Colorado Archives ~ Rambling ranger

November 30, 2022

My Favorite Places

This week I’d like to share with you all some of my favorite places, ones I will miss this winter as I practice The Middle Way on Orcas Island. This week’s Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge is Home Sweet Home. Tina Schell of Travels and Trifles asks us, ” If a foreigner were to spend a week or a month traveling your home country with you, where would you take them? What sights would you tell them to be sure to see? Where have you found some of your own favorite images? What is it you truly love about where you live, or places you’ve seen in your home country? ”

Southern Colorado — First snow in the Colorado mountains

Well, they would need at LEAST a month for all MY favorite places. Although I grew up in Colorado and now live in Alaska, I feel at home throughout the West. I’ll start with Colorado. I was raised in Colorado, and lived there for many, many years after I went out on my own. It’s probably where I’ll end up when I get too old to live deep in the wilderness in Alaska. My family is there. Colorado is always close to my heart.

Although I’m at home throughout the West, I do have a few favorite places that I try to visit whenever I have the chance. One is the Colorado Plateau. This region covers big chunks of 4 different states: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. I can’t narrow my favorite down to just one or two places in this area, it’s all so amazing. My advice to a foreign visitor might be to check out a few places that are not as well-known as iconic parks like Arches and Zion. Although I love them, too, they ARE getting loved to death and it might be good to try to spread that impact out a little. Lesser-known places such as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Petrified Forest National Park contain wonders, too.

Another favorite place is Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico. This is the best place I’ve ever been for birds. It is the winter home for vast flocks of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes. Over 340 different species of birds live there. It is an incredible place to observe wildlife.

Sandhill Cranes — Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

I spent 8 winters working as a ranger in Death Valley National Park. It is another desert that has captured my heart. The great thing about Death Valley is that because the altitude on the valley floor is so low (the lowest elevation in North America), the nights are seldom cold, even during the deepest darkest months of winter. Makes for great camping, and the rattlesnakes sleep in the winter! It’s an incredibly diverse park, with elevations ranging from below sea level to over 11,000 feet.

I did a little playing with LightRoom on this image. It was a daytime image and the background of bare dirt desert ground was a bit meh so I darkened it until it resembled the night sky, and tried to give a nighttime feel to the dunes, too. Since Death Valley is famed as a night sky park, and since one of my favorite things to do is to walk through the sand dunes under the full moon, I wanted to capture the feel of that experience in this image.

Mesquite Sand Dunes — I love to hike the sand dunes in the moonlight.

And then there’s the bloom. If there is rain in the desert, and if it is timed right, the wildflowers will rock your world. If it seems like it might be a good year for the flowers, I try to make a circuit that starts near the Mexican border in Anza-Borrego State Park, moving through Joshua Tree and Mojave National Preserve until I end up in Death Valley.

Anza-Borrego State Park — Love those desert wildflowers!

Further west on the California coast you will find another great wildlife phenomenon, the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas near San Simeon. Although you can find a few seals there at any time of year, December through February are the best months. Thousands of seals converge on the beaches, with the big strange-looking bulls battling it out for the right to own a piece of the beach, and all the females on it. The cows are birthing and raising their babies then, too. It’s an extraordinary spot to witness wildlife drama, so close you don’t even need binoculars to see it.

Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery — Sex on the Beach

From the campground at San Simeon I can walk to the beach and see some fantastic bird action on the sea stack that looms just offshore there. It’s an awesome place to catch the sunset.

Farther north along the California coast is Mendocino County. It’s my favorite part of the California Coast. I think the scenery is even more dramatic than Big Sur, and without the crowds. It’s got big trees, too.

Greenwood Beach — The beaches in Mendo are wild and uncrowded.

Speaking of big trees, I’ve really fallen in love with the tallest trees in the world, the redwoods, over the last few years.

Sometimes I go straight up the coast into Oregon. Other times I head for the Siskiyou country near Grants Pass and Williams. The trees there are incredibly graceful and beautiful and it’s my last chance to see wildflowers as I head north.

