Happy Trails with Mike & Ellen Taylor

This is our last day at Cripple Creek and we have really enjoyed this part of Colorado. We were never able to work up to long hikes--too exhausting--but the campground is large and hilly, and we take several walks around the area every day.

Early in the week we drove to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. A beautiful drive over yet another winding, scenic road. We listened to an interesting and enthusiastic national park ranger talk about the geological and more recent history of the area. There are many massive petrified stumps of redwoods that lived here millions of years ago. This area contains the largest number of insect and plant fossils anywhere in the world, the result of 3 large active volcanoes that were west of Florissant.

Yesterday we drove into Colorado Springs for a day of errands, and yes, over a winding beautiful road. For someone who's afraid of heights, Ellen is getting used to looking out over the tops of trees and down into deep canyons and valleys! Colorado Springs is a pretty little city in a spectacular setting; we had to drive around Pikes Peak to get there from Cripple Creek.

We've had our first bad adventure here in this campground. We've seen evidence of mice in our bottom kitchen cabinets! Some sort of sonic contraption that you plug in is now in place, plus sticky traps and clip-type traps. We see much less "evidence" and hope we don't take any with us when we move tomorrow! We told Max we were terribly disappointed in his not alerting us to those rodents.

We've added more pictures to our Colorado folder, so please check those out. We're on to Rifle in western CO, then back north into Wyoming. See you on down the road.