Happy 93rd Birthday! (08-12-23)

 In our planning for our summer adventures, we took into consideration that August 10th is Paul’s mom’s 93rd birthday.  Our hope was to be there for it, and we were.

We also try to schedule her doctor and dentist appointments for when we can be there, so, she had a very busy 3 days when we were in town.

Her party was scheduled for mid afternoon on a day that had lots of activities for the residents, so I was a little nervous about the attendance- but when we arrived, the room was full!

One of the attendees was a woman who used to be one of her main caregivers. She has since moved on, but comes back to visit periodically.

El Paso is sort of a turning point in our summer travels- an intermission of sorts. We had all our RV parks before August 10th  booked in advance, and nothing booked for after the 10th. In late July we sat down and re-looked at our calendar. I still had to book a trip to Massachusetts, since the one I had booked for June was canceled due to my broken foot. We also needed at least a loose game for September and October.

Back in early 2020, Paul and I managed to score permits for a campground on a reservation, to visit Havasupai Falls.  Getting the permits is difficult, as is the actual trip to Havasupai Falls. Reservations for the entire year open at 8 am on February 1, and sell out within minutes.

Our “original” dates were for March of 2020, for 4 people because two friends were going to join us. We all know what happened in March of 2020. So, we rescheduled our dates for October of 2021, then October of 2022, and now, since they are finally open again post Covid, October of 2023. Our friends have since dropped out, so it is just Paul and I now.

The trip is for 3 nights. In order to get to the campground, you have to hike 12 miles, 2200 ft down into a canyon. There are 3 restrooms in the campground, which is 2 miles long. Everything else, you need to bring yourself. All the food, tent, sleeping bags, clothes, shoes, cooking utensils- everything. Lucky for us, since we aren’t backpackers, we were able to hire a mule to carry our heavy things- although lately people have been saying that there aren’t always enough mules.

 If we don’t get a mule, we can’t go.

Once you are in the canyon, there are trails to hike to different waterfalls. This is why its worth the effort to get there.

Will we make it? We will see. This hike is the reason we have been working so hard this summer to build up our stamina. Especially me, since breaking bones in my foot really set me back. Although I am happy with my progress, it isn’t enough. We will have to ramp it up more in Sept and Oct for me to feel comfortable making the trek. There is a possibility that we might be able to take a helicopter out of the canyon, but it doesn’t run every day, can’t be booked in advance, and doesn’t run if it’s windy. So, you need to be able to hike out.

We are lucky that our reservations are for after monsoon season because flash flooding is reasonably common, and has a drastic effect on the waterfalls…

Our tentative plan for before then: the rig, and Paul, will be in Fresno, CA, so he can spend time with friends while I fly to Boston for 12 days. When I get back, we will head a little further north, near Yosemite National Park, which has gobs of hiking. We will spend about a month there, getting in the best condition we can, and then head back to Arizona, mid October.

Havasupai Falls Trailhead is about 4 hours from our house, so we will give ourselves a week at the house to pack up our gear and buy whatever we don’t have. Mostly everything has been bought, since we expected to do this trip years ago. Our reservations are for October 26-29th.

S '23, Episode 7, Manitou Springs, CO (08-11-23)

 For the past few weeks we have been staying for a week at each destination we had. That part of our summer is over. At this point we are headed towards El Paso to spend time with Paul’s mom for her 93rd birthday. We have time to stop a few places along the way, but not for a week, and we have no reservations.

We discovered that with the heatwave that has hit most of the country, RV spots in cooler areas are hard to come by. We finally found an RV spot in Manitou Springs- it was recommended by a park that had no availability (“they are so expensive, they might have a spot open still”) –and so they did.

It seems like whenever we look at a map of Colorado, our eyes skim over Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument, and we say some day we need to go there. Well, today was that day. We realized our rig would fit in the parking lot and it was on our way to Manitou Springs. Perfect.

This is one of the largest fossil beds in the world. They were created when nearby volcanoes erupted, covering the entire area with massive mudflows.

Our original intent was to just walk one of the short trails and check out the most impressive fossils, but we arrived just as a tour was starting, so we joined it.

The fossils in this area are all permineralized- created when an animal or tree is buried quickly. Over time, water seeps into the dead organism, and leaves minerals behind- essentially making a stone replica of whatever was there.

After an hour or so, we were on our way again.

The Manitou Springs/Colorado Springs area has an incredible amount of hiking available, and that's what we were focused on.

We first headed to Red Rock Canyon Open Space area- a place where we have never hiked.

We chose the Red Rock Canyon trail (very original) and ended up hiking almost 4 miles.

