The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
Tales From the MoJo Road –
By Glynn Wilson –
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Co. – So I crossed another river today, the Colorado River, about a dozen times along the MoJo Road. Discovered and camped by the headwaters in the national park.
After seeing it for myself, it’s difficult to imagine anyone crossing the Rocky Mountains in a horse drawn wagon. Doing it in a Ford van with a big V8 and knobby off road tires was intimidating enough. Some even do it pulling insanely large camper trailers behind massive, ugly pickup trucks, or driving luxury buses, land yachts on wheels. Crazy man. But it is a crazy world out there.
Hundreds did it back in the horse and wagon days, all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They must have been nuts or at least desperate, running from something awful from whence they came. Most started in earnest in St. Louis, Missouri. Those who made it traveled the 2,000 miles in four to six months. Many did not make it.
My schedule is to travel from coast to coast in 24 days, starting in Washington, D.C. and traveling about 2,700 miles to the western shadow of Yosemite National Park in California. We left Greenbelt, Maryland on Sunday September 7, traveled through the rest of Maryland, Pennsylvania, a sliver of West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and made it to St. Louis by Wednesday, September 10.
After four days there, we departed on Sunday, September 14, and passed another four days in Kansas at two Corps of Engineers campgrounds on two lakes, one a salt water lake with Franklin sea gulls, perhaps the literal center of the country. The geographic center of the forty-eight conterminous states was determined by the National Ocean Survey, formerly the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1918, placing the center near Lebanon, Kansas. That’s just north of the Wilson Lake State Park where we passed two free nights with a power hookup and a view of the lake.
Pulling into Denver on Thursday, September 18, we unloaded the van and setup in a free room for three nights on the 12th floor of the Westin Westminster Hotel, with three free meals a day and all the coffee you could drink. There we partied with the Wyoming Cowboys Friday night. They got bucked off by the Colorado University Buffaloes on Saturday 37-20. Never saw them again. The game was still going at midnight.
A view of the mountains from the 12th floor of the Westin Westminster Hotel in Denver, Colorado: Glynn Wilson
As check out time came on Sunday, with Gwyneth Ford packed once again for the MoJo Road, after stopping for gummies at a legal Colorado cannabis dispensary, we headed up Highway 36 to Estes Park. It’s the Colorado version of the tourist town on the edge of the national park, like Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg in Tennessee by the Great Smoky Mountains.
Passing through the most popular entrance at Beaver Meadow, Volunteer Ranger Heidi gave us the scoop at the visitor’s center and advised the first snow could be on the way in the higher elevations over the next couple of days, so best to traverse the high pass well before dark.
Taking her advice, we made the drive at speed, 30 mph-45 mph. It was surprising to learn that it would only take a couple of hours or less. Another ranger said you could fit eight Rocky Mountain National Parks into Yellowstone. Skyline Drive in Shenandoah in Virginia is a tad over 100 miles long, but not as high. Only 3,800 feet or so.
Anyway, great news and all, we only stopped at a few points for photos, including the Continental Divide at Milner’s Point.
The view at Milner Pass by the Continental Divide crossing: Glynn Wilson
It rises 10,759 feet above sea level, but it’s not the highest point on “the drive.” Trail Ridge Road is the highest continuous paved road in the country, they say here, 48-miles one-way across the northern part of Rocky Mountain National Park. It climbs to an elevation of 12,183 feet.
The view at Milner Pass by the Continental Divide crossing: Glynn Wilson
The timing was pretty good on Sunday, September 21, and we had a campsite reserved in the Timber Creek campground on the west side of the park, on the way back to I-70 and down toward Woody Creek near Aspen. In between a few little rain showers here and there, it turned into two glorious fall days – and a couple of 8,750-feet above sea level cold nights. The low I saw on the indoor/outdoor temp gauge said 31, below freezing.
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
On Tuesday, September 23, the destination was southwest out of the park toward Woody Creek Tavern. It was a long further drive through the mountains on a windy two lane road. We drove up over 9,000 feet in one of the national forests we passed through on the way back to I-70, where we turned south on 82 down toward Aspen, a playground for the rich.
