Day 4: Southwestern Colorado

145 South from Telluride to Dolores is fantastic:


Road construction in a couple places makes for a breather:




Mostly very smooth pavement and banked, fast, constant radius turns.

Took 184 as a shortcut to 160 to Durango.



Had lunch in Durango at Italian place. I had a tasty French dip.

Continue on 550 North, climbing beautiful aspen lined Coal Bank Hill and Molab passes...


...into Silverton:


The Silverton museum is the former jail, which now houses lots of cool old stuff mostly to do with mining, jailing or brewing, which I manage not to take any pictures of.

Silverton is a tourist destination. Outside winter the town lies at one end of the Durango-Silverton narrow gauge railroad. There's no skiing so it's pretty quiet in winter. Lots of original, historic buildings and some new development. This area is home to lots of actively used jeep trails also.


550 is great north of Silverton; some turns are very tight and narrow.
A bit north of Silverton on 550 is historic Ouray, a restored mining town featuring hot springs alongside the Gunnison River.

550 North from Ouray includes many postcar-like views:

Gassing up at Ridgeway we decide to head North rather than going West back to Telluride.

I get stopped by a State Patrol dude ostensibly for not having a front license plate, but really more likely because we're a pair of out of state sports cars among endless pickup trucks and white Jeep Cherokees. Obviously it's no fun being stopped, but meine papieren are in order and we're doing the speed limit, so it's just a warning and I'm on my way. The trooper didn't even mention the CB, scanner, radar detector, two-way radio, etc.

At Delta leave 550 to head East on 92 to Hotchkiss. Stay at a AAA approved motel that's decent. Great hippie/Mexican food at the Good Food Resturant. Hotckiss seems to be a big hunting destination. Singer Joe Cocker owns a resturant/tavern with his wife at a nearby boonie town.

Go to Day 5