The Cannibal of Colorado
Day 7 of A Big Road Trip
I had reached the pinnacle of my Big Birthday Road Trip: I had seen the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Now, my sweetheart had traveled to Gunnison to join me. From here on the trip was about what she wanted to see and do, not so much about me.
Lake City, Colorado is the site of Colorado’s infamous excursion into the dark side of the culinary arts - where Alferd Packer, hopelessly lost in a snowstorm, survived the harsh winter of 1874 by eating the the wannabe miners that he had been hired to guide across the Rockies to the gold fields of Breckenridge.
His story is a long one that I shan’t tell here in full, since this Substack is primarily about photography. I do have one photo of Packer’s pistol, now in a museum where the curator found it hundreds of years later in one of his collections. That is an entire story of its own, which I’ll tell when this Substack comes to that point in my life (hint: it all started for me when I found one of Butch Cassidy’s hideouts).
She wanted to see Lake City. We went to Lake City.
From Lake City, the highway proceeds over Slumgullion Pass, which is where I took all of my photos that day. But here is a phone shot of one of the signs down in town at the highway dept. historical marker of the event:
We were getting hungry and were thinking of buying lunch in town, but we found out that it would cost us an arm and a leg…
[cue a rimshot]
I went into a little country store to see what they had. There were some old men in there that all knew each other. And they were starting to talk about what to have for lunch. I was the only stranger in the room. I got the heck out of there before they decided that I was lunch!
And here’s an official Forest Service hiking trail sign, up near Slumgullion Pass:
This is all close to 12,000 feet above sea level. From the pass, we headed down a promising-looking Forest Service road to find a treat:
The Colorado Parks & Wildlife department started introducing moose to Colorado in 1978. They did so well in that initial transplantation, in the northern end of the state, that they brought more animals to this area in 1991-92. This animal is enjoying aquatic vegetation growing in one of two ponds that the Wildlife people built for them in Mill Creek, just below Slumgullion Pass.
It was an honor and thrill to see this bull, and I kept my distance. This shot was taken with the longest telephoto that I have.
Paid subscribers received a larger, high-res version of this photo a few months ago.
We proceeded on down the Forest Service road, which eventually became Cebolla Creek Road, to see more sights. At a Forest Service campground, I caught some cute squirrels:
Last year, I made a post here that was dedicated to the Golden-Mantled ground squirrel. One of the shots in that post was also taken here.
In a post made last month, I alluded to the geology of this area: the San Juan mountains. They are not part of the Rockies, though they abut the Rockies. The San Juans were formed at a different time, from different materials, and by a different geological process than the Rockies: the Rockies are an uplift that happened 70 to 40 million years ago; the San Juans are volcanics (primarily tuff, which is welded volcanic ash) that erupted about 27 million years ago.
This day’s trip was my first excursion into the San Juan volcanic field. I would come to appreciate the San Juans a lot more on future trips, especially after I learned a little bit about geology (which I hadn’t at the time of this day’s photos). Here’s a peak near the Continental Divide named Baldy Cinco. It’s kind of, sort of pretty:
And here’s another sight from somewhere on Cebolla Creek:
We got back to the RV park in the dark. It had been a very good day. The next morning, we began our two-day trip back home.
To be continued…
Cannibals prefer Democrats? #normalize cannibalism