Other American writers have traveled to Colorado and been inspired by it. Jack Kerouac based a good portion of “On The Road” in Colorado. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg established a poetry school at Naropa University in Boulder. And, of course, Hunter S. Thompson, the Dr. of Gonzo Journalism and literary legend from the heyday of Rolling Stone magazine’s National Affairs Desk, based himself in between the mountains around Woody Creek on a ranch he called Owl Farm.
After two days off the grid in the NPS campground with no power or shower, I meandered into Woody Creek Tavern on a Tuesday afternoon with my black cowboy hat on. It was clearly not the time for a party. That was just as well, since I only had one good local brew in mind anyway, and to have a look around the place. See if I could spot where the magic came from.
All I got was an old lady in town fly fishing for trout, staying a few nights at an AirBnB. Attached to the side of the tavern there’s a fly fishing shop. I thought about eating there, but a burger was $26. In and around Aspen, gas was up over $4 a gallon. But one of the bartenders heard my tale of woe, called a friend at the Aspen Recreation Center, and got me a shower for $6. With a complimentary towel.
My old labor lawyer and friend from Birmingham in the ’80s who left Alabama a long time ago, Joe Whatley, who lives in Aspen, replied to my emails. But he was going to be out of town. He still practices law in New York and Miami.
Anyway, my woe turned to wow. After the shower, I talked to a young man from Aspen in the locker room.
“Are you from here?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“It must be nice,” I said.
“It is,” he said with a little smile.
On the way back to Woody Creek, I found myself thinking: If I make it to California and turn 68 on October 15, I would be a year older than Thompson. He shot and killed himself at home on February 20, 2005, at the age of 67.
Back to reality, there was still that lingering worry about where to crash on Tuesday night. The U.S. Forest Service has 37 campgrounds in the White River National Forest around there. After spending some time looking around online, a forest ranger actually answered the phone and indicated none of them had showers. No, there were no electric sites available. Oh, and cell phone service was spotty.
He did say there was free dispersed camping up Woody Creek Road. Sounded intriguing. After the shower, I drove to the end. There was a dirt road. But it came after passing ranch after ranch on an otherwise private road. There was no U.S. Forest Service sign. Quite frankly, it looked and felt a little dangerous, considering certain political realities.
So I turned around and headed back north toward U.S. Highway 70. It was coming up on sunset, so I put “Rest Area” in the Apple map search. Siri found the Glenwood Canyon rest stop. A cool looking place I had stopped on the way down to snap some pictures of the Colorado River there. So I caught a nice, cold night there – along with about 10 other camper vans, a small RV and a jeep or two, and at least one Toyota Prius.
Up early with the birds, after the morning constitutional, we checked the bank and filled up the gas tank for $103, and headed west toward Utah. As we got into Grand Junction, however, the last stop in Colorado, there was a sign for the Bureau of Land Management. So figured I would hit them up for a map and ask some questions about camping on BLM land in Utah and Nevada. Apparently there are no Corps of Engineers campgrounds out west. They are some of the best in the East and South, even in Alabama and Kansas, which has better roads than Colorado. We already knew the Forest Service campgrounds had no showers or power. So what to do?
“Try Colorado State Parks,” he said. “For those kinds of amenities, state parks are your best bet.”
So boom, yeah, even though I knew it would be pricey, I made the call. I needed a place to work for a few hours. One of the campgrounds in the Colorado River State Park system had electric sites available, only a few miles down and right off the highway. Yes on the hot showers too. Yes on cell phone reception, three bars. It cost me $47 and change, but it was right by the river under a long series of Mesas and Buttes, smaller but similar than mesas, usually about as wide as they are high. Often buttes are the remains of mesas, significantly eroded over the centuries and millennia. Because of their distinctive form, mesas often hold spiritual significance for Indigenous peoples.
A Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
There is a prayer here for sure. It was a lovely first day on Wednesday, September 24. Got setup and organized and processed all the photos from Colorado, uploaded them to the website, and wrote the cutlines. Then it was time to sit outside and think for awhile about the trip so far and my 8 days in Colorado, as well as do some planning for the next 5 days. The plan is to arrive in Coulterville on October 1.
