From Leadville I drove a short distance south and then
turned west on highway 82 past Twin Lakes Reservoir . The road is considered one
of the most scenic in Colorado because it goes over Independence Pass, the second
highest paved through road in America at over 12,000 feet after Trail Ridge
Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. The road to the top of Mount Evans west
of Denver is paved all the way to the summit at over 14,000 feet, but it dead
ends there.

I crossed Independence Pass a few times in the 1990s when I
lived in Colorado, but it somehow always seemed to be cloudy and wet when I
drove it, so I didn’t get the full effect of the views over the Sawatch and Elk
Ranges and the numerous fourteener peaks I climbed in the region in that era. This
was probably the first time I crossed the pass in beautiful sunny weather. Of
course, the pass is closed in winter, which probably usually means about seven
months.

The road down from the pass into Aspen is especially narrow
and doesn’t seem like a significant state road. Most of the way down into town
it’s surrounded by thick aspen groves which I think I managed to hit close to
peak of color .

I’ve been to Aspen a few times during the summer months but
mostly as a place to pass through on my way to hiking peaks. It’s an expensive
place even in summer and quite far from Denver, so not a place I’d go to
recreate generally. I wanted to spend a few days in the area, though, to get
some of the vibe of the place. Is it really all it’s cracked up to be? It
strikes me as such a glitzy and pretentious place, one not inhabited or used as
a second residence just by normal affluent people (that would be Vail) but
rather by the super-rich and show types. I think of it as a place for shallow
trust fund babies, cocaine users, and Hollywood stars, with much overlap
between them. It is one of those places where even small cracker boxes of
houses sell for millions of dollars, and people of more modest means double and
quadruple up in tiny places simply for the privilege of living in Aspen. But most
people who work in Aspen live farther down the Roaring Fork Valley or even in
Garfield County, so much so that there are morning traffic jams into town on
highway 82 during the high season . Regardless of how beautiful Aspen and the
Roaring Fork Valley are, those financial conditions make it much less of a
paradise to live in.

What I’ve discovered, though, is that not everything is
Aspen is astronomically priced. Although you can blow hundreds of dollars on
dinner at one of the many posh restaurants and far more for a night at the
Hotel Jerome or other high-end properties, you can also get meals with fewer
frills at more casual restaurants in town for not much more than a similar
burger or burrito would set you back in Colorado’s other resort towns. I even stayed
once in Aspen in winter at The Saint Moritz Lodge which has one floor of
hostel/shared rooms that are very nice at a very reasonable price comparable to
staying at a hostel in New York or major European cities.

With the late September weather so perfect, though,
conditions were ideal for car camping. 
Why pay for accommodation when you can use your car as shelter,
right? Well, at least when it’s not too
hot or cold to sleep in the car, and the nighttime temps in the low to mid 40s
in Aspen in late September were just about perfect for my sleeping bag . The parking lot of the Aspen Inn near the
airport also turned out to be a perfect spot, one with cars present all night
but with relatively low lighting. I love the way Colorado makes much more of an
attempt to limit light pollution with much dimmer lighting in most parking lots
than the blinding version most of the country uses.

While I spent some time walking around town in Aspen, there
isn’t all that much for me there since I’m not into shopping or fine and
expensive dining. Rather, I made it my
base for a few days to explore the area with hikes around Ashcroft and the
Maroon Bells. That’s what Aspen is about to me – not shopping and dining and
day speas and apres-ski but the heart of one of the most beautiful areas in
Colorado and the United States.