On our departure morning, the 25th of Sept., the sunlight was bright and the foliage was brilliant. At one point the glow from the aspens surrounding the road in tight formation was so bright that it hurt my eyes. But who wants to distort the color with sunglasses? Not me! E, the driver, just had to do it, though. Going upward to Slumgullion Pass was simply an ethereal experience that morning....I search for words to describe it, and fail.
We stopped at the overlook above San Cristobal Lake for one last look, and though even these enhanced pix don't do it justice, it's a small clue to what the naked eye really sees. Many of the scenes prompted our comment, "You just can't capture this in a photo, it will have to be another beautiful memory in our minds."
Further down the road, the Rio Grande Valley that lies below Spring Creek Pass and onward toward Creede provided another colorful palette, a little different, large ranch meadows making the scene more pastoral (I started to say "bucolic", have been dying to use that word, but pastoral is more appropriate). The meadows are threaded with twining, twisting streams and surrounded by sweeping, golden and red mountainsides that terminate in rocky precipices backlit by a clear, deep blue sky.
Up and over Wolf Creek Pass, we drive through familiar territory full of memories of previous summers spent camping around this area. In Pagosa Springs, we stop at Tequila's for lunch, a peaceful respite as we watch the San Juan River tumble over boulders just below the hot springs location. As we reminisced about our times in Pagosa, we talked about the Happy Camper campground where we met the owner Rick, and Spike (with the bottomless Jack Daniels bottle), Carl & Joanna (email moniker is "goatroper"!?!), our evenings in the Bear Creek Saloon, our breakfasts at Victoria's Parlor, our dinners at the HogsBreath, our hikes above the Piedre River and on Wolf Creek Pass, our fishing in Echo Canyon Lake, and finally....our dip in the hot springs pools when we swear we stayed overnight in the Best Western across the street. This becomes noteworthy because we just can't figure out under what circumstances we stayed at that motel, given that we always were in a camper up until this year. But we both swore we actually did stay in the motel, and concluded that we've just been running so fast and furious for the past almost 8 years we can't remember every detail.
More trip home stuff to come, stay tuned, have to get some breakfast into our bellies!