Over the next several days, I will be chronicling a roadtrip through Colorado I took during the last week of September and first few days of October 2020. It had been a longtime "bucket list" item to see the aspens in Colorado during the fall, and I finally got to check this item off the list. It did not disappoint! The trip consisted of about seven days of camping and hiking in Colorado. While I reside in Fort Worth, the trip was "based" out of Norman where some friends and I met up. The purpose of this blog will be to recount some of the routes taken, sights seen, lessons learned, experiences that were had, and some of the challenges of a roadtrip amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. For this post, I start with "Day 0" as the day I drove from Fort Worth to Norman to prepare for the actual trip, as well as "Day 1" which is the drive out from Norman to Trinidad, Colorado. The dates covered here are September 25-26, 2020. The gang consisted of former University of Oklahoma classmate Curtis Riganti (technically one year behind me at OU, and now a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center), and former coworkers Noah Lock, Justin Keller, and Eddie Snyder. I would be the primary driver for the trip, with one other person added as a secondary in the event I would be unable to discharge the duties of my office.
 |
The trusty Nissan Armada that would be our home for the next seven days.
|
Since my 1999 Toyota 4Runner is no spring chicken, and we needed a vehicle large enough to accommodate five guys plus camping gear, we decided to rent a full size SUV from Enterprise. We ended up with a fully-loaded Nissan Armada. When we went to pick up the vehicle which had been reserved in advance, we were presented with two identical vehicles: the only differences being color and the license plates. One had an Iowa license plate, and the other had a California license plate. We quickly decided that Iowa is the "less controversial" state, so the Hawkeye State it was. The Armada did present a few packing challenges. The middle row of seats had a center console that could not be removed. This necessitated someone sitting in the back row. The original hope was that we would be able to sit two in the front, three across in the middle, and put the entire back row down, but this would not be possible. Still, Justin had a vision on how we could pack the car, and after lots of reorganizing and reprioritization of gear, we made it work.
On Saturday morning (Sep. 26), we were off bright and early by 8 a.m. The destination was Trinidad Lake State Park just outside the town of Trinidad in Las Animas County, Colorado. Most of the drive was uneventful and was just us crossing the wide open Great Plains of Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. We stopped for lunch at a Braum's in Pampa, Texas (and of course as a car full of meteorologists, we discussed the infamous
1995 Pampa Tornado). We opted to eat outside as it was a nice day and Gray County had been seeing some high COVID case numbers. The only real "adventure" that occurred on this first day was nearly running out of gas in northeast New Mexico. Somehow, an oversight was made on my part and we did not refuel while in Pampa for lunch. And we cruised right on through Borger, Dumas, Dalhart, and Clayton without anyone thinking whether to ask how we were on gas. Somewhere within the desolation of northeast New Mexico between Clayton and Raton (there is truly very little out there, though there is an
extinct volcano), the low fuel light came on. Less than 75 miles to empty. And we were climbing uphill steadily out of the Great Plains and towards the Front Range. By the time we got to Grenville, it was less than 50 miles to empty, and still no service stations in sight. Finally we found gas in Des Moines at what was actually a nice little country store and restaurant along with a Sinclair station. Needless to say, we would not be pushing a Nissan Armada into Raton.
 |
Church of the Holy Trinity. Photo taken summer 2019.
|
Once we got to Raton, it was time to drive my first mountain pass. That's right. I had never driven in truly mountainous terrain before this trip. Luckily I had some pointers from other people who had done it, including Curtis who had done it several times before. We climbed and descended Raton Pass into Colorado, and down into Trinidad. We stopped to get groceries at the Safeway supermarket in Trinidad while Curtis attended the Saturday evening Mass at the beautiful Church of the Holy Trinity.
After we were stocked up on food, we headed over to the state park where we camped near the shore of Trinidad Lake, a reservoir that had seen better days in terms of water storage, but a beautiful lake nevertheless. The sunset offered beautiful views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the west.
 |
Sunset at Trinidad Lake State Park.
|
One of the first lessons learned on this trip is yes, your allergies will be bad in Colorado. I had been suffering from ragweed allergies in Texas and thought maybe the would be better once I was out of the state. Never had I been so wrong! If you're an allergy sufferer and you're heading to Colorado in the fall, make sure you're stocked up on your allergy meds! Those beautiful yellow flowers you see in the photo to the left were likely not helping.
After some sunset photography and setting up of camp, we enjoyed a dinner of chicken fajitas. Late that night, we would all be awoken by strong gusty winds as
mountain drainage winds came down through the valley. All in all, it was a good place to stop (spoiler alert: we will stop here again for our last night on the wake back to Norman). Services were fairly minimal (well maintained pit toilets, and a fire ring, grill, and covered picnic table at each site) Tomorrow we will drive through Westcliffe and Salida on our way to Cottonwood Pass and eventually the Crested Butte vicinity.
Comments
Post a Comment