The long way to Moab

One of those occasions when turning the sat nav off (I never tire of shouting at sat nav lady that it's 'calculating root' not 'calculating rowt') and following my nose proved inspired. I should have just sat on US50/I70 freeways and pointed West. Instead I took the long way round, travelling down US141 through a small place called Gateway, then heading across the Paradox Valley into Utah.

Million Dollar Highway

A number of legends exist around how this stretch of US550 came to be known as the Million Dollar Highway. There's a huge history of gold and silver mining in the area so one story has it that men who built the roads linking the crucial mining towns of Silverton and Ouray discovered lumps of precious metals along the way and made themselves millionaires. The other story is more closely related to how perilous the road itself is to travel given the twists, turns, height and consequences of getting it wrong. A visiting VIP was heard to remark that "you won't get me going back down that road for a million dollars".