Days out from Manitou

Holed up in Manitou Springs waiting for RV parts to arrive we hired a car and explored some of the old roads that have been taken over by the Forestry service.

Gold Camp Road

This follows the old rail route from the gold fields of Victor and Cripple Creek to Colorado Springs. The photo is straight the tunnel ‘aint.

Due to several collapsed tunnels part of the road is closed and the Old Stage Road has to be used. About 40 miles and 2 hours later we arrived at Victor.

Three star gazers along the route.

Dis-used gold mines at Victor. There were over 500 mines in the 1890’s.

A number of establishments sprang up to serve the population of 18,000.

 

 

 

Now the population is around 400 and the main street is all but deserted.

 

One of the only businesses we found that was open. Karen has been hand making brooms for over 20 years and her husband runs the local printing press.

Spectacular views of the distance mountains over the nearby hills reward the few visitors to Victor at this time of year.

Phantom Canyon Road

Another old railroad track converted into a road; the Phantom Canyon Road runs from Florence in the south up the valley to Victor and Cripple creek.

 

The first 10 miles or so were tame.

 

 

 

 

Then the road narrowed and the rocks grew higher, but much easier road than the previous day.

 

Pikes Peak Toll Road

In 19 miles the road climbs around 7,000 ft up to the summit of Pikes Peak, at 14,110ft it is one of the 50 or so “Fourteeners”.

T-shirt weather at the start is replaced by sub-zero temperatures at the top fanned by a strong wind.

  Views to other distant peak in the Rockies range.

Summer events include hill climb races and a marathon up the foot trail. The record time to run up the 13 mile trail with 7, 000ft of elevation increase and back down again was a little over an amazing 3 hours. We were feeling the effects of altitude just slowly strolling around the top.

Idaho Springs

Before going to Manitou Springs we were staying further north at Idaho Springs. A 20 min walk took us to town where we found the “Tommyknockers Brewpub”. All very friendly; the food was good, the beers had very fruity flavours and the wall paintings interesting.

A Tommyknocker was a being who lived in the Cornish tin mines, and guided the miners to tin finds or away from danger by making tapping sounds on the walls. The brewery founder claims the tapping sounds he heard guided him to set up the enterprise and gave him inspiration for the recipes of his first brews and hence the name was adopted. The walls of the pub are painted with appropriate scenes of brewing and mining…………….

 

 

and it would have been rude not to have sampled some of the results.

Into Colarado

We entered Colorado south of Laramie, WY and were in North State Park. We had little info but found that we had stumbled upon "Moose Central" in Colorado.
This is a sculpture made from barbed wire at the visitor centre in Gould.

We had hoped to see a Moose at Yellowstone.................. but true to form they were hiding from the camera.







Then this large bull just ambled out across the road in front of us and wandered off in the willow shrub (its favourite food).



We headed for Fort Collins along HW16 following the Poudre River most of the way.










One of several canyons along the way.

Steam era and the Jackalope

Douglas, Wyoming was just an overnight stop but we saw a railway museum and had to visit. A town with a population of around 2,500 has the old railway station as a visitor centre, a steam engine and several coaches.

This 4-8-4 loco weighs in at 317 tons. The largest standard loco in the UK was only 92 tons, so this was BIG!!.





A dining car from 1947. Extenal body all stainless steel and called the Silver Salver. Look carefully and you can see that Elaine has found the bar!! It also had a full kitchen that Gordon Ramsey would have been proud of.

A much older regular passenger coach gave a feel for long distance travel before airlines.

Douglas also is the worlds only known habbitat for the Jackalope.

A strange and rarely seen creature first exhibited by a local taxidermist!!!!

Hots Springs and bones

The "Fountain of Youth" hot springs at Thermopolis were discovered when drilling for oil in the early 1900's.

Keen to take the waters I took a dip with an air temperature of 4.5deg C. The water was almost 40deg C so it was comfortable!!


Next stop was the local dinosaur museum which operates a site a couple of miles outside Thermopolis.

Very good explanation of how life on earth progressed from very simple organisms, through sea life..........




..............and on to this 106ft long late period giant.




Elaine explains the differences between a Triceratops and the Albertosaur.

Its the crest on the nose
that makes all the difference.


OK the horns also face back and the neck shield is different.




We headed south from Thermopolis along the Wind River valley. The rocks vary from 200 million year to 5 billion years.