Independence Pass is 12,000 feet up in the air and it was one hell of a drive. But first we had to get through Aspen the most expensive small city in the country according to the Wall Street Journal.
Approaching Aspen from our wild camp outside Montrose we found nowhere too interesting to spend the night. So when all else fails use a park and ride; we agreed it was among our weirdest overnight locations.
But get this: it’s totally legal to drive up and park in the gravel and spend the night. Just as well as dispersed camping isn’t a thing in millionaire row. They are building a nice new paved lot next door…
…and I hope 24 hour parking remains the rule. Aspen, like any over priced town needs to import workers and this is how they do it. Workers park and ride the bus seven miles to town while us van lifers piggy back to spend a free night. I asked the friendly security guard in his car if I had missed another camping opportunity. He thought for a second and said “Independence Pass is the closest,” he said. I had no idea where that was but I was going to find out.
An advertisement in the Aspen Times announced a downtown lot for sale for twenty million dollars. An eager landlord needs to rent a four bedroom house (pet friendly!) in a great location and rent is twenty five thousand dollars a month. Need something cheaper? I saw studios for seven grand a month. That’s Aspen.
It is as you would expect spic and span, an averagely pretty historic town in the Rockies where the architecture you’ve seen already if you’ve traveled these parts. Silverton, Ouray Glenwood Springs and so forth have this look.
But Aspen sits in a valley surrounded by soft sloping hills, not granite cliffs and that’s what makes Aspen. Walk to the end of the street and grab a cable car and ski back down. Not that you’ll catch me here in winter.
It is a pretty town but early on a Sunday morning there weren’t too many people around.
I’ve never seen bear proof trash cans in a city before, but here they are, decorated and everything:
I’m not a shopper but I saw lots of stores with New York in their name.
A Latin name sounds ostentatious to me but the thing is they sell highly fashionable clothing accessories I believe and their logo is a barrel to make them look like a speakeasy. Aspen confuses me.
I admit I loved the real paper papers with news and for free.
Rusty led me all over the place and he had a great time with no desire to stop. Meanwhile Layne was at the only open bakery we found in town.
One truly peculiar aspect of visiting Aspen is that there are no price tags on anything. Even the gas station is too coy to announce its prices. Layne bought two rather nice croissants at a “unique” chain bakery.
Mine was great and I was glad to finally get back from my endless dog walk to chow down on my raspberry filled croissant. “You could be eating a nice three course meal in Mexico with drinks, for the price of that pastry,” my wife said grumpily. Eight dollars for a croissant wasn’t enough to keep locals from standing in a long line:
Enough. Time to go so we took the road south, Highway 82, as we planned to visit a sand dune as suggested in a recent comment. This drive freaked Layne out completely.
I don’t think my photos capture the awfulness of this vertigo inducing drive. I had to hold the wheel with two hands on the hairy bits and they were truly hairy. I nudged the van into the middle of the road where I could to avoid my passenger staring into the void next to her. And to avoid me absentmindedly driving over the edge.
GANNET2 is only 21 feet long so we had no excuse not to go.
The road kept narrowing and climbing and it was too damned long.
These were the easy bits going up.
We did find the nearest official campground to exclusive Aspen though I couldn’t find out where it got it’s name. We blew past with a summit on our minds.
Oddly I stopped. I just had to look around so after reassuring Layne the hand brake was on and the wheels were turned I got out and quickly snagged a picture.
Yup, my van was within a mile of the continental divide.
Independence Pass is 12,000 feet high - not our highest drive! - and divides the waters that flow to the sea to the east and west. It’s not the middle of the country but it is an important geological dividing line, though it looks just like the rest of the countryside. On the other side of the road is a parking lot and a pit toilet so I spared you a view of that at least.
The van went into the dealer in Montrose for a recall and the gearbox got an electronic reset and this road showed me how much better my Promaster runs now. The recall changed the way the gearbox spreads the ratios and the engine runs much more smoothly and at lower revolutions so it feels less frantic. I found myself pulling up steep hills with smooth gear changes like never before. It was great.
But I’ll tell you I sure was glad and relieved to be going down hill at last. To save the brakes I used manual gears to hold the van back and GANNET2 was a pleasure to ride down the hill as well. Except for the plunging ravines no guard rails and hairpins…
Suddenly the speed limit went from 25 and 35 right up to 55 and I knew we were out of the hardest part. I was tired and wanted to pull over.
Not as tired as him probably. Maybe he’s a relentless mountain man and was ready for another ascent. Not me.
The road went on and on. Look at it, a ribbon descending the valley. I stopped to let the sedan by but I wanted a decent spot to park.
Finally.
Layne slept, I read my left over Aspen paper and took notes for this post, while Rusty lounged sometimes in the sun and sometimes in the shade.
We stopped for 90 minutes much to my surprise.
Then it was on to the Great Sand Dunes National Park as suggested by an alert reader. The park is out of our way but it was worth it so thank you for the suggestion.
Onwards!
