Travels with Gunther and Kara

Well, we’ve safely arrived in Acheson, Alberta (outside of Edmonton) after a two day drive up from Great Falls. Yesterday was a nice drive; it was actually pretty easy getting across the border in stark contrast to our previous trips to Canada. Once here we made our way to Okotok just south of Calgary and stopped at a Lions Club park for the night. They warned us that the campground was under an evacuation advisory due to the likelihood that the river would flood due to spring snow melt…but that they didn’t think anything would happen until Friday or Saturday. So we parked, went out and had a beer and burger for dinner and hit the sack. Got up early this morning and it was pouring rain. Didn’t look like the river had risen any over night but Neil put on his sandals, a pair of gym shorts, and a Goretex rain jacket and got the outside ready to roll. Once that was done we pulled in the slides and hit the road.

Five hours of driving in pouring rain later we got here to Acheson and are in site 158 here at the Glowing Embers RV Resort. It isn’t much of a resort; dirt/gravel sites, crappy internet so far…but at least the people are friendly.

We bought a prepaid cell phone last night…will get it set up tomorrow so we’ll have a way to contact family in the event of an emergency. Baked a pizza we got from Walmart the other day for dinner and that was about it.

Connie’s got some work to get done tomorrow and then we’ll figure out what to do fun…but it’s supposed to be rainy all week while we are here so I’m not terribly encouraged that we’ll be able to do anything. We really only came for the Saint Saëns concert anyway.

Neil got a picture of our campsite; I’ll try posting it tomorrow when we find some better internet or if the park wifi improves.

Edited Thursday morning at the Spring Grove Library. Here’s our wet campsite from yesterday afternoon.

Cyas.

Sunday was going to be the only nice day while we are here in Great Falls; so after Mass we changed clothes and headed out for a day trip to Glacier National Park. We had previously visited this park a few years back while on an organ trip to Calgary and weren’t that impressed with it but decided to give it another try. Turns out our previous impressions were probably flavored by having just seen Banff National Park in Alberta briefly the week before and also by the late fall time frame which meant that the water levels were low, waterfalls were just a trickle and too many tourists. We were pleasantly surprised that none of these issues were evident on this visit.

We wanted to go across Going to the Sun Road which transits Logan Pass (about 8000 feet) through to the west side of the park and have lunch with one of Neil’s old DC computer buddies who is now a farmer over near Kalispell MT. However, the road is still closed due to snow and isn’t expected to open until at least late June. We asked the Ranger at the entrance station how deep the snow was on top of the pass. She wasn’t sure but said they had some photos of the pass from a few days ago in the Visitor Center…and while she had no idea of this year’s answer she did know that last year the area known as The Big Drifts which is just short of the summit had 80 (yes, 80) feet (yes, feet) of snow on the road! We went into the visitor center and looked at the photos and while it might not be 80 feet deep there is some serious snow up there still. They don’t plow it like you would normally think of when clearing a road; it’s more of a heavy construction equipment, front end loader type of operation with excavators and loaders putting the snow into dump trucks which they go dump off the side of the mountain. So…no Going to the Sun Road for us…which turned out to be just as well since we would have missed a really great hike if we had spent the time to go all 30 miles across the park and back. We could only get in from the east side about 12 miles or so before getting to the Road Closed sign right near the Jackson Glacier overlook.

It’s about 120 miles as the crow flies from Great Falls to the park; in the photo below you can see the mountains in the park from probably 100 miles away. This was taken shortly after we exited the freeway to head up MT-89. The mountains are about 7000-8000 feet tall and the road is in the plains at maybe 4000 feet elevation. MT-89 is a 2 lane road vice a freeway but saves about 30 or 40 miles on the drive…and given that it’s pretty flat, straight, and the speed limit is 75 being on a 2 lane road doesn’t slow you down much. We were on 89 for 80 or 90 miles and saw maybe 2 dozen cars total on the road. It’s only the clearness of the air out here in Big Sky Country that allows you to see mountains that far away.

About halfway across MT-89 we entered the Blackfeet Nation Indian Reservation. They tribe owns basically hundreds of thousands of acres including several towns. We were surprised by how much junk there was in most of the yards that we passed…we have nothing against Indians we have noticed that usually on the tribal lands there is a lot of trash in the yards. Don’t know if it’s a cultural thing or what and we’re not condemning it at all but it is one thing you notice. The second thing you notice is that there are lots of tribal police force cars out giving tickets…they appeared to be giving tickets to Indians and non Indians at about the same frequency.

Coming across the last little ridge of hills and starting to descend into the valley east of the park we got a closer view of the mountains in the top picture.

Entering the park we passed the Ranger Station and Visitor Center and then headed west on Going to the Sun Road across the north shore of St. Mary’s Lake. Here is a nice shot looking west along the 9 mile long, 300 foot deep lake towards the central peaks in the park. Logan’s Pass is out of view to the right in this photo.

And here is a panorama view of the entire lake; this is essentially a 180 degree view looking south.

Here is another pano looking east; this one was taken from the road on top of the embankment you can see a little to the right of the pilings in the lake in the photo above.

A little further on we stopped for a picture of Wild Goose Island out in the middle of St. Mary’s Lake. This island is about a third of a mile out in the deepest part of the lake…it’s maybe 120 feet across and sticks up 20 or 30 feet with pine trees on the top.

Our trip up Going to the Sun Road came to an end at the “Road Closed” sign at the Jackson Glacier overlook. This is one of only about 15 or so glaciers left in the park; all of them are retreating significantly and the park will likely be glacier free by 2050. The glacier itself is to the south of the lake on the north side of the peaks where it is more protected from the sun; in this photo the 300+ foot thick glacier is about 8 or 10 miles away in the center of the photo.

