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Show mm TIME: mm mF(B By FLORENCE BITTNER Perhaps the most impressive thing about looking at scenery is that it continues. It's not as one of my back-east back-east friends once said to me, "I know you just put those mountains up there for my benefit and when I go home you will take them down." FOR OUR summer vacation, we drove to southeastern Utah and over into southwestern Colorado. We looked at scenery for days on end and never got tired. One couple we met who had recently retired, bought a motor home and set out to see the driveable part of the world said, "It's so beautiful and we are so tired of looking." We saw Indian ruins, but not any ruined Indians. That's a joke. In my growing up years, we always had to say it that way. We thought it was hilarious, but I don't .recall that the Indians were much amused. I GOT ANGRY once. In Dolores, Colo., a man has a private museum. When we had looked at the old ploughs and butter churns and artifacts of our recent past, he invited us into his private collection. It used to be a vault maybe it still is, and if not, it should be. There are hundreds of Indian artifacts, most of which he has dug up himself. I asked how he found them and he said he just hunted and dug for them. THINKING OF him going into a cliff dwelling with a shovel to dig for relics made me so mad I had to get out of there before I told him my opinion of vandals. Now I'm only sorry I didn't tell him. It's time someone made such . people realize those are national treasures, not for private hoarding. We drove over the "Million Dollar Highway." When 1 was growing up in southeastern Utah, we heard tell of that fabulous highway through the Colorado mountains. Cost a million dollars, it did, and it was a wonder. BY TODAY'S standards, it wasn't much of a road, but a million dollars was an impressive amount of money. For a million dollars cash that year they could probably have bought up most of San Juan County. It has been much improved, widened, black topped, filled and bridged, but it is still a wonder. I was proud of my little car purring right along at eleven thousand feet. I was also proud of me for driving it. I did get my steering practice and we kept having to stop to look. SILVERTON HAS turned into a tourist trap, but it is well done and well restored, so I forgave them. We stopped the car on a turn-out and looked at Red Mountain. It is the only orange mountain I ever recall seeing. Rocks come in all colors in that part of our country, but I don't recall another bright orange hill. CAROL SAID, "And when we go home, it will just keep looking like that." And I said, I don't think they pasted it up there for our benefit. It's not a road for the faint hearted, but for those of us who grew up thinking most roads come with switchbacks, switch-backs, nine percent grades and sheer drops into infinity over the side and no guard rail, it is a driveable road. FOR THOSE who believe the best way to see scenery is from the window of public transportation, there is the narrow gauge railway which goes up to Silveiton and I hear tell it is a ride worth taking. Booked solid, but worth the effort to make reservations. We had another look at the land behind the Blue' Mountains. The Needles Overlook is an easy drive, but the way to appreciate that view is from the bottom looking up. It's hard to realize how high it is from the rim looking down. JUST KNOWING how high it is makes me dizzy, but it is so flat on the top that it is deceptive. Still, it's not every day we see the earth disembowled and spread open. I know it is all out there, still as solemn and serene, as unimpressed with us as we were awed by what we saw. I stop in the middle of my scurrying about and bring back in my mind the white aspens against the dark green fir trees, the vertical cliff and the silver lake. I couldn't bring it home, but in the quiet place in my mind, it is still there for me to enjoy when I need it. i 'BBr'jjimiimw |