Heading Home

Today we start on our little road trip home. We got up fairly early and packed up whatever we hadn’t the night before. We had the next rental car reservation for 10:30 at DIA. It was about a 2 hour drive from Leadville, so we took off for Denver at about 9.

It is an interesting drive since the highway still winds up, down and through the mountains, but you’re on a 3 lane highway doing 75 the whole time. There was a hold up where the highway combined into one lane either way on the same side. This was due to construction from the destruction of the wildfire. We saw many burnt trees which were so close to the road at times that it was sometimes a surprise that even as much of the highway was open as it was. I’m talking about 70, so I guess they do whatever they can to get people through on the highway.

We made pretty good time even with the lane closures and got the Enterprise at about 11. We thought we were going to the same desk we got the Ram from, but we were wrong, nothing looked familiar. We’re not sure where we picked the car up from, it’s possble that they have multiple locations at such a big airport, but I think it’s weird. There were definitely many people there that had just landed, just like we were, but this was definitely not the same place we were 2 weeks ago.

We were in the right place as far as the guy at the desk was concerned, so we checked in and went outside to wait for someone to show us to our new rental. Meanwhile the Ram was sitting in the parking lot, waiting for us to come back and switch all of our stuff into the new one.

It took a minute for someone to come and get us as there were a lot of people out there, but eventually my name was called and we went to find a car. The first thing he showed us was a little Nissan Sentra. I was not a fan, but Kacie said it would be fine for the sake of getting out of there, so the Nissan it was. It worked out in the end as the thing got upwards of 45 mpg for our trip home,

We took the Nissan over to the lot where the Ram was parked and switched over all of our belongings. Once that was done, Kacie drove the truck for a final time over to return it, which was about a 30 second transaction. If you’re looking for a quick transaction when you’re going to catch a flight in Denver, Enterprise has you covered.

We stopped just down the street from Enterprise at Wendy’s for a bite and left for Harrisburg a little bit before noon. Denver is kind of the city on the outer boundary of the mountains, especially the airport. Once we were back on 70, it was flat, boring land for the next 12 hours at least.

We pretty much broke the drive down into four, 6 hour blocks. Kacie took the first shift and drove until we found a Pizza Hut, which we had agreed we both wanted earlier. After a delicious pizza, I drove until about 3am while Kacie slept a while. I thought I could go for longer, but figured I had someone else waiting to drive and why risk it since I was pretty tired. Kacie took over and drove until we got to a McDonald’s in Ohio another 6 hours into the drive. This was the first place on our whole trip where you couldn’t eat inside. Carry-out and drive-thru only. Fine with us, we were pretty ready to get home now.

I jumped back into the driver’s seat and drove the rest of the way to Dave and Jaime’s house, and just like that, our big adventure was over.

We had been gone for 2 weeks and had explored an entire state.

We arrived during a blizzard, and left on a typical summer day in Denver.

We were on top of 14,000 foot peaks, and down in 2800 foot canyons.

We saw a lot.

We drove a lot.

We used every second we had to explore as much as we could.

We had fun.

We got engaged.

We switched our stuff over to the little white Ford and took the rental car back to HIA.

Then we drove home.

The End

Jeep Adventure

We had to get up and leave pretty quick this morning as we had to go back to BV Jeeps by 8am for our 9am Jeep Wrangler rental. We had rented the Jeep for the whole day this time, 9-5. After renting the side by side from them, we knew to procedure when we got there and got through it quick enough to be on the road by 8:45.

The area we would be off-roading was the mountains around the ghost towns of St Elmo and Tin Cup. It was a popular spot since it was Saturday, it was nice out, and the leaves were starting to change. There were definitely a lot of cars that I would say should not have been on an off road trail, but they seemed to make it. We saw numerous non trail ready vehicles off road throughout Colorado. I don’t know if they don’t know any better, or they just don’t care about their vehicles. There were also many hardcore trail machines and side by sides. Side by sides are huge in Colorado, on the highways it seems like every other pickup truck is towing one.

So we started off heading to the actual ghost town of St Elmo, which is pretty much a tourist trap at this point. St Elmo is still technically a ghost town, although the general store is still open, and recently people have actually started buying the old houses off the main street or just building new houses close to town. It’s cool to see the old nonresidential buildings that are still lining main street, but again, it’s become a big tourist spot.

Is there a face in that window?

As we wondered around town, we noticed that all the side by sides were heading north to Tin Cup pass. We had heard that Tin Cup pass had become pretty rough and vehicle damage was likely, so between not wanting to destroy the rental and the fact that the more capable machines were flocking that way, we decided to head south to Hancock pass and the ghost town of Hancock, and there was a lake at the end of the trail to turn around at.

The trails in Colorado were all hard-packed dirt with rocks of various sizes everywhere. The rocks got bigger and more numerous as were traveled away from St Elmo. At first the rocks are easily avoidable, not so much toward the end. There were a few spots to stop on the way to the lake, the first of which was an old log mill that was slowly being restored. We had to park and walk across an old railroad bridge over a nice waterfall to get to the spot to see it.

