FRIDAY, 09/10/2010 - CANON CITY

We left Cripple Creek in the morning and took a little roundabout way to get down to Canon City. We first headed north and paid a short visit to Mueller State Park, in case we are ever camping again. From here we headed north and west, ending up in Florissant Fossils National Monument. This is a place where a tremendous number of very small fossils (flies, mosquitos, bugs, etc.) have been found. I am not unhappy that they are all dead; I hate pesky bugs. But I digress.



The highlight of this park to us was a number of petrified tree stumps, including the star of the show, with a stump 74 feet in circumference. Apparently a number of eons ago, this area was full of redwoods. Then it became a lake or something and all the trees ended up being fossilized. There are pictures here showing trainloads of people climbing the hills picking up petrified wood; this is prior to the US taking over the area.

Just prior to arriving in Canon City, we veered off the main highway and took the Skyline Drive into town. This is another of those roads that are not for the faint of heart. This road is about 3 miles long, runs 800 feet above the rest of the world on an extremely narrow ridge. There are no shoulders for most of the road. The driver does not get to see a lot of the scenery while the car is moving.

This picture says a lot. Down below is US Hwy.50. At the upper left you can see the road as it swings around a little curve. The top of the little hump in the middle is also the road.

Another picture of the roadway, the little hump again, and Canon City on the left. The reflection is caused by your photographer taking the picture through the windshield as there was no room to get out of the car.

Ethel insisted that I include this picture of Canon City, as taken from the Drive. She still thinks that I am beautiful. Oh well…………

Needless to say we descended down from the Drive safely and soon arrived at our B & B in Canon City. I had discovered a web site that pictured a number of large, old homes in Canon City, along with an address to get more details. Well, it turns out that all these homes had been painted by an artist, so we got a copy of the addresses and went house looking. We took pictures of each of these homes and decided to put a few in the blog: you’re probably tired of seeing mines.

This last of the bunch is our B & B, the Jewel of the Canyons. This house, along with all the rest, date back to the late 1800’s. And again, we have the room with the windows in front.

SATURDAY, 09/11/2010 - THE ROYAL GORGE

We took off on Saturday morning for a half day visit to the Royal Gorge, tourist central; a place we last visited in 1958. I must admit I had some trepidations about the visit. We simply don’t go to tourist attractions, preferring areas less traveled. Well, when you are wrong, you are wrong. When we got past all the schmaltz normally associated with private attractions, we found an incredible piece of natural, God made, wonders.


After you pay the landlord’s fee to get into the park your first view is what started it all, the bridge. And it is quite a bridge, and it sits about 1200 feet over the Arkansas River, and it spans an incredible Canyon.

An attraction that wasn’t here in 1958 is the tram, a fancy little box that holds a bunch of people and carries them from one side of the canyon to the other. We saw it coming from afar and did the zoom thing. Plans are to ride this guy later.

We started walking across the bridge when lo and behold the tram was making another trip across space, so we decided to take yet another snapshot.

1200 feet below the bridge, following the river, is a set of train tracks, and, as might be expected, there is a Royal Gorge train that runs for a few miles along the river. The train had stopped at the base of the Aerial Tramway (more later), so I was able to zoom in and check out the crowd on the open car. Nobody waved.

The whistle blew and the train took off, heading west. We all raced to the other side of the bridge to take pictures of the entire train as it wound its way around and along the rapids of the Arkansas. I suspect the view was pretty good from down there as well.

After we crossed the bridge we visited a few shops and then took the local trolley up to an area known as Point Sublime, a covered porch so to speak that had an excellent view of the bridge from some distance. Obviously it was a very sunny day.

Yikes. Some mentally deranged person constructed this tower that sits on the edge of the canyon, One or two people are strapped into it, pulled way back and up by a cable, and released. The girls scream like crazy on the first couple of passes. It’s like the swing sets all of us have been on as kids but this one has you out there 1200 feet from the bottom.

We caught the trolley back across the bridge and then descended to the bottom of the gorge on the Aerial Tramway. At the bottom it was absolutely necessary to show everyone what the bottom of a bridge looks like. Plus, for the next hour all you would see is the sun.

She was only a bird in a gilded cage…….

