REBOOT

I retired from my 30-year position as the executive director of a local Pennsylvania land trust on June 15, and four days later Kali and I headed west to start our new life in Livermore, Colorado, at 7,200 feet in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains northwest of Fort Collins.

I'm more physically active than Kali and take a lot of walks around our neighborhood, reporting back to her what I see when I'm out (partially as a way to try to encourage her to come out with me--so far, with relatively limited success).  In any case, Kali said I should keep a journal of my observations in our new habitat, so I decided to revive It Just Comes Naturally.

I'm not going to start from the beginning just yet; I'll probably catch up over the next few days.  I'm going to start with the walk I took yesterday (August 8).  Our rural development includes 400 acres of protected open space, and there is a trail system throughout.  Unfortunately, the trails are very lightly used and, thus, not particularly well maintained, but they are passable with some effort.  Yesterday, I walked on the gravel roads through out neighborhood to reach the Crellin Canyon Trailhead.  I descended Crellin Canyon, then caught the Sloan Trail that heads east, skirting a steep, rocky hillside mid-slope until I reached Mount Moriah, a  promontory just outside our house.

Looking back westward to the mouth of Crellin Canyon

Mount Moriah's south face; the north face is wooded.  There's a trail cairn on the right.

The whole hike covered a distance of about three miles, with a change in elevation of about 450 feet.  Along the way, I spotted three Canyon Wrens on Mount Moriah and a few American Robins in Crellin Canyon, but I was walking mid-day, so most birds were taking a siesta.

I've been using my cell phone camera a lot (as I did for these images).  They're not as good as the images produced by my Canon.  If I continue this journal, I'll start to use my Canon more frequently.

Stay tuned for more.

Back to the High Country (Mueller State Park)

View eastward toward a ridge extending from Pike's Peak

Overnight, Kali and I got over our tiff about not hiking the previous afternoon (see previous post).  The next morning, after breakfast, I proposed a hike at Mueller State Park, back in the high country west of Woodland Park, Colorado.

Mueller State Park is a relatively new Colorado state park, having been cobbled together from several ranches.  The park road turns west off of the north-south state highway south of Divide, Colorado, travels about a mile into the heart of the park, then turns sharply north to provide access to campgrounds and trailheads.  The beautiful new Visitor Center is located on a high point at the sharp bend in the road.

We stopped at the Visitor Center to get oriented and to ask for hiking suggestions.  I jokingly approached the ranger with the question, "Can you recommend a 5-mile hike with great scenic views and waterfalls?"  To my amazement, she replied, "I sure can (sort of)!"  She sketched out a route that included several scenic viewpoints and the canyon of the only perennial watercourse in the otherwise high, dry and arid park.

Kali at Raven Ridge Overlook looking southward

View eastward toward the northwestward shoulder of Pike's Peak

Another view southwestward from Raven Ridge

One downside to hiking at Mueller State Park is that the park access road leading to the trailheads is located on the crest a high spine that runs north-south through the park.  As a result, every trail starts off heading downhill (some for quite a distance).  Hikers have to pace themselves because the end of every hike is going to be an uphill climb to return to the trailhead.  This is especially important for hikers who haven't yet acclimated to the 8,500-foot elevation.

Geer Pond, where we were greeted by a pair of Mallards

Kali on the trail below the Geer Pond dam

Between Geer Pond (above) and Rock Pond (below), we made our way downward through the steep canyon of the only perennial stream in the entire park.  In terms of volume, it wasn't much of a stream, but it had carved a small canyon lined with gigantic boulders.  At the bottom there was a very modest waterfall where the creek spilled over one of the boulders.  Most of the birds we heard in the park were concentrated in the canyon.

Rock Pond - aptly named.  All of the numerous ponds in the park are old ranch ponds behind dams

Through an aspen grove

Elk-gnawed aspens

The ranger at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument the day before had told us that elk gnawed the bark of aspens for the aspirin precursor chemical the bark contains.  He said that elk cows were especially prone to gnawing the bark in advance of labor to dull the pain.  He certainly may be right, but I suspect that elk gnaw the bark during the winter for food, too.  

Nearly all the trails through the park are located on the ranch roads that used to criss-cross the land that is now park.  However, the state parks folks have done an excellent job of converting the roads to trails and of maintaining those trails, which, for the most part, are more like wide pathways than old roads.  In addition, all of the trails are very well marked and corresponded exactly to the trail map.

Dead wood

Kali loves to make images of photogenic dead wood.  She took several image of this log before turning the camera back to me.  This image is actually one of mine (not hers).  It's not the best of images, but it's satisfactory, in my opinion.  Unbeknownst to me, earlier in the hike I had inadvertently hit a button on the camera that made the self-focus sensor use just one point in the visual field for a focus; as a result, most images of the log were not worth saving.

Our hike at Mueller State Park was actually the most pleasant hike we completed during our visit to Colorado this year.  The trails were well-maintained, were not too steep (because they were old ranch roads), and were well-marked.  The scenery wasn't "national park" spectacular, but we enjoyed the abundant wildflowers, the ease of walking, and the cool breezes sighing through the evergreens.

We returned from our hike just as the skies opened up with a torrential mid-summer mountain downpour.  Great timing!

Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument and the gold fields

The Petrified Forest Loop and a mineralized sequoia stump

On our second day in Colorado Springs, Kali and I headed into the high country (8,500 feet) west of the city.  We drove through Woodland Park (the name sounds much nicer than the reality of the urban sprawl blight characteristic of this small city) and then further west to the crossroads town (don't blink!) of Florissant.  Here, we turned south to visit Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

The national monument was created in 1969 to save what was left of a fantastically productive fossil deposit that had been systematically pillaged by fossil hunters beginning as soon as the area was settled in the 1870s.

