2015 Colorado Trip

[hemibee]

As several of you know, I just returned from a 9 day trip to Colorado. Unfortunately this was a trip by cage and Jessica had to stay home in her garage. I wanted to take Jessica but the trip was laid out for purposes other than riding. My youngest son will be graduating from high school next June and he is trying to narrow down the colleges he will apply for. One of the front runners is Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. This trip was mainly to allow him the experience the area and get a chance to see the campus. If I was running around on Jessica we would not have had time to view/experience the area as a family. I would have only had a very few hours, maybe two or three to ride so it didn't seem as I could justify trailering, securing, and worrying about Jessica for the nine days.

I wanted to get this report done at one time but it looks like it will be done over several days. I've got over 1200 photos I need to preview and delete the bad one. I also have multiple video segments I need to edit into viewable products. So to get things started. . .

While we were waiting our scheduled departure time on the Pikes Peak Cog Train we decided to visit the Garden of the Gods.

From Wikipedia. . .
Garden of the Gods is a public park located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, US. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1971.

The Garden of the Gods red rock formations were created during a geological upheaval along a natural fault line millions of years ago. Archaeological evidence shows that prehistoric people visited Garden of the Gods about 1330 BC. At about 250 BC Native American people camped in the park. They are believed to have been attracted to wildlife and plant life in the area and used overhangs created by the rocks for shelter. There are many native peoples who have reported a connection to Garden of the Gods, including Ute, Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Pawnee and Lakota people.

The Utes oral traditions tell of their creation at the Garden of the Gods. Petroglyphs have been found in the park that are typical of early Utes. They found red rocks to have a spiritual connection and camped near Manitou Springs and the creek near Rock Ledge Ranch bordering Garden of the Gods. Other tribes traveled through Garden of the Gods.[2] The Old Ute Trail went past Garden of the Gods to Ute Pass and led later explorers through Manitou Springs. Starting in the 16th century, Spanish explorers and later European American explorers and trappers traveled through the area, including Lt. John C. Freemont and Lt. George Frederick Ruxton, who recorded their visits in their journals.

The area was first called Red Rock Corral.[3] Then, in August 1859, two surveyors who helped to set up Colorado City explored the site. One of the surveyors, M. S. Beach, suggested that it would be a "capital place for a beer garden". His companion, the young Rufus Cable, awestruck by the impressive rock formations, exclaimed, "Beer Garden! Why it is a fit place for the gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods."

In 1879 Charles Elliott Perkins, a friend of William Jackson Palmer, purchased 480 acres of land that included a portion of the present Garden of the Gods. Upon Perkins' death, his family gave the land to the City of Colorado Springs in 1909, with the provision that it would be a free public park. Palmer had owned the Rock Ledge Ranch and upon his death it was donated to the city.

Helen Hunt Jackson wrote of the park, "You wind among rocks of every conceivable and inconceivable shape and size... all bright red, all motionless and silent, with a strange look of having been just stopped and held back in the very climax of some supernatural catastrophe."

Having purchased additional surrounding land, the City of Colorado Springs' park grew to 1,364 acres. In 1995 the Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center was opened just outside of the park

Due to the large number of photos, please click this link to view the rest I have uploaded. Garden of the Gods on Pinterest

 

[hemibee]

Also in Colorado Springs is the United States Air Force Academy. While this was not on Kyle's list of schools we decided to visit anyway. Security was tight and access was limited during our visit, guess they knew I was coming. Actually if was because of ramadan or what ever the muslims call it. We were able to visit the Chapel and overlook the parade grounds.

Click here for the rest of the photos. . . USAF Academy on Pinterest

 

[hemibee]

Well I was going to post the photos in order but I was looking at the Pikes Peak photos and there is a ton of them so i thought I would post the photos from the ride down Schubarth Road. More info on the road can be found here . . . TrailDamage.com - Schubarth Road

This was a fun road to explore and a good chance at a mountain road for Alex to cut his teeth on. Most of the road was no problem and could be run by any Adventure or Dirt bike. I wouldn't suggest riding all of it by yourself. but it could be done. If you have problems it will probably be in the section you will only see 4X4's or a few trucks as the street vehicles don't appear to venture too far down the road. I have a video of this road that I will get edited and post once it is complete.

The map of the road

And the photos. . .

The route to the left was a little steeper than it looks. Guess which we took.

The one of the left, was there any doubt?

Alex and his 4Runner

Link to the rest of the photo. . . Schubarth Road on Pinterest

 

[Rocky]

Cool pictures
And I can name all the plane sup on pylons

 

[triumph david]

That must have been a fantastic trip!

 

[hemibee]

Yes sir, it was a fantastic trip.

 

[hemibee]

From Wikipedia
Pikes Peak is the highest summit of the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The ultra-prominent 14,115-foot (4,302.31 m) fourteener is located in Pike National Forest, 12.0 miles (19.3 km) west by south (bearing 263°) of downtown Colorado Springs in El Paso County, Colorado, United States. The mountain is named in honor of American explorer Zebulon Pike who was unable to reach the summit. The summit is higher than any point in the United States east of its longitude.

The first European-American to climb the peak came 14 years after Pike in the summer of 1820. Edwin James, a young student who had just graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, signed on as the relief botanist for the Long Expedition after the first botanist had died. The expedition explored the South Platte River up as far as present-day Denver, then turned south and passed close to what James called "Pike's highest peak." James and two other men left the expedition, camped on the plains, and climbed the peak in two days, encountering little difficulty. Along the way, he was the first to describe the blue columbine, Colorado's state flower.