Pacifica — Oregon has some incredible trees!

But no matter which way I go, I try to hit the coast at Bandon. It is so much fun to shoot the sea stacks there!

The Olympic Peninsula is my next favorite place. The old-growth forests redefine green and the wild beaches are phenomenal.

Olympic National Park — Ferns and feathers

And then there’s Alaska. It’s where my heart is, my community, my job, my life. My first love in Alaska was Denali National Park and I try to go there whenever I get a chance.

But home is McCarthy, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. I truly believe it’s the most spectacular place in North America. Case in point – check out my daily commute! And the feature image was taken while I was standing on my front porch! It doesn’t get much better than this.

I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my favorite places. As Jim Morrison of the Doors said, the West is the best!

April 2, 2021June 1, 2021

Geometry in Ages Past

When I saw that this week’s Lens-Artist’s Photography Challenge was geometry, I was at a bit of a loss at first. After all, I do primarily nature photography and although Mother Nature loves a circle or a sphere, she isn’t much into squares and cubes.

Then I happened to notice a similarity in the rock art of many of the ancestral peoples of the desert southwest. These folks were really into geometry! Even their sheep were made up of squares and rectangles.

Squares and circles on this petroglyph from Three Rivers Petroglyph Site in New Mexico.

Stylized, geometric depictions of people and animals can be found in rock art from the Fremont culture of northern Colorado and Utah to the Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners region to the Mogollon culture of southern New Mexico and Arizona.

Mogollon culture — Rectangles and squares – These ruins at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southern New Mexico date back to the 1200s.

Most of the ruins and rock art date back 700 to 1100 years. There are thousands of sites throughout the canyons of the desert southwest, some in quite remote locations. It is so thrilling to walk around a bend in a canyon and discover these traces left behind by people who lived there a thousand years ago!

Petroglyphs — Rock art panel near Moab, Utah

My first backpacking trip into the desert was in Grand Gulch, Utah. Back then it was just BLM land, in the middle of nowhere. Now it is part of the disputed Bear’s Ears National Monument. After walking around many bends in the canyon and discovering rock art and ruins here, there and everywhere, I was hooked for life. Searching out Ancestral Puebloan sites on the Colorado Plateau became a hobby and a passion of mine every spring.

Dinosaur National Monument — The trapezoidal body shape of this petroglyph is typical of Fremont Culture rock art.

By the end of the 1800s, many ruins were damaged and destroyed by pothunters, who would tear up the dwellings in their search for the buried treasure of the artifacts left behind. In 1906 the Antiquities Act was passed by Congress to protect these national treasures.

Since then, only 5 presidents have not used the Antiquities Act to protect additional lands (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Trump). Trump is the only president who has attempted to remove lands from Monument status.

Ancestral puebloan rock art — Many rock art panels have been defaced by bullet holes and graffiti

Theft and vandalism are still major problems faced by those trying to preserve both ruins and rock art. When I worked at Death Valley, we were not allowed to publish any pictures of rock art in the park or disclose locations to visitors because people would literally chip the panels right off the cliffs!

Graffiti and target practice deface many rock art panels. This damage is difficult and often impossible to repair. I can’t help but wonder why some people feel this need to destroy the work left behind by others. I just don’t understand it.

Thompson Utah pictograph — Triangles – Why would someone deface a painting that had lasted a thousand years?

Since enforcement is so difficult, the key may be education. If we can convince others of the value of these ancient artifacts, and how that value is enhanced by being left in place for future generations, perhaps we, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren, may enjoy the geometry of ages past for many more years to come.

Fremont Culture — Rock art in Dinosaur National Monument

Thank you to Patti of pilotfishblog for this week’s Challenge, Geometry.

February 6, 2021

My Photography Journey

Photography has been my passion for a very long time. I’ve been practicing the “Art of Seeing”for most of my adult life, ever since I first moved to the mountains when I was 23.