Back onto the main trail for a couple miles until we got to the Alpine Tunnel Trailhead. From here there were hiking and off road trails to go off on. We were here to drive it, but our map wasn’t the most comprehensive, so we first tried to drive up the hiking trail, which we didn’t get far. Next we accidentally started up the Hancock Pass trail, which was an advanced/expert jeep trail. This trail, right from the start, had become all rock, no dirt. We didn’t get very far before there was a whole line of purpose-built 4x4s behind us. We pulled over to let them pass and asked a nice guy in a Jeep if we were on the right trail. He told us no, and that Hancock Pass went straight up and over the mountain. Nope. And after taking the last couple wrong turns, we figured we’d find a spot to take a break and eat lunch before continuing on.

After eating our PB&J’s we continued on. By process of elimination, we started to follow the last trail that we hadn’t tried yet. This trail was pretty much right in the middle of the trail we had been on so far and Hancock Pass. It became harder to avoid large rocks so we had to start finding the right line, which jostled us greatly, and out here you don’t want to break anything,

We got off track a few times as we climbed, there were more side trails than there were on the map, so of course we took harder trails when given the chance, only to turn around. Eventually we came to an even steeper climb than we had been doing and saw a pretty high clearance pickup backing down the hill since he couldn’t make it. If he was having second thoughts, we figured our best move was to turn back as well.

It was then that for some reason I really wanted to get to the end of the trail and the lake. The trail to the lake wasn’t supposed to require that high of clearance, so I thought that we were on the wrong trail again and that I should find the right one and continue. There was no obvious other trail, and it was getting rough and late, so Kacie finally convinced me that we didn’t have to get to the lake and to head back, which was for the best.

On the way back to St Elmo, we stopped to check out some sort of building that had slid down the hill and was tilting towards the trail.

We also stopped to see the ghost town of Hancock. You could see some kind of foundation from the trail, but I did think there would be something else. Nope, the only thing left was a couple of logs that the sign said was the foundation of the saloon in Hancock. The town at one point actually had buildings all over the hillside, but there is no trace of anything else now.

Once we got back down to St Elmo, we decided to go into the general store as it wasn’t open when we first explored the town. Kacie bought an aspen leaf necklace and I got a shirt. At this point outside, the tourist action was much worse. The old man in the store said that he thought this weekend was more crowded than a holiday weekend, due to the leaves changing and the nice weather. The worst part was that the thing that seemed to amuse these people the most, was that they could all sit around the other side of the street and feed chipmunks… so many people sitting on the ground feeding chipmunks it was weird.

At this point it was getting toward the end of the afternoon, so we headed back to BV Jeeps to return the Jeep. Since it didn’t get dark until around 7:30, we should have enough time to hop back into our truck and check out another ghost town, Vicksburg. It was on the way from Buena Vista to Leadville and only about 8 miles from the highway.

Those 8 miles turned quickly into a trail much like what we had just done in the Jeep, only now we were in the Ram. We made it to Vicksburg, but we also really shook the truck and ourselves again. This was also another road where a lot of cars you wouldn’t think should be there, flying down the road, like one wrong turn wouldn’t shoot you 100 feet off into a tree.

Vicksburg is another abandoned town where people are starting to buy the old houses as hunting cabins. It hasn’t totally caught on there yet, so there were only a couple old houses that looked as if someone lived there sometimes. There was an old Jeep sitting down the road with an newer Ram at one of these lived in houses, which were the only vehicles we saw there.

On the non-residential side of the town, most of the buildings are still there, upright at least. You can’t go in any of them, but you can wander all around the outside, and peek into the windows that you can kind of see through.

We explored the town a bit and then headed back down to the highway. We also wanted to find a ghost town called Climax, which wasn’t supposed to be too far away, but the GPS sent us up a mountain to the current operational Climax mine. Not what we were looking for. We tried again with good old Google and ended up on the main highway at an abandoned motel.

Now, after looking it up again, it turns out the there are no structures left of the town because the mine resumed operations, which is what we saw, and the town’s buildings were moved to Leadville. So not only did we actually see the site of the town of Climax, even though it’s a large modern mine now, we also probably saw at least a few of the old buildings from the town of Climax since we stayed in Leadville for a couple days and saw many older looking buildings. No telling at this point which ones might or might not have been Climax buildings.

At this point we were getting hungry and bailed on finding any more ghost towns. We found a place in town with an online menu we could order from… a lot of the places up here don’t have websites or any kind of online menu, first world problems.

We picked up our food and went back to the house to eat and start packing the truck up for the trip back to Denver. The next day we would go to Denver airport to switch rental vehicles and start the road-trip back home,

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!

The Black Canyon

Today was another day that we could take it easy getting up and going, as we knew we could hit all the good spots on the south side of the canyon in about 4 hours. Although we were only about 20 minutes from the north rim of the canyon, because of the size of it, it would take us about an hour and a half to get to the south rim and visitor’s center. And because of that reason, we figured we would hit the south rim and the eastern portal to the floor today, and then the north rim in the morning before heading to Leadville.

After our journey down to the south rim, which was thankfully mostly highway. Driving out here is awesome, but doing these shelf roads everywhere we go is a bit much for someone from PA. It was nice to not have to worry about falling to our deaths… for now. We would find that to be short lived.

