Gold In Them Thar Hills!
Day two of our annular eclipse trip, with plenty of aspen gold
Photo ©2023, Steven Sande. Aspen on the way to Paonia, CO on the west side of McClure Pass.
The second day of our trip took us from near Carbondale to Ridgway (Colorado) over McClure Pass through Paonia, Delta, and Montrose. That wasn’t too long of a drive, but toward the beginning of it we were stopping a lot to grab photos of the scenery.
It was a perfect day — not a cloud in the sky, warm but not hot, and the aspen were in full glory. Other hillsides were blazing with reddish tinges from scrub oak, and the mountains had a dusting of snow.
We arrived in Ridgway a bit early for dinner, so we checked in at the Ouray KOA Holiday. This is a big campground in two sections, and like many high country campgrounds, they’re near the end of their season. There’s a small restaurant about a one-minute walk from our campsite, and this morning was the last day that they’ll be serving breakfast.
Our RV is in a nice long back-in site with a small canal behind it, and there was a grassy area where I could set up our Starlink satellite internet antenna. Yes, this place does offer Wi-Fi, but even the person at the check-in desk yesterday admitted that it is horrible. Starlink has been incredibly fast and stable, unlike when we used it in Yellowstone and Grand Teton on our last trip.
Back to yesterday — we wandered on a back road to Ridgway for dinner, only to find that most of the parking was occupied due to a Saturday afternoon Oktoberfest event called the San Juan Barrel Fest going on in a city park across from the restaurant we were going to. Fortunately, there was a handicap spot about a block away, and our RV “Heaven On Wheels” fit perfectly.
The restaurant was the True Grit Cafe. Ridgway is near where a lot of the 1968 John Wayne movie was filmed, and the restaurant bills itself as a “ranch to fork” eatery. That means that they use only beef from nearby ranches, and apparently we ate steaks from a steer that had spent most of the summer climbing mountains. The steaks were tasty, but really tough!
We sat outside at the cafe — the weather was quite nice, we could hear the music from the Barrel Fest (rock, not German “oompah” music), and the combination made for a leisurely and enjoyable early dinner.
Today (Sunday), we plan to take the RV over the “Million Dollar Highway” to Silverton and back. That’s one of the more “scary” drives in Colorado, but it’s also very scenic. Dinner will be in Ouray! Hopefully I’ll get some time in the next couple of days to “pre-flight” my camera and telescope for next Saturday’s eclipse.