The Highs and Lows

At the behest of my little sister I have taken some time off of my solo Colorado ramblings to sit down and document at least a little of what I have seen and experienced so far. Just to give the reader a little survey as to how far I've gone and how much I have seen in the past four days:

• ·       Car Mileage: 814
• ·       Hiking Mileage: 27
• ·       Highest Elevation By Foot: 14,203’
• ·       Highest Elevation By Car: 12,096’
• ·       Lowest Elevation: 5,756’
• ·       Lowest Temperature: 19°F
• ·       Highest Temperature: 81°F

All of that was in just a single state, believe it or not. One of the beautiful things about Colorado. Well beautiful and at times frustrating. That’s the thing about Colorado—it definitely has the highs (pun only partially intended), but it also has the lows as well. That being said my trip has had some highs and lows as well, and I’ll let you in on the full spectrum.

First and foremost, you have to understand that I have had absolutely no idea as to what I was going to do the next day and sometimes the next hour during this entire excursion. So when I left my parents’ home in the Springs I thought that I would definitely like to hike some 14ers, but I knew I was leaving too late to do that on that particular day. Aside from that though I didn’t even have any distinct sites to see, so I decided to check out some of the ghost towns that were listed on a Colorado road trip my friend had sent me the link to.

The problem with this was that it was designed to start from Denver and so I had to actually make a decision myself. Como, Colorado was the closest. I went for it. Como is not near as ghostly as the website had made it out as being. There were residents’ vehicles all over, and while I was reading the plaque in front of the train station there were a couple workers walking in and out of the building just a few feet from me. So much for one of Colorado’s most abandoned places. Of course nowadays it’s hard to find anywhere in Colorado that doesn’t have people living there or visiting there with all the people moving into the state.

Still Como has some interesting history, and a very unique building. The round house

is one of the last remaining in Colorado that retains all of the original pieces from its construction in the 1800’s. The old train station is quaint and attractive as well

though my talents at taking selfies create a much less attractive image.

Next stop was St. Elmo-- a town that I was hoping would prove to be more ghostly than Como (it just felt weird driving onto a community’s road just to take pictures of their buildings, though I guess Parisians deal with that junk all the time… maybe that’s why they detest Americans so much…)

St. Elmo was indeed a much more abandoned town, though it has become a major stop along the Colorado touring route for many individuals. Because of this there are always tourists' cars parked along the main street. All the people coming through also means there is a place to purchase souvenirs and food at the first two buildings on the road. Thankfully the rest of the town is very much deserted, aside from one quaint little pink home that I suppose holds residents at least during part of the year due to the signage hanging around it.

The town of St. Elmo was once again closely dependent upon the railroad for its vitality, quite like Como, so when railroads because less needed the town dried up. However, due to the tourist interest in the town, there have been many efforts to keep the town in good condition. There is even some restoration construction going on now, because or course the town is old, as the sign observes.

There is a nice little foot traffic only road in front of some of the old homes as well that all seem to be kept in pretty good repair.

If you drop in, I’d suggest making a little donation by the information plaque so we can keep this town around as a ghostly museum of our past. If you want to know more feel free to read this little flier that sat in the window of the local hotel (no longer open of course).

On the way out of the town I felt in dire need of some hiking. St Elmo was nestled back in on the South West side of Mt Princeton, which had made me crazy in need of hiking as I drove past it. On the way out I found a random little trail and pulled off to go explore. It was a very short trail, the Cascade Creek Trail. At least the loop is very short, but the hike up to the waterfall adds a couple more miles so it becomes somewhat more exciting. No matter what the arid landscape with the creek running through it is beautiful to see.

I met a couple other hikers along the way—Carl and Manning—they had come up from Austin, Texas, though Carl had initially been a Coloradan at one point. I hiked up to the waterfall with them and chatted a bit. After several hours in the car alone it was nice to have some friendly conversation. The extra mile or so of hiking to the waterfall was definitely worth it.

Going to St Elmo had put me right near the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness, which was the area that I had a map of the surrounding 14ers for, including a trail that could bring me to the summits of three different peaks in a single day. I decided to drive to the trailhead and most likely just sleep in my car before taking on the peaks the next day. But when I got on the road that led to the trailhead I found numerous campsites littering the side of the road, and no sign saying that I needed to pay for them or anything! So I took my CR-V down a nice hill that would probably qualify as a trail for 4X4 vehicles. (Gotta love a high clearance, AWD, manual vehicle!). There I made myself some delicious dinner

set up my tent, and then laid out inside it and began to read just as the rain started to come down.

The rain freaked me out a little. I had no idea if my tent was waterproof, but it stayed dry inside so I decided to relax and let myself fall asleep.

Now if it had only rained for three or even three and a half hours it would have stayed perfectly dry inside the tent, but it rained for four and a half. At four hours I found myself waking up and I reached out to check the border of the tent to make sure no water had gotten in. It had. So I moved all of my stuff back into my car, leaving the tent up to be taken down the next day, and then I was too lazy to resituate my belongings in the car at 1:30 in the morning in order to sleep in the back so I slept very fitfully in the driver’s seat until the next morning.

And that was day one. This post is getting a bit long so I’ll fit in the rest of the happenings in another couple blog posts that I’ll get up on the 31^st and September 1^st. (Hope this is good enough for you for now Jade ;p)