Exploring Colorado...traveler beware!

So last weekend we had a couple of days off of work. My coworker Elizabeth and I decided to explore a little bit of Colorado in the area around Lake City where we're working all summer. I have been looking forward to all kinds of road trips this summer. Especially around New Mexico and the National Parks of Utah.

Given that we only had a day and a half free, we decided to make a quick trip of the area. There was a road at the end of town that read 28 miles to Ouray. On the map Ouray looked pretty cool, well, there was a hot springs at least and that was enough for us! And being only 28 miles away, it sounded perfect.

So off we went, driving out of Lake City for 10 miles or so. The road was slow, as many Colorado mountain roads are (they're narrow dirt roads with massive drop offs and no guard rails). I can handle that though, I have a great little Toyota Tacoma pickup which I call Taco for short. Besides, nothing can be worse than the follies of the Alaska road system I'm sure.

At about mile 11, the road became increasingly worse; bad enough that we actually turned around because we thought it couldn't possibly be a road anymore. It was like it suddenly turned into a hiking trail, foot traffic seemed fine, but vehicular traffic seemed out of the question. A few bikers passed us at this point (motorcyclists that is). They assured us that this was indeed the road to Ouray, and that my Taco would make it just fine. Well alright then. We turned around and headed back up the hiking trail slash road. Oh how I wish I would have listened to my instinct! Turns out this was Engineer Pass- a road notorious for four wheeler traffic and Jeeps- stunningly beautiful, but terrifying. I can't believe people actually think it's ok to drive a car on this thing. I was terrified going over massive rocks on gravelly road with the constant fear that I would spin out at any moment, go over the cliff and find an early death. I'm not exaggerating, I was really terrified. Everyone around here says I'm pretty weak for this. I have never considered myself a wus, but there it is. Perhaps if I knew before hand what I was getting into it would have been different. But the truth be known that I do not ever wish to drive this pass again in my life. However, it was incredible.

Ah beautiful day. This did make the trip worth it, almost. Now that we had gotten to the pass, surely going down would be easy, and after going 14 miles in two hours we only had half way to go. Oh but wait, what feels so funny on my Taco, is that a flat tire I have?? Yes indeed, that is one massively flat tire. So we stop, get out and try to change it. It was here that I was happy this road was so narrow. No one could pass us, so they had to help. Thank goodness that two cars approached us within 10 minutes or so. There was no way we were getting those old lug nuts off of that tire!
That was one tough tire. Even with four large burly men it still took us two jacks, a lot of kicking and about 30 minutes to get on the spare and continue down the road. But finally we got it. Down the road we went. It wasn't any quicker, still treacherous and scary, but thank you Taco my dear friend for being such an awesome truck!
We did pass some awesome abandoned mining towns on the way down. These places are everywhere in Colorado. The mining here was just outrageous back in the day. They're pretty cool to walk around and imagine what life was like there 100 years ago.

So I guess the day did end well enough. Finally we made it to Ouray, though about 6 hours later than we had planned. Luckily we found some climbers on the way who recommended that we stay at Orvis Hot Springs. Turns out this was a 'clothing optional' hot springs resort. Well, we were hot, tired, and ready to relax. So you know how the saying goes....when in Rome!