That first SLR was a Minolta SRT-201. I LOVED that camera, so much that I bought the exact same model when the first body wore out. That Minolta was my inseparable companion for 25 years. It documented countless adventures, seasons spent in the Colorado Rockies, the Colorado Plateau, the Sierras, Denali. Hawaii and New Zealand.

Copper Mountain — Above treeline in Colorado

Photography was my zen, my meditation, my passion. To be still, observe, practice the art of seeing. I don’t know who first came up with that term to describe photography. I think it was David Muench. But to me, the phrase defines perfectly the role photography has played in my life.

I’m auto-didactic. I tend to try to learn everything through the school of hard knocks, and photography was no different. I was an avid reader of Outdoor Photographer magazine. I studied the work of photographers I greatly admired – Eliott Porter, Galen Rowell, and David Muench to name a few. I did attend a couple of workshops through Colorado Mountain College. I read a few books. I even took a mail-order course, but dropped it halfway through as I had no desire to do studio work.

Argentine Pass — I captured countless adventures with my Minolta.

I wish I had the pix from my Minolta to share with you. A lifetime of beauty. Alas, I am in temporary winter quarters and all my analog work is either home in McCarthy or in my sister’s garage in Colorado. I did find a scant handful of poor-quality scans stored on an SD card that will have to do.

Here’s the disclaimer, though. The original slides are SO much sharper, cleaner and have way better color balance. I really wish I could show you what that old Minolta was capable of.

Eccles Pass — These scans do not do that old Minolta justice.

It was good stuff. Good enough that people urged me to sell my work. So I did, on a small scale. I was co-owner of an art co-op in Colorado, selling prints and notecards, for a couple of years.

When I started selling my work, I upgraded. Although the Minolta was still my main squeeze, I acquired a used Pentax 645 medium format camera.

Mayflower Gulch — I fell in love with photography in the mountains of Colorado.

The Pentax took beautiful pictures, but the film was expensive and the camera was heavy. I took it out for special occasions but not often. I wish I had some of those images to share with you, too, but I don’t.

The art co-op didn’t last, and when it went down the tubes, I decided to go back to Alaska and ended up in Kennecott. The tiny ghost town was so unknown then that I would tell Alaskans where I was working for the summer and even they said “Where’s that?”

Kennecott, Alaska — Kennecott was unknown when I first got there.

There was only one postcard of the place, and it was a terrible shot. All the visitors asked, “When are you going to get some decent postcards?” I told them “Next year.”

I put my life savings, all $4000 of it , into the gamble. I started Wrangell Mountain Scenics, selling postcards, notecards and prints throughout the Copper River Valley, some taken with the Minolta, some with the 645.

I eventually reached a plateau with my business. I needed to step it up a notch if I wanted to take it from a good part-time gig to a profession. And an essential part of stepping it up was to have internet access so I could run a business online. McCarthy was still way too remote for internet service at that time, and I was living there year-round then.

I wasn’t willing to give up McCarthy, so I back-burnered photography and concentrated on being a ranger. I put all my money into land and building a house. I had to make a conscious choice – try to take my photography to the next level and spend a couple of thousand dollars on a professional-grade digital camera, or build a house. I couldn’t afford both. I chose to spend the money on boards.

Hardware Store McCarthy, Alaska — New camera or McCarthy? I chose McCarthy, the ghost town at the end of the rainbow.

I started working winters in Death Valley to earn money to build my house with. I had a fabulous new landscape to explore, and I desperately needed a digital camera. I couldn’t be satisfied with a plain old point-and-shoot given my background. I needed some control over what I was shooting, but I couldn’t afford a good DSLR, so I gravitated over to high-end point-and-shoots as a compromise.

Since I was no longer trying to sell my work, I was pretty happy with these top of the line point-and-shoots, apart from occasional frustrations. I’ve owned both Nikons and Panasonic Lumixs. I do love how light they are, after lugging a heavy fanny pack full of gear everywhere for half my life. Sometimes, though, you need better control and better lenses.