Heading back down we stopped at the St. Mary’s Falls parking area and headed off on our 3 mile round trip hike to see St. Mary Falls and Virginia Falls. Shortly after leaving the parking area we stopped in an open area before entering the forest and snapped this picture of what we think is the top half of Virginia Falls.

This is supposedly the better falls on the hike but (as will become clear in a couple of paragraphs) we can’t say for sure since we didn’t actually find it on the hike. Continuing on another half mile or so we arrived at the bridge over the stream immediately downstream of St. Mary’s Falls. We recognized this fall when we got to it as being one we visited on our previous short visit…but today it had probably 3 or 4 times the flow over it that it did in the fall after the dry season. Lots of snow melt makes for impressive waterfalls. Two shots of the falls; first one gets the upper and middle falls from the far side of the bridge and the second from the near side of the bridge gets the middle and lower falls with the stream continuing out of the frame to the lower left. The top fall is 20 feet or so, middle one about 30 and lower one another 8-10 with the lower one being more of a cascade down a steep rock face than a typical vertical drop fall. In addition to the photos Neil took a short video of this fall, you can find it on our youtube channel at St. Mary’s Falls. Turns out that we needed to go another half mile or so up the trail to get to Virginia Falls and the long range photo above is most likely the upper portion. Still though; we’re glad we turned around as another mile plus photo time added to our hike would have put our time getting home at past 2200; as it was it was almost 2100 by the time we pulled into our campground and we were tuckered out. Virginia Falls will give us an excuse to come back here someday…during the summer so we can get across Going to the Sun Road.

We continued on up the trail and after another half mile or so got to what we thought was Virginia Falls but turned out (we are almost sure) to be an unnamed but very impressive falls. We hiked down the side of the falls to the bottom for pictures (they’re always better from the bottom).

A couple from the top

One of Connie resting on the log at the base of the falls and one taken by Connie of where Neil climbed up to get the pictures from the base.

With that we headed back toward the car after climbing back up the falls to the trail itself. It was getting late and we were getting tired.

Connie spotted some flowers on the way back

and we spotted some deer droppings followed shortly thereafter by a Mule Deer (no word on whether the latter left the former or not). Frankly Neil was hoping for some Grizzly Bear Poop…he wanted to conduct an experiment to find out if bears really do s^%&* in the woods. We passed a guy on the way out who said he saw a couple of juvenile bears down in one of the ravines off of the trail…we passed those ravines within about the next 15 minutes but no bears for us. Connie didn’t want to see them at all…Neil wants to see one but only at telephoto picture range and not wide angle lens picture range:-)

Our almost final find of the day was some more flowers, yellow this time.

Then we headed for home. By the time we got back down to MT-89 it was raining and GPS said that cutting over to the freeway would be faster anyway. It was also getting dark and Neil was a bit worried about it being deer o’clock when those pesky critters start wandering out onto the road so we cut over on MT-44 towards I-15. On the way we found our final find of the day.

No word on what a lighted lighthouse is doing in the middle of Montana. No oceans around here that we are aware of.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We interrupt this blog post for late breaking news!!

We carefully looked at the busted bridge in Mount Vernon, Washington; evaluated the traffic patterns; and looked for potential ways around the detour (there aren’t many and I’m sure the truckers have already saturated all of them since there’s essentially only one road north/south in the area). After that we evaluated the importance of going to Vancouver (it was something nice to do but wasn’t really on our list of must do’s) along with the fact that driving from Vancouver down to Fort Lewis would essentially be 200 miles of city freeway traffic with BAT which would leave Neil in need of several drinks. After all of that we decided to punt on Vancouver and cancelled our reservation at Peach Arch RV Park. Instead; we’re going to change direction when we leave Salmon Arm BC and instead of 1 day west to Vancouver we’re heading south. After reentering the US at Oroville, WA we’re going to stay overnight at Osoyoos Lake right south of the border; there are 4 RV parks right in town as well as a Walmart so we’ll find an overnight stop on the fly. The next day we’ll be off to Leavenworth at the south end of the Wenatchee National Forest and stay 3 nights in the Pine Village RV park. From there it’s an easy 1 day trip across I-90 to Fort Lewis where we will rejoin our previously scheduled plans. Gotta love those plans set in Jello…or as the Marines would say “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.”

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post!!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Today we’re doing some paperwork, getting groceries, and generally getting ready to head for Canada tomorrow.

Cyas.

Well; we safely arrived at the Malmstrom AFB Fam Camp here in Great Falls after a 3 day travel period of 840.5 miles. I guess we coulda made it in 2 days if we needed to but we didn’t so we didn’t.

We headed out from the USAFA on Thursday morning after a brief altercation with this jerk who insisted on driving through campsites at the USAFA Fam Camp. Connie yelled at him; he yelled at her…and things went downhill from there. He tried to pick a fight with Neil but he just ignored him and we went ahead and departed Colorado Springs. 

Getting through Denver was a bit of a pain traffic wise but once we got north of the city the traffic died out and we had smooth sailing the rest of the way here. Our first stoop was at the KOA in Douglas, WY about 300 miles up the road…it’s situated about 2 miles from the freeway and was pretty easy in and easy out. The campground was pretty nice…but it was really windy when we arrived. Steady winds of 30-40 knots with gusts to 60. So we just pulled into our pull through site, dropped the front jacks, hooked up power and water and went inside for the evening about 5 PM. The wind rattled the slide toppers all night and we had no TV since it was too windy to put the satellite dish up so we just had leftovers from our birthday dinner at PF Chang’s for dinner, read some books, caught up on podcasts, and went to bed early.

