Road Trip Report #10, August 2, 2010 Aspen, Colorado

Road Trip Report #10, August 2, 2010 Aspen, Colorado

We've had a busy couple of days. Sunday, we loaded the car and checked out of our Colorado Springs hotel very early so we could take the Cog Railway to Pikes Peak. This was necessary because I wanted to take the Cog Railway, and then we had to drive to Aspen and had dinner reservations. In addition we wanted to make the four hour drive in daylight plus rain was predicted. Did you know Zebulon Montgomery Pike was born in Trenton, New Jersey?

Why do you think they call them the Rocky Mountains?
This tree did not get the Tree Line Memo. The tree line will vary by location. It is a factor of how long the summer growing season is at any location.

Our train looks like the one climbing ahead of us. This mountain is one big pile of rocks.

This is the cog rail. The train's four diesel engines have gears which fit into it so it can climb steep grades year round.

Don't mistake the gas for the brake. Watch that first step. That's the cog wheel on the logo.

You get some big views from the top. We were only up there about a half hour and the clouds closed in before we left.

The view is the same on the way down except we are riding backwards.

After lunch we drove through the Garden of the Gods before heading off to Aspen. It was raining at this point so we did not hang around.

Many thanks to one of my trip advisors, Michael Kahn because without his advice we would have taken the interstate to Aspen instead of Independence Pass which is closed seasonally. My GPS was absolutely furious that we took the Independence Pass route. "Make a U turn. Ok you missed it, I said make a U turn. Make a U turn! No, go this way. . . ." Fortunately you can turn off the voice and laugh at it. We would have gone 100 miles farther by its interstate route. Heaven help us all when these systems actually drive the car.

We had a very scenic drive and took too many pictures to include here.
This really does not do the view justice. There are places to pull over along the way for pictures. It was cold and rainy most of the time.

I still don't know how the stranger I asked to take this picture managed to get two shots completely out of focus. This spot is not that far from our hotel but I chose not to return to get an in focus shot. You can still get the idea. Rest assured the shot I took of him and his wife with his camera is a masterpiece which will hang above his fireplace. Anyway, this is the continental divide which means rain on one side eventually flows in the Atlantic Ocean, and the other side flows into the Pacific. If no one was looking, you could urinate into two oceans with one stream. Just watch out for the wind.

In Aspen we found the bike path of all bike paths, the Rio Grande Trail. It runs downhill just about the entire way alongside a babbling brook (downstream) lined with spectacular scenery and beautiful homes nestled into the landscape. You can buy a townhouse here for the price of the biggest home in Mirasol. The rich folks have homes here. We saw an antique shop with an old double slot machine for only $250,000. Were you looking for a chrome ejection seat from some kind of fighter aircraft for only $65,000? Sorry, it does not include the cushion. We decided to cut our ride short due to threat of rain (it was drizzling already) and the fact that the ride home was uphill the entire way. As it turns out it didn't rain heavily until later in the afternoon. Aspen is very nice.


Alongside the path is a softer gravelly section for runners so they don't have to jog on the nasty hard asphalt and the cyclists do not have to ride on gravel.

Feeling the need for culture, we decided to take in the Opera tonight, The Marriage of Figaro. It was all sung in Italian but they had subtitles and Laurie downloaded a synopsis of the story which we read at dinner so we could follow the story. We enjoyed it.

Due to closure of the visitor center in Dinosaur National Park (built on unstable land, but you can see replicas of fossils) we decided to ditch that stop and proceed straight to Jackson Hole. Since our hotel is sold out we will stay in a different hotel for one night. Weather permitting we will take a longer ride on the Rio Grande Trail and leave Aspen later in the day. We still have a 10 hour drive ahead of us (not the original plan).

Regards,

Steve & Laurie