Gold was discovered in the area of present-day Denver in 1858, and newspapers referred to the gold-mining area as "Pike's Peak." Pike's Peak or Bust became the slogan of the Colorado Gold Rush (see also Fifty-Niner). This was more due to Pikes Peak's visibility to gold seekers traveling west across the plains than any actual significant gold find anywhere near Pikes Peak. Major gold deposits were not discovered in the Pikes Peak area until the Cripple Creek Mining District was discovered southwest of Pikes Peak, and led in 1893 to one of the last major gold rushes in the lower forty-eight states.

The summit of Pike's Peak in 1901
In July 1860, Clark, Gruber and Company commenced minting gold coins in Denver bearing the phrase "Pike's Peak Gold" and an artist's rendering of the peak (site unseen) on the obverse. In 1863 the U.S. Treasury purchased the minting equipment for $25,000 to open the Denver Mint.

Julia and James Holmes traveled to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in 1858, and reached the summit on August 5, with J. D. Miller and George Peck, making Julia Archibald Holmes the first woman to climb Pikes Peak. From the summit, she wrote in a letter to her mother: "Nearly everyone tried to discourage me from attempting it, but I believed that I should succeed; and now here I am, and I feel that I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.”

Thirty-five years later, in July 1893, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful", after having admired the view from the top of Pikes Peak. It appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895. A plaque commemorating the words to the song was placed at the summit.

On July 17, 1913 William Wayne Brown drove his car, the Bear Cat, twenty miles to the summit. The ascent took 5 hours and 28 minutes.

The uppermost portion of Pikes Peak, above 14,000 feet (4,300 m) elevation, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

Pikes Peak was the home of a ski resort from 1939 until 1984

Some of my photos from Pikes Peak.

As we were headed to the Cog Railroad.

Our Cog Train and the one to the left that went up ahead of us.

The Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway (also known as the Pikes Peak Cog Railway) is an Abt rack system cog railway with 4 ft 81⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge track in Colorado, USA, climbing the well-known mountain Pikes Peak. The base station is in Manitou Springs, Colorado near Colorado Springs.

The railway is the highest in North America by a considerable margin. It was built and is operated solely for the tourist trade.

The railway was started by Zalmon G. Simmons, inventor and founder of the Simmons Beautyrest Mattress Company. The company was founded in 1889 and limited service to the Halfway House Hotel was started in 1890. The summit was reached the following year.



Pikes Peak Cog Railway locomotive and car, circa 1900
A number of steam locomotives were built for the line by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, all rack-only locomotives with steeply inclined boilers to keep them level on the average 16% grades. Operating steam locomotives on such a line was back-breaking work and expensive, so when more modern forms of traction became available, the railway was eager to modernize.

A gasoline-powered railcar was constructed in 1938, believed to be the first rack railcar in the world. It was designed to be a cheaper alternative to the steam locomotives enabling economic service during quieter times of the year. Proving a huge success, the railway soon bought more internal combustion engined trains. This car is still in operation on the mountain, though it is a different color from original.

The next were five 'streamlined' diesel locomotives from General Electric, which were equipped with matching passenger cars, acquired from 1939 onward. These slowly supplanted the steam locomotives, though some steam operations persisted until the 1960s as backup power and to operate the snow-clearing train (where their greater weight meant they were less likely to derail). A number of the steam locomotives are now on static display, in Manitou and elsewhere, and the Railway still has an operational steam locomotive (#4) and an original coach. The steam locomotive was put out of service for many years before being retrieved from a museum and brought back to service in 1980.

In 1964 the railway needed more equipment, but General Electric was not interested in the business. The railway went abroad, to Switzerland, home of most of the world's cog railways. In 1964, the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works in Winterthur provided two bright red railcars (railcars contain a seating compartment as well as engineer stand, eliminating the need for a separate pushing locomotive), very similar to equipment used on many Swiss railways. Units 14 and 15 were delivered and began service in 1964. Two more (Units 16 and 17) were provided in 1968 when the first two proved their worth. As of 2012 all four original Swiss trains are still in operation at the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway. All M&PPRy railcars are now powered by biodiesel.

As tourism increased in the 1970s the railway needed more capacity. In 1976 M&PPRy took delivery of two larger two-car articulated railcars from the Swiss Locomotive Works of Winterthur, designated Train 18 and Train 19. Passing sidings were built in several places at about the same time, allowing trains to pass at various points on the mountainside. Trains could previously pass only at the Mountain View siding, permitting only three trains a day up the mountain. Eight trains per day became possible with the new equipment and sidings (two more larger railcars were delivered from SLM; Unit 24 in 1984 and the last, Unit 25, in 1989).

Rolling stock on the M&PPRy consists of four 214-passenger articulated Swiss-built railcars, four 78-passenger Swiss-built railcars, three GE built locomotives (one of which has been modified to carry the section crew), one snowplow (#22 - built upon the frame of a GE locomotive), one 23-passenger diesel railcar (#7), one steam locomotive (#4 - built by Baldwin), a Winter-Weiss "streamliner" coach, and an original Wasson wooden coach (#104). Only the Swiss-built railcars carry regular passengers. The steam locomotive and passenger coaches are used on rare special occasions.

 

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The quick video clip from Pikes Peak Summit. As I was headed back to the train the snow started to fall. I know it's nothing for you that live in the Great White North but it is July and I had just left 95 DegF weather two das before this.

 

[Rocky]

Great stuff
Pikes Peak reminds me of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire which also has a cog railway and no trees at the summit.

 

[hemibee]

I'm starting to work on getting the video edited but thought I would post this photo for Garry so @Mad On Triumphs here's one for you, Alex saw the sticker and had to have it for his collection.

 

[hemibee]

Part 1 of the Schubarth Road/Trail video