It always seems to take longer going to a place than coming away from it. Roughly three hours from Denver, we made the turn west in between two mountain peaks. Stuck between a rock and hard place, we continue up a road that turns from pavement to rock to dirt. With each twist and turn, we question whether we have missed the very place we seek. When you set out in search of a ghost town, it isn’t surprising to wonder if it has vanished from the road. After nearly turning around, we finally receive affirmation that the ghost town is still up ahead. St. Elmo sits in Chaffee County, close to Continue Reading
Pikes Peak Wishes You Were Here
When Zebulon Pike first set out to climb what he deemed the “Great Peak” in 1806, he was eventually forced to retreat due to a blizzard. Perhaps to make himself feel better, he speculated that it would never be surmounted. Despite not being the first to climb such great heights, Pike would have the last laugh with the lasting name. I have just passed the tollgate to enter the Pikes Peak Highway, a 19-mile journey to the top of the most visited mountain in North America and the second most visited mountain in the world. Over a half a million people each year make the journey by foot, bike, car Continue Reading
Conquering Castles in Eastern Colorado
The wind howls as though fall is dancing into winter. It is just over 50 degrees as I cover the last stretch of the trail. A covered wagon would sure come in handy right about now. My fellow travelers and I battle the winds and the cold to reach shelter just up ahead. It has been a long journey, one filled with unknowns and danger, but at long last, we have reached neutral ground. I am out in Eastern Colorado, a part of the state few come to see, but back in the 1830s and 1840s, this was the “Castle in the Plains”. Bent’s Old Fort sits just 8 miles east of La Junta, Colorado, off of a Continue Reading
Sitting on the Corner of Colorado History at Ninth Street Historic Park
Almost like a hallway linking classrooms, students make their way ever so casually to class by way of the oldest restored block of residences in the city of Denver. They layout on the grassy thoroughfare to take in the sun in between classes amidst homes that were present long before Colorado was even declared a state. It is an unusual scene, one where the youth of college and university life coexists with the city’s earliest days. Within structures hailing from 1872 to 1906, ordinary collegiate business is conducted from transfer services to honors programs. Not a spot often sought out by Continue Reading
My Living Denver
When a study abroad friend came to town for a conference, he admonished me for not writing anything about where I live on my site. When you live in a place long enough, you are living in it. You aren’t seeing it as a tourist might. And when he asked me, “Isn’t the 16th Street Mall the place you go in Denver?”, I shook my head and grabbed the nearest slither of paper. I needed to pen those spots in the city I would want a tourist to see, from the perspective of someone living Denver rather than traveling its limits. I don’t claim to be an expert on a city I have always called home. The local Continue Reading
Sweet December Travel
He stirs the mixture of hot sugar, just one point in the process to create a simple candy cane. A father lifts his son on his arms to see the silver saint as an entire island elbows in between. And a lighthouse watches over a Christmas tree composed solely of lobster traps. I don’t often travel in December, mostly due to family filled schedules and of course the chaotic airport scene. After boarding a flight on Monday, a boarding process that took far longer than it ever should, I watched as people jammed their holiday gifts and jackets in the overhead bins, ignoring all announcements to leave Continue Reading
Mount Evans, Colorado Wishes You Were Here
In the harshest of environments, a gentle mountain goat poses for the clicks of a few cameras. He doesn’t care I am invading his mountain, a mountain of 14,130 feet. No, he will ham it up for someone who enjoys the camera just the same. I am on top of Mount Evans in Colorado where the Continental Divide is almost in full view. You can see storms up ahead signaling to me it’s time to head down the highest paved road in America. Opened in 1931, the road was originally intended to connect with Highway 285, an infeasible feat, as time would tell. Despite the impossibility, they kept this Continue Reading