Let's take a drive to wine country

Just back from a whirlwind trip to Paonia and Crested Butte... all in two days. We drove Kebler Pass from Paonia to CB, and I have no idea most of it would be dirt/gravel... not to mention winding through a forest and a mountainside. It took over 90 minutes to travel 30 miles.

But we survived. That's usually the way, right? We encounter some challenge or danger or touchy situation and we live to tell the tale. 

If you have no idea where Paonia and Crested Butte might be, well, that's hardly unusual. I sort of knew they were somewhere south of I-70, and were likely in mountain valleys. Paonia came to our attention as a "hidden wine trail" that was "discovered" during the pandemic, when lots of Denver folks were looking for somewhere to drive and get away from the plague. 

Crested Butte is a classic tourist town, filled with restaurants and shops and many opportunities for the young and fit (we saw many of them) to hike and fish and ride ATVs (and snowmobiles in the winter). 

They are both a bit difficult to get to, and my Maps app added to the difficulty by sending us onto some shortcuts (including several more dirt roads). We went over Cottonwood Pass, which is only open in the summer, mostly due to the many hairpin curves around the mountain. Well, now I know where it is. 

But we sat in a comfy little courtyard our motel in Paonia offered... and had the place to ourselves. We had done a couple tastings before we checked in and had walked to the "downtown," which was mostly shut down. We had purchased a bottle of our favorite red blend from the afternoon and proceeded to drink it Thursday night. Kathleen had brought fruit and cheese and crackers... and we had a fine time.

We could have been anywhere that evening... or nowhere. It had been 100 degrees that afternoon and mountain towns (even in valleys) are not set up for that heat. Who is? 

But the heat dropped quickly after the sun got low. We got a bit tipsy. The next day we concluded our adventure with Crested Butte and on to our house in time to have our traditional Friday night pizza and a movie. 

This month, we are doing Julia Roberts movies and we watched "Eat, Pray, Love," which neither of us had ever seen. It was "meh," I would say. Julia is always Julia but the angst and self-pity and general trendy mysticism of the novel just didn't translate very well to the big screen. 

Still, happy ending. 

I felt the same about our little Colorado mountain driving adventure. There was eating and there was love, and I might have offered up a few random prayerful thoughts ("Please, don't let a massive pickup swerve over the line and push us into a ravine."). 

Happy ending.