Friday morning we got up early and hit the road. After a quick stop at the Golden Arches for coffee and breakfast we did another 300 miles and arrived at the KOA in Hardin, MT about 1430. Again, we dropped the jacks and hooked up water and electric and called it a day. Neil went on a nice bike ride and we had some frozen lasagna for dinner then watched TV until time for bed. We did get some halfway decent pictures of some birds in the campground; although we were not able to successfully identify either of them. I’ve got to give a shout out to the Hardin KOA…it’s one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve been in for awhile. The owners Dave and Gina just bought it recently and it’s really a nice campground. About a mile from the freeway and we had just 3 neighbors for the evening in our nice pull through site. We would definitely stay here again if we were in the area. Turned out that we were only about 5 miles from the Little Bighorn National Monument which commemorates Custer’s Last Stand (which actually was more of a running battle than a Last Stand…but that’s another story). Neil wanted to go visit but Connie was too tired so we passed on it for this time through.

Saturday morning was pretty much more of the same. Up early, breakfast was a granola bar and a cup of coffee that the KOA provided. After that we hit the road, went about 50 miles up on the freeway to Billings where we got off, fueled up, and spent the last 220 miles of our trip on 2 lane US highways. A little hilly but really pretty nice roads, not much traffic, and we had a pretty decent travel day. We did grab a couple of shots of the mountains today…as you can see from the first one there is still a lot of snow at the higher elevations. Unfortunately; this means that the Going to the Sun Road across the pass in Glacier National Park is still closed so we won’t get the chance to go see the views in the park tomorrow. We’ll still have a hike to a couple of waterfalls we missed the last time we were here but are disappointed to miss Going to the Sun again.

We got here to Malmstrom AFB Fam Camp about 1315, picked out a site and paid our $72 for 3 nights and parked in a nice, level pull through site. Since we’ll be here for 3 days; we went ahead and unhitched BAT, fully leveled the house, and Connie cleaned the inside. Here’s a picture of our site…we’ve got great views through our rear and side windows of the snow covered mountains to the west and south.

Neil went on another ride then had a shower. We headed off to Goode’s Q and Bayou Grill for dinner since we didn’t feel like cooking. We had pretty decent Oyster Po’Boys and Iced Tea then came home. Connie had a shower and washed her hair and now it’s TV and then bed.

Tomorrow we have Mass at 0830 then we are headed off to Glacier National Park about 50 or so miles away. We’re going to enter the east side, go as far up Going to the Sun Road as they will let us and then hit a couple of short hikes to some waterfalls on the way back down. The last time we were here it was early October which was the end of the hot season so the falls and glaciers were at their minimum. In the spring like it is now…we should see much more glacier activity and the flow over the various waterfalls will be much higher resulting in better waterfall pictures.

We were going to go (originally) across Going to the Sun Road to Kalispell, MT and meet a friend of Neil’s that used to work with him at the Missile Defense Agency. Tom gave up being the computer guy and now grows organic vegetables near Kailspell instead…but with the road being closed it’s almost a 550 mile round trip to Kalispell around the south side of the park and that’s just too much for a 1 day thing. Monday we’re going to go see the new Star Trek movie that was release last weekend and then Tuesday morning it’s off to the border to start our Canadian Adventures™.  I think we’re going to grill on Monday as well.

I had forgotten how beautiful the countryside out here in the west is…super clean air, miles of open space, and lots of antelope and other birds flying over the plains.

Cyas.

You know how down South the locals will sometimes give you directions that sound something like “Go down to the oak tree and turn left and then take a right at the big rock.”? Well, I can report that they use those same sorts of directions here in Colorado. Our destination for the day was the Colorado Wolf Sanctuary…we were a bit delayed in leaving since Neil is now having the same stomach troubles as Connie was the past few days and we had to drop off the Mazda to get fixed. We are about convinced that our stomach issues are a combination of the altitude we’re not used to and a stomach bug we picked up somewhere (well, actually Connie picked it up first and Neil likely caught it from her).

Anyway; we were looking at the sanctuary website last night and it says right on the site that if you follow your GPS directions to the street address you’ll be at least a half mile from where you need to be. So…their recommendation instead was to turn left at the red barn

and then right at the big rock.

We had a nice laugh about those directions.

We were up at 9000 feet here in Divide Colorado (since it’s almost on the Continental Divide) and started our tour…while there was a pretty large number of specimens of various species of wolves the sanctuary itself really almost keeps them in jail. They have pens that range from a quarter acre up to about an acre in size…which is a lot better than in most zoos but they have no large range to run in, don’t do any hunting for themselves, and don’t mate since they sanctuary is not a breeding facility. In addition; the staff are really, really into saving wolves and the political message that hunting them is bad and that we humans essentially just persecute the animals was a little over the  top. In addition; the sanctuary makes a large amount of money from selling wolf photos and high priced wolf photo opportunities; so they limit you to just a 70mm lens maximum when you are on their $10 tour. It didn’t take Neil long to figure out that the 70mm limitation was to ensure that one could not get photos without the fence in them. So…apologies for the fence fabric in the photos…but hey, it’s the best we could do.

First up was a pen with some Silver Foxes in it; these are arctic dwellers and are pretty small.

Next door was a family of Red Foxes in a different pen; these are about twice the size of the Silver Foxes in the above photo.

