Winter Trip to Colorado

Last sum­mer, the kids planned a trip to the moun­tains to the resort town of Steam­boat Springs, Col­orado. They had been there two years ago and real­ly liked it.

In Octo­ber and Novem­ber, some states began to close due to quar­an­tine, and we start­ed to wor­ry about whether Col­orado would be open. Short­ly before the trip, the hotel sent a mes­sage that every­thing was fine, every­thing was oper­at­ing, they were expect­ing vis­i­tors, but a mask man­date was in effect in the city and hotel. Of course, they were expect­ing vis­i­tors; the whole town relies on tourism.

The ques­tion arose about how to get there. The town is locat­ed in the moun­tains in the north of the state, and dri­ving there with stops takes about 15 hours. To arrive in the moun­tains before dark, we need­ed to make an overnight stop in one of the cities along the way. We chose the route through New Mex­i­co to the town of Pagosa Springs in the south­west of Col­orado and decid­ed to stay there for two days to leave ear­ly in the morn­ing for our des­ti­na­tion. This was a new route that we hadn’t tak­en before.

As usu­al in win­ter, we rent­ed a car because we don’t own an all-wheel-dri­ve vehi­cle, which is almost essen­tial in the win­ter moun­tains. I have men­tioned before that we pick up the car at the air­port because there are many rental com­pa­nies con­cen­trat­ed there and a decent selec­tion of vehi­cles (unlike their city branch­es). Every year is a lit­tle adven­ture because you nev­er know what car you will get — you can book a car class in advance (for exam­ple, mini­van, SUV, truck), but you can’t reserve a spe­cif­ic car. In oth­er words, if we need an SUV, we book that cat­e­go­ry, but it includes sev­er­al types of vehi­cles (each com­pa­ny has its own selec­tion), and if we specif­i­cal­ly want a Chevro­let Tahoe, the chance is about 25% that we will get it.

This time we want­ed a Tahoe, but we end­ed up with a GMC Yukon, which is basi­cal­ly the same, except for some minor details. But it was big and all-wheel dri­ve — and that’s the most impor­tant thing. It’s unfor­tu­nate that in Phoenix, 95% of the time they issue cars with all-weath­er tires, but that’s some­thing we can manage 🙂

Ear­ly in the morn­ing on Decem­ber 18, Fri­day, we loaded the car with gro­ceries, skis, lug­gage, pil­lows, and blan­kets and set off along the famil­iar route to Payson, then head­ed toward New Mex­i­co, turn­ing north into Col­orado through Durango.

The land­scape in the areas we drove through in New Mex­i­co was quite bleak and des­o­late. On Fri­day, Mark had his last day before the hol­i­days, and the lessons were sup­posed to be 25 min­utes long, but the inter­net in these areas worked poor­ly. Mark wasn’t too upset about this and main­ly watched pre­vi­ous­ly down­loaded movies on his computer.

It was already dark when we arrived at the snowy town of Pagosa Springs. We had a reser­va­tion at a hotel (time­share) Wyn­d­ham. We love hotels in this chain because they have a kitchen with all the ameni­ties: a large refrig­er­a­tor, a stove, a nec­es­sary set of dish­es, a wash­er, and a dry­er; along with a cer­tain set of fur­ni­ture. The hotel was locat­ed in numer­ous cot­tages on the out­skirts of the town. Our room was in a sin­gle-sto­ry cot­tage, not far from the lakeshore.

December 19, Saturday.

In the morn­ing, when we woke up, it was a won­der­ful, sun­ny, pleas­ant­ly warm win­ter day. Snow lay every­where, and the snowy moun­tains were vis­i­ble in the dis­tance. We decid­ed to take a walk in the snow along the shore of the frozen lake and not go any­where since Vale still need­ed to study and sub­mit her work. Mark was rolling around and play­ing in the snow like a lit­tle kid.

In the evening, we spent a long time decid­ing which road to take next. We could have gone back a bit and trav­eled through Duran­go, but that would have added sev­er­al hours to our trip. We could take a more direct route for­ward, but as we read online, it was more dan­ger­ous. Appar­ent­ly, on this road, the climbs fre­quent­ly alter­nate with descents, mak­ing it dan­ger­ous for trucks, which often expe­ri­ence brake fail­ures because of this. Then we found reviews online stat­ing that the road had recent­ly been recon­struct­ed. If you dri­ve on it while adher­ing to the speed lim­its accord­ing to the road signs, trav­el is man­age­able. We decid­ed to take the short­er route, and we did not regret it.

December 20, Sunday.

The short road passed through the charm­ing cen­ter of Pagosa Springs. This is a small tourist town in Col­orado (about 2,000 peo­ple in 2010). It is locat­ed on a plateau with hot springs and is sur­round­ed by moun­tain peaks to the north­east. The snowy town cen­ter was dec­o­rat­ed in a Christ­mas style and resem­bled scenes from Amer­i­can Christ­mas movies. Just beyond the town, the moun­tain road began, which was cleared with two lanes in both direc­tions, and dri­ving on it was not scary at all. The road turned out to be very beau­ti­ful and pic­turesque, mak­ing us want to return in the sum­mer and wan­der through the slopes. We passed many ski trails on the sur­round­ing moun­tains, and I didn’t quite under­stand why we were trav­el­ing so far to Steam­boat when we could find a place to ski much closer.

Then we reached the plains and drove for a long time across the plateau, where we encoun­tered small farms and lit­tle agri­cul­tur­al towns. We were struck by the fact that rur­al Amer­i­ca still sup­port­ed Trump. The elec­tions had long passed, the elec­tors had cast their votes for Biden on Decem­ber 12, yet in small towns, both in New Mex­i­co and Col­orado, there were posters and flags with slo­gans like “Tramp,” “Tramp 2024,” “Women for Trump,” and sim­i­lar messages.

We arrived in Steam­boat not too late; it was still light out­side. The room turned out to be very nice and recent­ly ren­o­vat­ed. We unloaded and got to our usu­al task — care­ful­ly wip­ing down all sur­faces with chlo­rine wipes and alco­hol. We had done this in every hotel before, but now, due to the pan­dem­ic, we did it espe­cial­ly diligently.