We decided to go down to the river first, since the sun was pretty much as high as it would get and the walls are so tall. Every turn you are a couple feet from going over the side. They do warn you… no trailers, nothing over 22 feet, 18% grade zig-zagging the whole 2000 feet down. It’s not great on the brakes, I tried engine braking, and it helped a little, but without using the brakes too the engine would’ve revved way too high, it did get pretty hot.

We made it safely down, and the view was crazy. Pictures don’t do staring up these walls justice. The river road is east of the steepest walls in the canyon, but it’s still impressive. On a side note, where we were on the river was totally kayak-able for us, note for our next trip… but from here west it was nothing but expert whitewater, even in the best conditions, which were currently not good.

Panoramic View of East Portal Road

Once we were done marveling at the canyon, we headed back up the wall. Going up isn’t as bad, a few of the switchbacks were still a little tight, and over to the south rim trail. This road travels west of the east portal to give you views down into canyon from the edge. And sometimes you really are on the edge of a 2300 foot cliff, which according to a sign I read is a little more than 2 Empire State Buildings.

Driving the rim trail wasn’t a huge improvement from the portal trail, but was better. This time there closest encounters with the edge were surprises. There were bushes blocking the view from the road for the most part, and then all of a sudden there is a break in the bushes and you look straight down and notice that you can’t see the bottom, just the shear wall across the canyon from you, because you just drove a foot and a half away from a 2000 foot drop. Even when I missed them I knew they were there as Kacie grabbed on to whatever she could as we passed them. I gripped the wheel a little tighter every time as well.

There were 12 overlooks on the trail. Most of them are park and hike. None of them were more than a couple hundred yards away, which at this altitude still make you breath a little harder. We didn’t stop at every one, but hit the ones we thought were the best and different from the ones we just saw. Some where right down from the last one and had pretty much the same view.

The south side is not quite as close to vertical and the north side is, although when on top of them there’s not a huge difference. It’s more about looking east and west into the canyon where that comes into play. This is another thing that might not come through in the pictures, but when you’re standing on the north side at the edge, you can tell the difference.

We saw so many amazing views and rock formations. Hopefully we will do a feature page on this place in the future.

After we got to the end of the south rim, we headed back to the beginning, since the rim road is a dead end in a national park. It didn’t take that long to get out of there and head to WalMart. We needed some stuff. Then home where Kacie made Chicken Alfredo. Delicious.

While at WalMart, we picked up some bags for the trip home. After taking a minute to think things thru, we realized that we would need to send our luggage back home on Friday as soon as we arrived in Leadville and be without most of our stuff for 3 days. Right now airlines are allowing you to make changes to flights without charging fees so we thought it over and decided to cancel our flight home and make the drive! I haven’t been in a car across country since I was a kid and James hasn’t done it in years. I’ve wanted to do a cross country road trip for a while and it seemed to work out better for us this way anyway. Now we can keep all of our clothes and supplies with us until we head out on Sunday morning and still make it home on Monday. James canceled the hotel for Sunday night without penalty so the only thing we need to do now is plan a trip to use up our airline credit within the next year. What a shame… we have to go on another vacation.

Tomorrow we will hit the north rim trail for more dramatic views, then off to Leadville.

Side by Side Action in Buena Vista

Today we only had one thing planned, taking a Polaris RZR out on some trails. Unfortunately, the rental place and the trails were pretty far away. We rented them from the same place we are going to rent a Jeep on Saturday, BV Jeeps in Buena Vista. So after the long trip over there, we signed in, got a couple helmets and some instruction on the different routes, and followed the trailer carrying of machine to the trail.

We loaded our gear in the back of the RZR and we were off. Kacie drove it first, looking hardcore with her white helmet, dust mask and shades.

We went back and forth driving around, going back and forth a couple times throughout the afternoon. As always, stopping wherever there was a cool photo opportunity.

These things are basically little cars made for spirited driving over off road trails and they’re awesome. The thing has plenty of power, I never got to totally floor it. They handle well and are automatic, or CVT, which just means there’s one gear. It does have high and low gear, but low is really low with only a 10 mph top speed. Low is pretty much for crawling up steep hills and rocks, I only used once. Again, I have no idea how fast it would go, but the speedometer went up to 100. I doubt it, but maybe close, it got up to 30 in only a few seconds.

We drove it all around the trail system for about 4 hours before we headed back to where we were to meet the trailer. We got back with about 20 minutes left, so I had to just drive it up and down the mountain before we left.

Back to our long drive home. It wasn’t that bad, and once we got home we had pulled pork with mac and chesse we had got at the grocery the day before.

We have exploring the Black Canyon tomorrow. Then a third night at the Crawford house, which is the only one we are staying 3 nights in.

Royal Gorge

Tuesday morning we got up and checked out of the Hilton Garden Inn in Colorado Springs. It was a nice hotel and friendly staff. We went out to breakfast at a local place I can’t remember the name of. James had a ham and cheese omelet and I had a breakfast sandwich. They had the good has browns with thin little pieces of potatoes like they went through a ricer and then were fried so I actually ate mine.

From there we headed out of town to the Royal Gorge. I was excited about this one because it is the natural gorge with cool architecture thrown in which is something I think is interesting. It is a suspension bridge across the 1,200 ft drop of the gorge walls.

