Turkey Run 2: So Cal to Durango to Seattle

Somewhere west of Gallup a house fell on my car. Part of a house, actually, an upper part. Shingles. If you've never done roofing, let me assure you that asphalt shingles are not small. Each individual shingle is a part of a larger sheet, weighing 20 or 30 lbs. and wholly composed of tar and reinforcing fibers, and impregnated with nasty bits of crushed gravel.

Half-House Hurling
As the wind had been revving up for some fall blustering, I was cautious of the half-house mounted on a trailer going down the 40E, and anticipated a hole to shoot, passing the truck and eliminating the threat of a tall, unstable load. Too late. A bluster peeled about 20 complete shingles into the wind, lofting upwards with the exact trajectory necessary for splashing all over one unhappy Subaru aft of the rapidly defoliating house.


I dodged all but one, the last one, which plastered itself around the splitter on my lower airdam. Nasty gravel gouged through the paint and well into the poly structure, and the tar guaranteed I'd need something stronger than soap to remove it. Sometimes you just get burned. WRX front ends take a lot of abuse, even in OEM form. Fortunately, nothing else had come to airborne intrusion by the time I fell into Durango.

Old Train Running
You can see much of what was Colorado in the 19th and early 20th centuries by driving into any corner of the state. History sticks around. What may be the most poignant historical element in Durango is the Durango Silverton Railroad, a narrow-gauge stream train that still runs from Durango to Silverton, following an incredibly precipitous rail bed that's been around almost as long as the white man in this area. You can walk to breakfast and watch this fire-breathing fixture of iron-bellied history creep through town and bang northward, its whistle crying out to the forgotten associates of its past.


There are so many more pieces of what was to be found. Mines used and forgotten, abandoned cart paths and rail beds lining the faces of mountains and canyons. Ghost towns and the foundations of huge mills, tools, snow shacks. All this Americana stands up for itself, a coffin in a graveyard covered by only the barest trace of earth. Colorado won't let you forget.