Pretty nice waking up to this view! We stayed at Buena Vista (Spanish for 'Beautiful View') last night. This place has a population of a few over 2000 and has an elevation of nearly 8000ft, smack dab in the middle of the Rockies.
Many of the towns in the Rockies have historical districts and 'BV' is no exception.
Most of the buildings here date back to the 1880s and 1890s, when the town acted as a railroad hub, serving the local silver, gold, and lead mining industry.
We decided to take our time in the Rockies. We have a day up our sleeves and we'll use it here.
Here is today's animal shot. We saw a chipmunk today but I wasn't quick enough with the camera. So here are some Canadian Geese instead.
Over breakfast, we chatted with a local couple. These guys told us of a beautiful lake north of Buena Vista, so we put it on our list of places to visit. Here it is.
Turquoise Lake is about 10,000ft above sea level and was frozen. I think these tracks on the lake are from snow mobiles.
These ice blocks on the lake-edge were pretty interesting.
And these little ice caves were cool too.
Here's Nige returning from an attempted Lake Walk. Attempted, I say...
Back into the trusty Chev and on to Leadville, which was just down the road from Turquoise Lake. Leadville has a population of around 2500 but in the 1880s, during the height of the silver rush here, it was the 2nd largest town in Colorado.
Doc Holliday had his last shoot-out here and Harry Houdini performed in the Opera House, that is still standing. Here's the Silver Dollar Saloon at Leadville.
This is inside the Silver Dollar.
Being a shade over 10,000ft above sea level, snow is pretty common here. According to the locals, there was a foot of snow lying on the ground just a few days ago. Here's a snow plough on the main drag.
Almost all of Leadsville is historic. I don't recall seeing too many modern houses or buildings here at all. Here's a general Leadsville street scene, with an all-American fire hydrant in the foreground
This is the northern end of town.
And here's the view looking back the other way.
Leadville has a number of these tiny unpaved tracks between the streets. Check out the snow-covered mountains in the background.
Here's the Manhattan Bar - apparently the 'Hat' has a "rather dubious reputation."
Cool old buildings, eh? We were pretty hungry so had a three-course meal here, comprising vegetable soup, Bison Burger (yes, real Bison meat) and mashed potato with gravy. It wasn't bad, either.
These historic towns have a high proportion of antique shops. We had a look through one at Leadville. Two stories worth, including a lot of antique bottles. The proprietor was a bottle collector so we had a lot to discuss.
From Leadville, we drove northward to a place called Red Cliff. This is a small settlement, known for its spectacular bridge.
Here's the Red Cliff bridge from another angle.
From Red Cliff, it was on to Vail. This place is a bit like Aspen - a classy ski resort town. The ski season has just finished here - it finished yesterday, in fact, so the town was largely deserted. The amazing thing about this ski resort (and others we passed in the afternoon) was that the ski runs end pretty well at the base of the village.
My guess is that everything is rather expensive here, if the price of the ice creams we bought was anything to go by. The resorts here are huge, even in American terms. Here's one of the smaller ones.
We were driving on smaller 2nd-tier roads for much of the day but the road leaving Vail is an interstate (I-90) and was a six-laner. Vail is at 8150ft and the I-90 from Vail grinds up to its highest elevation,at the Eisenhower Tunnel, where the road is 11,158 feet (3,401 m) above sea level. The tunnel is 2.7 km long, and is the longest mountain tunnel along the Interstate Highway System.
There was a snarl-up in the tunnel as we approached it so had to park the car up and wait for half an hour for the emergency crews to clear the mess.
The sun was getting a little low by this stage but we had time to have a look at one more historic town - this one was Georgetown. Here are a couple of shots.
Georgetown sits at an elevation of 8530 feet (2600 m) and is tucked in a deep valley, so days are a little shorter here.
The buildings here are generally ten or so years older than those we've seen at other historic Colorado towns we've passed by.
Here's a cloud photo for you, Chris. Out-of-focus cumulus. In focus is a figurine adorning the Hotel de Paris Hotel at Georgetown, built in 1875.
The roads keep going up here! At one stage, I noticed the instantaneous fuel consumption was 2 miles per gallon! We really should have got a v6 or V8 for these roads. The poor old 4 cylinder isn't handling these high altitudes well at all.
We had a bit of a play in the snow here at Berthoud Pass - 11,307 feet. We went for a run up the hill behind this sign to test our high-altitude fitness.... I think we need more training...
Here's the road that winds down from Berthoud Pass. The road up was the same. Lots of 15 mph switch-back big-bend corners.
Here's a snow shot just to finish off today.
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