Death Valley National Park — Death Valley gave me a whole new landscape to explore.

During the 2016 Death Valley superbloom event, I was the park’s main flower lady. I wrote blog posts for the park website and provided photos I took on my days off. The photos became public domain, but I got a credit line.

About a year later, my superbloom photos caught the eye of an interior designer. She wanted to feature some of my work in a redesign she was doing for a hotel in the park. She asked if I had other images like the one she had seen and saved. I sold her some images. I was concerned about quality, since they weren’t taken with a “real” camera, but we made them work and I started thinking about getting back into the photography game.

I eventually purchased a Nikon D7100. I’ve had it for a couple of years now and still can’t use it right. Too many bells and whistles. I probably should have gotten something simpler, more like my old Minolta, but I decided to go big.

I’m taking tutorials right now, both in Lightroom and on my Nikon. There’s so much to learn. I definitely am feeling my age, and my lack of tech savvy. But I am absolutely loving learning more about digital processing, following the art of seeing with the art of painting with light.

Nakedstem Sunray — I’m having fun painting with light.

I wish I had a coach, like Patti of P.A. Moed has, someone to look at my work with a sharp but kind critic’s eye and let me know what works and what doesn’t, and offer tips and tricks on how to improve. I have so much to learn! Sometimes I feel overwhelmed.

But it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. Through all the hills and valleys, I’m loving the journey. Where will the next fork in the road take me?

Prickly Poppy — The Nikon lets me get closer and take sharper photos.

Thank you, Amy of The World is a Book, for this week’s Lens-Artists Photography Challenge – My Photography Journey.

December 26, 2019

2019 Photography Destinations – A Baker’s Dozen Part 1

As I look back over 2019, I feel fortunate. I had some incredible opportunities to spend time in a few of our country’s most amazing photography destinations. Some were popular places, in danger of being loved to death. Others were just as special, but not as well known, the kinds of places that creep up on you and get under your skin. Forever.

I thought I’d make a Top Ten list, it being close to the New Year and all. But I found I couldn’t narrow it down to just ten places. So I came up with a baker’s dozen. Then my post was too long. So I broke it into parts 1 and 2, the Rambling Ranger’s favorite photography destinations of 2019. Here is Part 1.

13) Elkhorn Slough / Moss Landing

This spot is one of those best-kept secrets. It’s a location that skates by under the radar on a coastline filled with destinations that are a bit TOO popular (Big Sur, Point Lobos, Monterey). Although Elkhorn Slough doesn’t have the flashy scenery of those more fashionable destinations, the wildlife watching here is fabulous. Look for a plethora of shorebirds. The main draw, however, is the sea otters. This just may be the best place on the Pacific coast to observe those cute little critters.

Moss Landing State Beach, California — Sea Otter Waving

12) Death Valley National Park

I spent most of March in Death Valley. I had committed myself months earlier to leading a few hikes there, before I could predict where the best desert wildflowers would be. The flowers were very late in Death Valley, with only a few blooming in March. It drove me a little crazy to be stuck there, as I knew that both Anza-Borrego and Joshua Tree were experiencing exceptional blooms.

But the great thing about Death Valley is that it is an amazing photography destination even if there are no flowers blooming. The austere beauty and diversity of landscapes offer endless opportunities for inspiration and creativity. I saw a few new places and revisited a lot of old favorites, too.

11) Southern Colorado Rockies

I had a short housesit in Durango over Thanksgiving this year. It’s always a blessing to spend time in southern Colorado. I love that edge environment, where the mountains meet the desert, giving you the best of both worlds. From the Great Sand Dunes to the many hot springs, from the jagged ragged peaks of the Rockies to the mesas and canyons of the Colorado Plateau, there were so many choices, all within a day’s drive of my base in Durango. The southern Colorado Rockies are another place I find myself returning to, again and again.

