8/11/2021
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Alas, I seem to be running out of vacation time, so I
guess it’s time to head home. I’ve seen some beautiful Colorado mountain towns,
traversed a gnarly mountain pass via 4x4 Jeep, driven through some sky-high
mountain passes of my own, watched one of my best friends get married, and seen
all three possible landmarks in southwestern Nebraska. Not bad, for a quick
trip! I’ve still got one more stop before I return myself to Texas, though:
Santa Fe, NM.
I had two ways to get to Santa Fe from Scottsbluff. The
first: the highways of the Front Range, home to soaring spectacular views of
the Rockies and about 3 million people all trying to go up and down the highway
at once. The second: the tiny two-lane Highway 71, which spans the flattest,
most boring part of Colorado, and consequently is traveled by absolutely no
one.
Now, given that the Front Range ranks among the worst air
quality in the world right now due to smoke from the PNW fires piling up against
the Rockies (ask me how it makes sense for it to end up piled on the lee side
of the mountains, but that’s air currents for you I guess), this was actually a
very easy decision to make. Travel a very smoky, view-less road with a billion
other people, or travel a very smoky, view-less road with no other people.
Highway 71 it is!
I departed Nebraska at a time when the weather was
actually clearing, so I got some cool views of the bluffs on my way out that I
had missed on my way in.
But then I crossed into eastern Colorado… and, well, it
looks like this:
Here’s the thing: many people don’t know it, but more than
a third of Colorado (the eastern third, if you haven’t guessed) is actually
awful. It might as well be western Kansas, and I cannot for the life of me
figure out who decided to draw the state boundaries where they did. It would
just make way more sense for all of the flat terrible corn fields to belong to
Kansas. But I guess Colorado needs some agriculture of its own, so here it is:
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| Literally miles of dirt |
Really, it’s kind of remarkable how FLAT it is. Even
Kansas has more hills than this! It seems almost as if the Colorado Rockies
soar to vast heights and swoop to deep valleys entirely to compensate for the
featureless flatlands adjacent to them. And in a way, the dullness of the eastern
topography plays counterpoint to the drama of the west, amplifying the impact
of the mountains. Certainly, it makes for an increasingly interesting and
exciting drive as you move from east to west – something that I discovered the
few times I traveled between North Carolina and Colorado.
The problem, unfortunately, was that I was traveling
neither east nor west today. I was traveling north to south. And that meant
that I was trapped in this drab doldrum belt for… oh, about 6 hours. Not that
long in the grand scheme of things, but certainly long enough for madness to
start to set in.
Well, probably the madness was already there. I mean, I’ve
driven 9 hours straight across West Texas – a similarly wastelandy-feeling voyage
– so many times I’ve lost count. And I keep doing it, every year, so I must be
insane. Whatever.
All this to tell you that I took very few pictures today,
because all of the pictures looked the same:
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| Wow! Incredible! |
Fortunately, as I neared the New Mexican border, things did
begin to improve a bit. With the sun low in the sky, the golden hour
approaching, and the haze nearly completely dissipated, even wide grassy flatlands
started to look nice again. You know, for as much as I remarked on Nebraska’s
endless oceans of grass – I was never really complaining, because they were
beautiful and had some topography to them. Rolling hills and bluffs and the
like. It’s a lot harder to make a completely flat grass field look nice in a
photo.
Finally, the flatlands gave way to hillier country. The
haze lifted entirely, and those big fluffy clouds so characteristic of a New
Mexican summer finally made a reappearance. Bluffs intersected by craggy
ravines slid by in a blur, blending with the patchy scrub of the southern Great
Plains.
As much as I love the craggy mountains of Colorado, I always
feel more at home in this terrain. This is a space big enough for a vintage American
car, a space where all that personality and drama and power can burst free and
run wild. No slowing for other travelers or twisty, confining narrow mountain
passes. No tedious traffic, no need to keep things quiet and contained. Out
here, we can be as loud as we want – indeed, the landscape almost seems to
demand it. It is a landscape that feels solid – not a constantly shifting,
whispering ocean, as the plains of Nebraska are, where your own self can
disappear into the void without a trace; but a place that calls you to be
present, to feel the sun on your skin, the rocks under your feet, the wind
across your face, and to see all of the subtle variances within those traces
that speak of a complex world. This is the kind of place where the open road pulls
you forward, always onward to some new intriguing sight right on the cusp of
the horizon. And so onward we went.
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| Could it be...? Mountains in the distance?? Some actual topography to cross??? |
We closed out the afternoon with a drive through Raton
Pass into New Mexico. It always seems a bit silly, to me, that this pass is
named and carefully marked. It’s a fairly low elevation pass, with very gentle
ramps leading to and from it that make it seem more of just a large hill. In
comparison to all other Colorado passes, it’s as gentle as a lamb. But I guess
it still is a pass, and maybe it’s a fairly sizeable one for New Mexico. Regardless,
we cruised our way through, enjoying the beautiful scenery, and then posted up
in a small hotel in Raton on the other side of the pass.
I suppose I could have made it to Santa Fe all in one
day. But truthfully, I just didn’t feel like driving 9+ hours all in one go to get there. Guess I must be
getting old. Well, that, and lodging is substantially cheaper here, and I happen to know from experience that the Raton Microtel has really, really nice rooms.
So until tomorrow’s adventures… Kelly signing out.
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