Rocky Mountain High

Back from Colorado, tired but refreshed.

My love of the West grows with each trip: Route 66, Yellowstone, and now the San Luis Valley and Wolf Creek Pass, in the south-central section of the Rocky Mountain State.

Katie's family - her dad, her three brothers, her sister - were all so warm and welcoming. We didn't pay a thing for room, and spent pennies on food and gas.

There were sections of highway 12 where you could smell the state - what Colorado says to the senses, in its beauty and isolation and deep valleys. Last year I only drove through, stopping briefly to sleep in Grand Junction. But along the eastern front of the mountains, there's a mix of New Mexico, Montana, and outlaw country that I've never experienced before.

I took plenty of pictures, but they hardly do the tug of gravity any kind of sensible justice. Scaling death-inducing cliffs, or tasting a down-from-the-mountain stream, or scrambling up the tallest sand dunes in North America - it's a true sense of the American frontier spirit that I took home (with some beer stained clothes, granite, a newly designed web site, and a sunburn).

See you next time, Colorado.