After 2 weeks in Colorado, we left Grand Junction on a short drive to our next destination, Arches National Park.  It was 131 miles (211 km), mostly on Interstate 70, though the actual straight line distance was 60 miles (96.5 km).

As we traveled west in Colorado several days earlier, the landscape had gradually changed from high mountain forest and tundra to high desert country, with quite a bit of farming in the Grand Valley of the Colorado River (once called the Grand River).  Driving west into Utah, the landscape became more and more desolate with a stark and fascinating beauty.

This was our third visit to Arches National Park.  The previous two were brief, but this time we had three nights reserved in the park at Devils Garden Campground.

Arches National Park is in eastern Utah.  It has over 2000 natural sandstone arches and many other interesting geological formations, such as spires, balanced rocks and sandstone fins.  It was designated a national monument in 1929 and became a national park in 1970.

Selected Information Resources:

Arches National Park.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Discover Moab
• GORP
• The American Southwest

This was our second time on this trail segment, which runs from the Bear Lake parking area to Emerald Lake and connects with other Bear Lake area trails.  We had hoped to make it to Emerald Lake if our legs, and the weather, held out.  The weather had been iffy overnight and during the morning.  Trail Ridge Road had been closed closed the night before and remained closed due to snow for the first time in the season. With rain threatening, instead of a hike that morning, we went into Estes Park.  After lunch and walking around Estes Park town center a bit more, we headed back into the park to the Bear Lake area trailhead.

The trail we chose goes to a trio of subalpine lakes – Nymph, Dream, and Emerald – in upper Tyndall Gorge.  The trail is well maintained and rises steadily over most of it’s 1.8 mile  length.  Difficulty is easy to moderate, but can be more difficult for those not acclimatized to the altitude as it climbs to over 10,000 feet.  We had already been in Colorado a week, so the altitude was less of an issue than it might have been otherwise.

From the Bear Lake area trails parking lot (9,475 ft.), the trail climbs steady for 1/2 mile, then levels off at about 9, 700 feet at the south end of  small, lily pad covered Nymph Lake.  The trail begins climbing again in the forest on the north end of Nymph Lake and levels off again at Dream Lake, 1.1 miles from the trail head and at an elevation of 9,912′ ft.  Dream Lake is .35 miles long.  The trail passes along its west shore.

We had hoped to make it all the way to Emerald Lake, 1.8 miles from the trailhead and 10,090 feet above sea level, but we turned back at the north end of Dream Lake due to deteriorating weather conditions.  Weather in the high country can be unpredictable, even in the middle of summer, but this was the middle of September and we’d already had some rain on our hike.  We had rain gear with us. However, it was already 3:30 PM and light rain was falling again, so we decided against pushing on ahead.

Selected Information
Resources:

Rocky Mountain National Park

• National Park Service– Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Suggested Hikes
  • Conditions and Closures
• Wikitravel
• Wikipedia

Estes Park

• Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Town of Estes Park
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Trail Gazette (newspaper)
• Stanley Hotel

Grand Lake

• Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce
• Wikipedia (the lake)
• Wikipedia (the town)
• Town of Grand Lake

On our four previous visits to Rocky Mountain National Park, we stayed one or more nights in the adjacent town of Estes Park. This time, we didn’t, as we were able to get reservations at Moraine Park Campground in the park for the duration of our planned visit.  As a result, we actually spent less time in Estes Park than any other visit – other than traveling through town and stops for fuel and groceries, just a short visit before and after lunch on September 15th, followed by an afternoon alpine hike back in the park.  It was an nice stroll along the street and into some of the shops – and much less crowded than our last visit on Labor Day weekend, 2009.

Estes Park, a town of just under 6,000 permanent residents, is a popular summer resort in the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, though there are plenty of recreational opportunities during the rest of the year. Located at 7,522 feet above sea level, the town is at the east entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Tourism has been a primary business for the town for most of its history.  Lodging includes The Stanley Hotel, inspiration for the setting of Stephen King’s novel The Shining.  (We stayed in the hotel during our 2001 visit.)

