Listing Through Life

The Cliff House at Pikes Peak

Posted on June 4, 2017 by Roger

On our Jeep tour through Manitou Springs, we passed The Cliff House, an old hotel with a fancy dining room. The boss decided she wanted to go there for lunch. We drove in her SUV through Garden of the Gods and Manitou Springs, fighting traffic along much of the route we’d just traveled in the Jeep.

The hotel was opened in 1873 as an inn and stagecoach stop. After the gold rush, business slowed down but then picked up again when the mineral springs in town were marketed as beneficial, particularly for those with tuberculosis. The Cliff House became a resort for the wealthy in the early 1900’s. Floods and fires damaged the building at various times, but it has recently been restored and expanded. I have no idea how much, if any, of the original building remains.

Manitou Springs has grown up around the hotel — much of the view from the porch is blocked by a parking garage and apartment building.

We sat at a table on the front porch, which was pleasant. The hotel was not crowded. It made for a quiet haven from the crowds. We had the attention of three servers.

In this old photo that was hanging in the lobby, the woman sitting on the railing is right about where our table was, although it’s obviously a whole new porch.

My wife had lettuce-wrapped steak and I had a cheeseburger. The food was very good, but pricey.

If you aren’t terribly worried about price and you’re looking for a tasty meal in a posh setting, The Cliff House will meet your needs.

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Garden of the Gods Jeep Tour

Posted on June 4, 2017 by Roger

Our sister-in-law was in Denver for a realtor seminar with her boss. They had Sunday free, so they drove down to Colorado Springs for a visit. The boss drove us to Garden of the Gods in her rental SUV. We weren’t there long when she decided to spring for a jeep tour for the four of us “because we only live once.”

Our driver said his name was Gabby. He was a little guy who mixed a lot of personal history in with his tour info. His facts were often suspicious — for example, he told us about “long-horn sheep” and “paragon” falcons.

Our ride began with a non-stop loop through the Navigator’s property to see Glen Eyrie castle.

You can see the remains of the Waldo Canyon fire on the hills above the castle. Gabby told us the fence across the creek is there to catch rocks carried downstream during floods.

We then got in the single-file line through Garden of the Gods. The place was crawling with people, and we didn’t see anything that couldn’t be seen simply by driving through in a car. We learned that trees in the park included pines, and that hikers were OK as long as they stayed on the paths, but if they went off the paths they could run into rattlers (which must not be allowed on the paths).

Gabby headed next into Manitou Springs, which was also packed to a ridiculous extent.

It was here that we made our only stop. Gabby pulled over across from Wheeler Spring, named for Jerome Wheeler who popularized the mineral water that made the town famous. We were each given a shot glass at the start of the tour. We dutifully walked over and filled our glasses. The water had some mild carbonation and tasted awful.

We climbed back aboard the Jeep and wandered through the town while Gabby told us about his bad back and showed us the alley where he and his wife rented a 600-square-foot cottage for $1,000 per month when they first moved out here from St. Louis. I tried to pay attention, but it became challenging after awhile.

This is where the Manitou Springs mineral water bottling plant was. Surprisingly, it’s no longer in business. Gabby said there’s talk of starting it up again.

We drove back through Garden of the Gods to the visitor center. The white formation in the next photo is called “Praying Hands.”

The tour took an hour and a half. Gabby was a nice guy who wanted us to have a good time. He didn’t take us anywhere we couldn’t have gone on our own, and I’m not sure how reliable his information was, but if you want to visit the garden and Manitou Springs without having to drive, it’s an option. Or you can just visit me and let me drive.

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Juniper Valley Ranch

Posted on June 3, 2017 by Roger

Juniper Valley Ranch is the only Colorado Springs restaurant recommended by Roadfood.com. It also claims, or is claimed, to have the best fried chicken in Colorado. But getting there takes some effort. For one thing, it’s located about 20 miles south of the city on Route 115. For another, it’s only open during the summer, and then only on Thursdays-Sundays, and then only from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. And reservations are recommended.

I put forth the necessary effort and took my wife there on a Saturday evening. The outside is pleasant, almost oasis-like in the open Colorado PJ (pinyon-juniper) foothills of the Rockies. There’s a small gift shop in the back yard, with a small selection of crafts. Judging by the attention she paid us, the woman working the register must have smelled that we were non-buyers.

