How I Spent My Summer Vacation Part III

  Loaded up once again we turned northwest and continued our journey.  Within an hour we had entered a national forest.  The elevation increased more rapidly.  As we climbed through the foothills, it became evident that our station wagon wasn’t up to the task. 

  “Boy, we sure are going slow, Daddy.”  My brother even at a young age was ever the worrier.  By this time the car was coughing and sputtering, asthmatically wheezing its way up the grade.  I sat forward on my seat peering over my dad’s shoulder.  “What’s wrong with the car daddy?  Why are we going so slow?”  The speedometer read that we were moving at five miles per hour.  I was beginning to get nervous. Was the car going to break down? Would we be stranded in this strange landscape of pine trees that stretched to the sky, a wasteland of large rocks and boulders that littered the ground?

  “I think that the carburetor isn’t adjusted for the altitude,” my dad offered up as if we would all understand what he was talking about.

  “Does that mean the car is broken?” my bother asked.

  “No, it just needs a mechanic to work on it for a few minutes-we will have to wait until we get to Telluride.  There is probably someone there who can adjust it.  We won’t be making very good time for the rest of the trip I’m afraid.”  My dad sighed.

    “Oh, it’s broken all right,” my brother nodded sagely, apparently feeling as if he had just been inducted into the fraternity of men who understood car talk.

***

  Creeping along we made our way across the Colorado line.  Our route took us via a new road through the mountains --The Million Dollar Highway.  This new roadway received its name because of the cost of blasting a two lane road through the solid rock of the cliff face of the mountains. The highway featured hairpin turns and switchbacks as it doubled back on itself like a gargantuan serpent coiled and ready to strike.  It featured no guardrails and amazing views-of thousands of feet of drop off-36 inches from the edge of the pavement.  

  “Look way down there.”  Mesmerized, my brother had his nose pressed up against the window trying to see as far down into the gorge as he could.

  “Oh, God, be careful!”  My mother’s anxiety asserted itself, spreading tentacles of fear throughout the car.

  “It’s fine, we will all be fine. This is good road,” my dad tried to reassure my mother.

  I sat in the back seat chewing my fingernails, paralyzed with fear, as I willed our way up the trail of terror. I fought back visions of our car plunging over the side, rolling end over end in space, ricocheting off of boulders on the way down. I silently vowed I would eat creamed spinach and liver without complaint, an inexpensive menu that was featured at the end of every month just prior to payday, if I got out of this predicament alive.

  Our entrance onto the Million Dollar Highway hadn’t improved our speed.  We were still sputtering along at five miles an hour.  Traffic piled up behind us, horns blaring in irritation.  The more aggressive drivers in the group attempted to pass whenever they could-a dangerous feat as the curves in the road made the view of oncoming traffic next to impossible.

  “Asshole! We’re going as fast as we can,” my dad muttered under his breath as one more car blew by on the left, horn blasting with impatience.

  “Yeah, you asshole, we’re going as fast as we can!”  The comment came from my brother, who had cranked down his window and was leaning out yelling at the parade that trailed in our wake.

  “Okay! That’s enough. Everything is fine but I need you all to be quiet so I can concentrate on driving. Roll up that window and get back in the car!” The car swerved as my dad turned to be sure my brother complied with orders.

  “Watch where you’re going!”  My mother puffed nervously on her Pall Mall, filling the car with blue smoke.

  I sat back in my seat, hands covering my eyes. For a moment I believed that I would prefer a nuclear strike to this.

 “I need to pee,” my brother complained.  “Is there some place to stop soon?  I really need to pee, Daddy.

 “You are just going to have to hold it, son.”  I thought I could actually hear my dad’s teeth grinding together as he attempted to keep his frustration in check.

  “I can’t Daddy, I need a pop stop,” my brother insisted. “I really need to go.” He grabbed at the crotch of his shorts.

  “You better not pee your pants,” I gave the order.

  “I can’t help it,” my brother shot back.

  “There is no place to pee up here. Okay?”  My mother leaned over the seat. “You just went to the bathroom before we got on the highway. You can’t possibly need to go now.”

  “He always needs to go when he gets nervous or scared.” My dad defended my brother.

   “It better not get wet back here.”  I gave my brother the stink eye.  He pulled his lower eyelids down to expose the red rims, then stuck his little fingers in his nose, flared out his nostrils and stuck his tongue out at me.

  “Gross!  He’s looking at me!”  I tattled.

  “Pop, want pop,” another country was heard from as my sister chimed in from the back of the little station wagon.  She didn’t have many words in her vocabulary yet, but she did have the essentials-pop and cookie.

  A new odor assaulted the interior of the car.  “The baby pooped!”  My brother shrieked.  “Boy oh boy, it really stinks bad back here.”

  I decided to take my chances with falling out my window over the edge of the roadway, and rolled down the glass to let fresh air in.  I hung my head out sucking in the mountain air in order not to wretch.

  My mother leaned over and put her face in her hands.

  “Can I pee when we stop to change her diaper?” My brother asked, positive that the idea of changing the baby would magic up a place to stop. “I need to pee…” he resumed his lament. And so it continued, for the next hour and thirty minutes as we sluggishly crept to the top of an American marvel of modern engineering.

