen into.) Also, I-70 into Denver is not exactly full of calm and slow drivers.
We made it to the Mile High City alive, barely. I couldn’t say whether I had beaten the Rocky Mountains, or the mountains had beaten me.
This is an installment in a cross-country road-trip adventure.