A Grand Lake

This past saturday, September 11, we took a drive through Rocky Mountain National Park.  We drove from our home to Estes Park which is a 50-mile drive and didn't even stop to shop at all the unique souvenir/frou-frou shops.  We entered Rocky Mountain National Park and soon saw some elk...

We decided to take the Old Fall River Road to the top of Trail Ridge.  Apparently, since it was such a beautiful fall day, everyone else had the same idea.  We've never seen it so crowded.

As you can see a few aspens were already turning...

We continued driving until we reached the quaint little town of Grand Lake.  One thing I love about Grand Lake is that the downtown area and lake area haven't changed much since I was a kid.  We even had an ice cream cone from the local Dairy King which has been there since 1953.

We drove up the hill above the town and went to the Grand Lake Lodge  . Neither of us had ever been up there before eventhough the lodge has been there since the 1920's.  It has a lovely view of the lake and even has an outdoor area for weddings.  It currently is for sale for a mere $6,990 million.  If you are interested, here is the listing.  There is a main lodge, cabins and other rooms.

View of Grand Lake from the lodge.

Then we drove home over the infamous Trail Ridge Road!

Buckskin Gulch

I've been going through old photos and came across a picture of a gold arrastra we had visited in 1995.  I asked my husband if he remembered where it was located and he (the man who remembers where every town in Colorado is, when we went there, what the weather was like, etc.) couldn't remember where it was located.  He couldn't even remember seeing it before and claims he had never heard of an arrastra.  For a moment I thought that maybe I was crazy - how could I remember that strange word 15 years later?  Apparently, I was really impressed with this primitive way of crushing ore to extract gold.  I "googled" arrastras in Colorado and soon found a picture online that matched my picture and found that it was located just a hop, skip and a jump from the "ranch". 

So, last Friday morning we headed out over Wilkerson Pass, to Fairplay and on to Alma.  The brochure said, "the 5-mile Buckskin Gulch tour begins in downtown Alma", but had no further instructions. Fortunately, the town of Alma is tiny and we found Buckskin Ave. and gave it a try.  The brochure had 9 points of interest, but as luck would have it, the roadside markers were missing...until we came to No. 3...which was the gold arrastra!  (I wasn't real thrilled with the murky water in it, but historically, it is just terribly interesting - the ingenuity of the miners was really amazing!!)

Just past the arrastra lies the Paris Mill.  It is on private property, so we couldn't get very close to photograph it.

About 3 1/2 miles up the road you can see a natural treasure.  Near to top of the mountain are 1000-year old bristlecone pines.  These trees have survived because they are found in steep, inaccessible places.  

We didn't continue the 5-mile drive to Kite Lake, we only went far enough to see the remains of the Sweet Home Mill.  We drove back to Alma and continued North over Hoosier Pass to Breckenridge.

On Hoosier Pass we saw Baker's Tank, which served the Denver, South Park & Pacific narow gauge Railroad from Como to Leadville,  The railroad had 63.83 miles of track and 435 curves.  The longest straight piece of track was 1.6 miles.  The railroad was completed in 1884 and abandoned in 1937.  The tank was restored in 1958.

Buildings at the top of Boreas pass...

.

Mt. Silverheels...

Roundhouse at Como, unfortunately it is

 on private property and I couldn't photograph

 the other side...

Then we drove to Jefferson and took county road 77 through Tarryall and the Puma Hills.  Thia is the old school house at Tarryall.