Being a suspension bridge, it does wobble with movement and just the wind. While we were walking across a work truck drove across which really made it shake. It made me a little nervous to be up that high on something that felt unstable but you should have seen the size of the cables on that thing. It was nuts. And also very hot. I was sweating in shorts and a t-shirt.

Anyway, not all of the attractions were available but you could walk across the bridge or take the gondola. They do have a zip line across the gorge which I thought would be awesome and so terrifying but they didn’t have it open so I didn’t have to make a decision on if I would actually have the nerve to ride across or not. We chose to walk across the bridge and then ride a gondola back. We should have picked the opposite.

The walk across was nice. Again, soo hot. It was a super sunny day, I’m glad we got sunblock right away when we got here. They have every state mentioned on the bridge with the state’s flag which I thought was nice. Once across the bridge we took in some sights and then started the walk up to the gondola area. This was an uphill climb the whole way which would have been much nicer to walk down (which is why I mentioned we should have ridden the gondola the opposite way).

Once we got to the top we found a spot in line that was in the shade. The cars run in sets of 3 and they are only putting 1 group per car at this time. They aren’t very large cars so it was really nice to not have to sit with anyone. Once the cars emptied this older couple with their dog who had just gotten off the car cut in front of us and hopped right back on the ride and headed back the other way! I couldn’t believe they would jump in front of us like that and barge their way onto a gondola car when they had just gotten off the ride to head back exactly where they came from! I’m still mad.

We waited for the next set of cars and this time got the front car. James (always seeing the silver lining) noted that since we had been cut out of the last ride we now got to sit in the front which he preferred. It wouldn’t have made a difference to me because this was the view from the side and it was awesome.

After making a stop in the gift shop and the bathroom we hit the road and headed to Crawford, CO. For some reason they had a train sitting beside the parking lot. I don’t think we missed any mention of the train in or around the bridge, so I’m not sure what the significance is except that back when the bridge was made, they used trains for everything.

This was another 4 hour drive - 4 hours seems to be the magic number when it comes to driving between towns out here. We drove past some more water on the way and stopped for a few photos.

As we were driving, I check the GPS and see it looks like switch backs coming up so I let James know I think we are coming up to another mountain. We keep driving and come up on this incredible canyon. I think right away this must be Black Canyon (which we are going to see on the 17th) and we have to drive past it to get to where we are staying. After all, we are staying on Black Canyon Rd and, I mean, look at this place. What else could it be?

So this is not Black Canyon. I think it is part of the same formation but it isn’t actually the Black Canyon people come here to see but it is worth a look. This is part of Curecanti National Recreation Area and we have driven by it 3 times now going in and out of Crawford. There aren’t many ways to get to this town.

We got to the house and it is so nice! There are 2 floors, a full kitchen (with a gas range that so nervous to cook on), walk in shower, and a back deck - this is just the first floor. In the basement there is a craft room and a weight room which are both better than mine at home. I want to use the crafts but I don’t know that we will have time with the tourism we have planned.

There is a country store about 25 min away so we headed there to pick up food to make here for the next few days. I guess we haven’t been mentioning it but everyone out here does wear masks. All of the buildings have signs just like at home saying they are required and to stay 6’ apart.

Tomorrow is razer driving in Buena Vista! We just realized this is about a 3 hour drive from our house so looks like another early morning.

Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods

Today we are going to hit the two big bucket list places for each of us in Colorado Springs, Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods. We started off the morning nice and slow as we had the whole day here and no real schedule. We had decided to go to Pikes Peak first, so off we went. It was a quick drive from our hotel and before we knew it, we were driving up the mountain.

Since they are doing construction all over the place at the peak, we found out that we would have to take a shuttle bus to the top from either the 13 or 16 mile mark of the total 19 miles up. Of course we drove as high up as we could go and parked at the 16 mile mark at the parking lot for Devil’s Garden.

They are big on masks and social distancing out here, so we ended up getting on a bus with only 2 other couples. The last 3 miles went by pretty quickly as these drivers don’t seem to even be fazed by the fact that if they swerve 2 feet to the right, we’re all dead.

As we approached the peak, the construction showed it’s majestic face. They are rebuilding everything. They should be done by May 2021, but I can’t say I really recommend coming here before then unless you just happen to be out here like we are. Unless you want to see some high altitude construction, which if you are, the operation is impressive. I can’t imagine using all that heavy equipment so close to the edge of a 14,000 foot mountain, but I guess they get used to it. We also saw full size tractor trailers barreling down the mountain like it was nothing.

We were dropped off in the mud outside the current old summit house in the middle of a construction zone. No social distancing in there. The observation deck was at the rear of the building, through the shop and snack bar. We were there to see the view from 14,115 feet and went right for it. It was less than impactful. There was about a 12 by 5 foot area, surrounding by construction that you couldn’t really see past, populated by groups of sad people sitting on the ground or ledge, eating their crappy snack bar cheeseburgers and doughnuts.

The doughnuts are apparently a big deal as they are made at the summit and that’s supposed to make them taste or look different. So after snapping a few pictures out back, we figured we would wait in line for 10 minutes for a couple of these famous doughnuts. Well, they were doughnuts anyway… not as good as we have a home, just a pain ass doughnut. So the white knuckle drive up 16 miles of mountain and the weird little shuttle trip was really paying off so far.