So looking at the Google map large on the big screen, with a tab open to Recreation dot gov, I found a site for $15 west of Provo, Utah on BLM land in a place where the Pony Express got its start. Highway 70 ends in Utah anyway. So you can either keep going on Highway 50, or go north on I-15 to I-80 and head toward Reno, Nevada. That’s the plan. Once there I will still have 4 days to see some things before the final day trip into California.
Thoughts on Hunter Thompson and Trump
Oh, and while I did not have time to get into it with anyone at the bar, I’m sure the way Hunter Thompson wrote about Nixon and Bush he would have hated Donald Trump.
“Richard Nixon was an evil man,” he wrote. “Evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.”
“These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern” upon his death, he said.
“But I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.”
That sums up how I feel about Donald Trump. I’ve covered his every lying, cheating, grifter move since he first showed up in Mobile, Alabama for his first big stadium rally in 2015. I watched him go down in 2020, refuse to accept the election results and incite a violent insurrection to try to stay in power on Jan. 6, 2021. I watched him get back up in 2024, then begin his long, earnest plan to dismantle the U.S. government and American democracy.
As Thompson wrote, “some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point,” he said. “It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. (The same for Trump). He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.”
The past decade of having to deal with Trump at all has been unbelievably painful. Nixon and Bush look pathetic and small compared to Trump’s evil. I can’t wait to see him go down hard at some point, hopefully soon for all the world to see. He deserves a horrible ending, the kind of ending only reserved for those who make Faustian bargains with Satan himself. One day the contract will be up and the Devil will call him home to hell.
See you down the dusty trail. Hope you enjoy the photographs.
More Photos
A view of the mountains from the 12th floor of the Westin Westminster Hotel in Denver, Colorado: Glynn Wilson
A view of the mountains from the 12th floor of the Westin Westminster Hotel in Denver, Colorado: Glynn Wilson
A cotton-tail rabbit in the parking lot of the Westin Westminster Hotel in Denver, Colorado: Glynn Wilson
A view of the Westin Westminster Hotel in Denver, Colorado: Glynn Wilson
A view of a replica of Stonehenge from the 12th floor of the Westin Westminster Hotel in Denver, Colorado: Glynn Wilson
The first view of the mountains from inside Rocky Mountain National Park going in from the east from Denver to Estes Park and the Beaver Meadow Entrance: Glynn Wilson
A view of bald mountain from the Timber Creek Campground on the Rocky Mountain National Park’s western north of the Grand Lake entrance station: Glynn Wilson
A view of bald mountain from the Timber Creek Campground on the Rocky Mountain National Park’s western north of the Grand Lake entrance station: Glynn Wilson
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
A meadow with elk on the far side in rut by the Colorado River: Glynn Wilson
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
The headwaters of the Colorado River by the Timber Creek Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson
The iconic Aspen trees changing color int Autumn, mixed in with the Spruce Pine that dominate the high elevations of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado: Glynn Wilson
The iconic Aspen trees changing color int Autumn, mixed in with the Spruce Pine that dominate the high elevations of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado: Glynn Wilson
A cabin in Holtzwarth Historic Site by the Timber Creek Campground, the site of an old dude ranch: Glynn Wilson
Did not get close enough to photograph the elk, but heard them in rut in the morning and evening and saw them across a meadow by the Colorado River, so I photographed this sign: Glynn Wilson
Glenwood Canyon on the Colorado River on the way west toward Utah: Glynn Wilson
Glenwood Canyon on the Colorado River on the way west toward Utah: Glynn Wilson
Glenwood Canyon on the Colorado River on the way west toward Utah: Glynn Wilson
Woody Creek Tavern near Hunter S. Thompson’s ranch Owl Farm: Glynn Wilson
It’s a Butte and Mesa world out here in Western Colorado near Utah, at the Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
It’s a Butte and Mesa world out here in Western Colorado near Utah, at the Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
It’s a Butte and Mesa world out here in Western Colorado near Utah, at the Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
It’s a Butte and Mesa world out here in Western Colorado near Utah, at the Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
It’s a Butte and Mesa world out here in Western Colorado near Utah, at the Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
The Colorado River in Western Colorado just past Glenwood Canyon by Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
It’s a Butte and Mesa world out here in Western Colorado near Utah, at the Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
It’s a Butte and Mesa world out here in Western Colorado near Utah, at the Colorado River State Park: Glynn Wilson
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