This is another picture I kinda like. The Arkansas is racing downstream, the train tracks are following closely, and I’m not at all sure what those steel beams are doing; maybe supporting the Tramway. My main thought here is what it took to get train tracks along this rushing riverbed probably more than a hundred years ago

Here’s a quick look at one of the Aerial Tramway cars, along with the view of the entire assembly as the cars climb the entire distance.

I used a little math on this one. If the angle of rise was around 45 degrees and the two tram cars were meeting in the middle, then they were about 850 feet from me when I snapped this picture. Sorry about the shaky but at this zoom length without a tripod, old Pops isn’t that steady.

PS. Jeff and Ali. Is my math correct?

We decided that it was time to ride the tram so we did just that. This is really the only place that you can get the whole bridge in the picture without a wide-angle lens.

This picture sort of gives you a full view of this fantastic area. The narrow gorge, the rushing river, the train tracks, the bridge, the surrounding mountains. Views like this make the whole trip worthwhile!

One of the added bonuses that accompany your visit to the Royal Gorge are several large areas where wild animals native to the area are kept. The trolley passes all these areas and you can walk this area as well. This bull elk, with the magnificent antlers was taking a snooze as we went by and didn’t notice us at all.

And here we have a real oddity; a white buffalo. Our trolley driver went into lots of detail but let’s just let it go for now as here's a white buffalo.

I think now that I can understand why some people will spend all sorts of money to go hunting for an elk when I see this marvelous set of antlers. I can just picture them hanging over the stone fireplace in my mountain lodge?????

OK, I was really impressed with the Royal Gorge and have included a lot of pictures. There are about twice this number that were looked over but not made a part of this post.

We leave after breakfast on Sunday for Creede, a small mining town about 100 miles from here.

MONDAY, 09/13/2010 - CREEDE

A little over a hundred years ago, Creede, Colorado had a population of some 10,000 hardy souls and was a rip roaring, typical western mining town. When the price of silver went south, so did Creede, ending up with about 500 people. Today the town has become somewhat of an artsy place, with a performing arts theater, lots of fancy little shops, old buildings restored for newer purposes, etc. The main part of town sits just south of a canyon with an enormous wall of stone, the Pillars of Hercules on one side. This spot marks the start of the Bachelor Loop, a seventeen mile long gravel road that runs well up into the mountains and passes the remains of at least 20 mines.

Our adventure here began as we headed up north on Creede’s main street. The opening to the canyon lies straight ahead and the Pillars of Hercules are on the right.

Continuing through Creede and starting on the Loop, we were greeted with this fairly awesome view of the mountains. Unseen, but always present, is the stream running along the right side of the road.

I guess I will always be a flatlander because I never cease to be boggled by the different types of rock formations we run into in various parts of the country

This picture just had to stay in. There were three separate wooden structures (they have a name) on the mountain side to hold the tailings from a mine, somewhere up above the top structure. And then there was this huge monolith, or something, standing guard.

I guess that if you are finding something on one level another guy will come along and try things higher or lower. Which came first, the, well you know. Apparently all three of these headframes were in use at the same time.

This picture saddens me a bit as it brings to mind the situation so many people are going through today. They have been forced to simply walk away from their homes and this is exactly what happened in most of these mining towns. The mine became unprofitable and they simply walked away. Very sad.

We finished up our extended ride on the Bachelor Loop at a spot overlooking Creede. As you can see, there isn’t a whole lot of area in this part of town. Just to the south there is a fairly large, spread out area that has quite a few homes. The black circle in the picture is the back porch of our B & B, the Old Firehouse Inn. The first floor has extremely high ceilings as it was where the fire trucks were garaged. It is now a restaurant and the second floor, where the rooms are located is up a ton of steps.

Tomorrow we are off to Lake City and an exploration of the Alpine Scenic Byway

TUESDAY, 09/14/2010-LAKE CITY

We left Creede after breakfast and headed west on the Silver Thread Byway.

We drove along the San Juan Valley for a number of miles and stopped at this location to get a view of the whole area along with a large grove of Aspen trees, turning their vivid colors.

About half way to Lake City we turned off the main highway to see the North Clear Creek Falls. They were very impressive for September and I can assume that they would be incredible in the spring when the ice melt starts.

I suppose that this picture looks a little hokey tucked in with all these nature pictures but it shows how high we were and the fact that water wise we were now out west. Howdy.