Since our hike was reasonably short, we felt fine looking for another hike the following day. This time we headed back to Garden of the Gods Park. We have hiked here before, but we took a different trail this time.

Along the way we passed by, among other things,  the Siamese Twins Rock formation. 

 

The bright green foliage against the red rock is a really spectacular sight.

This park is very popular so you are never really alone. We ended up hiking about 3 miles.

Our final day in the area we went a slightly different way. We drove to Seven Falls, which is a privately owned park, and therefore, has a cost associated with it.

There are two ways to get to the top- the stairs….

…and the elevator. Yes, elevator. We originally took the elevator up, but realized it didn’t go where we wanted,  which was the top of the waterfall.  Turns out there are TWO sets of stairs.

So we came back down and headed up the other stairs- 224 stairs up to the top.

Once there, there are a couple of hiking trails that lead to other waterfalls and some viewpoints. 

 

We hiked both of them. They aren’t very long trails.

Once we were done, we felt like we deserved some ice cream, so that’s what we had for lunch.

We could easily spend a month in this area, but 3 days is all we had, and then it was time to move on, closer to El Paso. At the pace we are moving at, it took us a few days more to get there.

After the success we had visiting Florrisant while towing the rig, we looked at doing the same thing at Pecos Pueblo National Historic Park, which was along our route to El Paso. It worked out very well.

The site of Pecos Pueblo was settled in the 1400s, and was inhabited until the mid 1800s when the last of the Pecos people relocated to nearby Jemez. 

In the 1600s the Spanish arrived, looking to convert the natives to their religion. In the process, their treatment of the Pecos people got worse and worse (oh, the irony) and in 1680 the people in several of the surrounding pueblos banded together to take their lives back. They planned a successful revolt, pushing the Spaniards out of the area. This is what is left of the church that was built.

We took a one hour tour of the ruins, and one of the things the ranger talked about was different ways of viewing “trash”. We, as modern people, view trash as things that have no value, that aren’t needed anymore. The Pecos people say that the piles of “discarded” items are halfway along their journey back to dust, and so, didn’t necessarily bury their loved ones separately from anything else.

A few days later we were hiking a trail somewhere else, and came across a rotting tree that really reminded me of that idea. You can clearly see that the top part of the tree trunk is essentially dissolving.

Soon enough, we were in El Paso.

S '23, Ep. 6 Leadville, CO (08-05-23)

 At 10,152 feet, Leadville is the highest city in Colorado. I was a little nervous about staying at that high an elevation, but we both did pretty good. Once in a while, for no apparent reason, we would feel short of breath, but it passed pretty fast.

Leadville is surrounded by the highest peaks in Colorado- Mount Elbert and Mount Massive. A local woman was telling me that her friends from Washington are surprised the mountains aren’t taller- they seem shorter than the peaks in Washington. To which she replied “Ah yes, but we are already standing at over 10,000 feet, and still looking up”.

We started out slowly by heading to the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum. With such a small town having a mining museum, it gives an indication as to the origins of the town.

Indeed, gold was discovered in Leadville in 1860, but the town came into being during the silver boom of the 1870s. The population grew to a record 30,000 (compared to 3000 right now). Many of the people living here today are descendants of the original families.

Before the California, or even the Colorado Gold Rush, the southeastern states were producing gold at such a fast rate that the Philadelphia Mint couldn’t handle it all, and 3 other Mints had to be created to turn all the gold into coins. Even so, when large deposits of gold were discovered in California, The California Gold Rush became the greatest mass migration in United States history.

The first section of the museum focused on industrial minerals- the every day minerals that we don’t think about.

Another section of the museum was similar to a fun house, in my mind.

 I walked through a tunnel , staying “on the tracks” and it took me through a “mine”, showing what I presumed I would see if I was in a real mine. It was actually well done.

There is a “fun facts” display that insists that nearly all of the gold found in the last 6000 years is still in use, and that an ounce of gold can be hammered into a 100 square foot sheet. Obviously gold is very malleable, so it can spread itself very thin but I guess that explains why it can be used in printed circuit boards.

Our first hike in the area took us to the back side of nearby Turquoise Lake. I admit I was excited to see this lake in the sunshine, so it could “light up”, but it turns out it got its name from the fact that there are so many turquoise deposits nearby. The lake was pretty, but certainly not turquoise.

Our hike took us past the ruins of Douglass City, an old, abandoned mining town, to the Hagerman Tunnel.

Along the way we passed by pretty ponds, and several small waterfalls. The hike was a good one, about 6 miles long and 700 ft of gain.

I did not venture into the tunnel- I was happy to sun myself on a nearby rock while I waited for Paul. As it turns out, he didn’t go too far into the tunnel because the entrance is a sheet of ice. Good Call.

