Cocoposts

Victorian Hotels in High Mountain Towns and a late summer drive to Tucson 

My first concern is no hot shower. The phone is charged, which is good because otherwise I would have missed the notice on my weather appa bout a “Regional Planned Emergency Power Outage.” That’s the wording.  As a former city planner I’m especially amused by the oxymoronic term, ‘planned emergency.’ Apparently it provided “plausible deniability” for hotels that rented rooms in spite on knowing what was coming. 

Up until then I liked my big bright corner room in the grand old hotel. The fire escape door at the end of the hall was tied open and there was a smell of room deodorant masking a sewer scent in the bathroom. But the mountain view – incomparable and stunning.

Red Mountain White Knuckles

The drive on US 550 between Durango and Ouray is intense. As kids we called the whole stretch the “Million Dollar Highway.” It probably costs at least that much every year just to maintain it. It is now apparently only called that between Silverton and Ouray. According to wiki, it’s the portion twelve miles south of Ouray – that last hair raising portion through Uncompagre Gorge, that gives the highway its name. Quick glances at faces in oncoming cars show passengers expressing worry or terror. 

The highway is a staggering and impressive drive all the way from Albuquerque. It’s US 550 the entire way – Bernalillo on the Rio Grande Valley to Montrose on the Western Slope – through some of the most interesting geology in the west. Portions follow routes used in prehistory and the Old Spanish Trail. In the San Juans a man named Otto Mears built the first tollroads on parts of what became 550. Then he built the first railroad to Silverton. Collectors of railroad memorabilia love his Silverton Railroad passes, printed on buckskin and adorned with silver filigree. 

It’s nice to divide the drive into two parts with a stop in Silverton for relief from the cliff-clinging road. A free Shakespeare production of As You Like It in intimate little Anesi Park that night was delightful. Multiple sponsors included UpstART Theater That Moves. The play was also preformed in Ouray.  

The Silverton history museum has expanded from the old jail to a mining boarding house donated to the San Juan Historical Society and moved to town. In and under those buildings is everything related to mining but a live burro. A mineral exhibit has me transfixed and I stare at innocent looking yellow uranium powder for probably too long wondering if it’s safe.  

My second concern on the morning of no electricity, is no hot coffee. I thank my stars for the cold brew I bought yesterday in Durango and sit in my car taking big gulps while admiring the looming mountainsides. They’re illuminated like a stage backdrop by the rising sun. No stage production could match it. Somewhere someone is whistling. 

The whole county seems to be lined up in the one coffee shop with a generator. There are delicious pastries. A hot cup takes over ten minutes. Everyone is listening to city workers – big guys in work clothes talking loud and greeting each other as they file in between the tourists. One guy says marijuana is a gateway drug and another says it sure was for him. The whole place erupts in laughter.

When the lights finally come back on no one cheers. A sense of camaraderie evaporates. I leave for Ouray and another old Victorian hotel.  

I love old places, including big richly storied western hotels. I worked at an old resort near Denver for a summer in college. It was memorable. I can smell it now – old wood and dust. The work was grueling – dragging an old vacuum cleaner to hillside cabins, cleaning all day after serving breakfast then cleaning up to serve dinner. The six of us lived in a bunk room under the porch with no insulation and touchy wiring. No one could use a blowdryer without blowing a fuse and this was the late seventies so that was a problem. We got one day off a week, separately. I would drive to Denver in a borrowed VW beetle alone to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

It was pretty – that canyon and the trees and the grand old three-story tower. We rattled the bones of that building at square dances in the lobby, attendance at which was mandatory. Sometimes people played the piano. The whole place seemed alive. 

Give me an old hotel over a new dull and anonymous one any day. But some people think that’s what a hotel should be. They don’t want character, just sleep. Preferably with electricity. Ideally with no unpleasant smells.