Colorado Day 6, Top to the bottom and homeward

Day Six was the begining of the end. Breakfast at the hotel was meh. Luckily the truck was still where we parked it, and everything was still in it. Off to the Peak! Pikes Peak Highway obviously holds a special place in most motor-heads hearts and I am no exception. It is also a very spectacular piece of natural beauty and history.

Then we fell back down the mountain (where we had to wait for the brakes to cool) and headed over to Garden of the Gods, which is a really weird place to me. Beautiful but in the middle of town and incredibly busy and therefore weird.

And then we were done. :( We hit the highway and headed north to Cheyenne, Wyoming. We stayed the night in a pleasant little place called Little America? The next day we got up and headed off into the high plains of WY and SD. We avoided Sturgis and the Black Hills as it was the closing weekend of Bike Week there and I don't like the crowds. Rapid City was still pretty busy but we flew through and enjoyed the sights of the Dakotas on our way back to home. We had to stop at Wall, since Leann had never been. She thought it was the stupidest thing since the AbMaster and swore she would never return. I thought that a bit steep but basically agreed. Home, and my own bed to sleep in. and a hot shower!

Colorado Day 5, Water in the Mountains!

Day 5 was the big day for us. We didn't have much of a plan when we left but Whitewater Rafting was one of the things that was on the list. We had made arrangements the day before to do the Brown Canyon Full day trip, rafting with Noah's Ark. Now I am not a religious man, and I missed the obvious clues as to the nature of Noah's Ark. That being said I was thoroughly impressed the operation and professionalism of the guides. It was amazing. And lunch was good too! We elected to not take our cameras or GPS on the trip since we really didn't know what to expect.

Our raft, less our awesome guide Andy. Myself and Leann, Brandon? Shannon and Jackson. Have I mentioned that I am bad with names? Probably all wrong...:( For those interested in this kind of thing here is my take-away shpiel: Both me and Leann are comfortable on the water; canoes, kayaks, power boating and sailing. We can both swim. But neither of us had ever done "whitewater" rafting before. So we took the tour companies advise and did Brown's Canyon, though we did make sure to do the full day and no less. Browns was a very nice pretty ride down the river, BUT if you want adventure on the high seas then this will feel pretty sedate. That said: We are glad we did that trip. It gave a us a feel for the rafts, the gear, the paddling techniques. Next time we will do the Royal Gorge trips as they are supposed to be very much more "Adventure" compared to our trip. Very cool. After rafting we dried off, had a bite to eat, and hit the road for Colorado Springs.

I found the scenery of South Park to be amazing in a much different way than the Front Range district. once we got to Colorado Springs we had a little spat over hotels that landed us in a shitty hotel called de Elegance or something. It was aweful. shitty neighborhood right off the interstate with nothing nearby. We drove a couple miles to The Public House. This place is an absolute gem! They are a little pub/sportsbar in a strip mall. But they push the "local" thing. They aren't fruit-loop hippies, they are just down-to-earth business people that know a good thing when they see it. The food was great and at a great price! Then back to the lousy hotel for a nights sleep.

Colorado Day 4, Rest Day and Trails

Day 4 we decided to be a rest day. After the stress of not having a campsite the night before and the stress of staying were we did it was decided to put a priority on securing a decent camp and exploring the local area around Buena Vista. We packed up camp and headed in to Buena to explore. I got some not-so-great pastry at the bakery. I had hoped for better. :) I also picked up a cheap hatchet...since I never replaced our old one and neglected to secure one before leaving on the trip. Foolhardy I know! There is also a very pleasant look Dispensary in Buena, but I didn't go in. In fact I didn't buy any marijuana on the trip. Which is dissapointing. :D After grabbing some maps at the visitor center I realized there was a FS campground literally across the river from our last nights camp. If only I had come prepared. We zipped down there and sure enough there is a beautiful campground right on the bank of the Arkansas River. We snagged a cozy site that hadn't been washed away (remember those rains I mentioned earlier?) and set up our soggy tent to air out and dry the sleeping bags.

Pretty idyllic if you ask me.

Going out from the campground we met up with some of the locals. Goats of some sort I guess?

I am guessing this is not a local. Somebody of the same mind as myself but with a larger budget... We decided to run the 4-mile trails outside of town. They offer some great dispersed camping indeed!

incredible. The far peaks are all 13-14 thousand foot peaks, with Buena Vista in the bottom of the valley.

The only proper obstacle on the 4-mile loop was this out of place cattle-guard. I was worried about clearance because it seemed to just be sitting on the ground. looks like most people just drive around it.

The loop has lots of great views and plenty of spots to stop and have a picnic or something. There are a couple water crossings, though they are probably not too wet during an average year.

The trail comes out just north of Buena on the old railroad grade. These tunnels are just eye-candy. We went back through town and headed back to our camp early and had a wonderful dinner and a nice hot campfire. We stayed up past sun-down and the alpine glow really is incredible. There was so much light from the moon and stars I was in awe. And the dry sleeping bag with the gruggle of the Arkansas flowing by was just what the doctor ordered.

Colorado Day 3, High Rockies

Day three was another long haul. Starting at the Willow Creek camp, we headed along the Colorado River Headwaters Byway till we hit Kremmling. Which probably means we missed some of the better parts of that Byway, shucks. From Kremmling we headed south to Dillon, which I thought was a very scenic section of highway, past Green Lake?. Lunch was had at the Dillon Dam Brewery. It was good. It was huge. Couldn't finish it in fact! From Dillon we headed south through Breckenridge and over Hooser Pass.

