Pikes Peak Cog RR & Cripple Creek

It's Saturday afternoon, well early evening and I'm sitting here listening to the rain storm. Fortunately for us, we had returned home before the skies opened up. Yesterday was a beautiful day and I'll tell you about it.

We made reservations for the 1:20 pm Cog Railroad to the top of Pikes Peak. Being anxious to start this adventure, we arrived at the station about a hour ahead. That was OK as it gave me time to browse the gift shop.

Finally the time came for us to board the train and we were ready to go. The ride up to the top of Pikes Peak was awesome as where the views. We saw small waterfalls, beautiful scenery, mule deer, yellow-bellied marmots, big horn sheep and lots of rocks. The ride up took about one hour, but we were entertained by our conductor. Not only did he tell jokes, but he was great about pointing out the not to be missed things as we ascended toward the top of the mountain.

When we left the station in Manitou Springs the temperature was a comfortable 78 degrees. When we reached the top, it was a cool 45 degrees, funny though, it didn't really feel that cool to me.

We only had about 35 minutes at the top and we spent most of the time outside looking and taking pictures. There is a big gift shop and snack bar there, but just not enough time to take it all in. I did make sure to purchase a couple of the "Pikes Peak donuts". Not sure what the hype is, they were OK, but nothing special. Just plain cake donuts.

All to soon it was time to board the train for the trip back and I mean "back" as we rode backwards going down the mountain - not bad though, I got to see what we passed after we passed it - LOL. We actually saw more bighorn sheep going down and I had the advantage for picture taking - you'll see when you check out the pictures I've posted.

At 4:30 we arrived back at the station in Manitou Springs and our adventure was over except for the memories and pictures. We had dinner at the Hungry Bear Restaurant in Woodland Park before coming home for the evening.

This morning we took off for Cripple Creek early so we could take advantage of the 49 cent breakfast at Bronco Billie's. Yes, that is correct, 49 cents gets you two eggs, hash browns & toast, or in my case a cheese omelet, hash browns and toast. You can add bacon or sausage for 75 cents which we did. Our bill total including coffee and OJ was $4.06! On top of a great price it was good! After eating we checked out the casinos in town and I lost, Dean broke even. I was not overly impressed with Cripple Creek. All there is are casino's and empty buildings. Very few shops at all. There is a train you can ride that goes four miles (we didn't do it) and a museum. The big thing there just seems to be the casinos. After going to Virginia City in Nevada last year, Cripple Creek was disappointing.

On our drive home we drove through Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. We were going to go in, but I had left our Natl. Park Senior Pass at the motorhome so we didn't. Not sure I'm really into looking at fossil's in rocks anyway. We did pass a interesting homestead that I have pictures of posted at the picasa web site.

That about brings me back to the beginning of this post. The rain has stopped and the temperature is now up to 59 degrees. I'm about ready to move on to someplace a little warmer. It's not bad when it's not raining or overcast, but those days are getting a little cool for me. Not only that, but the campground that we are staying at will not allow you to use your heat pump or electric heaters - bummer as we have 50 amps. We are parked right next to one of the camphosts so we can't even cheat! I think that we will only stay here for two weeks then move on to Canon City to do the Royal Gorge. See y'all soon....

Pictures will be posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/SchultzTravelPhotos