Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Day 54 - Mueller State Park, CO

This morning we got a slightly earlier start and headed east from Mueller State Park to Pike's Peak. I didn't take any photos of the trip up to the summit so the first picture is of the cog railroad cars at the summit. This one was blasting its horn announcing to the passengers that if they wanted a trip down the mountain they better get back on board.

There is a large viewpoint with great views of the Colorado mountains in several directions. What was missing, at least as far as I could tell, were descriptive information signs telling you what you are looking at.

For the benefit of the train passengers, there is this non-official looking sign to pose by between the train and the gift shop. We did pose by it but I don't have any of those pictures. I've only been on a higher mountain once before. Mt. Whitney in California is about 400' higher. And that was back around 1980 on a hiking trip.

Here is the rest of the crew waiting for the cog railroad cars to take off down the hill. Shortly after this, we went into the gift shop in search of the Pike's Peak famous doughnuts. I'm not sure why/how they are famous. Just plain cake with no frosting or other adornments. We picked up a half dozen along with some other snacks enjoying not only Pike's Peak but also the wonderful company.

About 3 miles from the summit, there is a large dirt parking lot. Last October when we tried to make it to the summit, this was a far as we could go. Today was kind of hazy so no real long shots. In fact, my camera was having difficulty focusing. Infinity should be easy.

We made numerous stops on the way down for pictures. And there should be some video available some time as Martha filled up her phone with video. Bridget took a lot of GoPro video but I wasn't going to try and do any editing until we have some real Internet. Here at the state park, AT&T sort of works (4G) and Verizon has a couple of bars of LTE. Neither is very fast.

Another stop was this rock pile. If you look carefully, you can spot some people near the right side of the photo. You can see that these are some pretty large rocks.

Anyway, a huge thank you to Dom and Martha for meeting us at the campground and bringing the other side car rig. It was a lot of fun not only to be riding again but to spend time with you. 

5 comments:

  1. You four are having so much fun. I can see the meet up and riding being one of the highlights of your vacation.

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  2. Great fun was had by all....we wouldn't have missed it for the world.

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  3. What a fun experience to share with friends! When we were up there, it was absolutely frigid (June 12th!), but clear as a bell. I too noticed there were no information signs. I hope it isn't because of vandalism.

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