After we finished our uninspired doughnuts, we noticed people off a bit in the distance on the other side of the summit climbing around on the boulders that cover everywhere that there isn’t construction. As there is no real system in place up there, you are allowed to wonder through an active and very busy construction zone to get to a small but well worn trail that hugs a chain link fence that in some places was less than 3 feet wide, muddy, slick, and sloped toward a probably 300 foot shear drop onto a boulder field. At one point as we walked over, there was guy on a giant forklift right beside us lifting what was probably a ton of rock. On the walk back we almost got swiped by a bulldozer too.

Having said all that, once we were wondering through the rocks and boulders, construction behind us, it was awesome. It then became worth all of the crap to get there. It might not have been the best time to go, but it just doesn’t matter when you’re up there looking out over Colorado. Just seeing the perfect Rocky Mountains off in the distance makes it worth it. It’s amazing that we had to drive so far to get from there to here and have that range still dominate the view. Pictures obviously don’t do any of it justice, but we kept taking them anyway.

You could wrap around a decent portion of the summit on this little muddy trail, and through most of it, you can walk out pretty far on the rocks. It was a little iffy as there is nothing for safety anywhere, but we still braved a few trips out, just not too close to the edge.

After we took it in as much as we could, we headed back to the summit house shop to dump a bunch of money on hats, shirts, cups, stickers… We might have gone a little nuts on buying stuff, but I think most people do. Not when the first get there, but after they stand out on a boulder, looking face to face at the surrounding mountains, from the top of the highest one around.

Once we had our bags full of souvenirs, we got right in a van to take us back down to the truck. This trip was a bit longer since we were now going down. Engine braking is key here, as we found out again later in the truck. The van screamed the whole way down at about 20 mph. But we got down to the truck safe and after wondering around for a second, we hopped in to drive the rest of the way down ourselves.

It was another white knuckle ride down. Not so much that it was scary, as we just rode in a van with a guy who did worse like it was nothing, more that you just have to keep a tight grip on the wheel. At least I did. But like I said before, engine braking made it a pretty easy trip. About halfway down they even stop you and check your brake temps before you continue on. My brakes were fine as I barely used them. That Ram stayed right at 20 in 1st gear no matter how steep the downhill stretch was.

Once we were down, we wanted to get something to eat as all we had so far was a couple of doughnuts. We ended up in Manitou Springs which is a little town with a main street full of shops and cafes, but no parking. We found a couple places but a lot of them only did curbside, no eating in. We ended up finding a Sonic just outside of the touristy part of town and pulled right in. We both got tots with our meals, and although it doesn’t sound very exciting, we were excited to eat them. I got about three down before I dumped them on the floor.

After we ate, it was time to get to Garden of the Gods. It was a pretty quick shot from where we were so we were there in no time. It’s a popular place as it’s free and technically a city park. Kacie was very excited as soon as we saw the first formation above the tree tops. Although the parking lot was pretty full, we ended up lucking out and getting a pretty good spot. Right off the bat, we saw a couple deer just hanging out. The animals out here are just not scared of people.

Garden of the Gods is very close to town. You probably even say in town. So it’s popular with tourists and locals. We even saw a guy in full USA gear on a very expensive racing bike we are pretty sure was an Olympic biker. There are also rock climbers around, as well as horses. A lot of people use this park, there was a wedding that was just wrapping up when we got to the overlook they were doing it on. But even though there was a wide variety out, we didn’t have much of a problem. Some pull offs can only handle a car or two, but since it only takes 10-15 minutes to drive the loop around the park, you can go around again to try to catch what you missed last time. I think we did a total of three loops, to hit offshoot features and to get a look at a good overlook of the central park.

The central park is where most people go. It has most impressive and largest formations in a fairly compact area. There are numerous trails, heading in all directions, starting from here. But the most popular trails are the few that circle in and out of the rocks. We wrapped back and forth around the main area and took it all in. It was hot this afternoon, but it wasn’t too bad hiking around.

After looking through the central park, we jumped back in the car and wondered around the various roads to various features.

A lot of the pull offs are good vantage points for taking in the huge formations as a whole. When you’re in the central park, you are right beside the rock. Which means it’s like walking through New York, you can’t really get the scale, you just can see that there is a giant object right beside you that extends hundreds of feet up. Hundreds might be an exaggeration. Point is, it’s almost looking at two different things depending on if your close or far. It was nice to get both perspectives.

Once we saw as much as we could see without hardcore hiking and climbing, we headed back to the hotel to change. Once we did, we started looking around for a place to eat and found the Airplane Restaurant. Since our hotel was close to the airport, it was only a couple minutes away. It’s a nice place, as Kacie said, they went so crazy with the theme it went past cheesy and back to cool. You can guess the theme, but it is a lot. The walls are covered with airplane pictures, there are model planes hanging from every ceiling, and you can eat in a plane. The plane seems to have been gutted, and then a building was built around it. The plane is mostly outside of the building, however, the right side wing, complete with engine and landing gear, create a big chunk of the main seating area’s ceiling. It’s a pretty cool place. They pretend they all work at an airline and have old-timey newspaper looking menus.

We didn’t get to eat in the plane as it was full, so we just ate in the main room. We decided that since they had it on the menu, we would each get a buffalo burger to try it. It’s not bad, and the say it has less fat than chicken or turkey. Everything was pretty good and it was a cool, unique place to eat.

