Rushing to Cripple Creek

Candy: Today we took an impulse trip up to Colorado Springs, ate some great Mexican food at the On the Border restaurant (yummy), and then pulled out the atlas to see what would be a great back-roads route to take home to Pueblo.

We ended up driving west on highway 24 to 67 south, traveling around three sides of Pike's Peak (beautiful), and ending up in Cripple Creek, Colorado, which is about 60 miles northwest of Pueblo (as the crow flies) in the hill country behind Pike's Peak.

The lead image in this post is a roadside vista we pulled over for. Tim played fetch with Chase down the sloping hillside where we stopped, which was great b/c it tired Chase out really quickly, both from the high altitude and the uphill running.

The town of Cripple Creek, at 9,494 feet above sea level, marks the area where a cowboy named Bob Womack discovered gold in 1890. Today it's a National Historic District commemorating the fourth largest producing gold camp in the world. There are still two large gold mines in operation today, and tourists can take mine tours and pan for gold.

There are tons of historic mine shafts and lots of old, abandoned buildings that dot the mountainsides. We could easily imagine what it must have been like in the gold rush days. The town is filled with quaint red-brick buildings and there are quite a few cool shops for the thousands of people living in the town and surrounding hills.

By the way, as we entered Cripple Creek from the north, this is the vista we saw. There was quite a bit of haze and I don't yet own a polarizing filter, so you can't really see the snow-capped mountain ranges in the distance in a way that would be much more true to what we saw this afternoon.

However, the Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) mountain range is to the far left in the distance, and several other mountains were within view. Mt. Pisgah is the dark, pointy peak to the right.

The other photos in tonight's post are from the same vantage point as the panorama above, except that they show the areas behind or to the side of where I was standing for the panorama.

This is Mt. Pisgah again. I like the lens flare effects of shooting into the sun on this shot.

We arrived back at our apartment in time to watch the rest of the season finale for Grey's Anatomy, one of our favorite shows. Shortly after 11, Tim started having some pain in his stomach, and we hoped it was just gas, but it now appears that he has food poisoning.

What are the odds that we'd both get food poisoning in the same week?

Today I finally felt back to normal, and we ate essentially the same foods and drank the same drinks, with one exception...a Big Gulp brand cola Tim drank this afternoon.

He loves those non-namebrand drinks. I'm guessing that's what caused it, though there's really no way to know, of course.

He's been vomiting and getting chills and all the other usual symptoms, and has been doubled up on the couch as I write this. I'm hoping that it'll move through his (much faster metabolism) system quickly and that he won't be miserable for as long as I was. He's finally gotten warm enough and comfortable enough to fall asleep.

Well, I'll leave you with my favorite photo from today. I love the clouds and how brilliant the sky was against the contrasting yellow vegetation.

Have a wonderful Tuesday.