Oh beautiful, for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountains, majesty
Above the fruited plain
Katherine Bates

I assumed that when I crossed the border from Kansas to Colorado that the Front Range would just be there, in all its majesty, as in the anthem. Wrong. Eastern Colorado was a mirror image of western Kansas, flat and dusty. Desperate townships pock marked the highway and were verily unattractive, like pimples. Dogs ran in packs, urinating on scrubby trees and rusty gas pumps. Old men played checkers on town squares, and chewed and spit. Beer cans and broken bottles sparkled among the stubble on the roadside. Every road sign had been shot dead several times. And still I search for the Coor's commercial?

Two hours later, at some nameless crossroads, I veered left on Highway 24 and found it. The sun was bright, the sky cobalt blue, and an armada of clouds skimmed the horizon to announce the awesome presence of the Rocky Mountains in the distance. The more I drove the bigger they loomed. I was filled with happiness.

The road eventually led up and over Wilkerson Pass. On the down side a wide valley appeared with flowered fields, glistening streams, and log cabins pressed against muscular mountains. It was heaven and, best of all, I had it almost to myself. As I approached the town of Buena Vista the earth fell away to a low plain which revealed the Collegiate Peaks ahead, the most formidable range in the lower 48 with 16 fourteeners, purple and snowcapped, spread over a 30 mile front. I descended into town with a Rocky Mountain High.