    It was with considerable relief that we pulled into our campsite in the San Juan National Forest. Tomorrow would be more mountain travel as we made our way through the high passes to Telluride, but for now we had solid ground with no drop offs under our feet.

  We rocketed out of the car.  After the past couple of hours in a vehicle that reeked of outhouse,   the fresh, cool, pine scented air was surely a preview of the fragrance of Heaven.

  A picnic table and a trash can sat in the middle of a small cleared area. Pine trees and quaking aspen surrounded us. A light breeze caused the aspen leaves to flutter, exposing their undersides in flashes of silver and green.  A small creek burbled merrily along a few yards in the distance.  My sister, unconcerned about her messy diaper toddled towards the sound of water, Teddy, ever solicitous, trotting at her heels.

  “Kids, keep your sister out of the water.  The potties are over there.” My mother pointed in the direction of two outhouses constructed of rough sawn logs. Off my brother ran as fast as his legs could carry him to christen them.  Not waiting for my dad to throw back the tarp, my mother rummaged through a box packed at the back of the trailer. “Ah, here it is.”  She pulled out a bottle of Irish whiskey and two paper cups.  “I think it’s time for a cocktail.”

***

  Camping in the mountains is much more comfortable than camping in Texas.  For one thing, you don’t have to worry that every living critter that comes in contact with you is poisonous.  Timber rattlers aside, there are no coral snakes, cotton mouth water moccasins, copperhead snakes, deadly tree asps, tarantulas or scorpions in the Rocky Mountains.  You don’t have to consider whether or not the twigs you cut for toasting marshmallows have deadly sap. Such as the case of  Oleander, which killed a pack of cub scouts when they used the sticks for a weenie roast in Austin the year before. It might have been wise to worry about mountain lions and bears, as they have been known to attack tourists, but for one reason or another it never crossed our minds to hang the food in a tree away from camp. (A practice I employed in my twenties when I back packed in the back country of Rocky Mountain National Park.) They say God looks out for fools, and in our camping naivety we needed looking out for, no doubt. 

  However, the air was cool and the setting beautiful.  After dinner around the camp stove my mother brought out the monopoly game, which we played in the light of a kerosene lamp until bedtime. 

  It was not mountain lions or bears that disturbed my slumber that night. It was the running water of the brook that flowed by our camp.  About twenty minutes after we were settled in our sleeping bags in the back of the stationwagon, my brother poked me. “Hey, I gotta go.”

  “What?”  I had just nodded off to sleep.

    “I haffta go to the outhouse.”  I moved out of the way so he could crawl over me to get to the door.  And so it continued every hour all night long.

 I fell asleep the final time close to dawn.  It was the cold mountain air that woke me up in the morning.  It was freezing.  I could smell bacon frying but I had no intention of getting out of my sleeping bag to get some.

  “Time to get up and get on the road!”  My dad was in a very good mood.  “We get to Telluride today.”

  “Do we have to camp again?” I asked from the depths of my cocoon.

  “Nope.  We will stay at your Aunt Shanna’s place tonight.”

  Mentally I weighed the pros and cons of staying at my Aunt’s, the woman who hated kids, as opposed to sleeping in the car again.  The car might be the more attractive option.  My mother threw my sweatshirt into the back seat.

  “Get up, let’s eat.  We’ll be on top of the world today!”  She was in a good mood too.  I pulled my head out of my sleeping bag and looked around.  The sun wasn’t fully up yet, the warmth of the rays still hidden by the mountains to our east.  My sister sat at the picnic table munching on bacon.  Slipping on my sweatshirt I crawled out of the car to join her.  My brother, having eaten already was throwing rocks into the creek.  I chewed the bacon, my mood improving with that of my family’s.

  “Come on, time to go.”  My dad began packing the tent and camping gear into the trailer.  We packed up to begin the home stretch, climbing ever higher into one of the highest range of mountains in the lower 48.  We made a stop in Montrose where my dad found a mechanic who fixed the carburetor. On the road again, making much better time, we emerged late in the afternoon, headed north.  On either side of the narrow ribbon of highway, mountains rose vertically, heavily forested two thirds of the way up their sides. In the shadows of the peaks patches of snow resisted the early June sun.  Here and there a paint or palomino horse grazed, in the lush meadows of the valley, their coats shining in the afternoon sun.

  “Why aren’t there any trees at the top?” I asked.

  “The air is too thin to grow trees and the soil is too poor.  We can take a trip up there if you’d like, Chicken.” My dad was getting excited as he and my mom discussed how scenic the area was.  It didn’t matter where you looked, all you saw was mountain.

  I wasn’t at all sure I was game for an expedition to a place where trees didn’t grow.

  “Oh look, there is!  Look at that!”  My mother’s voice echoed the sound of someone truly awestruck.

   Dead ahead was Telluride, nestled in a box canyon surrounded on three sides by snow capped peaks so high it hurt my neck to look up.  Towards the top of one I could see a waterfall spilling down the rock face of the mountain.  As we drove along Main Street I took in the scene of a town out of one of my favorite western television shows.  It could have been Bonanza or Gunsmoke come to life, complete with a saloon with swinging doors.  The natural beauty and character of the place was breathtaking.  I hated it.