North Rim & Leadville
Friday morning we had some breakfast at the Crawford place one last time, cleaned up, and headed to the north rim of the Black Canyon. As James mentioned yesterday, this was only about a half hour from where we stayed so it was the shortest trip to date. This was also the least crowded area we have come across. The south rim is much more traveled and has more lookouts but this side had great views as well.
We stopped at about half of the lookouts. They are the same as on the south, you walk a few yards and are on the edge of the void. As we were walking around the one area another traveler let us know that if we walked a little further on this trail it was the best view he had seen yet. We took the advice and he was right!
We were told that the haze in the distance is actually smoke from the fires. Originally I was confused because we aren’t very close to any active fires in Colorado right now but James did some digging and found out it is actually smoke from the California and Oregon fires. The smoke blows this way and gets caught in the Rockies which is why we are seeing it here. I guess the fire by Steamboat Springs is also contributing, it is on this side of the mountains as well.
We finished up the north rim with some other photos of the sites and began the trip to Leadville. This drive was about 3.5 hours so we beat our normal record of 4 hours between stops. The drive into town was another death defying drive that I’m happy to not have taken the wheel for. After all of these days staring at mountains, I still haven’t seen any sheep. I did get to snap a few pictures of the scenery and was so excited that the leaves are looking so pretty!
Leadville is 10,114 ft elevation. As we drove into town we ran into road work and felt like we were back in PA already.
The place here is nice. We have a full first floor and a loft space. There is a full kitchen so we made another stop at the grocery store and made burgers in for dinner. Nice easy day towards the end of our trip.
Tomorrow is the Jeep rental and ghost towns!