Moving on into the wolves section; we viewed Gray Wolves, Arctic Wolves, some mixed breeds including the only one born in the sanctuary; almost all of the wolves in the sanctuary were rescue animals from breeders or fur operations.

First up; a bunch of Gray Wolves in their various color schemes. They actually aren’t all gray; colors range from black to carmel colored but the majority of have the gray and black mix coloring that you can see in the photos.

Here is one of the Arctic Wolves; this is a 14 year old specimen. Note you can see the almost webbed feet and longer legs that an Arctic Wolf has; this makes it much easier for them to travel in heavy snow.

We also saw some Mexican Gray Wolves…the pair the sanctuary has is pretty wild and not comfortable around humans at all. Unfortunately; they were in a chain link enclosure instead of the larger chicken wire that the rest of the enclosures used and none of the photos were worth posting.

Our tour ended up with a little more political grandstanding and then the entire group put up a wolf howl in an effort to get the animals to respond…our lousy howl was rewarded by a 3 or 4 minute serenade as all of the wolves in the sanctuary (probably 30 or so total in about half that many enclosures) talked to each other. With that we hopped back in the car, picked up the Mazda which was now fixed (some of those Check Engine Light emissions control stuff went bad) and came home. Neil was feeling pretty lousy by this time and only slept an hour or so last night so he had a nap for an hour or so while Connie went and did the laundry since it was his birthday.

Neil also got another picture of the Black Billed Magpie that is really common around here; we finally got one that had a little sun on it to show the beautiful colors.

Our original plan to go out and eat at PF Chang went by the wayside…Neil just felt too lousy…so we just had a couple of pot pies instead. We found at Walmart some Marie Calendar brand Chicken Corn Chowder Pot Pies…chicken, bacon, taters, onions and cream sauce. We’ve had these a couple of times now and really like them.

Tomorrow is our last day here…and we have a small pile of chores to handle before we can leave. None of them are long but there are 13 or so we need to finish up. Connie has to go and get her new crown cemented on. Depending on how we feel we may try PF Chang after all. Thursday (assuming she gets her crown tomorrow) we’re off on a 3 day drive through WY and MT to Great Falls MT where we’ll spend Memorial Day weekend.

Cyas.

Today was supposed to be a rainy sort of day so we headed off after breakfast to our first stop of the day; the Molly Kitchen Gold Mine in nearby (well, 40 miles away nearby) Cripple Creek, Colorado. Our first souvenir for the day was our admission tickets; the tour was $18 apiece but well worth it in our opinion.

Our tour started with Mike our guide as we entered the elevator cage after donning hard hats for the descent. The elevator has two cages one over the other and each holds maybe 4 people tops. Once in; Mike triggered the right number of bells on the bell cord to indicate the destination of the trip (ours was the tenth level down from the surface)…more details on the bell system in a bit.

The mine opened in 1890something and was the third or fourth mine on the mountain and the first one in Colorado that was owned by a woman. She had to take her husband who was a mining lawyer along with her to the claim office to get the claim registered as women in those days were severely frowned upon in mining towns other than in the kitchens, laundries, and establishments that provided…well, let’s just call it entertainment since this is a family blog:-) There are a total of 11 levels in the mine but the bottom one wasn’t fully mined before the mine shut down in the early 1970’s due to the smelting plant closing. Underground gold mines don’t have the loose gold like you’ve probably seen on Gold Rush on Discovery Channel…it’s mixed into the minerals in the ore. Once mined; the muck (hey, that’s what the call it) is delivered to the smelter where through a process using mercury and some other toxic chemicals the gold is extracted. The smelter leaves a lot of mercury contaminated dirt, stone, and tailings behind and the environmental concerns were the reason the smelter was closed. No smelter means that the 7 or 8 mines on the mountain closed despite there being plenty of gold left in the veins. When the mine was closed a yield of half an once per ton of muck was the break even point and the mine was yielding 10 ounces per ton when it shut down so there was a lot of money left in the ground.

Our tour started at the bottom of the elevator shaft 1000 feet below the surface (which was at 10,020 according to my GPS). You can see the previous tour group in the back left getting ready to enter the cage which is the red phone booth sized thing behind the grate in the center of the picture. The other cage is below the floor in this shot; the upper cage is loaded first and then the lower; unloading is in the other order. After the shot we turned 180 degrees and headed away from the elevator for our circular (more or less) tour counterclockwise through the mine level with about a half mile total in length.

Our first stop was a recreation of the original mining technique. This is called triple jacking where the jack (chisel) is held against the wall by one man and the other two take turns pounding it with sledge hammers until the holes are about 2 feet deep. Holes were drilled with a center hole about halfway between the floor and ceiling; a series of 4 in a square around it, another square of 4 around that and then more evenly distributed around the perimeter. Final holes were along the floor and ceiling. Black powder was placed into the holes with the exception of the center and the fuse was lit. The innermost square went off first collapsing the inside of the smallest square towards the empty center hole, then the next square, then the third ring and finally the ceiling and floor charges. The result was about 10 tones of rock being blasted loose and falling into the tunnel where it was ready to be loaded. This mining technique remained in use through the closure of the mine with just a couple minor improvements. First was an air powered drill which could drill deeper holes (about 4 feet) and then an improved air drill which could dig to 6 feet or so. Each of these was combined with improvements in explosives…first to nitroglycerine for the 4 foot deep holes and then to ANFO (a mixture of ammonium nitrate or fertilizer and diesel fuel). The drills were essentially developed to be able to drill deeper holes as improvements in explosives technology enabled blasting 20 and then 35 tons of muck per blast.

