Month: July 2006

Friday morning Miranda and I got up early and headed for Canon City, Colorado to see the Royal Gorge, the world’s highest suspension bridge. Because we made it there before their normal business hours, we were able to get into the park for the early bird special price of $14 per person instead of $21 per person. I know this would make some of you feel old, however, I was very excited as the prospect of saving money and not worried about being labeled something else.

When you first enter the park, there’s a really neat water-clock.

Here’s some history on the bridge.

This picture is looking off of a ledge about 15 feet away from the cliff. I was nervous.

Artsy picture of a tree.

A wide shot of the gorge.

The bridge was really incredible. The bridge is really just a bunch of small wires holding up and spanning this massive structure. What you walked on to go across was wood planks, nothing special. Some of them didn’t seem to be screwed into the structure itself.

The wires.

A shot of the gorge from the bridge.

It’s hard to explain how thin these wires are, they are no bigger than 10 or 12 gauge wire. Strength in numbers.

Most people walk across the bridge, however there were some individuals who drove across the bridge. Because it’s a suspension bridge it is susceptible to swaying and it is certainly a strange feeling.

Representing.

A white buffalo.

What is up.

My wife and myself.

We were able to take this cart down to the bottom of the gorge, this is a picture going down.

The Arkansas River, which I believe is the same rive which flows through Tulsa, OK.

A view of the bridge from the river.

A view of the cart and tracks. It took 5 minutes to get to the bottom and 5 minutes to get to the top.

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Miranda and I arrived in the Breckenridge area on Wednesday afternoon and we decided to go to Vail on Thursday morning.  Needless to say, Vail is perfect.  Too perfect.  There are all of these perfect shops with perfect shop owners and everyone appears to have lots of money, it was all just a little too perfect for my taste. 

We started by trying to hike a little on some of Vail’s mountain trails but we quickly realized that it wasn’t very much fun hiking on ski trails and so we abandoned our little trek about an hour or so into the trip.  The remaining pictures are from the town of Vail.  As an aside, my favorite picture is the one where the dog is sleeping in the storefront window.

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After hiking in Buena Vista we decided to head north towards Breckenridge and on the way was the quaint little town known as Leadville.  Leadville is the highest altitude town/city in the US and Miranda was quite taken with this little town.  She really like the antique shops and I hated them.  I will not tell you too much about this town, it is neat if you like antique shops and on the West wide of town, the mountains are very close (see the last picture).  The most interesting thing was a group of young vagrants who were walking barefoot in the city with their dogs.  I want to call them hippies, but I really don’t know if that’s accurate, they were young people, some of them shoeless and seemed happy who were hanging around the downtown area.  The only thing I really was worried about was the health of their puppy dogs and they all seemed to be in good care.  Good times.

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On Tuesday afternoon Miranda and I drove to Buena Vista and Wednesday morning she and I got up early to do some hiking. Initially we drove 20 miles up the mountain to Cottonwood Pass, which lies on the continental divide. Of course everyone knows that the continental divide is the point where the watershed divides the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. After driving to the top and freezing our rears off, I took a couple of pictures and we drove down 5 miles to Ptarmigan Lake, which turned out to be a blessing.

At Ptarmigan Lake we were a little worried because we were the only ones who were there. Not being expert hikers, we thought that this 3.3 mile hike better be worth the trip, or rather, there better be a payoff, something spectacular at the top of this hike. At the end, we weren’t disappointed.

Please notice the 4 day beard and how awesome I look. This is me after the hike, but I thought that this better described what what we were about to climb.

This is the first and only river that we crossed, I thought that this would be the end result of what fed the lake that we were about to hike towards, but until we got to the top, we weren’t sure.

Parts of the climb was a bit rocky, if you were to look down this cliff face then you’d find a very steep and very jagged set of rocks.

I must say that I was very proud of my wife, she was wonderful and she really was excited to do this with me, in fact we both stated that this was something that we always wanted to do, but just never did.

Flowers on the trail.

There’s no filter here, just clear beautiful blue sky framed by pine trees. Beautiful.

My wife keeps moving forward.

This stream was near the top of where we ended up, up.

This was my wife and I as we reached the top of our little journey.

Miranda takes it in.

From what I recall, a flat portion on top of a mountain is called a park and this was a truly amazing view of the park at the top of the mountain, opposite of Ptarmigan Lake.

Blue filter, looking up at the sky and the sun.

Ptarmigan Lake.

This is the small snow drift/glacier that partially fed the lake.

The mountain side.

There was no doubt that this was our best day. Miranda and I had 20 minutes where we just sat and enjoyed the scenery, sitting on some rocks, basking in the sun, loving each other.

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Tuesday morning Miranda and I drove to Manitou Springs, Colorado to make our way up to Pike’s Peak. There are a couple of ways to get up this mountain, the first is to drive, without guardrails, the second is to climb up and the third is to take a train. We opted for the train. It is a 3 hour round-trip and well worth the money, especially since it costs money to drive (I think $10 per person) and the wear and tear on the breaks on the way down the mountain.

Below is some info on the peak itself.

The scenery here is the inspiration for America the Beautiful.

This is a picture of the train and the worst part about the train is the obscured views.

One of the two stations close to the top of the mountain.

The following are a series of pictures from the peak. When we got there Miranda looked around for a few minutes and decided that it was so cold that she was going to go inside the gift shop.

Incredible views of the surrounding area.

I believe the furry creature is the yellow-bellied marmot.

At the top with my wife.

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