It ended up being a pretty full day, so we went back to the hotel and crashed. Next up is Royal Gorge, and hour or so south of Colorado Springs, and then on to our next spot, The Black Canyon.

Rocky Mountain National Park - Sunday

Sunday morning consisted of another breakfast in the condo and more PB&J’s for the afternoon. We packed up all of our stuff because this was our last morning at Beaver Creek and hit the road back into Rocky Mountain National Park.

This morning on the way to the gate I saw a sign showing Trail Ridge Road was open all the way to Grand Lake! James was cautiously optimistic but I knew it was going to be open. Guaranteed! We went right for Trail Ridge and back to the Rainbow Curve lookout. The plan was to take comparison photos from the day before to really see how much snow had melted. James took this great shot (I don’t know how he got the exact angle) so we can really see the difference!

After Rainbow Curve is where the road was closed on Saturday but, as I knew it would be, it was now open! Up we went. The highest point in the park is on this road which is over 12,000 ft. We were above the tree line and the tundra is beautiful. Again, we had an incredibly clear day with great visibility.

There were many more stops on the way down the other side of the mountain. It is surprising how many people we saw biking up and down the road. I can’t image being strong enough to bike up, let alone brave enough to bike back down!

Once at the bottom, we stopped at Lake Irene. There weren’t many people at this one and the path was a bit snowy still. Once we got out to the lake there was only a couple there, the man was doing some fishing. It was a very serene place and we wandered around what we could of the area.

After getting back out toward the car, we decided this was a good place to have our lunch. We had a bird visitor trying to sneak a bite of food but were otherwise left alone. We made another stop at a small historic area within the park. This spot had an old house from the pioneer days and an area you could explore but we chose not to go any further. It was a great trip and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. Honestly, I preferred to see snow on the mountaintops and I’m so glad we got to see it that way and still had an opportunity to experience the full thruway of Trail Ridge Road.

At this point, we started our drive to Colorado Springs. This was another 4 hour journey so we could avoid going into Denver and the traffic there. After leaving the park we saw a few larger lakes by the road and the leaves are starting to change!

I drove for a very short amount of time once we got away from town. On the side of the road there was a reservoir you could tell immediately was super low. They have been having droughts which contributes to the spreading of fires. Steamboat seemed to have normal water levels, at least from what we could see, but you can tell we have caught up to the drought areas now.

We made it the rest of the way to Colorado Springs without any issues and checked into the Hilton Garden Inn hotel we are staying at until the 15th. There is a restaurant connected to another hotel right down the road we checked out for dinner, JB’s Burger Kitchen & Bar. I had a quesadilla and James had a burger. The food was good and his drink looked very strong so I would say it was a decent place.

Monday is Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods!

Rocky Mountain National Park- Saturday

Yesterday morning we had some breakfast in the condo and packed some PB&J sandwiches before heading out for the day. We got into Rocky Mountain National Park at about 10:30. The park is doing timed entry passes right now that you need to purchase ahead. We bought ours early enough that we had the choice of anything we wanted and chose 10-12.

Along with most of the people that arrived with us, he first place we went was to Trail Ridge Road. This road is one of the big draws to the park as it is the highest continuous paved road in the United States, reaching an elevation of 12,183 feet. Due to the blizzard on Tuesday, everything above about 9,000 ft was still shut down to allow for snow removal. Along the way we made many stops climbing the mountain and watching the landscape change. Kacie was living the dream, snapping pictures with all of her cameras.

Rainbow Curve was the last stop on Trail Ridge before we had to turn around and go back down because of the snow. This is a great look out with lots of parking and chipmunks.

Due to the snow storm we flew in during, and the colder temps for the last couple days, the tops of the mountains were still snow covered. Since the temperature was to climb into the 80’s for the foreseeable future, the snow was not going to last long. We also overheard a ranger saying that given that the temps were going to rise quickly, Trail Ridge Road should be opening up by the next day.

After braving the steep drop offs to come back down the road, we started to make our way to Bear Lake. We took our time and stopped a few places along the way to take in more sites. One place we went to was Beaver Meadows. This was a mostly open area where we got out and stretched our legs a bit with a walk. We found what we thought was an old shack but after wandering over to it, realized it was actually a spring house. We also had an idea that this would be a good place to check out the stars later that night.

Bear Lake is one of the more popular spots in the park so getting a spot in the parking lot is just luck. We lucked out when we got there and found a spot! This lake is very close to the lot so we took a few photos, it was very busy there. James decided it wasn’t very big, about the size of Strasburg pond, and not worth the hype but with this being my first mountain lake in Colorado, I thought it was nice. This lot also serves about 4 other lakes and has a trail to a waterfall. We set out on the waterfall trail which started a steep decline. We went what I assume was half way to the fall before deciding to turn around and head back. I’ll tell you, you lose your breath so much faster than at home and with the climb back up looming, we thought it would be best to go back. Also, we weren’t expecting this type of hike and didn’t bring any water along with us. On the way out, Kacie thought she was already starting to notice the snow disappearing on the mountain tops… foreshadowing.

We made a few more stops on the way out but at this point it was after 4 and time to head back to the condo and get some dinner. It wasn’t until 5 when we made it home and ordered from Smokin’ Dave’s BBQ to eat back on our deck. It was good. Kacie had pulled pork and I had brisket.