Once the muck was loose; laborers called mockers loaded the ore into carts; a half ton per cart which were moved to the elevator to be raised. The carts were originally moved by donkeys which lived their entire lives from birth to death in the mine and were therefore blind. In the 1930s or so it was declared that using donkeys was inhumane so they were abolished and humans pushed the carts for a few years until the invention of the air powered cart. About this time the mockers were also replaced with this air powered miniature backhoe like thing that picked up the muck and dumped it into the cart. Here is a photo of the muck loader being operated by Mike our tour guide.

And here is a photo of the third type of drill; the improved air drill. The second one had a much more complicated mounting mechanism so it had to be disassembled and reassembled for each hole.

Once the miners were in a vein (an area where there were the gold bearing minerals instead of just rock they mined to follow the vein. They much preferred to mine upwards so that gravity gave you an assist. The miners stood on boards or logs to drill and once the blast went off the muck fell to the bottom of the shaft where the carts were waiting. Here is a photo of one of the Mine Up areas; this one went up about 100 feet or so before being abandoned.

The walls and ceilings of the mine shafts are covered with magnesium sulfate which was carried in by water seeping into the mine and dissolving the minerals. You might know this chemical as Epsom Salts but it wasn’t available in enough quantity to make retrieval of it worth while.

Here is a second vertical shaft; this one goes up almost 800 feet before the vein petered out. The ladders were on the right side and the blasts were concentrated on the left side to fall down to the bottom for removal.

The miner’s restroom, rarely used as it was far from the business end of the mind so buckets were the preferred alterantive.

This gadget was invented to assist with the dreaded Mining Down; in which gravity was not your friend. It lifted 500 pounds at a time and has an ingenious arrangement that tips the bucket at the top to dump the contents into a cart. It was moved from a neighboring mine and was used to dig and remove muck from a 10 foot wide vertical tunnel that went down over 3000 feet before it was abandoned. I can’t even imagine how many trips up and down it made to move that much rock…500 pounds at a time. Manual labor for mucking made a comeback in Mining Down as there wasn’t room for any of the automated loading methods.

This chart shows the system of bells which was used to call for the elevator which was operated from the surface. It was invented by a guy whose brother was killed in an elevator accident. Each mine originally used a different bell code…which meant that an experienced miner who moved from one mine to another could get confused by the different system and hence get himself killed. This system slowly made progress until all of the mines on this mountain used it; it was then picked up by the state and mandated for use at all mines for standardization.

This is where the miners sat to eat their meals…yes, it’s the very first Hard Rock Cafe!

With that, we were back at the elevator where we made our way back to the surface. We grabbed this shot of downtown Cripple Creek, Colorado from right outside the mine…we had lunch down at Maggies Cafe in the Casino (one of many in town, seemed to be the chief income producing business these days) in the midst of a snow and sleet squall. Neil didn’t think much of that cold and icy stuff; especially after he jogged back to the car to keep Connie dry. It was only 75 yards or so and was downhill but the altitude of 9500 feet made it seem like he had run miles.

After lunch we headed home and spotted this heard of elk on the side of the road. Don’t know if they were a commercially farmed herd or not.

We were headed for our second hike at the Red Rock Canyon Open Space maintained by the city…but a couple things resulted in canceling of that part of our day. First; it was raining and we thought that wandering around on wet clay was not too smart. Second, we got the dreaded “Check Engine Light” coming on in the car so we headed over to the Mazda dealer to get it looked it; turns out we need a couple of sensors replaced so we’re dropping it off in the morning before heading off to our final fun thing for here in Colorado…a visit to the Wolf Sanctuary. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Cyas.

Today we headed off to 0830 Mass then stopped by Denny’s on the way home for brunch. After that we waited a bit until Connie’s tummy issues had settled down a bit then headed off about 10 miles south to our destination for the day…hikes at Cheyenne Mountain State Park.

This state park is located on the flanks of Cheyenne Mountain which is probably more famous as the home of NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command. Every body has probably seen the pictures of the tunnel into the mountain with the nuclear blast proof doors where incoming attacks are monitored and if necessary responded to. We couldn’t see the opening to the tunnels from where we were even though we were on the south side which is where the opening would be located (makes targeting by ICBMs harder). Here’s a picture of Cheyenne Mountain (at least the top of it)…you can barely make out the antenna farm located a bit to the right of the highest point of the peak. A large portion of the mountain has been hollowed out and the United States command center built into the hollow section. It’s got huge nuclear blast proof doors and enough power, air, and water to last for several months on it’s own and sufficient communications links to manage all of the US military forces in the event of a crisis.

Anyway; we paid our entrance fee and parked at the picnic area then heeded off on a hike that combined the Coyote Run and Zook Loop trails for a total of about 2.5 miles of hiking. There was a couple of hundred feet elevation change through the hike which in our non acclimated state was enough. Unfortunately the wildlife really didn’t cooperate much. We spotted a couple of deer hoof prints but they weren’t distinct enough to bother taking a picture of. Neil did grab a picture of Connie on the trail

and we saw this cool grasshopper alongside the trail at one point.

We managed to miss the rain; a couple of thunderstorms passed us by during the hike and at one point we looked east across the valley and Neil got this nice panorama photo of a couple of the storms that passed us by dumping rain down on Colorado Springs.

You can see the rain coming down in a couple of places; it actually looked a lot better in person but I  guess this photo is the best I can do.

