Eastern Colorado (STR-2022-24)

Monday, 22 August

As today was mostly a reposition day (no golf planned), we enjoyed sleeping in, something we have not done recently. A leisurely morning including making weekend lattes since we weren't able to do them on the actual weekend.

We headed east on US 50, crossing Monarch Pass, elevation 11,312 feet.

Monarch Pass

At Salida, we turned north to Buena Vista, then turned east on Colorado Highway 24. Doing a hike along the route was an option, however, the pop up thunderstorms made it an iffy proposition. We arrived mid-afternoon at Mueller State Park Campground near Divide, CO, where we will be spending a few days camping and adventuring with Tom and Heidi - sailing friends formerly from West Virginia, recently having moved to Colorado Springs. They also pioneered our wintering at Riverside RV Resort in Florida. We spent the evening starting to catch up since we last saw them in Florida back in February.

Our campsite is at 9,700 feet elevation, the highest we have camped since last summer when we had a few nights at 9,900 feet.

Tuesday, 23 August

With an overnight low of 45 degrees, Sprinty's heater got some use last night. We headed out with Tom and Heidi for the town of Cripple Creek, about 18 miles/30 minutes away. Reviewing our trip notes from last year, we found that we visited Cripple Creek August 21, 2021 with the caravan last summer.

We timed our arrival to take the 10am ride on the Cripple Creek and Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad (cripplecreekrailroad.com).

For today's 4-mile trip, we were pulled by Engine No. 3, a coal-fired steam engine engineered by Tina. 

The train ride was in an open car.

The trip began at the depot in Cripple Creek, went south past the old Midland Terminal Wye, then over a reconstructed train trestle, continued past historic mines and terminated very near the abandoned Anaconda mining camp before returning to the depot in Cripple Creek.

Abandoned Mines

It also offered beautiful vistas.

After the train ride, complete with authentic burning coal smoke, we visited the Cripple Creek District Museum (cripplecreekmuseum.com), a point of interest we were not able to visit last year due to time constraints, and we made a note to visit it the next time we were in Cripple Creek. Like many museums, it was filled with various artifacts from Cripple Creek's past, and were more interesting having visited Cripple Creek before.

The most interesting exhibit was the multi-level glass schematic display of the Portland Mine.

Glass sheets depicting each level of the mine going down over 3,000 feet were stacked vertically to provide a three-dimensional view of the underground workings of the Portland mine. Due to reflections and glare, a photo of this artifact was not possible.

After lunch, we went to the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine for a gold mine tour, a tour we did last year with the caravan.

Our guide was Patrick, and he made the tour quite interesting. The tour started with getting into a small double deck man car with six (sometimes seven) people squeezed in tighter than riding a Japanese train at rush hour. We were then lowered 1,000 feet below the surface in two minutes.

Patrick explained the exhibit of the old way of hand drilling the rack face for placing the dynamite. A crew of two men were expected to drill a face every shift. Each face consisted of about 24 holes, 6 feet deep. A mine was expected to progress 18 feet a day with three shifts.

Patrick then demonstrated the hydraulic drill. The very loud hydraulic drill.

Another exhibit showed what a face packed with dynamite would have looked like. The fuse cords were of different lengths to have the blasts go off in a specific order to ensure maximum blast and to prepare the blasted rock for mucking - the loading of the blasted rock onto carts.

As difficult as horizontal excavation was, the vertical mining, called stopes, was daunting. This one was vertically drilled and blasted over 600 feet up.

Near the end of the tour, Patrick took our photo by the 1,000 foot underground sign.

Remembering the nearby Newmont mine overlook from last year, we revisited it. There an exhibit explained the mining process.

The Newmont Mine is a huge open pit mine.

Even though we did the tour a year ago, we found it just as fascinating. Well worth doing a second time a year later.

Wednesday, 24 August

Today's activity was to revisit the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Florissant, CO. Sprinty visited last year, but the Visitor Center was not open to see the exhibits and video due to COVID.

This year, the Visitor Center was open and we got to view the many exhibits which explained the significance of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. The video and exhibits were well done. Florissant has one of the richest troves of fossils in the world, specifically from the late Eocene period (about 35 million years ago). The nearby Guffey volcanic center blanketed the Florissant valley with a series of debris flows and explosive eruptions of airborne volcanic ash and pumice. These volcanic deposits compacted to form the rock layers exposed today. Some of the rocks preserve the ancient life of the area as fossils, both large and small. The volcanic activity in the area managed to preserve fossils of over 1,700 species as lava, ash, lahar (mud flows) locked these fossils in paper-thin shale.

And we got to visit it with our geologist friends, Tom and Heidi, who shared many interesting details beyond the video, exhibits and interpretive signs.

One of the centerpiece fossils were the petrified redwood stumps which were covered in volcanic mud, and then petrified. When the mud flows covered the area, the trees were buried in 15 feet of mud. The tops died, decayed, leaving the buried stumps. Over time, the silica-rich water seeped into the cells of the wood, preserving them. Several are now covered and monitored for decay as they work to preserve them for future generations.

We then walked the Petrified Forest Loop, and noticed the fossil excavation demonstration site was open. The volunteer geologist, Bob, explaining the site greatly added to our understanding of the fossils in the shale layers. As a demo site, he had samples to see and touch. Bob was also a retired geology professor Pennsylvania. Tom and Heidi compared notes and found several geology people they knew in common including a student they had both taught.

Our lucky day as the demo site was only open in the morning, and Bob said he only worked one day a week.

We visited the Big Stump, another huge petrified redwood tree stump. This one has additional significance as they tried to saw it in pieces to exhibit the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893. Remains of the rusty broken saw blades are still embedded in the top of the stump

Kris pointing to broken saw blade 

The loop trail passed by several other petrified stumps.

After lunch, we took a road trip south to see the remnants of the lahar that dammed Lake Florissant, which resulted in the paper thin-shale layers forming at the bottom of the lake encapsulating leaves, seeds, pollen, insects, and even fish. We learned much of the lahar has eroded over the millions of years, making us wonder how this section of the lahar managed to survive.

We drove another few miles to the Guffey Volcanic Center Viewpoint. There, with the aid of the handout from the Visitor Center, we could imagine the Guffey volcanic center in the distance.

Thursday, 25 August

We started the day with hiking the Grouse Mountain Overlook Trail. The trail itself is about a mile in length, and we started from our campsite, adding almost another mile.

The trail led to a nice overlook.

We broke camp around 10am, and made our way to Colorado Springs to see Tom and Heidi's new home and their development. They used to live in Morgantown, WV and moved to Colorado Springs a couple of months ago. Their development is new and many homes are under construction, with more still to be started. They are at 6,800 feet elevation, which made for nice cool temperatures, especially at night.

Friday, 26 August

We decided today would be mostly a drive day, and departed Colorado Springs shortly after breakfast. Enroute, we decided to break up the day and played 9 holes of golf at Trinidad Golf Course in Trinidad, CO. We finished our round of golf as thunder was starting to roar nearby. The rain started just as we pulled out of the parking lot. We continued south on I-25 and crossed into New Mexico at Raton Pass.