The word “park” used in place names in the Colorado Rockies often refers to a valley or meadow. Estes Park, then, originally referred to the valley and was named after town founder Joel Estes.

The town experienced severe damage in July 1982 from flooding resulting from the failure of Lawn Lake Dam.

Additional information on the Lawn Lake Dam Failure, July 15, 1982:

• KOA TV Channel 4 – YouTube, 1982 footage
• Wikipedia
• Town of Estes Park

Selected Information
Resources:

Rocky Mountain National Park

• National Park Service– Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Suggested Hikes
  • Conditions and Closures
• Wikitravel
• Wikipedia

Estes Park

• Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Town of Estes Park
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Trail Gazette (newspaper)
• Stanley Hotel

Grand Lake

• Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce
• Wikipedia (the lake)
• Wikipedia (the town)
• Town of Grand Lake

(Continued from “Forty Years Ago–A Departure”.)

The flight from Houston had a short layover at Los Angeles International before continuing on to San Diego.  From there it was but a short trip to the San Diego Naval Training Center.

A few weeks earlier, I had ridden with a friend to the Manned Spacecraft Center, where he worked.  He was loaning me his car for the day so that I could look for a job.

Even though I had already had several jobs, I had very little experience at actually looking for a job and, looking back now, I really didn’t have a clue then on how to do it.  I basically spent the day driving around, eventually ending up in a shopping center in Baytown.

I really didn’t start the day even thinking about joining the military, but there I was, at a Texas strip mall that housed recruiting offices for Marine Corp, Army, Air Force and Navy.  With the ongoing Viet Nam conflict, the first two had absolutely no interest for me.  While I don’t remember much about it, my first stop was in the Air Force recruiter’s office.

The stop at the Navy recruiting office was more memorable.  The recruiter talked about a number of options, but there was one that really caught my attention, the Navy nuclear power program.  Not only did it offer interesting opportunities in the Navy, but the job experience gained might later lead to opportunities in civilian nuclear power.  The main drawback was it required a six year commitment instead of the more common two or four year enlistments.

In the ensuing weeks, I qualified for the program through the advanced programs test, passed a physical, and enlisted in the Navy with entry delayed until the end of December.

One of the benefits of the program was that I would be entering the service at E3 pay grade,  a seaman – equivalent to a private first class – instead of seaman recruit (E1).  Completion of recruit training would bring automatic promotion to Petty Officer Third Class, equivalent to corporal.

Three different job fields were included in the program: electronics, mechanical, and electrical.  I hoped for electronics, but I wasn’t going to learn which field I was going to be in until after further testing in boot camp.  Of course, electronics was what most of those who enter the program hoped for and not everyone could get it.

January 1, 1972 was a holiday, of course, so there was no processing of the new recruits.  Instead, we got to watch football games in the receiving and outfitting transient barracks.

Each time we visit Rocky Mountain National Park, we travel the Old Fall River Road from it’s junction with the modern Fall River Road, U.S. Highway 34.  The road is two-way and paved for the first 1.75 miles, passing Lawn Lake Trailhead, Lawn Lake Alluvial Fan, and the Endovalley Picnic Area.   The remaining 9.4 miles is winding, narrow,  unpaved and one-way from the picnic area  to above treeline at Fall River Pass, following the steep slope of Mount Chapin’s south face to it’s junction with Trail Ridge Road.

Old Fall River Road was built between 1913 and 1920.

The Lawn Lake Alluvial Fan is a particularly interesting recent geologic feature.  It was created when flood water and debris rushing down the steep and narrow Roaring River valley from a failed dam at Lawn Lake slowed down when it reached the broader Fall River valley, leaving behind an alluvial fan of debris.  When we first saw it over 20 years ago, the large Roaring River gully scoured by the flow and the alluvial fan were still a fairly fresh scar on the land, with little new vegetation. In the ensuing years, the scar has weathered some and vegetation has moved in.