We passed a couple of other hikers but it was pretty quiet on the trail. After that we headed home and rested a bit…by dinner time Connie’s tummy issues had subsided a bit so Neil made some spaghetti with onions, cheese, olive oil, and some leftover bison short ribs from our dinner at Ted’s the other night. Add a couple glasses of wine and it was (again) quite tasty.

Tomorrow we’re going to visit the gold mine; it entails traveling about 1500 feet or so underground to see the actual gold mining operations; we’re looking forward to it. We might go to Red Rock Canyon as well but it’s supposed to rain so that might get canceled if it does.

Cyas.

I can report that as I write this the temp is in the 60s and it’s a pretty nice evening here at the Air Force Academy. About 12 miles away as the crow flies it’s snowing on top of Pikes Peak and the temp is in the 20s and snowing. Glad we’re not up there this evening.

Today we got a sort of late start; Connie had a bad night sleeping and has been having some on and off (mostly on) tummy issues. We’re pretty sure it’s just due to the altitude; she hasn’t got full blown altitude sickness but is having some of the symptoms which start with headaches and on and off nausea. We’re continuing to do what we want to do; but between that and the thin air it’s just slower than usual.

We did get stuck by the bank robbery on the base as we left this morning. Just as we got to the gate they closed them and weren’t letting anybody out. Talked to the guard and apparently an alarm had gone off at the bank on base so they were restricting leaving until they found out what kind of car the robbers were driving. We had a good laugh with the car next to us since we were clearly too old to be robbers and they had 4 kids in the car…besides, everybody knows that robbers have masks and guns…the gate guards didn’t find this amusing at all. After about 15 minutes they opened the gates and let us go…we never did find out what happened but there was nothing on the news and no additional armed security when we got back 3 hours later…so we decided it must have been just a false alarm. Darn, we always wanted to be in the middle of a bank robbery, guess we can’t check that one off the bucket list.

By about 1100 or so she was feeling better so we headed off to our scheduled thing for the day which was a visit to the Wild, WIld, Wild West Festival in Pueblo, Colorado about 45 miles form here. Pueblo is about 2000 feet lower in elevation so we pretty quickly could tell the difference in breathing as we headed south. By the time we got there it was noonish and getting up into the 70s so we wandered around the festival awhile. It turned out to be very little in the Wild, WIld, Wild West mode and mostly just another street festival. Connie was all up for quarter horse demonstrations and cowboys and shootouts and the like and what you got was funnel cake, turkey legs, snow cones, and lots of cheap but overpriced trinkets. Bummer.

We parked in a 2 hour free parking space a couple blocks from the festival, wandered around for an hour or so, had lunch and decided that we had enough street festival. It was getting pretty warm by that time (1300 or so) and Connie was running out of gas so we left, hopped in the car and came home.

We were really tired (not much sleep last night for Connie and Neil was worn out from just living today…so we had a nice siesta in the afternoon. After that we got up, had a wine cooler, and made a nice dish out of left over rotisserie chicken from the Commissary, some leftover sauce made from Mushroom and Roasted Garlic Campbells soup and a little wine, and some noodles. Added some cheesy garlic bread using the last of some rolls we got the other day (as you can tell, it was pretty much a leftover kind of dinner) and it tasted pretty good. We’re having bread pudding with strawberries on top for dessert a little later.

Sorry no pictures today; there wasn’t anything worth it. We did see some nice young ladies dressed up in old west saloon girl costumes (saloon girl was a nicer term for available woman back in the day) wandering around trying to drum up business for the photo studio…but then they opened their mouths and all had down home Virginia accents with a real Southern Bell attitude…which sort of clashed with the saloon girl outfits. We were too hot by that time to bother with pictures though.

Cyas.

We’ve had an interesting and very busy couple of days…so this post is a bit photo intensive. Sorry about that.

Thursday we headed off for our first fun day; we had two stops scheduled for our visiting pleasure. First up was the Garden of the Gods State Park here in Colorado Springs. Our plan was to drive through the parts of the park we were not going to hike through and then take a 3.5 mile hike around the central and most scenic parts of the park.

Our first stop was Balanced Rock. This 700 ton boulder is about 20 feet tall and 30 wide and is balanced on a little segment about 6 or 8 feet around. It’s right next to the one way road through the park so it was a pretty easy visit.  

After that we made our way around to the south parking area and set off on the Chambers/Ute/Bretag/Palmer trail which is  a nice loop that covers most of the best areas in the park. Right at the north end of the parking lot we spotted Cathedral Rock. Our original impression of this rock was that it was just a pinnacle as you can see from this first photo which was taken from the south side.

Little did we know that in actuality it’s a long skinny dorsal fin shaped rock about 500 or so feet high. As we got further around the east and then north east sides of it Neil took the following two pictures…it’s nice how almost every direction gives you a different viewpoint.

Shortly after that we happened across a Black Billed Magpie. This is really a beautiful bird with the black and white accents…Neil was able to get 2 good pictures from slightly different viewpoints.The wings are black and white and flash in flight along with the greenish iridescent tail.

Shortly after this we crossed the main entrance road into the park and took this shot of the classic and famous view of South Gateway Rock on the left, Signature Rock in the middle, and North Gateway Rock on the right. This view is looking to the west and that’s Pikes Peak about 15 miles away between the two gateways.

We turned to the west around North Gateway Rock  and passed White Rock; this is the north side of North Gateway Rock shortly after we turned again to the south to continue our hike.

After going up and down a couple of canyons we exited the trail and entered the Central Gardens area of the park from the west side where we went past Cathedral Spires.

Doesn’t look much like spires from this angle but from the side you can see the separated towers that give it it’s name.

