Edits after posting: corrected some elevations.
I already said that there is no summer in the high country. Well, fall doesn’t last all that long either. Soon, there were only two RVs in the “Denver West” [actually, Central City] KOA: us, and some guy that worked at Coors (nearly an hour’s drive). It was to be my first winter in Colorado and I didn’t see it coming. I thought I did, ‘coz I’d lived in Montana. At 2500 feet above sea level. We were at 8900 feet.
Seeking aspen color, I took the 4WD road to Argentine Pass, the highest pass in Colorado on which you can take a wheeled vehicle (but you can’t go across). It’s over 13,000 feet above sea level, and on the Continental Divide.
Colorado’s famed Fourteeners, two of which are very close by (see next picture), are only another thousand feet up. From here, the old stagecoach road over the pass becomes a mere trail down the west side, too narrow for anything on four wheels (see first photo). Below and around the bend in the canyon is the city of Montezuma, Colorado and the Snake River, which I spoke of in my previous post. Here’s another view down the west side from the top.
If you know your Latin, you know that “Argentine” means silver. This was a hill full of silver. There was a town here once, named Waldorf, and it even had a post office. All of that’s gone now, but the holes in the mountain are still spewing mining waste, polluting everything down below.
Fifteen hundred feet below the top, at treeline, was the site of Waldorf. Nothing left of it now but scenery.
Paid subscribers received a higher-res, richer-color version of this shot (taken a year later) last month.
In October, the snow began falling in the High Country. I headed out with my camera.
Soon, the snow was down to where we were. I decided to go to Mt. Eva, but turned around at this point:
I had intended to tough out the winter there on that mountain above Central City, but my sweetheart found a house for rent two thousand feet below, in Parmalee Gulch aka Indian Hills. Though we lost 2,000 feet in elevation, we were still a coupla thousand feet above Denver.
We moved on Thanksgiving weekend. The snow at the RV park was already up to fourteen inches, and squeaking. When the snow squeaks, you know that it’s ten above. That’s ten degrees above zero, Fahrenheit. And it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet.
The cats loved the new place. Our Norwegian Forest Cat frustrated himself watching a squirrel through the front window…
while Pookie watched the neighbor’s backyard out another window.
Life was good for them. During times of no snow, there were mice in abundance outside. It was Pookie’s favorite place in the whole world and she never wanted to leave. In fact, she stopped going on Pookie Walks with us, and no longer wanted to go on Jeep rides either.
We’d been in the motorhome for the better part of a year. We would be in that house for two and a half years, only using the motorhome for camping and trips. It would be a very good two and a half years.