Best route TX to northern CO?

[dick&claire]

I-25 goes straight up to Denver via Pueblo and Colorado Springs. Spend a little time in Palo Duro Canyon. The ride down into the canyon is steep but easily navigated. The deer and turkeys in the park are tame. Avoid West Texas: Midland and Odessa, there is nothing there other than George Bush's childhood home and the air museum, which is no where near as good as Pensacola or Dayton except for the bomber nose art which is very graphic!

[Melody Ranch]

REDAX Route 287......Its a good way to go straight north. I came from Bismark a few years ago on my Harley. Thought I would try something different. Being that I lived at my place in Weslaco, Texas...in the Rio Grande Valley...right on 83 I figured what the heck....83 all the way from Bismark. Let me tell you, any Winter Texan who complains to me about Texas being hot, flat and barren has never been to West Nebraska and West Kansas. It was a good road, however, and I enjoyed the historic aspects. Not a road for your trip to Colorado though.

[Gringo]

I've been through Palo Duro, on the way up to the RMNP from houston in the early 80's, but never spent much time there. I saw enough to want to go back someday. I really got into the history, customs and religions of the native north americans, and this spot has a special place in the history of the frontier. I just recently read the new Quanah Parker history (Empire of the Summer Moon) and it renewed my desire to go look around Palo Duro, where the untrained, illiterate Comanches outfought and outmaneuvered the best the US Government could come up with......for 40 years.

But I suspect the frame of mind I have in mind would mind the 105 degrees. I'm sure the experience of being down in a canyon in that heat would give me new respect for what it took to live and work in west Texas in those days of my own illustrious ancestors in Texas history.

The history will still be there in September, I bet.

[mojo]

Whenever you head out, I would keep a watch on the weather as it is monsoon season in CO and there have been horrendous rain and hail storms pounding eastern Colorado moving north & east to OK, KS, & WY.

[KL's 77]

Quick elevation may be 287 to Amarillo and I40 to Clines Corner and up through Santa
Fe to 25N. And, of course, the bonus is Santa Fe.

[Gringo]

Santa Fe, eh? Interesting thought. I've never been there. Love the architecture.

[eubank]

When we lived in Austin, we decided to go the shortest route to mountains, then work our way north toward Colorado (Paonia, to be exact, the location of my parents' ranch back then). So we struck out directly to the west, got into the mountains at Cloudcroft, and worked northward.

It was, though, a tough drive across west Texas. We had only the MG, fully loaded, and no AC. And it was hot, hot, hot!


Lynn

[Phoenix]

Beware of tame-looking turkeys. We saw a herd of them in Zion one year, and one of them jumped onto the hood of a car in the parking lot near the lodge. Really messed up their paint.

[Gringo]

I think I still have the recipe for wild turkey.

[cojer]

it's an easy one....open bottle tilt it toward your lips and swallow

[Gringo]

I hadda give up the Black Jack Shellac a few years back. I kept breaking out in handcuffs.

[cojer]

i hate it when that happens! the other best wild turkey recipe in my book is a crockpot and plenty of hatch green chile...makes up one hell of a stew