We nearly get washed away in mud slide!!!
Trip Start
Apr 18, 2007
1
120
173
Trip End
Oct 16, 2007
Ouray,
Colorado,
United States
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
We returned to our room and tried to sort out a trip on the Durango&Silverton steam railroad - we're not there yet, more later maybe. Our plan was to visit Telluride - a skiing village around the other side of the mountain. It allegedly got its name from the bandits and thieves who after committing their crimes dashed off up the valley into the hills shouting "to hell I ride" - but whilst a great story and play on words the truth is it was called Colombia but altered its name to avoid confusion with a similarly named town in California
"River"
. The name Telluride is based on a chemical used in gold extraction.Here's a piece from the town's web-site:
A Brief History of Telluride
Used as a summer camp for centuries by Ute Indians and named by Spanish explorers in the 1700's, the San Juan Mountains lured fortune seekers to Colorado with visions of silver and gold. By the mid-1870's, the Sheridan Mine was the first in a string of local claims and a tent camp was established in the valley below. Originally called Columbia, the rowdy mining camp became a town in 1878, and changed its name to Telluride.
With the coming of the railroad in 1890, the remote boomtown flourished. A melting pot of immigrants seeking their fortunes turned Telluride into a thriving community of 5,000. Prosperity abounded and Telluride was full of thrilling possibilities. But when silver prices crashed in 1893, followed by the First World War, the mining boom collapsed. Miners moved on and the town's population gradually dwindled from thousands to hundreds. In the 1970's, Telluride reinvented itself. Legendary powder - a different sort of gold - was being mined
Clearing the road
. When the Telluride Ski Resort opened in 1973, the character of the community changed, and the town spun back into high gear.We walked around and found a free gondala which goes over the mountain to Mountain Town (a newly created ski-resort) - fantastic views and excellent warm sunny, weather when we got the other side. We wandered around and found a bar where we made ourselves very comfortable gazing at the mountains and watching the clouds darken over towards Telluride.
As we were on 2 hour parking we had to go back and re-parked going into a restaurant to enjoy a tuna sandwich before dashing back to the car as the rain started.
We'd gone through extensive road-works on the way up the mountain where they were trying to prevent the rock face on the left of the car from collapsing onto the road - at times we had to wait for a convoy. They don't seem to like traffic lights preferring to employ two people with walkie-talkies to organise the two-way system.
We drew up behind a mega-queue to go through the first set of road-works ok and then were stuck in another line
Library in Ouray
. After a while we moved off just as the rain turned to heavy rain and then large hail!!! MJ commented that he was glad we were in a slow-moving line of traffic when the car in front veered-over as a red deluge of rock and mud came sliding into our road lane (fortunately it was single-file at the time but both lanes were clear on this piece of road). We followed suit and soon came to a halt as the hail intensified and the traffic in from had stopped (also all on the wrong side of the road). Nothing much happened for a while and the mud slide slowed as the hail/rain stopped. After a while the traffic moved on a little and we saw large boulders in the road, the road away from the rock face was now turning into a red, muddy stream and we could see the mud building up behind the rear tyres of the car in front. None of this is made up - it was amazing how it all went from sunny day to disaster-movie in about 45 minutes.
Basically we had to wait while all the earth-movers they were using to shore up the road further along were used to shift rocks, boulders and thick mud from the road. When we got going again after about 45 minutes (and another rain storm) we found out that further down it must have completely blocked the road for 200m or so.
Mud Slide
We drove back in overcast clouds with lightening all around (but far away over the mountain tops) and didn't get back until 6pm. Somehow after months of baking, hot sun weather a few thunderstorms and rain seem a welcome break - if it was the beginning of a 2 week holiday we'd probably we miffed, especially as it seems like a week of thunderstorms is forecast for SW Colorado. We think we're in "monsoon" season where they get a lot of rain in mid/late August.
Our plans are to stick around this area for a while as we understand that Texas and Oklahoma won't be a scenic and we'll do an Interstate dash through them later on our way back to Florida.
In the evening we visited "The Outlaw" where we had an excellent (and much needed) steak meal and got speaking with Garry and Kathy Giddens. MJ had noticed Garry on the next table becasue he had a superb Huckleberry Hound accent. We swapped stories about the mud-slide. and found them very good company.
We're about two thirds through the trip now and we've done 12,000 miles.