We were really freaked by the color of the mountain top here, but unfortunately the camera just didn’t get it right. The side of the hill was really red and stood out like crazy.

This was a very interesting stop. It’s called the Windy Point Overlook and it shows all five of the 14ers in the one picture. This is rugged country as you will soon see.

From the same general location what’s left of one of the mountains can be seen. This is in the Slumgullion Pass area and not all that long ago some major things happened. There was a major mudslide and the side of the mountain headed downhill. This mass of mud, which is still slowly moving, crossed a river, created a natural dam which in turn created Lake Cristobal.

And speaking of Lake Cristobal, well here it is. We turned off the main highway and headed up the southern leg of the Alpine Scenic Byway. We drove alongside the lake for quite a while. The water is incredibly blue and I have no idea about what happens here: boating, fishing, whatever. There was nothing happening while we were here.

The Alpine Byway is a 70 mile loop that travels through some of the roughest area in the country. The Loop has three legs; Silverton, Ouray, and Lake City. Parts of the road are drivable with a two-wheel drive car. Parts of the road are not. There are two passes that are over 12,000 feet in altitude and the road gets very rough up that high. We took the lower route out to the remains of the city of Sherman and the picture above is just a sample of the scenery along the way.

After all of our mountain adventures today we settled in at the Inn at the Lake B & B, a Christian retreat B & B located near Lake Cristobal. The picture above was taken from our front porch and shows the lake and surrounding area.

Okay, you are all just dying to see the front porch, so here it is

WEDNESDAY, 09/15/2010 - MONTROSE

After far too much breakfast and some wonderful words from our host, we headed into town and swung up to the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway, on the northern leg. Our goal was the deserted city of Capitol City, which over a hundred years ago was to become the capitol of Colorado. Well, it didn’t happen because when the good ore ran out so did the population.

We drove about 14 miles up the Loop, and took quite a few pictures. I am putting three of them together below with one simple comment; views of this type were commonplace. As you can see, the Aspen trees are really starting to turn at these higher altitudes. The fourth picture will be a little scriptural, King Ken’s Version.

The Bible says and you kids sang, “The wise man built his house upon a rock, the foolish man etc.”. Well the version up here in Colorado says, “the foolish man built his house upon a hillside that was aligned with potential snowslides. This was a small store operation until one winter the snowslide appeared, from across the road behind me. I think the owner, who escaped, decided to change vocations after this happened.

I think that there is quite a story with respect to the picture above. Way back when someone decided to build a dam to do something with the river water which flowed through the canyon At the present time the river has breached the dam at its bottom portion. The thickness of the dam at the bottom was the same as at the top, and this doesn’t work with dams, period. There are a number of structures that are unoccupied; so it is a very strange area.


After we exited the Loop, we headed north on the Silver Thread Byway. I should take a minute and say that this 117 mile Byway was one of the most beautiful roads we have ever driven. You don’t do this road in two hours.


After we exited the Loop, we headed north on the Silver Thread Byway. I should take a minute and say that this 117 mile Byway was one of the most beautiful roads we have ever driven. You don’t do this road in two hours.

 The Byway ends at US-50, which heads west, along the northern side of the Blue Mesa Reservoir. Okay, geography lesson. The Gunnison River runs east and west across central Colorado, starting out in Gunnison and ending up in the Colorado River, near Grand Junction. Along the way it carved, over eons, the Black Canyon, which we will visit tomorrow. For whatever reasons, three dams were constructed on the river, all of them between Montrose and the city of Gunnison. The most easterly dam created the Blue Mesa Reservoir, a body of water maybe 20 or so miles long that filled parts of the canyon. This reservoir is a paradise for boaters and fishermen, and I suspect is packed all summer long. The picture above is a formation known as the Dillon Pinnacles, sitting across the reservoir. We had just crossed to the southern side via a bridge.

The second dam in this system is the Morrow Point Dam. We were able to drive down fairly close to this guy but forbidden, of course, to go any further. (in case I had a nuke in my camera bag). This picture of the dam, which is 468 feet high, shows some of the terrain, the spillways, etc. The Morrow Point Reservoir runs a good bit east from the dam which created it.


We intend to check out the other two dams in the next couple of days.