Million Dollar Highway — Durango is beautiful.

10) Denali Highway

This is one of my favorite places to see the fall colors in Alaska. And Alaska often has some OUTRAGEOUS fall colors! The blueberries are pretty incredible on the Denali Highway, too! Late August to early September is the time frame to aim for if you want to see the tundra put on its fancy dancin’ clothes. Special bonus: You might get lucky and see that visual symphony, the Aurora, too!

The Denali Highway is a great fall photography destination — Fall colors along the Denali Highway

9) Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky has a special place in my heart because I lived in both Estes Park and Grand Lake long ago in my younger days. I was fortunate to land a housesit in Allenspark, at the southwest corner of Rocky Mountain National Park, in October. It was a blast from the past, revisiting the environment that first instilled in me my deep love of the mountains.

Rocky is one of the best places in the country to catch the elk rut. It is also home to superb alpine scenery, wonderful hikes, and brilliant aspens. One thing to keep in mind – like Arches and Zion, this park is in the process of being loved to death. Be aware of your impact. Choose the trail less traveled. Give the animals their space and leave no trace so that we can all continue to enjoy Rocky for generations to come.

Colorado Rockies — My old stomping grounds

8) Point Pinos

Storm watching. Big waves. That’s why Point Pinos, in Pacific Grove, California, made my list. This is the first place I’ve ever been at all successful at capturing the essence of the power of the ocean. The surf here is awesome, in the original sense of that word.

Pacific Grove was also a place of great sadness for me, where I witnessed the crash of ecosystems, both terrestrial and maritime. The near-extinction of the Monarch Butterfly and the exponential effects of sea star wasting and a warming ocean were only too apparent during my stay here. Although it was heartbreaking, I felt it was important to be a witness.

Big wave, Point Pinos, Monterey Coast, CA — Point Pinos is a great place to watch the big waves.

7) Tucson, Arizona

There’s a reason why Arizona sunsets are famous. I swear they’re the most lurid sunsets I’ve ever seen! I love the cacti, too, stately saguaro and crazy cholla. I spent a few weeks in Tucson on a housesit last February and was surprised at how much I liked it since I’m not much of a city girl. But national and state parks abound, as well as other great open spaces.

Colorful sunsets make Saguaro National Park an excellent photography destination. — Crazy cholla

These were just a few of my favorite photo destinations for 2019. I’ll let you in on the rest by New Year’s Eve. What were some of yours? Let me know in the comments!

November 28, 2019November 29, 2019

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #73 – COLD

I used to embrace the cold. I worked ski resorts in Colorado for 15 years. For ten of those years, I worked at the top of the mountain, at 11,000 feet. I’ve seen some savage storms, and brutal cold.

I spent 10 winters in Alaska. Five of those winters were in the remote Interior rural community of McCarthy. I watched the frost creep up the nails on the inside of the door of the cabin my first winter there, and marveled at the cold, colder than anything I had ever experienced.

The coldest temperature I’ve ever seen was 53 degrees below zero. That’s cold, so cold my thermometer didn’t go that low. I had to call a neighbor with a better thermometer to find out just exactly how cold it was!

Richardson Highway, Alaska — I used to embrace the cold when I spent my winters in Alaska.

I USED TO embrace the cold. Then I learned to drive and bought a car. Now I’m a snowbird.

I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 50. I didn’t want to be part of the problem. I was worried about my carbon footprint long before the term “carbon footprint” was ever coined. I rode bikes, took buses, and lived in communities where you didn’t need a car to get by.

Kluane National Park — I’m OK with snow, just not on the road.

But in order to get a job promotion with the Park Service, I had to get a driver’s license. It was a prerequisite for the job.

I can definitely correlate my aversion to cold and winter with when I acquired a vehicle. I just don’t want to drive icy roads in nasty weather!

AlCan Highway, Canada — This is why I don’t do winter anymore!