South of Alma we turned onto County Road 19 and headed off to Mosquito Pass. We were running the route "in reverse" from what it seems like most people do. Its an offroad road so I didn't care what direction we went. A lot of this trail is pretty mild but the upper sections DO need high clearance and I needed 4wd once on the way up, and needed the low geared transfer case on the way down since I cooked the brakes on the way off mount evans. Oops.

This image doesn't look so bad...until you realize that is has got to be a good 20% grade or more! And most of it has water running down it.

Looking back down the road in. You can see the London Gold Mine ruins a little. there was a flock of Jeep JKs there when we drove by but they were headed down the valley.

The actual mine shaft for London. This is where the easy trail ends when you are coming from the East.

Proof! It was very windy and only about 50F at the pass. Now most people climb the ledge road section from Leadville to the Pass, we descended it and got some absolutely incredible views of the rain showers moving across the valley.

We survived the descent and took a pit stop at the diamond mine outside Leadville. This is the western terminus of the Mosquito Pass Trail. Once we got down to Leadville we shot off to Buena Vista to find a camp for the night. Sadly the three FS campgrounds on Chalk Creek were full! We couldn't believe it. And we didn't have a map of Pike forest so we didn't know where the other campgrounds in the area were. :( So we ended up at the private Chalk Creek Camp Ground and RV cesspool. This reminded me of why I don't stay at private campgrounds.

Colorado Day 2, The mountains.

The second day in Colorado was spectacular. On this image we traveled from FS Camp to Camp Willow, via Rocky Mountain National Park. The day started out at the Meeker Park Overflow campsite, with a pleasant breakfast a short hike for the last pictures in yesterdays post.

Black Betty at the camp. The week before we got here there had been torrential rains across most of the Rockies so many of these campsites were in bad shape, and roads were in need of repair, but the truck handled all of that quite well. There were little passenger cars that got in to their campsites too so it wasn't anything crazy. We rolled into Estes Park and stocked up on more ice at the grocery store and stopped at the visitor center to see if they had anything of interest. Nope. On to the park!

We took the Trail Ridge Road which is entirely in the RMNP. It is amazing. We saw a few Elk along the way and a deer. Thats about it for wildlife.

So we went up and over and back down to the Grand Lake area. Our camp was at the Willow Creek Resevoir. Not sure if the resevoir is for drinking water or power gen. It was very pretty, once the rain stopped. There are Osprey living around the lake and it was fun to watch them fish. Sadly we did not bring fishing gear (we are vacationing in the mountains...fish dont live in the mountains right?) but there were a few blokes fishing around the lake. Pictures dont do the RMNP justice. Sufice to say it is incredible and I would have loved to do some backcountry backpacking there.

Colorado Day 1

Sunrise in Denver was probably pretty nice...We slept through it! :D Since Leann had never been to Denver we decided to take a slow morning in the city. We ate breakfast at Snooze: An AM Eatery which did have incredibly good breakfast...but incredibly busy and not so great of service. I guess they have two locations so maybe the other one isn't so bad. We left full either way. My hopes for the day had been to do the Lariat Loop Historic Byway with a variation to Mt Evans and end the day north towards Rocky Mountain NP. And we almost did all that!

After leaving breakfast and the heart of Denver we headed out to Golden since we had a deadline to meet there:

We had to wait nearly an hour for our free tour, but I am a sucker for brewery tours and free beer so we waited it out. I'm sure there are beer snobs reading this in agony, as I choose the largest and most mainstream brewery in the area to visit instead of hundreds of "craft brewers" nearby. *shrug* oh well. On our way into the brewery I had noticed a couple signs for the Lariat loop so we headed out as soon as we got back to the truck and grabbed some sandwiches in town.

we took a short hike from the road because there was a swarm of either paragliders or powered paragliders taking off from somewhere on this hill. Never did find them but you can see a speck of one in the center of this picture. Also Golden and Denver in the distance. This hilltop was neat, to me, because you could see one of the main E-W streets in Denver pointed right through this hilltop. After our hike we continued up the switchbacks and through the hillside communities along the Loop road. Eventually I spotted signs for Mt Evans and we took off up more windy hillside roads to the west. I saw lots of camo-wrapped development cars along this route, which I of course was facinated by. We eventually ran into their hotel headquarters in Dillon, but that comes later! We made it all the way to the base of the Mt Evans auto road, via this backroad, only to decide that we didn't have time to drive up it! :D we are such dorks. On the way down from Mt. Evans we passed the most rediculous thing I had seen yet. So rediculous that I had to turn around and take a picture.

You saw that right! A Hummer in the bed of a Duece-n-a-half. And a Dodge Megacab dually. Whom ever this is is ready to drive over some stuff! Eventually we made it down to Indian Springs on I-70 and took that back east until we hit the Peak-to-Peak Historic Byway and headed north. This is a pretty busy route in spots but I liked the views and the rocks. At some point we deviated off the route and ended up in Boulder. This was okay because we had a chance to gas up and stop at a grocery store for ice and last minute supplies. Next we headed up to Estes Park area, via the detour. At this point the night was getting awefully close and we didn't have a good map for finding a campsite. Finally we happened across the Meeker Park Overflow campground north of Allenspark. This turned out to be a pretty sweet little campsite with lots of trees and space. It was nearly full by the time we got settled. Damp firefood resulted in a pretty sad dinner on the stove. We were tired. The view in the morning was spectacular:

Which was only made mroe incredible a couple miles up the road when you find out that the peak above is not the main attraction:

But that is tomorrows story!