The place was busy but not crowded. We certainly didn’t need reservations on this night.

We were put in a small dining room with four tables and had it to ourselves for two-thirds of the time we were there. Our waitress was very nice and took good care of us.

There are only two options on the menu — fried chicken or baked ham. My wife’s chicken was dry and not terribly tasty. My ham was good. The rest of the meal was served family style. We had cherry cider (delicious), biscuits with apple butter (very good), riced potatoes with gravy (bland), coleslaw and okra casserole (fair), and apple crisp (good).

The history, the ambiance — I really wanted to love it. But it just wasn’t great. Good, yes, and fun to do once. But not great.

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May Natural History Museum

Posted on June 3, 2017 by Roger

When you drive south on Route 115 out of Colorado Springs, you pass a huge bug that stands on a hill next to the road. This is Herkimer, a giant West Indian Hercules Beetle built in the 1950’s to mark the turn-off for the May Natural History Museum.

Herkimer and the collection was located for a time at Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida then brought back to Colorado. While in Florida, he starred in this postcard. The exhibit itself used to tour the country, appearing at state fairs and other attractions, sometimes in a truck and sometimes in a tent.

The museum wasn’t large or fancy.

The exhibit space consisted of one room, with insect display boxes arranged to create narrow aisles that wound back and forth through the space.

The emphasis was on glamorous and impressively-large bugs — iridescent butterflies, garishly-colored cicadas, giant beetles and so forth. Signage was hit or miss — sometimes informative, sometimes entertaining, sometimes nonexistent.

Each bug was labeled with a small piece of paper. The papers were all the same size, which can give you a sense of scale. They gave the Latin name and the place and date that insect was collected. The earliest we saw was 1906.

We learned that some butterflies live in treetops in rain forests where they are impossible to capture. They were collected by luring them to lower levels with a concoction that included whiskey. It made them drunk and easy to grab. There’s a moral lesson in there somewhere, or at least a sermon illustration.

The large pink and yellow creature is a locust. They were captured by shooting them with shotguns filled with find sand.

Another sign informed us that all of the giant beetles are capable of flight. Some of them can fly at 40 mph and, if there is a collision, knock a person down and cause considerable injury. The big one on the right below (and in the center of the display in the picture above) is a Hercules beetle (like Herkimer).

Note the hummingbird suffering the fate of being eternally eaten by a bird-eating tarantula in the display below.

Many of the displays in the back half of the museum were near-duplicates of ones in the front half. It all was interesting, though perhaps not worth the $7 admission price. Much of the attraction for me was vintage-tourist-attraction vibe. It’s a great destination on a day when weather makes outdoor attractions unappealing.

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Bird #480 — Grace’s Warbler

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Roger

setophaga (from Greek ses, “moth,” and phagos, “eating”) graciae (discovered by Elliott Coues and named after his 18-year-old sister, Grace Darling Coues)

Monday, May 29, 2017 — 8:50 am

Cheyenne Mountain State Park, Colorado

This was about as easy as it gets. About a week ago, a Grace’s Warbler was discovered in a patch of ponderosa pine at Cheyenne Mountain State park, just south of Colorado Springs. It was reported repeatedly over the ensuing week, always in the same area. People were posting directions to the exact spot. Grace’s Warblers are fairly common in the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, but rarely make it up into central Colorado.

We were looking for something to do on Memorial Day that didn’t involve fighting holiday traffic up into the mountains. We headed down in the morning and arrived before too many hikers and bikers filled the trails. We strolled about half a mile through scrub oak on the lower slopes of Cheyenne Mountain. When we got to the trail junction near where the bird had been seen, I pulled out my phone and played the song so my wife could help me listen for it. Immediately, we heard the bird itself in the nearby woods.

I walked off the trail and found it within a minute. It was moving rapidly branch-to-branch and tree-to-tree through the ponderosa pines, usually near the tips of the branches.

I followed it as it foraged through the trees and soon found myself back on the trail where my wife had waited. It spent a couple minutes in a pine directly above where she was standing. After maybe 10 minutes, it flew off and stopped singing.

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Listing Through Life

The Cliff House at Pikes Peak

Garden of the Gods Jeep Tour

Juniper Valley Ranch

May Natural History Museum

Bird #480 — Grace’s Warbler

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