Doesn’t look like the same rock formation, does it. It’s about 200 feet or so high and the profile in the second picture was taken from immediately to the left of the rock in the first picture. Here is another neat formation we saw in the Central Gardens although hit doesn’t appear to have a name of it’s own.

While in the center area we spotted this Western Scrub Jay.

With that our hike was about done so we exited the east side of the Central Gardens area, rejoined the Chambers/Ute section of our original trail and made our way back to the parking lot.

Our next stop was the Manitou Cliff Dwellings which were inhabited by the Ute Indians for about 1000 years…they lived in the caves in the cliff and farmed on the top of the mesa above. Due to a drought about 1300 or so they abandoned the area and moved further south between Pueblo and the Four Corners area. Here are a couple of shots of the dwellings.

Connie noticed that we had forgotten to take a picture of the Kissing Camels at Garden of the Gods earlier so we stopped by there on the way back to the Fam Camp. We really needed to wait until later so that the Camels (which actually are on top of South Gateway Rock) would be backlit and hence easier to see.

You can see the hump and head of the left hand camel and pretty much just the head of the right hand one; the large bump to the right of the second head sort of forms his hump but it’s harder to see than the left one.

With that we headed home as we were pretty tired. We stopped by the Trinity Brewing Company and had a couple of beers and then pretty much just snacked for dinner.

Friday we got up early as we had another pretty long day. 

Our first stop was Helen Hunt Falls. There are two falls at this location; the first (and what turned out to be the better of the two) is right at the trailhead parking area.

This falls is about 40 or so feet high; the picture above is an HDR compilation Neil took from down in the stream bed. After that we headed up about a 1/3 mile hike which would normally be pretty easy even with the 200 foot vertical rise over the distance. However, since the hikestarted at 7600 feet…it was pretty tough going until we got to the top. Neil grabbed this shot of the valley part way up

and then we got up to the upper falls which pretty much turned out to be a bust. This is the best picture Neil got; the falls here are only 4 or 5 feet high. Still worth the hike though.

On the way down he grabbed a couple more shots of the stream; this first one was just below the upper falls after the water ran down a 45 degree rock slope and then hit a rock that was poking out of the slope. Neil really thought this was a really neat shot.

and finally this is the stream just above the lower falls.

With that we were off to our second destination of the day…Pikes Peak. There is a 19 mile long road that goes all the way up to the summit at 14,110 feet. Costs 12 bucks a person toll to go up but the views were definitely worth it. Following the recommendation of the toll road folks we drove all the way up and stopped for photos on the way down as that’s a lot easier on the car than stopping and then having to start again going uphill. The first 9 miles or so were pretty easy climbing through Pikes Forest…the next 4 were getting steeper, less shoulders, almost no guard rails except at the switchback turns and climbing through the tree line and the last 6 were essentially through arctic tundra. Again, not much space on the side of the road if one lost control and it was a long way down. Finally arriving at the summit; the first thing we did was put on some warm clothes as it was 29 degrees up there instead of the 80 it was down in Colorado Springs. Here are some shots from the top.

as well as a 180 degree panorama view looking to the east/northeast.

Here’s the obligatory We Made It!! photo of us at the top.

The wind was blowing about 20 knots so the wind chill temp was around 19 or 20…needless to say we didn’t hang out too long outside. We did head into the gift shop and Connie got a T-Shirt that says “Pike’s Peak, 14,110 Feet. Got Oxygen?”

We thought the air was thin down in Colorado Springs but it was really, really tough to breathe up on the summit. We walked maybe 300 or 400 yards tidal around the top taking photos and buying stuff and pretty much stopped and gasped every 50 feet or so. Right before we left, Neil grabbed this shot of the Pikes Peak Reservoir; this is the main water supply for Colorado Springs. The reservoir is over a mile below the summit in height and about 7 or 8 miles away horizontally.

With that; we got back in the car and headed down…slowly and in low gear so as not to overheat the brakes and recreate the old Harry Chapin song “Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas” which is about a truck headed into Scranton PA that has a brake failure and the resultant trials and tribulations of the driver (true story by the way behind the song). The purpose of this picture will become clear in a bit.

Here is a shot of some of the switchbacks up in the above the timber line tundra area.

These are actually not some of the steeper ones; Neil was afraid to stop and get a picture of them since there were no pullouts. The grade ranges from 4% up to about 15 or 18% for several short ramps. I can’t believe that they actually run a marathon foot race up this mountain with the finish at the top. The race starts down in Manitou and climbs over 7000 feet during the course of the race. Nuts I say.

On the way down; we stopped at the visitor center on the shore of the reservoir from a couple photos back; at the top of the reservoir you can see the white line that is the dam holding the reservoir back; the visitor center is just on the left side of the dam. Here is a shot from the visitor center lot looking back up towards Pike Peak.

This shot is looking almost due west. The dam is immediately out of the frame to the left and the road is behind where Neil took the photo from. The highway to the summit turns and parallels this reservoir for a bit then winds around the back side of the rightmost snow capped peak you can see here then onto Pikes Peak itself which is the left hand snow capped peak. The road comes up from the back right side of Pikes Peak and the summit house is just to the right of the highest point you can see.

We headed home then went out to Ted’s Montana Grill for dinner…then it was back home and since there is nothing worth watching on TV tonight we’ll go to bed early. I think we’re getting acclimated to the thin air. Tomorrow we’re heading south about 50 miles to Pueblo, Colorado for the Western Cowboy Festival. I can’t remember what we’re doing Sunday, Monday and Tuesday but we have more fun stuff scheduled for all 3 days. Wednesday is get ready to travel day and we head out for Great Falls, MT on Thursday.

