Sharing photos, videos, vintage images I've discovered, and -- occasionally -- commentary and thoughts from retired life and travels.

Colorado

A Rocky Mountain Park…

December 16, 2011

Rocky Mountain National Park, to be exact.

After our short stay in the Colorado Springs area, we headed mostly north to our next stop, Moraine Campground in Rocky Mountain National Park.

View from fall river pass

Looking down Fall River Valley from Fall River Pass.

 

2011_trip_map_4th_legThis was our fifth visit to this area – not counting the trip with my grandparents and 17 year old uncle back in 1957 when I was 5 years old.

The drive for the day was about 145 miles.  Unfortunately, it was also through the Denver metro area and there wasn’t much of an easy way around that.  We would prefer traveling through metropolitan areas on a weekend when the traffic is less, but I had been unable to get reservations at the park campground for the duration we wanted any earlier than September 12, a Monday.

We delayed starting out a little while in an attempt to miss the worst of the traffic.

I was in the left hand lane on US 24 not long after we left when I noticed the driver in the next lane holding up a card trying to get my attention.  I don’t remember exactly what it said, but it was basically telling me that I should be driving in the right hand lane.  Now I understand people getting upset when people abuse traffic requirement, including the one where slower vehicles are supposed to stay to the right.  I was driving a 25 foot motorhome towing a car, so, yes, I was going slower than some others. However, I also had a GPS that was telling me that about a mile down the road I had to make a left turn to get on the freeway and, with the heavy morning traffic, I was in the left hand lane early to make sure I didn’t miss it.  The guy made a right turn shortly after that so I wasn’t really delaying him at all.  Just a control freak jerk, I guess.

I’m working on the photos and videos from the several days we were in the Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) area.  We were in some locations more than once and I want to group the material from those together, so the RMNP posts won’t necessarily be chronologically sequenced.

More to come.

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Mountain Towns

December 7, 2011

After our Pike’s Peak drive, we spent some time looking around the towns of Manitou Springs and Old Colorado City.

Today, the towns are part of the South Central Colorado Urban Area (Wikipedia). Old Colorado City is actually a natural historic district in the city of Colorado Springs that was incorporated into Colorado Springs in 1917.  Adjacent to each other, both towns were on one of the direct routes to the Pike’s Peak area gold fields.

Manitou Springs is the home of the Pike’s Peak Cog Railway.

Information and Resources:

Manitou Springs

Old Colorado City

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Pikes Peak–Driving to 14,110 feet.

November 28, 2011

2011 09 10 karen 002On September 10, we headed out to drive to the top of Pikes Peak from Garden of the Gods Campground in Colorado Springs, a driving distance of about 25.6 miles, with an elevation change of almost 8000 feet.

We had attempted to drive to the top in 2004, but were stopped at Glen Cove Inn, at 11, 425 feet, due to high winds higher up.  We were told that the winds will likely lessen later.  After waiting a while, we went back down and, later, decided to try to go up on the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway.  When we got to the top, we found that it was brisk and chilly at 34°F with great views, and the wind was low enough that there were already cars in the parking lot.  The ride on the railway was a great experience, though.

On this year’s trip, the wind was not a problem.  With stops, we made it to the top in around 2 hours.

The road has recently been improved significantly as a settlement of a Sierra Club lawsuit. (A lot of the online references say that the road is not paved on the upper half.   This is old information.)  Except for a section less than a mile long, the road is paved all the way to the top.  The road is on federal land administered by the U.S. Forest Service, but is leased to the City of Colorado Springs for operation.  The toll is used to maintain and improve the road, thus requiring no general tax revenue for the road.

Note:  The images and video segments are sequenced from the bottom of the mountain to the top, but most of them were actually taken at pullouts on the way back down.

Pikes Peak is about 10 miles west of Colorado Spring, Colorado.  It was originally called “El Capitan” by Spanish settlers, but was renamed after Zebulon Pike, Jr., an explorer who led an expedition to the area in 1806.  It is one of Colorado’s 54 fourteeners, mountains rising over 14,000 above sea level.

Information and Resources:

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Cripple Creek, Colorado

November 25, 2011

065-paintedSeptember 9, 2011 – After visiting Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, we headed on down the road to Cripple Creek.  In 2004, we had rented an A-frame cabin near Cripple Creek and, on this day trip, decided to drive through the area again.

Cripple Creek sits in a high mountain valley just below tree line at about 9,500 feet near the western base of Pikes Peak.  For many years the valley was consider to be of little value for anything more than grazing cattle.  A mini gold rush was caused in 1884 when three con men salted gold in a prospect hole near Mount McIntyre, 13 miles west of Mount Pisgah.  The men planted a fake claim sign and invited the press.  In the excitement over news of a new gold strike, the papers mistakenly identified Mt. Pisgah, near current day Cripple Creek, as the location of the strike.  Experienced miners quickly determined the strike was a fake and the incident became known as the Mt. Pisgah Hoax.  It gave the area a bad reputation, prospectors avoiding it for many years.