I’ve decided I’ve seen enough cold. There’s a lot of beautiful places to see in this world, and they’re not ALL cold & snowy in the winter.

But there are things about winter, and the cold, that I miss. The beauty. The serenity. The quiet. Sun sparkling on the snow. Snowshoeing. Most of all, the northern lights.

So, occasionally, I treat myself to the tiniest taste of winter. I just make sure I have an escape route or the luxury of waiting for a good weather window so I can get out without driving those icy roads.

I needed to travel across practically the entire state of Colorado this past weekend as I transitioned from visiting my family to my next housesitting gig. I was lucky. I hit the perfect weather window, with a big storm in the mountains Wednesday to Friday, then a bluebird weekend for travel before the next front came through on Monday.

Great Sand Dunes National Park — On my way down from visiting my family in Denver, I stopped at the Great Sand Dunes. It was cold. The wind was bitter. But it was beautiful.

I’m in southwestern Colorado now, Durango to be exact. Although I am in the mountains, the desert and relief from snowy roads is less than an hour away.

Durango isn’t big, but it is a bit bigger than I usually like my towns to be. I’ve gotten a little lost a time or two. I’m surprised at how much I enjoy it. Although the desert is close, Durango is definitely a mountain town, vertical topography rising in every direction. The wild is still close. Driving down an urban street in the heart of town, you see deer strolling the sidewalks like they own them. I like that.

It’s snowing on this Thanksgiving day, but it’s a gentle snowfall, not a raging blizzard. It isn’t even sticking to the driveway, although the frosting on the trees is very pretty. It IS cold, though. BRRRRRR!!

Since it is Thanksgiving, I’m pondering gratitude and the many things I am grateful for. Throughout this year I’ve been more consciously grateful, on a day-to-day basis, than ever before in my life. I’m thankful for my many blessings.

Keystone Canyon, Alaska — COLD waterfall

I’m thankful for my family and the time I’ve been able to spend with them recently. I’m thankful that my mother, although quite fragile at 91, is still with us. I’m thankful for my home in McCarthy and the amazing community there that I am privileged to be a part of. I’m thankful for work that I enjoy and that I feel is important.

I’m thankful for my many friends, wherever they are in this wide world. I’m thankful for the freedom that allows me to travel and see more of this amazing planet we all share. I’m thankful that my little Toyota truck is still going strong at 285,000 miles and I hope it continues to treat me right.

San Juan Mountains — Just a tiny taste of cold…

I’m thankful I have food to eat and clothes to keep me warm. I’m thankful for wine and chocolate – oh, and raspberries. Can’t forget raspberries.

I’m thankful for the shelter that keeps me out of the cold. And I’m thankful for the cold – the little bit of cold I’m getting a taste of right now – because it will make the warmth that much sweeter later. What I’m especially thankful for, though, on this snowy Thanksgiving weekend, is that I don’t have to drive any treacherous icy roads today!

Thanks, Tina, for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Cold.

October 31, 2019November 15, 2022

Colorado’s Peak-to-Peak Highway – A Blast From My Past

The Peak-to-Peak Highway is one of my favorite Colorado scenic byways. My recent sojourn down this beautiful road was an incredible trip down memory lane, scenic but also big on nostalgia.

The Peak-to-Peak is the closest access to Colorado’s alpine for folks living in the northwest Denver/Boulder metro area. Since that’s where I grew up, this road was once my favorite way into the high country.

Estes Park, CO — You can sometimes catch this kind of action going on in downtown Estes Park.

Rocky Mountain National Park

The route starts (or ends) in Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. I spent 2 summers there in my early twenties, the first mountain town I ever lived in.

In a landscape created by the rubble left behind by ancient glaciers, lumpy ridges and random boulders painted with lichens form the bones of the land. Stately Ponderosa pines and small groves of aspen adorn huge, park-like meadows, superb habitat for herds of elk. Tromping the trails whenever I had a chance, this country crept deep into my soul as I made the transformation from a city kid to a mountain woman.

