From the Road: I am so done with mountains. Today, we drove on Monarch Pass on Rt.50 in Colorado. The top was 11,700 ft high. My head hurts, my hands shake and I am terrified. We visited Black Canyon National Park - stunning and scary. I really want to be done with the Rocky Mountains. The single hill of my childhood was 45 ft high, high enough. People are very nice here.
I lived in Durango, Colorado for several years in the early 1980s, and I loved the mountains.
Some of those mountain passes were pretty scary, though, like Wolf Creek Pass, especially when I was pulling a horse trailer.
Went over Monarch about 30 years ago. it was a rainy/misty day and we could not see more than 100 yards away. Very disappointing but it still was awesome. At that time the road from Aspen was about one and a half lanes wide in some places with a big drop off and scared the hell out of my wife.
I've had an off and on again problem with heights in my life, so I understand. Sometimes I can do it, and sometimes I can't.
I had to do it. My travel companion suffers from COPD, so it was always me getting out of the car and leaning against the guard rails, trying to calm my shaking hands.