Listing Through Life

We stopped at Rudy’s Bar-B-Q in Colorado Springs after coming down from Pikes Peak. We got there mid-afternoon, but the place was packed and the wait was about 20 minutes. I ordered pork spare ribs. My wife had brisket. The meat was amazing, although I prefer my sauce a bit sweeter. We split an order of potato salad, which was also very tasty.

It’s an eat-with-your-fingers, paper-instead-of-plates place. I neglected to get a photo of the food, so I guess we’ll have to go back.

We stayed up top for maybe 45 minutes. Clouds were moving in fast and it looked like it might storm, but rain didn’t materialize until evening.

We stopped at an overlook for a few minutes.

At Glen Cove (11,440 feet), there’s a mandatory brake check. If your brakes register hotter than 300°, you have to park for a half hour. My friend has driven the mountain many times and knows to use low gear. As we pulled up to the station, he told the ranger that he guessed his brakes would register 74°. He was right on the button.

We pulled off the highway for a bit and toured the Catamount Reservoirs.

There was still a long line of cars by the toll booth as we pulled out. We decided it was a lot of fun but that, on future trips, we’d try to avoid summer weekends.

I’m not going to attempt to put my photos in any sort of order.

We enjoyed the view for a while until the cog railroad train headed back down. Our friend told us this was the time to go inside the Summit House for donuts — while part of the crowd was gone. We bought a half dozen, and then we got two more later when my wife bought a mug. They’re clove flavored and very greasy, but you just can’t go up Pikes Peak without eating one or two. We wandered out the other side of the Summit House and took some more photos, then headed back down.

Monument to “America the Beautiful,” written by Katherine Lee Bates after visiting the mountain in 1893.

Remains of the original summit house with the current one in the background. A new one is in the works.

Looking north with the Catamount Reservoirs on the left and Crystal Reservoir on the right.

Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs to the east. I think Garden of the Gods shows up as some little bumps in the center.

Downtown Colorado Springs and the plains to the east.

Our friends drove us to the summit of Pikes Peak. It was a beautiful Sunday after two days of rain, and a lot of people chose the same adventure. Here’s the mountain from I-25 near the Air Force training field.

Another shot of the mountain from Route 24 in Manitou Springs. The Incline can be seen as the stripe up the side of the mountain in the foreground.

There was a long line of cars waiting at the toll booth. It costs $15/person up to $50/car.

The road begins climbing immediately, although views of the summit made it seem like we weren’t anywhere near the mountain. It’s 19 miles from the entrance to the summit.

I didn’t get a good photo of this sign in passing, but you get the general idea.

There are guardrails on a lot of the curves, but not all of them. It’s disconcerting when all you can see out the windshield is sky.

The bare spot in the distance is the gold mine above Victor.

The summit was packed. We found a spot and joined the throng.