Family enjoys trip
Pea Ridge family returns to mountains regularly
Southwest Colorado is the favorite vacation destination for many Pea Ridge families. In the 1980s and ’90s, several of the Pea Ridge firefighters took their offroad motorcycles, their 4x4s, and their families to Colorado each summer to camp and explore the high-country.
The Hosea Ellis family, Betty Jean Williams, Sharon Wood and Barbara Merritt moved to Pea Ridge from Colorado and returned often to the mountains to enjoy the mountains and visit relatives. Many more of our neighbors love Colorado, too.
Back in 1976, friends from Youth With A Mission (YWAM) invited me to visit their base in Cimarron, in south west Colorado, and I took my parents there in a ’68 Volkswagon van that September. The aspens were a brilliant gold contrasting the bluegreen spruce around our camp site at YWAM, and the surrounding mountain peaks were covered in fresh snow. When we awoke, we, too, were covered in snow, but it soon melted. We borrowed a dune buggy and explored the high forest trails, and we caught some beaver-pond trout which we cooked on an open fire. Dad and I fell in love with Colorado!
Back in Pea Ridge, Mark and Mike Williams helped me build a VW buggy which we took to Colorado. We explored the highcountry, stopping to watch shepherds herd huge flocks of sheep down from mountain meadows to valley pastures. At dusk, we parked and listened to bull elk bugle in the alpine meadows as the snowcapped peaks turned pink in the alpine glow of sunset. We did this for several years until I bought an ’86 Toyota 4-Runner with four-wheel drive and lowrange gears to explore higher, steeper trails. I began writing about my back-country vacations in The TIMES, and then in offroad adventure magazines.
The blue Toyota with red lights atop and Pea Ridge Fire Dept. plates appeared in many 4x4 magazines. Rick and Josh Whitaker camped and explored the mountains with me, and then Rick began attending mountainman rendezvous. In time, my wife Barbara and daughter, Lora Jones Garner learned to love exploring Jeep roads, too. In ’80, we took Lora’s friend, Shelia O’Dell to the mountains including a ride on the Denver & Rio Grande narrow gage steam train from Durango to Silverton. For years, we introduced friends to the San Juan mountains around Ouray and Silverton. Barbara preferred motels and B&Bs to camping and now I do, too. One year, Jerry and Angie David rented a cabin near us at Cimarron, and they rented a Jeep in Ouray so they could ride the high-country with us.
Ol’ C.W. McCall of country music fame, whose real name is William Fries, and was mayor of Ouray, said in his wonderful video presentation, San Juan
Odyssey, “The San Juan Mountains are the roughest, toughest, steepest mountains in the West. You can hike ‘em if you’ve got the legs, you can ride ‘em if you’ve got a horse, or you can Jeep ‘em if you’ve got the nerve, but one thing is for sure; You can’t see this country any other way; you’ve got to climb it!” So every summer and fall thousands of four-wheel drive enthusiasts flock to the San Juans to ride the high-country that can’t be enjoyed nearly as much from the highways far below.
When Lora married Donnie
Garner, he, too, fell in love with the high-country. One year when he was youth pastor at First Baptist Church, Pea Ridge, he and Bob Harp took the youth on a Colorado ski trip. Now Donnie pastors the River of Faith Church with the Big Cross at Jacket, Mo., and he works for Making Memories Tours (MMT) of Washburn, Mo.
When our family began planning this year’s trip to the mountains, Donnie used his skill at trip planning to develop a vacation plan like Making Memories does; he scheduled a stop about every two hours. In MMT’s spacious van, we stopped at interesting places that we had always hurried past on previous trips like: The Pioneer Woman Mercantile in Pawhuska, Okla., the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, the Big Well Museum in Greenburg Kan., etc. We paused near Hasty, Colo., where Barbara and Sharron’s Dad had his heart attack while on his way to visit relatives in Canon City. Judy and Don Fite, a retired couple from near Montrose who were following him assisted him until the EMTs arrived, and they called us. Since then we have visited them several times. They introduced us to the Bar D Chuckwagon Dinner and Western Music Show in Durango, and Donnie has since taken large MMT tour busses to that wonderful music show.
After checking into the Comfort Inn at Salida, we toured the old town on the upper Arkansas River where Barbara was born. We found their Dad’s old garage which is now the local gas company shop and at their old house which had changed very little, except they agreed that it seemed smaller now.
