Camping at Pinicon Ridge

A weekend camping with Rose's Campfire Girls group at Pinicon Ridge Park:

The view from atop the Observation Tower:

Captain Emily:

Traffic jam!

Roasting s'mores:

Can you see the deer?

The evening ride to the modern restrooms was a big deal, yo:

Colorado!

On June 7th we hit the road for our long-awaited trip to Colorado to stay in a yurt at the YMCA of the Rockies. Sure, we look like we're having fun now, but just wait 13 hours.

Nebraska. The Rocky Mountains were our reward for driving through this desolate state.

About halfway through our trip, we stopped in North Platte to visit Fort Cody, which is a kitschy, offbeat tourist trap/museum founded in 1963 and full of nifty wild west displays and lots of souvenir stuff and t-shirts for sale. Plenty of historical inaccuracies and silly caricatures of historical figures and events, but a really fun place to stop for a bit. They have a room with an enormous display of hand-carved miniatures that make up Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. An added bonus is that the whole thing is animated and it runs every 30 minutes. Apparently it was out of order when we were there, but we'll take their word for the animated part. There was also a preserved two-headed calf, a various assortment of tomahawks, old rifles, saddles, actual chaps worn by cowboys back in the day, Chinese throwing stars(??), nunchucks (I'm not making this up), and various preserved wild west items on display.

A few of the thousands of hand-carved miniatures on display in the tiny wild west show:

Buffalo Bill might've done well to start a restaurant selling fried chicken...

Back on the road again...

Finally the Rockies!

After driving through Denver and across the mountains we arrived at Snow Mountain Ranch just before dark and checked into our yurt.

The girls were excited about the bunkbeds!

You can't see it very well in this picture, but the view out of the east window of the yurt the next morning was amazing:

There were quite a few hiking trails nearby, so we explored one of them after breakfast:

So the story behind this cave is that apparently a silver miner lived here with his pet porcupine and burrowed into this hillside in hopes of striking a silver vein and finding his fortune.

Can you spot the marmot?

After we returned from our hike we spent an hour on the tubing hill:

Then we visited the Rowley homestead that was settled by squatters in 1919. They lived off of the land and built the cabin and barns by themselves since there was no one else nearby to help. The Rowley family used whatever they could find to build the structures and tools that they needed.

Our tour guide took our picture in old-timey costume:

Later on we trekked up a steep trail towards the waterfall, but the combination of thin air and tired people kept us from completing the trip.

Blue Ridge Mountain was near our camp, so we drove as far up the road as we could, but near the edge of the tree line the road had so much snow and mud across it that it was impossible to go any farther. There were two 4x4 trucks stuck in the road, so we took that as a sign that the Buick probably wouldn't do any better.

Snowball fight!

Back at the yurt that evening:

Before our trip, we had put together a list of the things we wanted to see and do and the Georgetown Loop Railroad was one of them. A steam locomotive from the 1890s still runs along this track pulling passenger cars through dynamite-blasted passages in the rock, across high ravines, over roaring rapids, and into the Silver Plume station. The track was an engineering marvel because they had to devise a method of getting the train up/down a 650-foot elevation change over the short distance between the two towns. Ordinarily, a train can't handle more than a 6º grade, so they developed a series of turns and loops to allow the train to ascend/descend at a rate that was tolerable. It was still very steep, even by today's standards, and that added to the fun.

The train looped around and went over this trestle bridge up above. In the 1890s this bridge was assembled three different times because they kept assembling it incorrectly. It's been standing for a while now, so I think they must've gotten it figured out.

Along the way our train was stopped and robbed by bandits. They would've taken the money and left, but luckily an actor in costume on our train escalated the situation and opened fire on the outlaws. During the ensuing gun battle a drunken sheriff showed up and struggled to round up the bandits while trying to keep her stick-on mustache in place. Who knew the wild west could be so wild!

Before the trip back to Georgetown our locomotive had to turn around on a siding track to switch to the other end of the train to pull us back up the track.

On the trip back to Snow Mountain Ranch we stopped at a couple pull-offs to take pics:

There was a small park with a picnic area just off of the highway, so we stopped there to eat lunch and explore the trails.

Back at the ranch...

Cooking over a fire really does make everything taste better.

How does she do that??

Hitchhiking would've made the trip even more exciting.

The next morning we made our own hiking sticks:

Then we headed out onto Trail Ridge Road. This is a drive that requires some skill and focus, but it's totally worth it.

Even though it was 80something degrees when we started, by the time we reached the top it was in the 40s and the wind was intense!

At the opposite end of Trail Ridge Road we reached Estes Park, home of The Stanley Hotel of Stephen King fame. This was the hotel he stayed in when he wrote The Shining and was largely the inspiration for the book. The building is fascinating and many of the rooms and hallways display photos and artifacts from its long history starting in July of 1909 when it opened. It was filmed in the 1997 TV series "The Shining" and it was the hotel in the movie "Dumb and Dumber."

One of the interesting things about the hotel is that in 1920 (I think?) when the hotel still had gas lighting in all the rooms, a maid entered a room and went to light the gas lights. Unbeknownst to her, the gas was already on and the room had filled up with natural gas. Back then, sulphur hadn't been added to natural gas, so she didn't smell it and when she went to light a candle the room exploded, demolishing 1/3 of the hotel. Miraculously, she survived with two broken ankles after the floor opened beneath her and she fell into the dining room below. After recovering, she continued to work at the hotel for 20 years.

The hallways on the ground level of the hotel are lined with framed pictures of various parties and notable events over the years as well as celebrities and VIPs who have stayed there since 1909. It's fascinating to look at all those photos from the hotel's colorful existence... many of the celebrities in the older photos are completely unfamiliar to me.

This humongous doll house appeared in the 1997 TV series:

We spent much of the day in the town of Estes Park and got our vintage picture taken:

Back on Trail Ridge Road... we wanted to be back to camp before it got dark cuz this road is challenging enough in daylight. Apparently there had been a snowstorm that dumped three feet of snow before we got there and the road had only reopened two days earlier. It must be a monumental effort to keep this road clear all summer. And yes, that's a wall of snow:

Nobody wants to get out and look around with me this time. IT'S TOO COLD!

The Continental Divide! This line marks where rain and snow melt drain to Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other side. And it was super cold and windy, so we didn't hang around.

So a yurt is a like a cross between a tent and a cabin. It has a wooden structure that can withstand the strong winds and it is anchored to a concrete pad, but the frame is wrapped in a heavy duty canvas. There is no heat or running water, but it does have electricity. It gets hot in there during the day, but there is a plexiglass dome on the roof that opens to let the warm air escape and that helps tremendously. At night it gets just as cold in there as it does outside, so bundle up!

It was good to be home again after our four days in Colorado. And even though the time went so fast, we had a lot of adventures. Can't wait to go back!