The AARoads Blog

We resume this batch of pictures with a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

Very close to the park entrance, we get this view.

An elk calf! Young elk are surprisingly hard to spot, because their mothers tend to keep them very well hidden away. Certainly the first time I’ve ever seen one!

A pair of bighorn sheep. That might be literally correct, as it is a ram and a ewe. This photo is from up the Loveland Pass road – US-6, going to 11990 feet.

Loveland Pass. Infrared camera. Fisheye lens.

A ground squirrel. More of this little character later.

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We pick up in Iowa, where we decide to stop heading east in order to get to New Mexico. We see flooding along the Missouri River, and catch a thunderstorm in Kansas.

Minimum maintenance road.

Flooding causes standing water. Standing water causes mosquitoes and other insects. A fresh source of food means the dragonflies grow fat and happy. This one was about three inches long, with a five inch wingspan.

We’ve got ourselves a good old fashioned lightning storm. Western Kansas.

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We pick up in Colorado, December 2007 – where a snowstorm has just subsided, and we thus prepare to cross the Rockies, crossing our fingers hoping that it does not pick up again and render unto us blinding whiteout conditions.

Of course, it does.

Red rocks in winter. Colorado state highway 149 – just barely on the western side of the Rockies, after we cross on US-50 across Monarch Pass.

This deer is about to eat me, I am sure.

Ouray, Colorado. Looking back (south) at Red Mountain Pass that we have just crossed, on US-550 coming from Silverton. The Million Dollar Highway was built in 1913, and scarcely improved since then. Yes, there is still a sheer wall to one side, and a sheer drop to the other.

After a successful crossing – 3mph down the hill through a whiteout blizzard – I set up my tripod in the middle of the road, and while I was taking a 90 second exposure, a deer walked about two feet behind me!

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South Dakota. US-16 and interstate 90. And a wee bit of Wyoming and Colorado in the evening. December 2007. Grim winter.

18×18 I-90 shield. 1957 specs. And, more interestingly, an embossed arrow to point the way. Since the 1957 specification called for white, not blue, arrows, they took a 1948-spec arrow that they had lying around and used it to point to the new freeway.

This is the sign find of the day. There are only two shields with the original specifications left in South Dakota, and this is the only 18×18 example.

The Badlands – a sudden mountain range in the western half of South Dakota. These days, a tourist attraction – back then, in 1866, an impermeable obstacle that prevents one from reaching the west.

Black Hills, South Dakota. An eleven minute exposure, 6100 feet, -11 degrees. Yep, I was cold.

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Here are photos from Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska. I woke up in Wyoming after being awake for 80+ hours, experiencing near-total biological failure and thus getting a lease on a $26 motel room and my continued sanity.

I headed south to visit my friend Brian, then was about to turn back west to take photos of the Rockies… before noting that a Snowstorm of Usual Occurrence was blowing through and it would be at least two days before the roads were somewhat less than total failure. Thus, it became a frolic through the farmlands for a few days.

A wintry evening in Colorado.

Foggy night in farmland Kansas.

Hey look, an old sign. I happened upon this one in the middle of the night, and got the long-exposure shot out in the middle of the frosted fields.

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Pictures of a trip from November, 2009. Kevin Trinkle and I poked around some of Colorado before taking a trip through New Mexico, down to Route 66, and eastward to Texas.

Here is the first day, and it involves no Route 66 whatsoever. Just Colorado and New Mexico.

Here’s sunset on the first day, on Johnson Mesa – New Mexico state highway 72 just east of Raton.

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And, finally, we have the third part of the trip – from Antelope Canyon to New Mexico. Daniel Brim and I, driving a cargo van… always fun exploring narrow old roads in a big old vehicle like that!

Here’s a 1950s Indian road sign! Complete with peeling numbers on some of the oldest engineer grade (does not fade to green) scotchlite I have ever seen. They invented the stuff in 1950 and this is not much newer than that. 18×12 inches; somewhere in southeast Utah near the Four Corners area.

This might very well be a meteor in daytime! I just noticed this when I was processing these photos – note the smoke trail in the middle. I have the photo from 1 second before, and 4 seconds after, and they show nothing – but this one definitely has that black streak, which I believe to be a smoke trail from a very bright meteor.

Behold the birds. Pagosa Springs, Colorado has this lake, fountain assembly… and swans!

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Photos from Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma (and the single point in which they intersect) from September, 2009 – and some New Mexico, and a really, really small quantity of Texas.

This is the New Mexico/Colorado/Oklahoma triple point. Dale takes this opportunity to breathe some refreshing Oklahoma air, and drink some water he has brought with him from New Mexico – and park in two states at the same time.

Dale parks the car squarely in a single state, and looks up at the Kansas/Colorado/Oklahoma marker that is visible from miles away – a good thing, because the dirt roads that one takes to get to it are somewhat labyrinthine.

The Oklahoma panhandle is known for the occasional thunderstorm.

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More from my New Mexico trip of November 2008, including some actual New Mexico this time.

On the mountain pass between Chama, New Mexico, and Cumbres, Colorado – both states call this one highway 17. The sky was dark blue, just after sunrise – the snow is that bright, and there is just that little atmosphere, at 10,000 feet.

Sunset over the plains of northeast New Mexico. Old US-64 (now state highway 325) near Capulin Volcano.

An undisclosed location in northeast New Mexico, home to my friend Dale. Certainly no old signs to be found anywhere.

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I was in Denver this weekend for the big IMTA map convention, and took a lot of photos of I-25, I-70, and I-225. I-25 and I-225 were under construction for many years as part of a rebuilding process called T-Rex. The project involved adding lanes, bridges, and two rail lines along the interstate corridors. The end result is impressive.

Through Arapahoe County, I-25 is an unrelenting 10 lanes with a rail line on the west side. The lane count goes down to 8 after I-225 and eventually to 6 on the un-reconstructed portion of the road near downtown. It reminded me of I-5 losing lanes headed northbound into Norwalk and downtown Los Angeles. As always, click the smaller photos to get the larger ones.

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