I volunteered to be a sponsor on the Cotopaxi, Colorado school's 7th grade history trip on April 2-4, 2008. Three days on a bus with 15 students and four adults (counting the driver). Aside from the cramped seating and my being an old guy hard pressed to keep up with the youngsters, it was  great trip. I got to see parts of Colorado I had never visited before.

Using the bus as the reference for each stop (except I am embarrassed to find I failed to take a picture of the bus at the Black Canyon; my bad), I organized the other pictures into individual Tabblos, linked from this one. (This is "in progress" as I complete each individual Tabblo.)

Generally the relevant comments are below the pictures. Except when they aren't. :)

This is the bus at the school being loaded. It is about 8 AM and the leader, Curt Lukassen is briefing the class elsewhere. They showed up a few minutes later with a bunch of coolers which went inside the bus. At this point, I was totally mystified as to what was going on and how I fit in.

As we began the trip, I felt it best to explain to Mr. Lukassen that he shouldn't plan on a routine trip. That I carry a jinx with me making life more interesting. He thought I was joking. Foolish man!

He became a believer a short time later. We had almost made it to Salida, Colorado, 25 miles up the Arkansas River from Cotopaxi, when we found the highway closed (above and below). A semi loaded with propane tanks had rolled and dumped them all over, some even in the river. And a few were leaking. It became quickly obvious that the road would be closed for hours. The accident is just around the bend.

So we and the other bus (they were going skiing at Monarch up the highway from Salida) turned around using the wide place in the roadway (shown in the lower picture) and rerouted the trip. Instead of going south from Salida over Poncha Pass in the San Luis Valley, we would go back to Cotopaxi and turn south toward Westcliffe and over La Veta Pass.

As it turned out, US50 was closed for 18 hours.

This is us at a convenience store in Westcliffe, Colorado with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the background. It was a long stretch to the next potty break so this was THE choice on this new route. The detour added about two hours to our trip.

The Sand Dunes NP was our first scheduled stop on the trip. Our driver, Dean Ward, knew an unpaved shortcut which saved us a half hour or so over an unpaved, winding county road. It was nice to walk around again!

The left picture is us at the visitors center and the right one is at the dunes access parking lot.

The details of this stop are here.

Before ascending Wolf Creek Pass, we stopped at Shaw Creek rest area near Monte Vista, CO (left).  The kids all spent some time playing games for a while then we loaded up for the high country.

This is us at the Wolf Creek Pass overlook (right). That is Mr. Lukassen caught in an unflattering pose. Some one just had to have something out of the cargo bay. This wasn't even a rest stop, just a stretch stop.

The picture upper left is us at the motel in Durango. This was our first overnight and it went better than usual I gathered: the kids were actually all at the bus when they were supposed to be the next morning. Dean, the bus driver, said he didn't expect them at the bus for another half hour!

Then we went to City Market (lower left) to pick up our lunches. And the students picked up some junk food. Then we all headed to the Durango Depot and RR Museum.

These three shots are of lunch being set up at Mesa Verde. This is near the picnic area a quarter mile or so from the museum. But we got to sit on rocks since bus parking isn't allowed in the picnic lot.

This is us in Dolores, Colorado. We stopped to learn about the Galloping Goose #5 train there. This was a brief one, maybe an hour or so. Then we headed to Telluride, the same route the Goose used to travel.

After Mesa Verde (background), we stopped at the Sleeping Ute Rest Stop not far from the Park entrance. As usual, the kids played ball to burn off energy.

Our bus driver got brave here: the bus is parked in a zone he wasn't supposed to park in. And the Highway Patrol regional office was right across the street! Not that anyone would care; we were the only patrons.

At the summit of Lizard Head Pass everyone got out but some got right back in since it was cold! I don't remember why the cooler was sitting by the bus. There was a brief episode of snow throwing before we reentered the bus.

This is in Telluride. The building to the right and behind the bus is the Gondola station. It kept lightly snowing in town (the white dots in the picture) with heavier snow up the mountain.

Our driver was brave again; this was in a 15 minute parking area and he took two places! But he tried to find another place to park a school bus nearby with no luck. It's hard to make a parking lot in a Historical District!

This is our faithful bus in the motel parking lot in Ouray. Notice the snow on the hot tub cover in the foreground. 

Along about here, I got really lax in taking pictures of the bus in its natural environment. One I missed as at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. And we were there for quite a while eating lunch, sightseeing, and listening to a movie and talk on the canyon. 

This is our bus in the Curecanti National Recreation Area parking lot below Morrow Point Dam. It is in the bottom of the Black Canyon, an awe-inspiring idea.

Our next stop also doesn't have a bus picture; we stopped at Blue Mesa Dam and Reservoir for a potty break and picture-taking.

I have added a non-stop post script to the trip of the view from Monarch Pass on the eastern side. There is also a brief geography lesson in it!

I hope you enjoyed this armchair tour of southwestern Colorado as much as I did taking it! I suggest taking more than three days for this route to see some of wonderful places we didn't have time to visit.