We spent several days just sitting still (i.e. After the hard, bleak drive down the Eastern side your eyes feast on the myriad of forms and colors, soaking in the greens, marveling at the downtown red brick buildings, reveling in rise of the mountains. Our repose was at Trinidad Lake State Park (review coming) and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. Here the flat plains actually start to rise again and you’re greeted with rolling hills, towering red mesas and green pinyon pine. What a treat!īut we made it through and our final destination was going to give us a view, some history, a few brews and 4 blissful, glorious, stationary nights of NOT moving! We’d arrived at Trinidad a historic mining town founded in 1862 in the central southern part of the state. What a feast for the eyes! The Ave Maria Shrine sits on the hill above town and dates to 1934. I guess it’s interesting to see…once…but I wouldn’t recommend the drive in a big rig…more than once. It’s a high plains desert, parched from the huge, moisture-sucking mountains to the west, incredibly remote and barren, dry and featureless, and with very, very bumpy backroads. But Middle-Eastern Colorado is very different. We’ve spent several summers in the mountains of Western Colorado, the area you always imagine in your minds eye when you think of this state -> the beautiful Rockies, stunning 10,000 foot peaks, sweet alpine lakes and luscious forest, that kind of thing. This was our first time in Eastern Colorado and I can’t imagine we’ll drive this route again. It took 2 hours of rest and hard alcohol before the rig stopped moving. I guess we could have turned around, but once we committed we were.well committed…and we kept thinking it had to get better, right? Just around 7 hours of earthquake-quality miles later we finally arrived at our destination thoroughly shaken, well-stirred and exhausted. The bumps started almost immediately and for close to ~300 miles they didn’t stop except for rare (and frankly psychologically torturous) stretches of smooth asphalt. It was a great road, flat, smooth and thoroughly enjoyable to drive.Īll that changed when we entered Eastern Colorado on hwy 71. Over the past few days we’d been lulled into the pleasant (and most excellent) experience we’d had driving 385 through Nebraska. Most of the time they’re scenic, traffic-free and soooo much more relaxing without 18-wheelers flying by all the time. We usually love taking 2-lane backroads instead of the main Interstates. Whoo whee…rock n’roll.īut this road, this Eastern Colorado po-dunk road was right up there. Our other worst ever road was I-10 in the East coming through Louisiana.
#Driving my tractor down a bumpy road tv#
I-5/hwy99 just north of LA comes to mind, the one and only time our TV rattled straight off its hinges. Bang! Welcome to California! Some of the worst roads we’ve driven in the country have been there too. You’d go from super-smooth Nevada and you’d hit the first pothole. I used to joke back in the day that I could always tell when I entered California, even with my eyes shut and it was all about the road quality. If it weren’t for the jarring bumps you’d risk falling asleep from sheer tedium. Other times it morphed into a hypnotic blur. At the times the road shimmered and faded into a watery mirage, tricking your mind into thinking you were driving into a lake. It was hot, the sun baking on our front windshield and the view was a field of seemingly infinite monotony. Nothing but miles of empty, achingly remote landscape with only the barest of features to relax the eye. We’d been driving on this bumpy, grinding, shock-shattering, back-breaking backcountry road for what seemed like an eternity, and there was no end in sight. “was that the slide wood paneling?!?” See all those wiggly lines? Those are bumps…miles and miles and miles of bumps Sometimes the road morphs into a hypnotic blur Bumping Our Way Into Colorado – Trinidad, CO
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