first stop from the airport was Estes Park, where we spent way too much time feeding the chipmunks
and the birds
Then we hit up the Stanley Hotel
and then we hit the road south. The plan had been to take her on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, but the night before it had closed due to ice and snow, so we had to adopt plan B, down Hwy. 7 instead.
Since she had to bump her trip up by a week, there wasn't much gold to be found among the tree leaves
as we were coming down Hwy 119 into Idaho Springs, we met this handsome fellow noshing on weeds right beside the road
Heading up Guanella Pass outside of Georgetown
at the summit:
by the time we landed on the other side of the pass at Hwy 285 it was 4:30 with another 2 hours of driving to reach Mom and Dad's cabin, so we hit the road with purpose and didn't make any more stops in order to get there before 7:00 and twilight.
and just a little late to catch the near-full moon's rise
we had a lovely dinner and hit the hay
Friday morning, I tried a bit of astral photography, knowing the full moonlight was going to intrude. I got into the shadow of the cabin to escape as much of it as I could
a stellar jay and hummingbird showed up at breakfast
Dad made us blueberry pancakes
we headed out for the day to Cripple Creek
Mollie Kathleen was chasing a herd of elk when she stopped to catch her breath and noticed an outcropping of quartz that caught her eye. Her husband was involved in the law side of filing gold claims and threatened the area with a lawsuit if they refused to issue Mollie her own claim in her name -- the first woman to ever do so.
It was mined for 70s years, until 1961 when the price of gold dropped to $35 an ounce putting all of the mines in the area out of business. However, the Mollie had been maing money giving people tours for years (while they were minig!) and was able to switch to a complete tour-based economy without missing a beat. There is more here outlining the history of the touring business side of things, including a photo from the 1950s of tour guests.
But the Newmont Gold Mining concern is active in the area again today and the area continues to produce staggering amounts of gold in the tiny area of Cripple Creek.
Here is a good overview of the conditions that created this pocket of gold from ancient volcanic activity.
our hardhat crew
the worst part of the tour is getting underground, on a double decker shaft elevator, where you are smushed tightly, fitting 6 fully grown people into a space that barely fits three comfortably.
you will descend for several minutes roughly the equivalent of the Empire State Building's height
way down underground, the tour will make a complete circle
it takes you through the various stages of the gold mining technologies employed at the Molly Kathleen from it's first days in the 1890s, with men working by hand and candlelight
Jack Dempsey, who was from Victor, CO worked in theh Black Diamond mine for a very short time. He was unable to keep up and was fired, after which he found slightly less difficult work as heavyweight boxing champ of the world.
a couple of the advances in drilling at at different stops, all of which are turned on for a brief moment. I don't know how any of the miners weren't deaf.
the cross-cut at the bottom of the frame is the first part of mining, blasting through until you hit a vein that is followed upward, where men would work on small planks for hours
see the planks up there?
Also, see the screaming man with his head on fire in the rock to the right?
(that's what I saw anyway)
here he is zoomed in center
the walls are covered in crystalline salt (epsom) as well as other colored minerals that leave hopeful traces of places that gold might be wrung from the earth
late in the tour everyone hops on the underground mining train: The Tram-Air-Locomotive was built in Cripple Creek in 1951 for the Molly Kathleen and restored for the tours, to chug ourselves over to the next stop
the Nick Cox drift, marked above on the right, was a later discovery in the 1970s
our littlest tour participant was adorable
the mines outlined on the left of the vault are the Victor side
and the ones on the right are the Cripple Creek sid
Our guide today was Jack McGee, a fourth generation miner who made his own discovery a few years ago, a pseudomorph known as Fluorite after Barite after Laumontite from his claim at the Moffat Tunnel here in Cripple Creek. He was the first to find this iteration of crystal formation, a sample of which is now homed at the Smithsonian. He and his sister were featured on the series Prospectors, season 4, ep. 4 "Cripple Creek Crystals."
He passed out small pieces from his find to each of us at the end of the tour.
this is a better piece than the stuff on the Prospectors episode
of course, he wasn't passing out samples like the above, but I think I got a really nice one!
The above was originally the stable for the donkeys employed underground for the entirety of their lives. When new humane rules were put in place, the donkeys were brought up to the surface and let loose in the town, as the mine had no way to comply with the new laws requiring they be allowed breaks above ground regularly. Those donkeys descendents, dating from their release in the 1940s, still freely roam the town today. We'll be meeting up with them before lunch!
Ringing the bells in the correct rhythm to signal the hoist we were ready to come back up to the surface:
after the tour, we found the donkeys :)
and then we headed back over to Victor for lunch at the Fortune Club
And post lunch, after a visit to the Broom Factory, we took a drive along Rampart Range for a late afternoon tour
I don't know what kind of bug Steph inadvertently caught flying by as she took this photo of Dad
we also popped by the Newmont Gold Mining overlook before heading back to the cabin
Later that night...
Early Saturday morning:
since the moonlight was going to fight me getting anything in deeper space, I decided to work with what I had and do some silhouette work instead
after breakfast and sunrise
Regal waiting on Steph to open the door
This isn't even Steph's giant suitcase included:
on our drive back to Denver
We spent the rest of the day Saturday vegetating on the couch and playing with the dogs.
Sunday at 5:00 a.m. we set out for Colorado Springs to pick up Steph's jacket left at the cabin that Mom and Dad found and brought back to their house. We had planned to do sunrise at Mt. Evans but we changed plans in order to pick that up and went to Garden of the Gods instead to catch the sun rising and the moon setting behind Pike's Peak
we met a couple of rescued timberwolves on the trail back down
and came across deer on the way over to Mom & Dad's house
We stopped in for the Saltsman house tour, while picking up Steph's jacket, and Regal made sure to follow us around every level.
Then we headed over to Adams Mountain Cafe for breakfast
I ordered the Huevos Rancheros and Steph ordered the Orange Almond French Toast, which I was really torn between. Turns out she didn't like the sweetness and halfway through, we swapped plates, so best of both worlds!
Loved the Rocky painting behind Steph's head of Manitou under Pike's Peak with the Van Gogh strokes.
Then we hit up Miramont Castle for a tour
janky columns -- the one on the right is shorter by half here. Most of the house is cobbled together on a whim, combining some half a dozen different architectural styles in a mish-mash. And 16 sided rooms. And gold leaf on ceilings (above and below)
The massive fireplace in the parlour
doesn't put out as much heat as this one few rooms over near the great staircase, thanks to ventilation fans
the original arsenic wallpaper behind glass, still, and always, poisonous
this chapel fireplace, the original, was discovered behind multiple walls, put in over the years that the mansion had been converted into apartments
at the top floor looking out from the tiny unheated servants' quarters in the house, whose rooms weren't even included in the official count of the mansion's dimensions.
the artist whose work hangs in the Great Hall died this year. A couple of years ago, Rocky had published an art book filled with his drawings and verse. The Miramont Gift Shop has copies for sale, which we can't afford, but we were able to look through one of them.
we drove back through the Garden and stopped for a drink at the Garden of the Gods Trading Post
We headed back for dinner and a movie, then hit the hay in order to get up early and get Steph back to the airport Monday morning.
All told, having zeroed out the trip mileage when Sammi brought me the CR-V to drive all over the state, from the trip to the airport on Thursday morning back from the airport Monday morning and we logged 766 miles all told. A good adventure for a long weekend!
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