Shortly after passing Lily Lake south of Estes, there’s a turnoff to reach the Long’s Peak trailhead. Long’s Peak is the northernmost fourteener (mountain over 14,000 ft.). in Colorado It was the first fourteener I ever climbed.

It’s a scramble, not a trail, to get to the top. The climb turned into an epic adventure when we were caught near the summit by a quick-moving thunderstorm. Torrents of hail felt like ball bearings under our feet as we charged down the slippery scree-covered slope. I watched a bolt of lightning break off a chunk of the mountain the size of a small house and send it crashing down on the slope below. Intense.

The Peak-to-Peak provides access to many other alpine adventures. Trails in the Wild Basin area near Allenspark travel along creeks filled with cascading waterfalls to pristine lakes. Climb higher, above the treeline, and immerse yourself in a tapestry of tiny tundra wildflowers.

Peak-to-Peak Highway — Walk by waterfalls in Wild Basin

Indian Peaks Wilderness

The Indian Peaks Wilderness lies south of Rocky Mountain National Park, just a few miles west of the highway. I remember the challenges of my first week-long backpacking trip as I revisit Brainard Lake and gaze at the peaks and passes beyond.

When I hiked the Continental Divide one summer a few years later, the Indian Peaks Wilderness was one of my favorite sections. I recall how we spent the best day of the entire trip here, up near Fourth of July Mine and Mt. Neva.

Indian Peaks Wilderness Area — Brainard Lake gateway to the Indian Peaks

The Towns

At the foot of the Indian Peaks, you’ll find a smattering of old mining camps, towns like Ward, Jamestown, and Eldora, ghost towns turned hippie havens. The friendliest and funkiest of them all is Nederland.

It’s definitely a hippie town. It’s the home of the Carousel of Happiness. Nederland was the third community to legalize pot in Colorado, just after Denver and Breckenridge. The locals call themselves Nedheads.

Nederland celebrates the eclectic and just plain weird. Case in point – the town hosts Frozen Dead Guys Days every March. This festival celebrates the attempt by a local resident to practice a little homemade crionics, stashing his grandfather in a storage shed with a bunch of dry ice, holding out for some future date when the miracles of science could bring him back to life. Some of the fun things to do in Nederland during the festival include coffin races, frozen t-shirt contests, and a polar plunge.

Just past Nederland is Rollinsville. This old railroad town once had a fun bar, the Stage Stop (now a restaurant under new owners). I loved dancing on the timeworn hardwood floor to name acts like Tab Benoit.

Rollinsville also reminds me of my first backpacking disaster. I took my little sister and brother with me to teach them the joys of backpacking. Crossing a creek on an old log, I proceeded to teach them how to prevent hypothermia after the log snapped in two and dumped me in the creek. Then it started to snow. Eventually, the snow turned to rain and came down in torrents. It didn’t stop. In imminent danger of being stranded by flooding, we bailed and hiked out to Rollinsville to beg a ride home.

The Peak-to-Peak is one of the most popular roads in the state when the aspens turn gold. Signs on the highway warn leaf-lookers that they are not allowed to stop in the middle of the road when taking pictures of the fall colors.

The scenic byway ends at the town of Black Hawk. There aren’t many memories left for me here, though. When I was growing up, Black Hawk and neighboring Central City were practically ghost towns, rich in history but with no economic base to support their residents. The towns sponsored a referendum to allow legalized gambling to create jobs and provide some tax revenue for the county. Now there is an economic base. It seems like a new casino opens up every other week here. The facades of a few of the buildings are all that remain of the old towns.

Although the Peak-to-Peak may not hold as many memories for you as it does me, it is still well worth the travel. Views of the Continental Divide, golden aspen groves, access to wilderness and a host of delightful communities are just a few of the treasures you will find along the way.

Tag: Colorado

My Favorite Places

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Geometry in Ages Past

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My Photography Journey

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