Saturday - Checking on Creede Fire

Toni and I drove over to Creede to take a look at the fire situation.  It is still burning but Highway 149 has it stopped for now.  There is a lot of personnel and equipment being used but I think they are mainly trying to contain it via broad open areas and are trying to save homes from burning.

Here are some pictures of the fire fighters headquarters west of Creede.  They have signs out saying "No Stopping" so Toni had to take these while moving and was using the little camera.

 

The military had units posted at many of the side roads to prevent folks from straying.

 

 

 

 

While we were in Creede, it came a nice shower, which cleared a lot of the smoke from the air.  Also, the heavy wind has stopped, which is nice.  The air in the Lake City area has been very nice and we have been getting short showers almost every day now.

Friday Run past Carson City

I left the MH at 1:30 pm to go on the Carson City trail and on up to Pearl Lake.  It took me 4 hours to go 36 miles, 8 of which was on 35 mph roads.  In other words, I spent 3 1/2 hours doing 28 miles.  There are a lot of pretty rough areas where you have to take it real slow but all in all, it is a very interesting trail.  There were several side trails that would be fun to explore. 

This would be a good trail for a group as long as they have the whole day to do it and not get in a hurry.  It rained and sleeted on me on the way out and rained again on the way back.  There are several places where you are very high up and I was worried about lightning so I pushed pretty hard on the way back.

Only took a couple of pictures since I was working hard to get the trail over with.  Sort of like in a race.  Pretty smart, huh?!

          Below is the Carson City ghost town.  I flew right by this spot at 10 mph.  Wow!!!

 

This bird was on the trail.  Is it a grouse??

 

 

 

On one of the down hill areas, some sort of animal was running towards me on the trail.  I stopped, he stopped, looked at me for a moment, and then ran off to my right.  I think it may have been a wolverine and he was making up his mind whether he wanted to attack or not!!!!

90 mile Jeep Trip

Some people have a lot of sense, some a little sense, and some have no sense.  I think I fall in the last category.  My sweet wife agreed to go with me on an off-road trip.  We left Lake City at 9:30 am and headed up Cinnamon Pass.

We got over to Animas Fork, where we visited briefly with some of the tour guides that were taking about 50 people in four different rigs.  At this point we decided to follow them onto the California Gulch trail towards Silverton.  We finally got to Silverton at 1:30 and ate lunch.

I decided to take a different route back to Lake City so we drove about 15 miles on Hwy 550 towards Ouray, where we headed up Mineral Creek.  About here was where the no sense thing kicked in.  This trail was the worst one I have ever driven in Colorado.  I even had to lock both axles for the first time since owning our new Jeep!!  It wasn't scary to me but I had to negotiate some compromises with Toni as a result of taking her down the Mineral Creek trail.  Oh well.

Anyway, we drove a total of 90 miles, 75 of which were on the dirt and it took us over 8 hours.

Here are a bunch of pictures we took on the trip.

 

These are a couple of RZRs headed towards us.

 

 

Lots of Jeeps running the trails this day.

 

One of the tour trucks.

 

Tour truck with a herd of people.

 

Shelf road gets pretty narrow as we go by the snow.

 

I reached out the window and got me a handful of snow.

 

 

This little lake is up in the tundra area.

 

This is a unimog with a load of folks.

 

There were tons of these spots where the "road" disappears.

 

This house was for sale last year when we were here and still is.

 

 We weren't but about an hour from camp when we passed this house and we quit taking pictures. We just wanted to get back to the barn............I mean, the motor home.

 

Toni didn't take pictures of the Mineral Creek Trail since she was concentrating on not watching the trails and was just hanging on.  It was so rough that she couldn't hold on to the camera.  I enjoyed the Mineral Creek Trail since I actually had to closely watch tire placement, etc.  Not a trail for the faint hearted.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, June 23rd - Engineer Pass Waterfalls

These are mainly some more waterfall pictures taken alongside of Engineer Pass.

The first ones are Whitmore Falls.

Just to prove how athletic I am, here are the steps that I had to use to get down to the falls!

 

 

The following is a scene from the Whitmore Falls lookout.

 

 

Next are some pictures of some falls a good distance from the main road.

 

 

 

The next picture is a mine location that was destroyed by a snow avalanche.  Several were killed.  Pretty recently too........I think it was 1929.    :-)





 

 

For anyone that doesn't have my email address:  claytoncarroll1@hotmail.com

 

Monday - ATV Trip

I decided to take an ATV ride.  The following pictures were taken on the Nellie Creek Trail, off the Engineer Pass out of Lake City.

I rode the Can Am 50 miles this day and pretty much wore me out and got me dusty!