The plan was to head back into the park at dark and take some more photos at night. We went back to Beaver Meadows which James pegged for a good spot earlier that day and the park ranger also said was the best spot for star gazing. We set up the cameras and had a few elk visitors. Actually, the whole night the elk wouldn’t stop yelling at each other. We also had some loud human visitors but they left pretty quick. We went to 1 other spot along the road in Beaver Meadows before going back home for the night.

Hello Estes Park

This morning started out with a quick grab and go breakfast in the hotel lobby and a few short hours of photos in the big house. We worked for only about 2 and a half hours before calling it finished. We finished up with about 90 different views so I would say we covered everything.

After saying our goodbyes we started our journey to Estes Park. Due to the wild fires what would have been about a 2 hour drive was 4. We had the choice of going south around the fire almost back to Denver and then up through Boulder or going north into Wyoming before heading back down into Colorado and the park. We chose Wyoming which took us into Laramie. I was excited to be back there for the first time in over 20 years and to be able to hit 2 states on our trip! This first leg of the drive was my first time behind the wheel of the big truck. I got to drive up over a mountain going from 8400 ft up to 9100 ft and then back down to 7300 ft elevations. The way down I was extra cautious with it being such a big truck and being my first time driving it but I did have fun.

While we were up in the mountain we passed a whole burnt section of trees. At first, I thought it was from the fires happening now but then we realized this must be older because of the new growth we could see.

After getting into Laramie and driving through town we realized there was no where to park, so ended up stopping for lunch at Iron Skillet. James had a burger, big surprise there, and I had a chicken cordon bleu sandwich. There was some rain in Wyoming but coming back into Colorado, it cleared right up.

James took the wheel again and we started on the second half of the trip. Here we saw a lot of red rocks around the road, something we don’t see at home very often.

When we got close to Estes Park we looked for smoke from the fires but couldn’t tell if what we were looking at were clouds or smoke. I still can’t figure out if we ever did see smoke in the distance. We drove through this amazing rock canyon that pictures really don’t do any justice. At some points you couldn’t see the sky the walls were so high. We were driving next to, what looks like on the map, Big Thompson River.

This time we are in a condo called Beaver Brook. I have to say, James was right this is much better than getting a hotel room. We have a deck on the back looking over the river and mountains. There is a fireplace, microwave, minifridge, and a full size shower. Here is a look from the deck

We checked the place out when we got here then immediately started emptying the truck. We stepped back outside and heard an elk and knew it was close. After getting everything inside we went out to the deck to see if we could spot it out by the water and I caught it moving through the trees! I can’t believe we saw one so fast. We couldn’t have been here for more than 15 mins before seeing our first one.

Our last stop of the day was the local Country Super Market for essential food. We packed our bags for exploration tomorrow and we are in for the night!

Day 3 in Steamboat

Today Kacie didn’t have to start shooting the house until lunch time, so we got to go out to breakfast in town and hit some shops. We still got up pretty early since she had a zoom call at 10:15… which is 8:15 here. Once they finished up, we headed to The Egg. Yup, they specialize in eggs and breakfast. She got something fancy, I think Eggs Benedict with crab, and I got a ham and cheese omelette. Everything was good, one of the better omelettes I’ve had anyway.

After breakfast we headed downtown to hit a few shops. Right around the corner we found a cool shop that specialized in jewelry and fossils, called the Jewelry and Fossil Shop, very creative. Weird combo but an awesome shop. We would’ve bought everything if we could, they even had Megaladon teeth for about $150. They really had some cool stuff for rich people.

Then we hit a sock shop, yes, they pretty much just sold socks. They don’t have a website, but they did have a lot of socks. Kacie wanted to get some plush, comfy socks for wondering around the house since you can’t wear shoes inside there. I don’t blame them, even the floors are incredible. After buying socks and a couple cool masks, her’s is a flowery number and mine was an eagle shaded in with an American flag, we went down the street and found a hat shop, Steamboat Hat Shop. Here they sold only hats, a lot of very specialized shops in town here. There I bought a cool Colorado hat we both agreed on. Unfortunately by now, we were out of time. We spent a lot of time in the fossil shop… so we headed back to the hotel to pick up the camera and gear.

Once I dropped her off, I headed back up north to Steamboat and Pearl Lakes, which were only a couple miles up from where I was the day before in Clark. In Colorado you have to pay for a pass to visit state parks, so I had to stop in at the visitor’s center at Steamboat Lake. $9 bucks just to drive around and check the lakes out. Being from PA and checking out at least half of our state parks, it blew my mind to have to pay for a state park, but you have to pay for everything up here. It was worth it, I had them both basically to myself and the scenery was amazing.

Steamboat Lake is huge. You can’t boat on either lake right now, not sure why, probably Covid, but it was too cold for kayaking anyway. There were a few coves at Steamboat Lake that you could drive to and check it out from different angles, I hit all of them. It might have also been that the roads up there were all dirt and I had a big truck to drive around in…

Pearl Lake is not even close to the size of Steamboat, but it’s much more impressive. Where Steamboat Lake is out in the open with flat land surrounding it, Pearl is surrounded by tree covered mountains. It’s also even more secluded, meaning there literally was no one else there. I just kind of stood there for a while and took it all in.

