Aspens are lovely even after the leaves have dropped.
I set out westward this morning determined to pay more attention to the map and avoid navigation errors, and all went well as i wandered westward on US 50. I caught the critical turns south at Montrose and on CO 62 west at Ridgway but discovered a flaw in the map at Placerville, where the map clearly shows CO 62 t-boning into CO 145.
It doesn’t.
You have to take a 90 degree left turn off 62 to go southeast toward Telluride on 145. And if you do that, you’ll pass through Placerville about a mile down the road. If you keep going straight on 62 expecting to run into Placerville, you’ll be on 145 heading northwest toward Norwood, which i did. And then after fifteen miles turned around and ran past the sign to Telluride again, going the other direction. Well, see, there was major road construction with traffic taking turns on the one open lane, and the sign faded into the background noise. When i finally got onto 145 toward Telluride, i discovered that all the motels in Placerville were closed, and i got all the way to Dolores before i found one open a few minutes after dark. The Outpost Motel and RV Park.
Here it is the next morning.
On this trip i’ve been stopping fairly often for coffee and bathroom breaks as well as for meals. So of course i’ve been passing in front of many television screens. Colorado is a swing state, so every time i glanced at a screen, somebody was explaining how either Obama or Romney was the spawn of Satan. We’ve been missing a lot in California.