Additional information on the Lawn Lake Dam Failure, July 15, 1982

Aerial view of Estes Park, July 15, 1982 (USGS)

• KOA TV Channel 4 – YouTube, 1982 footage
• Wikipedia
• Town of Estes Park

Lawn Lake alluvial fan from Trail Ridge Road

Selected Information
Resources:

Rocky Mountain National Park

• National Park Service– Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Suggested Hikes
  • Conditions and Closures
• Wikitravel
• Wikipedia

Estes Park

• Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Town of Estes Park
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Trail Gazette (newspaper)
• Stanley Hotel

Grand Lake

• Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce
• Wikipedia (the lake)
• Wikipedia (the town)
• Town of Grand Lake

The Bear Lake area of Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the most popular parts of the park.  We’ve hiked several trails in the area, including the 0.6 mile trail around Bear Lake.

The Bear Lake Trail is an easy walk, listed as accessible – available to most people, including those with handicaps. However, the trail is not entirely flat and is more challenging than most accessible trails.  The lake is about 9500 feet above sea level.

Bear Lake is  at the end of Bear Lake Road, eleven miles from the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center.  With several other trails in the Bear Lake area, the parking lot fills early during the summer and weekends.  Bear Lake Route shuttle buses run from a large Park & Ride parking area across from Glacier Basin Campground, with stops at other trailheads along the route.

Selected Information
Resources:

Rocky Mountain National Park

• National Park Service– Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Suggested Hikes
  • Conditions and Closures
• Wikitravel
• Wikipedia

Estes Park

• Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Town of Estes Park
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Trail Gazette (newspaper)
• Stanley Hotel

Grand Lake

• Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce
• Wikipedia (the lake)
• Wikipedia (the town)
• Town of Grand Lake

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.

Looking down Fall River Valley from Fall River Pass.

This 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.

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

• The Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce, Visitors Bureau & Office of Economic Development
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• City of Manitou Springs

Old Colorado City

• Wikipedia
• Old Colorado City Associates LLC.
• Facebook

Newport State Park, Door County, Wisconsin, September 17, 2008

Newport, northeast of Ellison Bay, is Wisconsin’s only formally designated wilderness park. With 2,373 acres and 11 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline it offers quiet alternatives to bustling Door County. – Park website

Newport State Park – related sites:

• Newport State Park website
• Wikipedia
• Newport State Park Overview – Door County WI Travel Show (YouTube)

Related post:

• Photographic Serendipity

Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, Idaho, September 16, 2007

• Mesa Falls Scenic Byway
• Wikipedia
  • Upper Mesa Falls
  • Henry’s Fork Caldera
• VisitIdaho.org

September 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:

• Wikipedia
• Cripple Creek Travel Website
• City of Cripple Creek
• Ghosttowns.com

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

Florissant 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

Our 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:

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• University of California Museum of Paleontology
• Proctor Museum of Natural Science
• GORP
• Facebook

^__________

¹ from a park interpretive sign

…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:

• Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center
• Wikipedia
• City of Colorado Springs
• Garden of the Gods Trading Post
• Friends of Garden of the Gods

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.

Photo shot the river bank at the Snake River KOA, 12 miles south of Jackson, Wyoming, September 18, 2007.

From Wikipedia:

The McKenzie dory or Rogue River dory also called by many a Drift Boat is an evolution of the open-water dory, converted for use in rivers. The design is characterized by a wide, flat bottom, flared sides, a narrow, flat bow, and a pointed stern. The sole identifying characteristic of the McKenzie dory is a continuous rocker. Rocker is a term used to define an arc from bow to stern along the bottom of the boat. It is this constant rocker that allows the boat to spin about its center for ease in maneuvering in rapids.

Related posts:

• Idaho images
• Just Grand!
• A little drive into Idaho

Leaving Canton Lake, our next destination was La Junta, Colorado.

Most of our trips to and from Colorado have required crossing two or more states to go between Arkansas and Colorado.  Our last two trips traveling to Colorado, though,  have crossed only Oklahoma by going though Oklahoma’s panhandle, a relatively narrow section of land that separates the Texan panhandle from Colorado and Kansas.

