The Continent Divided

Today we had a great trip. We drove though Creede between two sheer cliffs and up a canyon full of old mine structures and equipment. It was cloudy when we left but the sun quickly warmed everything up and it turned out to be a beautiful day. The trip was a little more challenging for the 4 wheeling impaired. On a scale of 1-10, trails are rated by their difficulty. A 10 should only be attempted by the most experienced drivers and they should expect vehicle damage! Well, we are not at that level! We don't expect to damage our Jeep or ourselves. The trail today might be a 5. We drove through beautiful valleys and climbed up to the top of a mountain on the Continental Divide. We had views where we could see as far as tomorrow! We were very close to 13,000 feet above sea level. There were scattered patches of snow, wild flowers and beautiful skies. It was a little windy on top so we decided to go down to a more sheltered area for lunch. We pulled out our picnics, opened our folding chairs and basked in the sun and the mountain air. What a great day!

Today's trip was steeper and rockier than we had experienced. We forded several streams but the water was very shallow and the bottoms were rocky. We encountered mud puddles but they were mostly water, not so much mud so they did not present a problem. The rocks in the road were the biggest hazard as there were many places that we could have hit bottom had we chosen a poor path through them. Fortunately our Jeep has protective plates on the underside to protect vulnerable running gear like the engine, transmission and gas tank. We weren't anxious to test how well these plates work. Several folks had minor scrapes on rocks but nothing serious enough to break anything.

Tomorrow we have a respite from the trails and will probably go prospecting or rock hounding to see if we can find any unusual rocks like we don't have enough weight in our home on wheels already! I did find a few leaf fossils in some sandstone near the park. Hopefully we will find a better specimen if we spend more time with our hammers and chisels.

We have met lots of new folks and expect we will encounter some of them again in our travels. One couple knows a couple at our resort in Arizona, what a small world!