End of the Road

So, I'm still kicking up dust on Last Dollar Rd, looking for new vistas and working my way around the western shoulder of the mountain headed for Montrose. The mountain backdrop here is the same as in the picture of the chalets west of Telluride, a southerly view, but the foreground and middle ground have changed. The scene could use some horses - or maybe some Longhorns - couldn't it?

Okay, here's another one with all the elements: the mountain at first glance appears to be a perfect cone; the snowcap is a nice touch; a traditional snake-rail fence just past the whatchamacallit trees; and the stand of aspens split by the road would give you some shelter from the wind. You could get excited about going home if you lived on Last Dollar Rd.

This, of course, is the same stand of aspens from the preceding picture. Here though, it's all about the light. It would even be nice to walk down this road. . .

I saw this fence and disliked it immediately. First of all, the rails aren't split - like they ought to be in my estimation - but it's more than that. After some consideration, I decided the posts ought to be vertical, irrespective of the slope at the side of the road. These posts appear to be perpendicular to the ground. What was that guy thinking? Not only does it offend my aesthetic sense but, commenting as an engineer, a significant portion of the weight of the fence is "working" to loosen the posts in the ground. But it's not my fence. . .

After a few bends in the road, you begin to anticipate what might lie beyond the next one. In this case, I was wondering when the road was going to start around the western end of the ridge and take me out of the San Miguel or Telluride Valley [I don't know what the locals call it]. As it turned out, just around this bend I found one more gravel drive before Last Dollar Rd turned into a tire-sucking quagmire, challenging all comers. Needless to say, I declined the challenge.

Last Dollar Road

If you'll remember, I told you I discovered Last Dollar Road on Google Earth, where someone had posted (and labled) a couple of very nice pictures which gave me the notion that I'd like to see what I could find up there. So, after cruising Main Street, I took the Airport Road up onto the mountain and found Last Dollar Rd just where it was supposed to be. Little traffic and lovely views.

If you look closely at the first three pictures, you'll see they were all taken of the same ridge and from the same general direction - if not the same spot in the road. Picture No.1 was taken looking north, along a fenceline toward a pair of pleasantly imposing tors with lines of aspens running down the slope in front. The fenceline and the lines of trees move your attention across the lower half of the picture in contrast to the mutually reinforcing masses of the two mountains.

In picture No. 2 the viewpoint has shifted around to the left as I moved farther along Last Dollar Rd. Note the two peaks from the previous picture are no longer perfectly aligned and neighboring peaks now share the spotlight. Note also that the sky has become more interesting as the afternoon clouds continue to increase. The fenceline might have been added simply for visual interest, considering the break with no gate and the fact that it seems to just stop 200 ft down the road [actually, it continues on, but curves back to the right, hidden by the slope]. In any case, it works fine for my purposes.

No. 3 was taken from the same location; I just shifted the focus to the right slightly. The clouds here are closer and somewhat more substantial than in the previous shots, giving me hope that before the day is out I'd have some much more interesting skies. I knew from an earlier trip that once I get out to Utah [the following day], where the scenery is monumental but visual detail is often baked out of pictures by an unrelenting sun, I was likely to need some interesting skies to help out my "rock shots".

Well, it's May so the snow is melting and, though the rivers were all running high, I didn't see as many streams washing down off the mountain as I had expected. Here's a nice, full, noisy one coming down, running under Last Dollar Rd and making its way south to join the San Miguel.

Telluride At Last! Sorta. . .

Finally made it to Telluride! Well, almost. This first shot is looking east from CO 145, looking up the valley towards the town, a mile or two up the road and hidden at the base of the mountains. Long and narrow, like the valley itself, the town's about ten streets wide and about three times longer, and bounded on its southern edge by the San Miguel River.

The town reminded me of Mainstreet, USA at Disneyland, as much as anything. Neat, clean, well kept. If I were a shopper, it's the kind of place I wouldn't mind spending the day wandering in and out of stores. It was, in a word, inviting.

Another shot, a hundred feet or so up the road from the previous one. This one highlights the San Miguel River, meandering back and forth across the valley floor. You'll find out sooner or later, so I may as well confess. . . after all the build-up, I didn't get any shots of the town itself. On my sole trip up and back down Main Street, I was keeping a lookout for pedestrians, which seemed prudent in light of their number, and avoiding the large volume of vehicular traffic, which moved slowly but steadily through town.

Here, you can see the western edge of town as I approached. Alongside the rode, hidden by those bushes at the center of the picture, was the local sherrif in his Jeep, whose presence there slowed the incoming traffic right down. Very effective. Like I said in the first of these posts, I'd give the town of Telluride an "A" or even "A+".

This one was taken looking south from Airport Road and shows a few of the chalets and such for the skiing public. I must admit, I didn't see anything like the ski runs I saw years ago in Red River, NM. But I trust they're around somewhere; this place is way too cool to be a hoax.