A busman's holiday?

I saw something very memorable today, and had to share. Just a crazy confluence of events.

According to Wikipedia, the phrase "busman's holiday" is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a period of holiday or leisure time spent doing something similar to one's normal occupation...

So does this photo (taken by me) depict a busman's holiday, or a busman's worst nightmare? The setting is unquestionably lovely (despite the poor visibility due to smoke blown from wildfires in California), but sadly, this is a nightmare. If you look closely, you can see that the bus is draped with yellow tape



I spent the past few days pursuing my other hobby, backpacking in the wilderness. This particular location required a lengthy drive. After leaving the interstate, I drove about 40 miles on a winding gravel road with occasional rough sections, and a final 6 miles on a rough 4-wheel-drive (aka jeep) road (the last 6 miles took more than an hour).

As I returned today, imagine my surprise to see a Greyhound bus (coach) abandoned along a rather pleasant section of the gravel road. Truly, this is the middle of nowhere. Strangely, it was abandoned in a location where it was barely possible to squeeze by.

Here is the route that the driver took to get there (from right to left).


This is the southern entrance into the amazing Flat Tops area of Colorado. Looking at the route, you can see that the first 10 miles involves a steady climb of about 3,000 feet with numerous sharp switchbacks. What the map doesn't show is that this is a narrow gravel road with no guardrails and extreme exposure. You are basically making sharp turns on a 1.5 lane road with one side often falling off precipitously for hundreds of feet. If a vehicle approaches in the opposite direction, you have to hope that you are near an occasional wider section so you can squeeze past each other. Once reaching the plateau, the gravel road alternates between well-graded and rough, but nothing a passenger car can't handle. All other routes on the map are either hiking trails (single dashed lines) or jeep roads (double dashed lines). There are no other improved roads in sight, and if you continue another 10 miles, the only option becomes true jeep roads, where one is crawling slowly over large rocks.

How did this happen? Checking the news after I got home, I found that it was the combination of an engineering marvel ... and climate change.
21 people rescued from Greyhound bus that tried to get around I-70 closure

Here is the backstory. From 1980-1992, a remarkable section of Interstate highway 70 was built through picturesque Glenwood Canyon, winding above and alongside the Colorado River with multiple tunnels and bridges. If you have driven this section, you will remember it, it is spectacular.



But then came the Grizzly Creek wildfire in 2020.


And then the rain, causing unprecedented debris slides, closing the canyon.


There is no viable detour for the interstate traffic. Vehicles are routed via tiny roads two hours out of their way. The small mountain towns are overwhelmed and services for large trucks are in short supply. To make a long story short, it's a nightmare even if you take the correct detour (and for the residents).

And to make matters even worse, GPS routing software is not always adapting well to these closures. As Mrs. S says, "I feel badly for the driver." 😁

…”it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine…..”

I feel like I just read the bare bones of a literary short story for our time. The gist of which, was summed up by the comment above. Thanks for sharing this.