Our camping spot is only 24 miles from the town of Palisades, Colorado. Peach lovers will recognize that as the peach capitol of Colorado, so our mission is to buy some before we leave. We got the best local advice from our cousins, to meander along the little roads looking for local fruit stands. We exited off of I-70 at Clifton, turned left on Front Street, and that's where the produce stands began. We also immediately started seeing the healthy peach orchards that this area is famous for.
The most famous geological landmark is Mount Garfield. We thought it made a lovely picture with the mountain in the background, and more orchards in the foreground.
You can also see that we were blessed with lovely weather, and views only a little hazy from the distant wild fires. We stopped at the first local fruit stand--Garfield Mountain Produce--and priced their boxes of peaches. They ranged in price from $10 to $40, and they let us taste six different kinds. This is getting more complicated than we thought. Ten dollars for an entire box seems mighty cheap, but we can't buy from the first place, can we? So we continued on to check the next, and the next, and the next fruit stand. Mark will tell you that we stopped at ten different fruit stands today. The u-pick place was $30 per box, and we found prices as high as $48 per box. They went up in price as we got closer to the town of Palisades, with the most expensive being found in town, with organic farms charging an extra premium as well.
Wouldn't you know it, we returned to the very first stop to buy that box of $10 peaches. We are at the end of the season, but these were very nice cling-free peaches and such a bargain!
We also made a return stop to Talbot Orchard, for a flat of their "ripes." We found that you can buy firsts (the best and prettiest peaches that are packed with cushioned spacers and sell for a premium price of $35-$50), seconds (smaller or blemished or miss-shapen peaches but significantly cheaper) or ripes (you better use them in the next day or two and they aren't perfect). For $5 we bought more peaches!
We accomplished our mission just in time to drive to our cousins' house for dinner. They had ordered pizza and made a salad for a great meal tonight. And for dessert--two different peach pies! That was the first of a long string of peach desserts in our future. We first made the award-winning peach four-layer-delight that we discovered six years ago at the Palisades Peach Festival. We forgot to take a picture of both the four layer peach dessert and the next peach crisp we made. But we did remember to photograph this peach pie with crispy topping that we tried later.
Since we are on a food theme, we should point out the beautiful fields of sweet corn around the town of Olathe, Colorado. We bought plenty of Olathe corn at produce stands as we drove through this part of Colorado. It brings back good memories of six years ago when we participated in the dance contest at the Olathe Corn Festival.
As we left northwest Colorado, we knew that we had a tough travel day ahead of us. We have been traveling Highway 50 since we left California, and as we continue today we are prepared for the construction ahead. The signs are up, and we have been monitoring the web site they mention.
As we near the construction, we see signs that this is the last place that trucks (or any other vehicles) will be able to turn around to avoid the delays ahead.
This section of Highway 50 is closed--starting today--from 8 a.m. until noon, and then again 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. We planned to arrive in time to make the critical one hour opening during the lunch hour. We took our place in a very long line of vehicles at 11:15.
As it started to rain, Mark went out to invite the group of motorcycle riders into the motor home. We didn't know how long it would rain, but we certainly wouldn't want them to be without shelter if it started to pour. But they ended up dawning their rain gear and staying outside during the misty moisture that we had during our wait.
We were lucky to have a bathroom and kitchen on board. We used our wait time to have lunch while we enjoyed the views.
Precisely at 12:00, our line started moving. The eastbound lanes got to go first through the canyon construction zone. We felt bad for the car closer to the front of the line that wouldn't start after sitting idle so long. We hope he got his problem worked out before the highway closed for another four hours.
The construction includes blasting the canyon walls to make this section of Highway 50 wider. While they started back in April, they were forced to stop construction and open the highway when I-70 was closed from rock slides this spring. There are few east-west roads through the mountains of Colorado, and this construction was delayed until I-70 was reopened. Our timing was really rotten to arrive on the first day that the road was closed again.
There were 156 west-bound vehicles waiting for the noon highway opening as we drove by. We know because we counted them. Now past that road-block, we traveled past "The Pinnacles," just across from Blue Mesa Lake.
Just a few more miles, and we rolled into our home for the next couple days. We are camping for half-price at Blue Mesa Outpost Campground, with this lovely view from the motor home. We've had a successful time, completing our mission of buying Palisade peaches, and successfully making it through the Highway 50 detour.
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