Of course, the major history of the area is mining, so we looked for things we could do related to that. We had already toured the nearby Molly Kathleen Mine (one of my favorite mine tours) but Tripadvisor says that the Capital Prize Gold Mine tour is one of the best. It’s in Georgetown, about an hour drive from where we are staying, so, off we went.

The entrance to the property gave me a sinking feeling about the quality of the tour because it was basically a yard full of old cars and junk that no one bothered to get rid of. The entrance to the mine is barely noticeable. However, the tour itself was really good. It was different from any other mine tour we had taken.

 

Our guide is from Slovakia, and comes from a long line of miners. She was personable, knowledgeable, and fun. 

This is what is called an “active mine”. I assumed that meant they are fully mining and are making money at it. What it actually means is that there is definitely gold here, and they are actively looking for “the mother lode”. If they had already found it, it would be a “producing mine”. So, now I know.

Putting on our helmets, we went underground- our first stop being the “Shaker Table”. It is actually one of the last steps once gold ore is found. After being crushed, the gold containing rock is shaken. The heavier minerals settle out on the bottom, leaving everything else behind. Gold “nuggets” would not be found in this environment- they would be found in a stream, where small pieces of gold sink and because they are so soft, adhere to other pieces of gold, creating a nugget.

I learned a lot on this tour ( and wrote an appropriate review) in a way that was anything but boring. One of the things I learned was the differences between an Adit, a tunnel, and a shaft. A tunnel has an opening at both ends, an Adit goes horizontally into a hill, and a shaft is vertical.

As we walked further into the mine, we passed by a shaft and she asked us how deep it looked. After we all gave our answers, she laughed and said its about 2 feet deep. The effect is done with mirrors.

One of the “fun facts” we learned is that the “honey wagon” was brought in on the same rail tracks that loaded the ore and took it out. Because the tracks were put in at a slope to make it easier for full ore cars to leave the mine, a chain was put across the tracks to keep the cars in place. As a joke, sometimes someone would “remove/yank” the chain, and the car would move down the track. Not great for the person who was using it as a commode. So, the term “don’t yank my chain” was coined. True story- look it up.

As we walked further into the mine, we were able to see veins that contain a lot of gold in them.

After our tour, and lunch, we continued up the scenic drive high up above Georgetown to Guanella Pass. We got out and admired the scenery several times, but this wasn’t our day for hiking.

The other hike we Did do, was a trail around Turquoise Lake. There are several, and its a big lake, so our goal was to hike 2 or so miles to the historic lodge and then turn around- and that’s what we did. By the time we finished the sky was spitting out water, so we were glad we hadn’t gone further.

Apparently we did a lot of things in Leadville, because I am not finished.

There is a train ride you can take from Leadville –it calls itself a scenic ride, and it was.

It didn’t feel like it had the historic value of other train rides we have taken, but once in a while the scenery was good.

We were glad were sitting inside when the heavens opened on our way back. I admit, I walked outside just to see what the hail felt like.

Being a historic town, we of course wanted to walk the historic downtown. The Silver Dollar Saloon opened in 1875 and still serves drinks, but we decided to pass.

As we walked along the boardwalk, we passed a store called Melanzana Outdoor Clothing. This is a custom made clothing store- all of the clothes are made here in Leadville. When we entered, we were assured that they were happy to show us around, but there is nothing we can buy. Literally nothing. The way it works is that you make an appointment for a fitting. At that time you are allowed to order two articles of clothing. They specialize in hoodies, and inner/outer layers. The next available appointment? January. I said Kudos to them for finding a niche.

Along the same quirky lines was the restaurant we chose for dinner, Quincy Steak and Spirits. As we entered and requested a table for 2, the hostess replied “certainly…and are you familiar with our menu?”  We were. The menu has 3 entrees on it. Filet Mignon (3 sizes), lasagna, and Mac and Cheese. There is no choice of vegetable- you get a salad. The meal also comes with a baked potato- no other choice.

The meal was incredible, as was the ambiance. Comfortable seating in a lounge type setting. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

In our downtime in Leadville, we made friends with the mountain bikers who were here for a race, and we sat by the fire while watching the hail and rain fall.

As a side note- driving around this area of Colorado, we several times drove north or south on Rte 9. This area has taken part in a wildlife study since 2016.. Along the highway, a variety of escape routes and wildlife overpasses and underpasses were created. This area had a large amount of wildlife-vehicle collisions, mostly involving deer, but also elk and moose etc. Over the course of the study they determined that there was a 96% reduction in collisions.

In addition to deer, at least 15 other species, including bears and  mountain lions, have been recorded using the overpasses.