From Laramie, Wyoming

From Laramie, Wyoming – Sunday morning we left Canon City and headed out on a beautiful morning taking deserted back roads with snow covered Pike’s Peak in the distance ahead of us.  Our destination was the village of Cripple Creek at an altitude of 10,500 feet.  Cripple Creek is the gambling center of Colorado and I expected it to be deserted on a Sunday morning.  But, to my surprise, the casinos there never close.  We parked the car and walked quickly (it was quite cool) to the Brass Ass because I liked that name for a casino.  Rita rapidly feed a dollar into the slot machines and we were done with Cripple Creek.  It is a pretty little town but we’re not big gamblers.

Our next stop was the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument where we stopped to see some of the fossils of insects and leaves.  We also walked a short trail to see petrified redwood tree stumps.  Next we headed west over Wilkerson Pass to Hartsel where we took highway 9 north to the town of Fairplay.  In Fairplay we stopped for lunch at the historic Fairplay-Valiton Hotel with its antique bar and pool table.  We had a surprisingly great lunch of soup and sandwich before heading on to the next picturesque town.  That was Alma which bills itself as the highest incorporated village (at 10,578 feet) in the United States.

Soon we arrived in the ski resort of Breckenridge where we stayed at the beautiful house of our friends, Keith and Mary Kay Jones.  The afternoon was spent drinking beer and wine, conversing about good old times, and eating a delicious meal at their house.

Wildlife encountered this day were prairie dogs, a lone coyote, and the deer and antelopes at play.

Monday, Memorial Day, we said our good-byes and headed further north on State highway 9 to Kremmling.  For the first time it looked like we would encounter rain but the showers were always just to our side.  We drove through beautiful, sparsely populated country past snow and snow melt runoff to the town of Walden which bills itself as the Moose Viewing Center of Colorado.  We only saw a moose statue at the Moose Café and after a brief stop for lunch snacks we continued north on highways 125 and 127 to the Wyoming border.   Walden was also advertising the upcoming “Never Summer” rodeo.

We arrived in Laramie, Wyoming and headed to the farm of old friends from Saudi Arabia, John and Judy Nelson.  John showed me his garden, barns, chickens, geese, and horses among other items.  John has a lot of projects to work on.  Judy  prepared a delicious meal at the end of the day and we enjoyed our evening  in Laramie.

While the weather turned a bit cloudier with rainfall close by, the strong winds caught our attention.  John’s windmill registered top winds of 57 mph today.  He says that while Laramie is known to be windy, these were strong winds by normal standards.

Day 2 - Amarillo, Texas to Canon City, Colorado

Day 2 – We started the day driving west on I-40 out of Amarillo and then taking back roads to see the location of old Tascosa, a frontier town where Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett walked the streets.  A town on the low water crossing of the Canadian River where cattle trails headed north to stockyards.  A town used by the cowboys of the Frying Pan and XIT ranches that were nearby.  All that remains today is a Boot Hill cemetery named after the one in Dodge City.  This is located on Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch that was established in 1939.  As a kid who wanted to be a cowboy, I thought it was a great place for me until I learned that it was for orphans and under-privileged children.

We continued on to Dalhart, the town in Texas that usually makes the 6:00 o’clock news as the coldest town in Texas on winter nights.  We hooked up with highway 87 once more and took it into New Mexico across scenic country into the town of Raton.  During yesterday’s drive through the Panhandle the only wildlife we witnessed were highway alligators so it was a nice surprise to see antelopes alongside the highway today.

This was Rita’s first time in this northern part of New Mexico but I realized that it was my third time to cross the Raton Pass.  My first time was in 1946 when my older brother, mother, father, and I crammed ourselves into a 1940 Ford pickup truck pulling an Airstream trailer.  My father worked for a wealthy Houston rice farmer who had a ranch in Lander, Wyoming, and he asked my Dad to deliver the truck and trailer there.  My second time was in 1961 when a friend and I drove my Corvair to Colorado on a vacation.  The roads have changed each time.

In Raton we drove north on I-25 into Colorado to Pueblo where we stopped for lunch and gasoline.  Then we took highway 50 west to Canon City.  We were too early to check into our room so we drove straight to the Royal Gorge.  First we walked across the high suspension bridge, peering over the rail at the Arkansas River below.  The bridge was completed in 1929 and sits 956 feet above the river.  We walked back across the bridge and took the aerial tram across the gorge.  The tram is 2,200 feet in length and sits 1,178 feet above the river.   We saw elk, bison, and bighorn sheep in the wildlife park then, once more, walked across the bridge.  I drove across the bridge in 1961 so I didn’t feel the need to do that again.  Finally we took the steep incline railway to the floor of the gorge where we saw the train pass through.  We thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon at Royal Gorge.

We came back to check into our motel then drove into Canon City for a nice dinner at Di Rito’s Italian restaurant.  We took a self-guided driving tour around this pretty little town before calling it a day.

Day 1 - Home to Amarillo

Day 1 – “The sun has riz, the sun has set, and here I am in Texas yet”

I was reminded of this saying as we approached Amarillo at the end of today’s drive.  We left home about 7:15 on a clear, sunny morning with the sun at our backs.  The day before we left home we reached 105 degrees so we expected another hot one today – and it was.

We stopped in Fredericksburg for breakfast at the award-winning Rather Sweet Bakery.   I topped off my meal with a fresh kolache made with local peaches.  How could the day go wrong?  From here on it was easy for Rita to navigate as we stayed on highway 87 all the way to Amarillo.  That will change.

We had nice hill-country scenery through Mason and Brady which is not far from the geographic center of Texas.  After Brady, cactus and live oak trees give way to flat land with mostly mesquite trees.  Near San Angelo the fields are used for growing cotton but we only saw plowed fields, no cotton.  I suspect this has something to do with our drought.  

In San Angelo we stopped for gasoline as the price was $3.57 a gallon.  That will change too.  Before we left home we filled up with gasoline at $3.65 and I thought that was a bargain.  About noon we arrived in Big Spring, the temperature was at 100 degrees and we were hungry.  As often happens, we drove through town wondering if any of the restaurants were good (they didn’t look especially good) and stopped at the last one on the edge of town.  A truck stop, no less.  They did have a salad bar and we remained good by only eating a little salad.

We continued on through wind farms and pumping oil wells to Lubbock and reached Amarillo after driving about 500 miles.  There was still plenty of daylight left and I could have driven more but enough is enough.   We ended the day with steaks at the Hofbrau Steak House and a bottle of Shiraz – not something that we intend to continue or we won’t fit in the car for long.