While James was checking out the sites, I pressed on with the photos. We finished up all of the day time shots and then ordered dinner to eat in the house. James came over for the '“family dinner” after picking up our salads from Slopeside Grill. They were good and it was nice to have something semi-healthy on vacation where I usually just eat junk.

After dinner we did a few more shots where outside light wasn’t a priority. We had to wait about 45 min for the sun to go down and we could take our nighttime shots. I actually got to watch part of the first football game of the season. From the sound of it, the beginning was the most exciting part. Once the sun went down enough, we took the rest of what we needed to finish up our photo set. I will still go back in the morning to make sure we have what we need and take some more artistic angles. It sounds like that will be a quick day and we will be able to get on our way to our next stop in the Colorado tour earlier than expected!

Day 2 in Steamboat

Kacie was shooting at 8am today at the ridiculous house at the base of Steamboat mountain. They have a ton of photos to do and got a lot done on this first day. I went to get some breakfast at place called “Freshies” here in Steamboat Springs. It was good, but 2 eggs, sausage, hash-browns and toast ran me about 18 bucks. While Kacie took her photos I got one of our boxes that we sent out. In the box was some of her photo gear, so after opening it up I headed back over to the house to drop some gear off and get the tour. It is an amazing place, Kacie might have a few shots to show you later, but she can’t put them up here yet. Once my tour was over and we hung about a bit there, I headed up north to Clark. First, once you get out of Steamboat there is nothing but high dollar homes dotting the county-side. After you get a little further out, it’s nothing but ranches… wide open spaces in between mountains. Clark was about 20 miles north of Steamboat and was pretty much ranches and one country store with a deli. It was a nice little store, nice people, and considering how far out they are, they had everything a Turkey Hill would have back home. Here’s a typical landscape of Clark, from the parking lot.

Kacie and her boss, Aaron, were shooting for about 6 and a half hours until the camera ran out of battery so I went back over to pick her up. Then we went back to the UPS store to get our other 2 boxes. Everything arrived safe, so we now have all of our stuff that was sent out here. Plenty of outdoor gear for our travels. Once we changed and got everything into our room, we decided to head up to see a local sightseeing spot, Fish Creek Falls. It’s a 280 foot waterfall about 15 minutes north of Steamboat Springs. It’s a tourist trap so it’s an easy hike to the lookout.

After that we drove around downtown Steamboat Springs to check out the little shops and restaurants. We also checked out a little park that is on the Yampa River, which runs the whole way through town. Then we needed to get back to change since we had 6:30 reservations at Rex’s, the restaurant attached to our hotel. It was a nice place, but we still got giant burgers and drinks. The fries were good too.

That was pretty much our first full day in Steamboat. Kacie has many more photos to do on Thursday. They are doing some night shots as well so they will start later and we can get some breakfast and wonder around town. But we’ll tell you about that later.

Getting to Steamboat Springs

Today was the day we started off on our two week adventure through Colorado. We had two flights, Harrisburg to Washington, and then Washington to Denver. The first flight was uneventful. It was a very small plane, so a bit cramped, but not bad. The actual flight was under an hour, so no big deal. Once we landed, we had to hustle over to our next flight to Denver. That plane was a proper airliner in which we lucked out and had a three seat row to ourselves… figures crossed for the way home. This flight was a little over three hours and was pretty uneventful again, although we soon found the snow on approach into Denver.

Getting through DIA was no problem either. Once we got out of the terminal to our rental car shuttle, we first felt the cold. It didn’t take too long to get our vehicle for the trip, a Bighorn Edition Hemi Ram 1500.

After getting on the road, we stopped in Idaho Springs for lunch at Beau Jo’s Pizza. They make mountain pizzas with a thick crust served with honey. I have to admit, the honey with the pizza crust was better than I was expecting. The Beau Jo’s pizza sauce was good and so was the Italian sausage. Beside the parking lot we used was an old train… just sitting there. This is where the snow started to pick up for our journey.

While we were eating the forecasted snow caught up to us. We were not dressed for the cold weather. I ran back to the truck which is harder than it sounds in this altitude and climbed in. The next hurdle to literally get over was the first mountain. James heroically took the wheel and we were off. It started out beautiful to see the snow but as we went higher it became a blizzard.

The temperature low was 16 degrees at which point we pulled off the road to scrape ice off the windshield. In case you were wondering, rentals do not come standard with an ice scraper (even in Colorado). We found some pamphlets in the glove box and hopped out into the cold. They worked better than expected and were on the way again!

It wasn’t too long after that we were to the bottom of the mountain with full viability. Getting there was slow going but James is an expert driver. From this point on the trek was less eventful but much more beautiful. I caught my first glimpse of the mountains and they are shockingly stunning. Up until we passed the snow the distance was covered in fog and clouds. With the new visibility, I ended up asking to pull over at every chance and running along the side of the road with my camera to take pictures, like that would surprise anyone.

The next few days will be mostly work for Kacie and solo adventuring for James. Luckily, the house is right around the corner and incredible. We can’t wait to try the local food, I hear the restaurant connected to our hotel is very good. We are going to give that a try tonight!

Getting Ready for Colorado

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