A persistent prospector, Bob Womack, came to Colorado in 1861 with his father at the tail end of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush.  While they didn’t do well, they liked Colorado well enough to bring out the rest of the family, purchasing the Levi Welty homestead in Pisgah Park, where Cripple Creek would later be established.  Womack dug hundreds of holes search for gold, becoming known as “Crazy Bob” and a drunkard.  In 1890,  Womack dug a narrow shaft into Tenderfoot Hill, finding gold ore.  Womack called the discovery the El Paso Lode.  It later became the Gold King Mine, eventually producing $5 million in gold.

In 3 years the population rose from 500 to 10,000.  Though the mines of Cripple Creek produced a half a billion dollars of gold ore, Womack profited but little and died penniless in 1909.  (See more on Cripple Creek history at Wikipedia.)

Unlike many of the historic gold camps and towns that have faded into ghost towns, Cripple Creek reinvented itself in the 1940s as a tourist destination.  In 1991, Cripple Creek was one of a small number of towns opened to legalized gambling by Colorado voters.  Casinos now occupy many of the old historic buildings and gambling revenue has revitalized the area.

Information and Resources:

 

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Florissant Fossil Beds

November 20, 2011

On September 9, we visited Florissant Fossil Bed National Monument and Cripple Creek.

2011 09 09 021Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is located in Florissant Valley, a high mountain valley west of Pikes Peak.  The valley, fossil beds and national monument take their name from the nearby town of Florissant, Colorado.

In 1893, when the photograph on the right was taken, tourists had ready access to shale fossils and petrified wood.

“Early accounts describe the valley as being littered with petrified wood.  As word spread, the Florissant area became a popular tourist destination.  Exploitation, constant collecting, and thoughtless destruction continued for nearly 100 years.  There is no way to assess the damage done or the loss of rare scientific evidence during this period.” 1

2011 09 09 130Our visit to the park included the small visitor center, the Petrified Forest Trail, and the Hornbek Homestead.

“Adeline Hornbek was not a typical homesteader.  In the 1970s, after the loss of two husbands and two homes, this single mother of four moved her family to the Florissant Valley.  At a time when women had few opportunities to own property, she filed a claim to homestead 160 acres here. Within seven years, Adeline had built a sizable house and nine outbuildings, and had acquired $4,000 worth of livestock.  On top of the daily work of homestead chores and raising children, she added a job at the general store in Florissant.”1

Information and Resources:

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1 from a park interpretive sign

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A city park that’s simply amazing.

November 14, 2011

Garden of the Gods - 2004 visit…and it’s free to visit.

Until we visited it in 2004, I had no idea that Garden of the Gods was a Colorado Springs city park.  Most large cities have some nice parks, but few have parks with outstanding geologic features like Garden of the Gods.

We visited the park again this year.

Garden of the Gods Park started with a gift from the family of Charles Elliott Perkins, a former president of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad.  Perkins had purchased 480 acres of the current park for a summer home that was never built.  He died in 1907 with his children aware of his wish for the public to be able to enjoy the natural wonder.

A plaque in the park reads, “The Garden of the Gods.  Given to the City of Colorado Springs in 1909 by the children of Charles Elliott Perkins in fulfillment of his wish that it be kept forever free to the public.”

Source of the name “Garden of the Gods” –

The name of the park dates back to August 1859 when two surveyors helping to set up nearby Colorado City were exploring the nearby areas. Upon discovering the site, one of the surveyors, M. S. Beach, suggested that it would be a “capital place for a beer garden.” His companion, the young Rufus Cable, awestruck by the impressive rock formations, exclaimed, “Beer Garden! Why it is a fit place for the gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods.” The beer garden never materialized, but the name stuck.  –Wikipedia

Geologic formations –

The outstanding geologic features of the park are the ancient sedimentary beds of red, blue, purple, and white sandstones, conglomerates and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but have now been tilted vertically and faulted by the immense mountain building forces caused by the uplift of the Pikes Peak massif. Evidence of past ages; ancient seas, eroded remains of ancestral mountain ranges, alluvial fans, sandy beaches and great sand dune fields can be read in the rocks. A spectacular shear fault can be observed where the Tower of Babel (Lyons Sandstone) contacts the Fountain Formation. There are many fossils to be seen: marine forms, plant fossils, and some dinosaur fossils.

The hogbacks, so named because they resemble the backs and spines of a pig, are ridges of sandstone whose layers are tilted. Instead of lying horizontally, some layers are even vertically oriented. Each hogback can range up to several hundred feet long, and the tallest (called North Gateway Rock) rises to a height of 320 feet (98 m) tall. A notable rock feature on this hogback, the Kissing Camels, appears to be two very large camels sitting face to face with their lips touching. –Wikipedia

Links:

 

Our travel day was a short one from La Junta, Colorado, to Garden of the Gods Campground, a commercial campground near the Garden of the Gods park.

 

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