On the Road - Colorado

After the trip with my parents to Minnesota in 1972 (see On the Road - Family), I convinced my parents to drop me off in Leadville, Colorado where I camped for several days before hitchhiking back to Arizona. I got some great pictures in the mountains near where I was camping.

My campsite near Leadville.

Two of my photos from near Leadville, Colorado.

While hitching out -- note bright orange tube tent in backpack.

The ride home

The hitchhiking went well at first. I got a ride through the Great Sand Dunes National Park area in a van with a guy who only played 8-track Doors tapes (talk about a cliché). I got a ride over Wolf Creek Pass and all the way to Durango with a lovely girl in a '64 Volvo. We even shared a Mexican dinner in town before I continued on my way. Things continued well as far as Mesa Verde National Park, where I went hiking with some guys who had picked me up (and where I managed to lose a contact lens in a particularly gnarly bush.) 

But in Cortez I discovered an oddity of Colorado law -- or law enforcement -- while you can hitchhike in the rest of the state, you couldn’t down in the southwest corner near Arizona. I learned this when I was still about 40 miles from the border. Lacking any other options, I set out to walk to Arizona. I lucked out however, and someone who knew the situation picked me up without my having to even show my thumb. I made it down to Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo reservation and there I stood. Still not the right state, but getting closer.

The landscape around Shiprock is beautiful in a stark way but empty, especially of traffic. I stood at the side of the road and watched as a dark cloud appeared on the far horizon, slowly approached me, dropped a bit of rain on me, and then proceeded to disappear over the opposite horizon. At length, I got a ride in the back of a pickup all the way to Gallup, New Mexico. Then I got a short ride to the west, on I-40, before getting dumped on the freeway next to an overpass in the middle of nowhere. Again. And now it was getting dark. I was considering sleeping under the overpass on the side of the Interstate when a car finally pulled over and picked me up. This was the strangest ride I ever had.

The people who picked me up were the owner of the car and another hitcher. The owner had been robbed by a previous hitcher and needed gas money to get home. I had the money and home for them was also Phoenix -- we were all home free. Actually it was even better than that as they were headed for the house of one of the disk jockeys on my favorite alternative music radio station (KDKB) in Phoenix (who went by the name “Toad Hall”. Here's a "The '70s will never die" link I just found thanks to Google. KRIZ and KRUX were the two local pop-rock stations in the '60s. I think I was a KRUX person but I'm no longer certain: http://radiofreephoenix.com/listeneremails.html). We ended up having a little party at the home of this guy I only knew as a famous (to a select group of listeners) local radio personality.