High Points: At the car wash

There are sure a lot of dirty cars out there.

This is the time of year when the mud and the crud and the grime and the salt and the mag chloride collect and coagulate on the undercarriage and bodies of our cars, leaving them nearly unrecognizable as cars at all. Drive up and down Highway 82, and the cars all look to be the same, rounded blobs sharing the same color: A dark shade of brown. Yuck.

There is something egalitarian about all of our cars taking on the same hue and the same crusty coating. It doesn’t matter if you drive a brand new $195,000 Mercedes G-Class (“invented to defy the limitations of time zones, and time itself,” according to the Mercedes Benz website) or a $5,000 2004 Subaru Outback with 217,598 miles (“Hey, it gets me to the Rodeo Lot,” according to Jason from ‘Bonedale) — we all share the same mud.

What is a little different is the way we get that mud off our cars.

Mercedes guy likely has a guy. A guy who, for a fittingly exorbitant fee, comes by the house and “details” the vehicle to perfection, making sure every smudge of highway mud, every grain of road salt, and every strand of dog hair are eliminated in time for the next ride to Sant Ambroeus. Subaru guy likely has a bucket and a hose, which will see car-cleaning duty in late April after a long ski season and just before a car-camping trip to Moab.

The rest of us? We wait in line.

There are a number of car cleaning options up and down the Roaring Fork Valley; but if you live in Aspen and you don’t get it done at your house or at a detailer, then you’re going to have to go beyond the roundabout. Oh, the horror.

The Roxy’s car wash is convenient if you live in town, but it can be hit or miss in terms of its … shall we say … amenities. The in-bay automatic wash is not cheap, but it rinses the grime away as long as you don’t mind a wait to get in that is usually longer than the Alpine Springs lift. You can use one of the three self-serve bays, but they are a bit tight, and the cranks that offer the different selections can be cranky.

You have to ease on down the road towards Basalt for your next options. For cleaning it yourself, there is the Basalt Car Wash, hidden behind Roaring Fork Fire Rescue Station 41 and across from the Basalt Middle School. Nothing fancy, just four big bays that offer pay-as-you-go car wash services 24 hours a day. Basic. Other than peak times, it is usually easy to find an open, covered bay, and you can pretty much stay as long as you want. The vacuums provide good suck for the buck, and if you have your own detailing supplies, this is the place.

For those who like to kill two tasks in a single stop, The Basalt Store on Emma Road and the Willits Car Wash at the Willits General Store offer gas fill-ups with discounts on a wash with minimum purchases. Both have reasonably good automatic wash services but with just one “tunnel” each getting, say, fourth in line, can take a good chunk of an afternoon.

For my money, the shiny El Jebel Autowash is the best place to get a wash in the valley these days. It’s state-of-the art, which means you get multi-colored, psychedelic soap sprayed in waves that coat your car. You enter the touch-less washing bays slowly, getting an undercarriage blast, which takes an acre or so of mud off the bottom of your ride. By the time the machines rinse off the foam at the end of the wash, you’re reminded, once again, what color your car really is.  

Located on Balboa Way, west of the El Jebel roundabout, Luis and Anthony keep the lines for the two bays moving along with each car taking an average of just 5 minutes. Oh, and they do detailing on-site. Open from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week, you can also set up next door in a spacious lot to vacuum your interiors.

One thing Mercedes guy, Subaru guy, and the rest of us have in common: We all feel better in newly washed cars.