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.