Shelf Rd / Phantom Canyon Rd Trail Ride

Opened in 1892 as a major route for stagecoaches and freight wagons to link the Cripple Creek Mining District with the Arkansas Valley this is an incredible drive along the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley and creek hundreds of feet below. The road ends just outside Canon City. A short drive north gets you back to Phantom Canyon Road for the drive back to the Victor / Cripple Creek area. Phantom Creek was just as incredible with tunnels, a crystal clear creek and spectacular rock formations at every turn. Both roads are mostly single lane with steep dropoffs and few places to pass oncoming traffic.

Dinosaur Resource Center

While Connie was busy with laundry, Christopher and I thought we would get out of the windy, wet, snowy weather we were having today. We have passed this place a hundred times since we arrived here. You can check out their website at www.rmdrc.com. Its a neat display of real and cast skeletons. There is lots of hands on kid friendly stuff and an area where you can "discover" bones yourself. It only took about an hour to go through trying my best to keep Christophers interest on anything but the play digging area. That was his favorite.

Mt Herman Road Trail Ride

This was a great road through another part of Pike National Forest. The signs warned that the road was not maintained but the snow was pretty clear. Some of the road was only one lane but as usual the views were amazing. The pictures dont do the rock formations justice. Some of these boulders are just huge and seem to be balanced by a smaller rock or a tree or just some dirt underneath them. We had a great ride from Woodland Park over to Palmer Lake / Monument area. We stopped at O'Malleys Pub for some wings and fried zucchini. The food was great. This place has steaks and burgers but you have to grill them yourself on a huge indoor grill. We were too tired and hungry for al that work.

Mueller State Park

A beautiful park. The Ranger at the gate told us it is usually booked solid every weekend during the summer. They have limited camping and very limited facilities open during the winter. We read about sledding & tubing hills on their website so we stopped at Walmart on the way and bought a $5 blow up pool toy for Christopher to sled in. It worked great. Now if I was in good enough shape to climb back up the hill more than twice :). The weather was beautiful. Even though there was snow it was sunny and really nice out. We had a great picnic lunch and then hit the hill for some sledding and a short hike to a small half frozen pond. We headed to the visitors center which was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays but did a small hike on a trail that starts from there. The view was beautiful as usual at every turn.

Garden of the Gods

This is a beautiful open space that is free to the public. There are miles of hiking trails and a visitor center. The rock formations here are just incredible. They are huge layers of rock that just stick straight out of the ground hundreds of feet. Christopher had a blast hiking around and over some of these formations. We even saw some climbers on the face of one of the outcrops.

Hiking @ Helen Hunt Falls

Had a great day Sunday hiking with my brother and his family. It amazes me how beautiful Colorado is. You'd think that once you've seen one snowy mountain peak, rock outcropping, boulder, hiking trail or aspen tree grove that you've seen them all. But thats not the case. Everyday we are amazed at just how beautiful this area is. Within 20 miles of our campground there are so many parks, scenic drives and open spaces that we dont think we will get to them all before its time to move on. There are acres and acres set aside here as "open spaces" that are free for public use.

Snow, Snow and More Snow

We woke up to about 12" of snow and they expect it to continue through tomorrow with a total of 18" to 24". I joked about packing a snow shovel..I guess I should have really done it. We did buy snow brushes/scrapers on clearance at Walmart for the truck windows. See we are not totally unprepared.

Victor & Cripple Creek

The forecast today was for rain/snow. We decided to take a short road trip to the Victor & Cripple Creek areas. These two areas are THE gold mine areas in Colorado. There are fully operational gold mines here and LOTS of abandoned homes and mines from the past. One thing I keep seeing are old passenger train cars near old houses. They must have used these after the railroads stop running as extra living space. We took a couple of pictures of two neat old wooden railcars today. It got really cold and snowed on us a little but stayed really nice all day.

Rampart Range Road

This was 25 miles of dirt road with the views around every turn getting more spectacular than the last. We were disappointed to not see any wildlife other than two black squirrels with big fluffy ears and a chipmunk that almost became a speedbump. Took lots of great pictures of Pikes Peak and the surrounding area. We were above a layer of clouds which made for some great pictures. The road ended right in the middle of the Garden of the Gods. An incredible park with some beautiful rock formations. More on that to follow. We plan to go back and spend a few hours hiking that area later.

One thing that kills me is the trash that people leave EVERYWHERE. The road goes through Pike National Forest so there were lots of pull offs where you could set up camp and enjoy the area and the views. There were broken bottles, trash and grafitti painted on the rocks at almost all of them. Even a couch out in the middle of nowhere. Its incredible that people dont realize how beautiful this place is and try to keep it as beautiful and natural as they found it. Anyway I'll get off my soapbox now. Enjoy the pictures :)