From Canton Lake to the Colorado border, we traveled State Highway 3, the longest highway in the Oklahoma road system.  The portion we traveled is officially designated “Governor George Nigh’s Northwest Passage.”

The route lies across a portion of the North American Great Plains, a broad expanse of flat land with few trees, comprised mostly of  prairie, steppe and grassland.

We had stopped for the night in Hayes, Kansas, on August 21, 2004.  We were on our way to the old gold mining region southwest of Pikes Peak in Colorado, where we would be renting a mountain cabin for a week.

This was one of many large fields of sunflowers that we saw on our trip.

The first night of our 2011 trip was Labor Day – camped at Canton Lake, west of Oklahoma City.  We had a reservation for 1 night at the Sandy Cove campground near the dam on the northeast end.  We had stayed there in August 2009 and liked it well enough to stay again.

It was a good location for photographing the sun setting across the lake and I hoped to be able to do a sunset time lapse.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the sunset in one continuous time sequence, but was able to get two good segments, which are included in the video.

It was obvious that the lake was lower this year than it had been in 2009.

The swimming area buoys were certainly  high and dry.

The video includes photographs from both Karen and me, two time lapse sunset segments and a short “home video” segment of our campsite. I’ve produced the video in three formats 1920 x 1080, 1280 x 720, and  640 x 360.

Canton Lake links and resources:

• US Army Corps of Engineers– The Corps of Engineers operates five multi-use recreation areas which offer a combination of overnight camping and day-use opportunities to the visiting public.  The sites are (links go to Recreation.gov):
  • Big Bend
  • Canadian
  • Fairview
  • Longdale
  • Sandy Cove
• Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department
• Wikipedia

Our first day of travel:

On Labor Day morning, we were packed and ready to go – and I had no intention of trying to blog the trip as it happened.  Every time I’ve done that in the past, I would get behind or miss a few days and I’d never get back on track.  So this time, I’m going to blog about the trip after the fact.

The following map shows the route that we traveled with our motorhome – about 3,500 miles total.  It does not show all of the little side trips we made with the car that we tow behind the motorhome.

We left Monday, September 5th and got home Wednesday, October 19 – a trip of 6 weeks and 3 days.  We spent most of our time in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and traveled through parts of Oklahoma and Texas while travel from and back to our home in Arkansas.  A lot of the places we visited were old favorites, but we managed to find plenty of new favorites that we had never been to before.

I’ll be posting more as I work through the photos and videos.

Market House Museum, Paducah, Kentucky, April 24, 2010

I don’t know what the colored bottles were for.  I was too intent on taking pictures.  This photo intentionally has a shallow depth of field, leaving some parts of the picture out of focus.

Paducah, Kentucky:

• Market House Museum website
• City of Paducah
• Paducah Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel

Related posts:

• Architectural detail
• Art tiles
• A short spring time trip
• A Visit to Paducah…,

We missed the big dust storm in Lubbock, Texas, on Monday by just a couple of hours. Even though we fought the wind all day, we managed to make it past Lubbock before the storm hit.

We were on the homeward leg of a 6 week trip and had planned to go further south, crossing Texas below Dallas and Fort Worth.  Saturday and Sunday nights, we had been camped near Carlsbad, New Mexico.  We were able to get online Sunday night, barely, and checked the weather forecast for where we were thinking of going – wind and blowing dust, with temperatures in the mid to high 90s.  The forecast for the Lubbock area was cooler and windy, but blowing dust was not mentioned. After talking it over for a bit, we decided to head north instead of east.

I did get a some video from our windy day’s trip and produced a short YouTube video.

On this trip, I decided that I was not going to try to keep up with a travel blog.  My intent was to keep a written journal and take lots of photos and video and to incorporate the journal and images into blog posts after we got home.  I was only partially successful.

While I did take lots of photographs and videos, the written journal fell by the wayside after only a few days.

I did read quite a few books over the last six weeks, though.