Cyas.

Today was planned to be a work day…which turned out to be a good thing since Connie didn’t feel good most of the day with tummy issues and it rained on and off from about 1000 on, sometimes pretty heavy. Connie’s plan was to stay home and do some work…and catch up on everything she needs to do for the next week or so and then we have the rest of our time here in Colorado to do fun stuff.

Neil took the Mazda over and got the oil changed and a minor repair on the front bumper…it got sideswiped in a parking lot somewhere and one of the clips holding the bumper on was broken so it needed a little hillbilly engineering to help hold it in place. It wasn’t in any danger of falling off but was loose and rattled in the wind at highway speeds.

After he got back from the Mazda place Connie was feeling a little better so he cut up an avocado for lunch for her and got some lunchmeat and cheese for himself. After that he went on a quick run…and thinks he’s starting to acclimate to the altitude a little since it didn’t hurt quite so much today…then had a shower and listened to the Security Now podcast from twit.tv. Following that they ran out to the commissary to pick up a few groceries we needed and mail a package for Connie’s work to Chicago.

Getting back home we watched a little news and are going to have some rotisserie chicken with cheese tortellini for dinner and then settle in for some of Connie’s favorite shows on TV. We also picked up a couple of packages (new power supplies for Neil’s Macbook Pro and Connie’s work laptop) that we ordered on Monday.

Tomorrow we’re off to see the Garden of the Gods state park and the Manitou Indian Cliff Dwellings and then have a date at the Trinity Brewing Company for dinner. Friday we’re going to on a hike to see Helen Hunt Falls and then take a drive up to the top of Pikes Peak and back. I’m sure we’ll have some great photos from those adventures…and then we have additional adventures scheduled for Sat through Tuesday. Wednesday we will get ready to travel and Connie has to go and get her new crown installed. Tuesday is Neil’s birthday and we’re planning on going to Tomo Sushi for dinner…it was recommended by Dr. Koo the dentist we saw here as having the best sushi in town.

While it rained most of the day it was pretty nice early this morning…here are a couple of photos of the 14,114 tall Pikes Peak. It’s the snow capped peak in the center background of these pictures; Colorado Springs is located in the valley to the immediate east of the Front Range which is the part of the Rocky Mountains that passes west of Colorado Springs and Denver. Both photos were taken from the side of the road through the Air Force Academy to our campground but he zoomed in a little bit for the second. They were taken with his iPhone…hopefully we’ll get some more detailed ones later in the week as we have our fun.

Pretty impressive, huh? These shots are looking southwest from the road toward the peak. The road to the peak that we’ll be taking Friday leaves the freeway a little north of Colorado Springs then goes west and basically comes up the back right side of the peak as you see it from this viewpoint. I’m sure glad we aren’t doing any serious hiking at that altitude…we are having a hard time catching our breath here in town at a mere 6,100 feet and the summit is 8,000 feet higher than we sit here. Nonetheless; we’re looking forward to it.

Cyas.

I really don’t have much to report since our arrival Sunday and my post yesterday morning with our site picture…but I’ll go ahead and catch you up anyway.

The first thing I can report is that there isn’t’ any oxygen in the air in Colorado Springs. I knew we were getting pretty high in elevation but thought we were somewhere in the 4000+ foot range still lower in elevation than Denver. In actuality, Colorado Springs is at 6035 feet and the air here is really, really thin…especially when you’re not acclimatized yet. Yesterday Neil went on a bike ride…11 miles or so but discovered that a 300 yard long climb that went up 30 or 40 feet total was really steep in the thin air and caused much heavy breathing on the way up. Today running…he was even worse…by the time he got to the front of the campground he thought he had run 10 miles. Nonetheless…he continued and did about 3 miles but boy did it hurt.

After our early bedtime Sunday night; we got up yesterday and Connie worked in the morning while Neil caught up on some bills, paperwork and other administrivia. After that we did a serious cleaning on the house; Neil vacuumed the floor and carpets while Connie cleaned and then she Swiffered the floors. We had a steak and some fried ‘taters for dinner, a beer with it, and a coconut chocolate ice cream bar for dessert and went to bed.

Today we woke up and were starting to feel refreshed a little bit; although the thin air does make things take longer to do…hopefully that will pass in a couple of days.

Monday Connie went for her dental cleaning and discovered she needed a new crown…she has a cavity under one of her existing crowns…so she went back today and got the prep done while Neil had his dental cleaning. We also got her recliner repaired (the Lazyboy dealer in Sarasota forwarded the parts here), ran a couple of errands (including buying a couple of 5 gallon containers for spare diesel fuel in the back of BAT)

Tonight’s dinner was sautéed chicken with a sauce made from fresh mushrooms, onions, a can of Roasted Garlic Cream of Mushroom soup from Campbells and a little wine…the sauce was really good but unfortunately not as good as the one Neil made a week ago out of fresh roasted garlic. Now it’s a little TV for the evening…we got our DirectTV access shifted over to the West Coast channels for network broadcasts…and we’ll have some fresh baked cookies for dessert and then off to bed.

Tomorrow is going to be a rainy day…so Neil is going to go get the oil changed in the Mazda while Connie does a bit of work and then after that we’re looking forward to some fun stuff…Connie’s working out the schedule this evening.

Pikes Peak is really pretty cool looking…Neil will try to grab a picture tomorrow when he heads out to get the oil changed in the Mazda so you’ll have a little taste of the good views to come during our visit out west.

Cyas.