Chapter 2:

In Which We Go Where Eagles Get Nosebleeds, and Marmots Wear Little Oxygen Tanks :)

From Utah we headed to what is truly my favorite area on the world - the San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado. There are many stunning and awe-inspiring mountain ranges, but even serious cognoscenti who know the Alps, the Himalayas, and the great mountain ranges of South America will tell you that the San Juans are special by any standard. I could not even begin to capture the beauty of this area in pictures, but here are a few nonetheless... this first shot is from a drive I did by jeep trail over a mountain pass from Ironton, just off Route 550 going into Ouray, to Silverton. The ponds are all from melted snow, but at that altitude (close to 14,000 feet) there is some snow year-round, so some of these little ponds are permanent, and have evolved as little isolated ecosystems with kinds of amphibians and fish that exist nowhere else. (Don't ask me how I know this. :))

If we had come just a few weeks later all kinds of mountain flowers such as Columbines would have been in bloom...anyway, you can see some of the old mining roads in the background. This area produced nearly half of all the gold and silver in the world, and God put it in the most unbelievably inaccessible spots. Many of the roads are still there, and are usable (barely) by jeeps and small off-road vehicles. Interestingly, geologists think that there is probably about as much gold and silver remaining here as has been mined since the late 1800's. There is still some active mining going on, and if precious metal prices go up, this may increase.

So what were we doing there? I am glad you asked. :) We were breathing the air, which puts to utter shame the stuff they call "air" on the coasts, loving God's mountains, and looking for ghost towns. There is something about ghost towns that I have always been drawn to; I am not entirely sure why. Part of it is the quiet and isolation. Maybe part of it is the lessons they teach about the impermanence of all that we are and do. At the very least, they make for great photos, and give me an excuse to drive a few thousand miles through awesome deserts and mountains, and see the earth as it came directly from the Artist's hands....

Ruthie standing by the sign at the summit, just after she threatened to kill me for trying to kill her by driving us up there. :) No guts, no glory! The car in the right of the picture isn't ours - it's a Chevy Suburban, which is MUCH too wide to be driving on the narrow ledges that pass for roads up there, one of which you can see if you look carefully on the left of the photo (We had just driven that one.)

Black Bear Pass - see the switchbacks going up the side? Does that look like fun, or what?? The trail is just barely wide enough for a regular jeep, and the switchbacks require very careful backing up if one is to avoid going over the side...this is known as one of the two hairiest jeep trails in Colorado.

...and this, Virginia, is what happens when you forget to look where you're going up there!! I found a shoe in that wrecked pickup.. still wondering what happened to the rest of whoever was driving it!