After breakfast, we stopped at Monarch Pass for hot cider before going on to Black Canyon National Park where we enjoyed a picnic lunch. Then we checked into a house we had rented in Elk Meadows above Ridgway. Ridgway is where John Wayne filmed “True Grit” and “The Cowboys.” We had a good steak at True Grit Restaurant next door to the Ft. Smith Saloon.
The next morning, July 4, we drove into Ouray and placed our lawn chairs in a good place to see the big Independence Day Parade. Thousands of people flock to Ouray for the morning parade, evening fireworks, and parade of lighted 4x4 vehicles. After the morning parade, we ate lunch and learned from Facebook that Joel and Cindy Easterling were eating across the street.
At 4 p.m. we checked out a pair of Jeeps we had rented in advance. Ouray is known as The Little Switzerland of America, but because it has so many scenic four-wheel drive roads, it is also known as The Jeep Capitol Of The World. This year they had extra snow and the popular high passes were still snowed in. We four-wheeled up Yankee Boy Basin renowned for its abundant flowers. The road was passable for quite a ways, but the snow was 10 feet high beside the trail and much deeper over the pass to Telluride. This was a first time experience for my sister Susan Odell, and she loved it!
David Wood was a veteran of the Battle of Pea Ridge and after the war started a freighting company hauling supplies ahead of railroad workers as they laid tracks across the plains. When the tracks ended at Ridgway, he became the major freighter for the San Juan gold mines. He built many of the mining roads that are now loved as four-wheel drive roads. His biography is titled, “I Hauled These Mountains In Here.”
Back in Ouray, we placed our chairs in a good location to see the magnificent fireworks display shot off the mountain above town. Thousands of people come from near and far for the grand show. The next morning we tried to Jeep up Owl Creep Pass to the meadow where John Wayne charged the four outlaws, but the road was closed, so we wheeled the lovely, but less challenging Last Dollar Road to Telluride. We enjoyed a picnic high above Telluride. We returned our Jeeps in Ouray and going back to our house at Elk Meadows, Lora spotted a huge herd of elk.
The next morning, Lora spotted a bear with two cubs near our house. Donnie drove us by highway to Mountain Village ski area where he has taken MMT tour busses. We rode a scenic ski lift tram down into Telluride, and after touring/shopping, we took the tram back up to our van and returned to Elk Meadows where the ladies cooked a fine supper.
Denver and Kathy Jennings love Ouray too, and Kathy says that what she enjoys most is relaxing in the big natural hot-spring swimming pool. We visited Charles and Malissa Fletcher’s charming China Clipper Bed & Breakfast in Ouray. They recently sold their dairy and bought the B&B so they could live in Ouray. It’s conveniently just a block off main street, and we hope to stay with them next time.
Leaving Ouray, we climbed the switchbacks of U.S. Highway 550, The Million Dollar Highway, over Red Mountain and down into Silvertown. We watched tourists get off the famous Denver & Rio Grande steam train up from Durango that is often seen in western movies. After a picnic lunch we climbed more switchbacks over Molas Pass and down into Durango. After checking into Comfort Inn, we went to Bar D Chuckwagon Dinner and Western Music Show. We always love their entertaining show with good food. Donnie likes taking MMT bus groups there.
On the way home, we wanted to go to the outdoor musical drama, Texas, in Canyon, Texas, but it is not open on Mondays, so Donnie rescheduled a visit to Old Santa Fe where we visited the historic Loretto Chapel and toured/ shopped the square before lunch at the renowned Plaza Café. Then on to our motel in Amarillo, Texas, after a blessed week in the cool high country, we were back in the heat and humidity.
Each day of a tour, Donnie has a surprise stop, and the last day’s surprise was the best of the trip, a visit to the Cross at Groom, Texas, beside I-40/Route 66. Surrounding the 190-foot-high Christian cross are 14 lifesized bronze sculptures depicting: Christ’s Last Supper, arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection with the associated scriptures: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:16-18
For each of us, the cross and its meaning touched our hearts profoundly. We returned home from a special vacation with dreams of, “Next year in Ouray,” maybe a fall tour when the aspens are golden and the bull elk are bugling!
Robert and Jenny Wood love Ouray for their family vacations. In Facebook posts from previous vacations, Jenny posted a family photo with the mountains of Ouray in the background that said, “Ouray is one of my happy places, and these people are my happy place!” Another of her posts reads, “Leaving Ouray was hard for all of us. Pictures and souvenirs are all packed away, but the memories are still being played over and over in our minds and for years to come. Had a wonderful time with family.”
Ouray mayor C.W. McCall said , “Life is simply a collection of memories, but memories are like star light… they live on forever.”