The Florissant valley experienced two fossil-forming episodes.  During the first, 35 million years ago, a lahar swept down the flanks of a volcano situated about 15 miles away and buried the standing sequoia forest in 15 feet of volcanic mud.  The mud killed the trees, which rotted away above the level of the mud, but the entombed stumps were mineralized and preserved as petrified wood.

In the second episode a few million years later, a landslide from the volcano blocked the stream that drained the valley.  The water in the creek backed up behind the landslide dam to form shallow, warm, and "soupy" Lake Florissant on top of the former sequoia forest.  Over millions of years, plants and animals that fell into the lake sank to the anoxic bottom and were incorporated into the sediments that later became shale.  While the petrified tree trunks were impressive, the fossils of the invertebrates from the shale were what really impressed Kali and me.  Fragile insects were preserved in truly exquisite detail.  The Visitor Center at the national monument has some of the best fossils on display.

The bed of fossil Lake Florissant, looking northward

Kali and I accompanied Ranger Ray on a guided tour of the 1-mile Petrified Forest Loop Trail to learn the history of the site and enjoy the partially excavated sequoia stumps.  We thought about hiking some of the other 13 miles of trails in the park, but decided that (1) it was hot and exposed and (2) most of the park is located on the lake bed of fossil Lake Florissant, so it's fairly flat and most of the park is visible from the county highway that divides it north-south anyway.  We decided to move on.

The Big Tree. No one knows how large the stump was before fossil hunters chipped away at it.

Oh, and I turned 62 in May, so I was eligible to buy a Senior Pass to the national parks and national wildlife refuges that will give Kali and me free access for the rest of our lives.  It was $10 - what an incredible deal.   


After Florissant, we continued to drive south to Cripple Creek, Colorado, a former gold mining town that's down on its luck.  Apparently, more gold has been mined from the hills surrounding Cripple Creek than in any other single location on earth, but the current gold rush has mostly passed Cripple Creek by.  Now, the town is full of Victorian storefronts that have been converted into casinos.  With the exception a a few restaurants and souvenir stores, every building in town is part of a casino complex - and there must be a dozen casinos in a town that looks like it has a population of about 1,000.  We didn't even get out of the car.

We continued five miles on to the town of Victor, Colorado, to see the Second Annual Gem and Mineral Show.  Victor bills itself as the "City of Mines" and it's not kidding.  There are mine tailings and mine workings everywhere, and there's a gigantic working gold mine right on the edge of town. Downtown is downtrodden, shabby and sad, with the same Victorian area buildings as Cripple Creek but without the casino glitz.  We looked over the (small) rock show and stopped in a few stores before having a hamburger lunch at the Elks Lodge - a grand old building gradually (or perhaps not so gradually) crumbling apart.

From Victor, we headed back north.  I wanted to do a hike I'd read about in a trails book.  We turned off the main, paved state highway onto a decent gravel forest service road.  Kali always gets upset when we drive narrow, gravel forest service roads and she's suspicious of the hikes, so she became increasingly unhappy as we meandered through the forest.  By the time we reached the trailhead, Kali was in a truly bad mood, and, to top it off, it had started to drizzle.  We sat in the car for a while, trying to decide if the rain was going to be a serious impediment to our hike.  Finally, we decided that we didn't want to risk getting soaked and we "threw in the towel."  I instantly got in a bad mood, too - petulant for having been subverted and denied a hike I had been looking forward to.  We drove the 1.25 hours back to Colorado Springs in grim silence - each the offended party.

Garden of the Gods

Kali and I began our 2014 Colorado getaway in Colorado Springs.  The most frequently visited attraction in the city is Garden of the Gods, a large city park with impressive red sandstone formation.  The "garden," which contains the most photogenic rock formations, is actually a fairly small part of the park, which encompasses a valley in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  There are red rock exposures on both sides of the valley, but the more interestingly eroded fins and spires are on the eastern side of the valley.

The park is very heavily visited.  Kali and I arrived about ten, but but the time we left there were hundreds of people swarming over the grounds.  The trails through the most interesting formations are paved, and visitors are confined to the paved trails by attractive post-and rail-fencing.  If the trails weren't paved, the crush of visitors long ago would have eroded the walkways into unsightly, dusty ruts.

A rock climber (in the crack on the lower right)

Technical climbing is permitted on the rock formations for skilled and experienced climbers with a permit.

"Kissing Camels" 

A pair of Prairie Falcons (Falco mexicanus) had established an aerie just below the opening in the "Kissing Camels" formation (not visible in the image above).  By the time of year we visited, the chicks had fledged and joined their parents in soaring flights among the rock formations.  I did manage to get a (very distant and too dark) image of one of the adults when it perched.

Prairie Falcon adult (perched on the rocky knob dead center)

After we toured the "garden," we decided that we wanted a hike away from the crush of people, so we walked the 0.75-mile Gateway Trail to the Visitor Center.  There was almost no one on this trail, and we had an opportunity to enjoy some nice vistas and wildflowers.  We would have liked to walk more of the park's trails, but by the time time we had walked to and returned from the Visitor Center, it was early afternoon and very hot (our hottest day in Colorado), so we decided against additional exploration.

Yucca flowers

A meadow alongside the Gateway Trail

Pike's Peak, 33rd highest of Colorado's 14ers (14,000+ foot high mountains)

Another view of Pike's Peak, with the western wall of the Garden of the Gods valley