Ouray

By mid-afternoon, we had gotten back to within 20 miles or so of where we had started that morning. Our circuitous route had been necessary, but nice - pretty classic Colorado, with the Black Canyon thrown in.

I first encountered Ouray on my grand 1976 walkabout, the day after I climbed Mount Elbert and just a few days after almost getting washed out of the Big Thompson Canyon (Estes Park: 2007). My last ride had dropped me in town and I walked up (it's a steep Main Street) to the switchbacks above town, where I spent hours watching cars and jeep tours pass by before finally crawling under trees somewhere to sleep. I was on the rode again early the next morning and I think I spent the next night along the Santa Fe mainline just outside Williams, Arizona.

Ouray, like all the other towns around it, was built on mining. Silver, mainly, and some of the other minerals often found in similar hydrothermally altered areas. The mountainsides are red as a result of the heavily oxidized minerals. The stream beds are stained red for the same reasons, though mining practices accentuate any natural tendency to rust. The ground beneath these mountains is riddled with small and large tunnels, at least one of which go all the way through to Telluride, the next valley west.

The road from Ouray over the top to Silverton is impressive (and expensive enough to be called the million dollar highway - although that would only buy a few thousand feet of guardrail in today's dollars). As noted, the roads I really wanted to take were the jeep roads back to Lake City or up above Telluride -- maybe another trip with more time and on a tour where someone else drives.