Listing Through Life

Cripple Creek is only five miles north of Victor, which I’d visited on Wednesday. Like the smaller town, it got its start during the gold rush at the turn of last century. And like Victor, it reeks of history. The difference is that Cripple Creek also reeks of gambling. Casinos have taken over and, as a result, the town has vamped itself up a great deal.

I drove down main street, taking photos through the windshield.

The elevation is 9,494 feet, and this had turned into a cold, blustery day. I parked on a sloped side street and went looking for something to eat.

I soon happened upon Kathy’s Deja Vu Diner (see what I mean about the vamping?).

There was a poor drawing of a piece of pie on the window, so I went inside and asked if the pie was baked there. It was. I ordered a slice of cherry.

It wasn’t the best cherry pie I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t the worst either. I also ordered a chocolate milk shake to go. It took the guy behind the counter a good 10 minutes to make it, but it was worth the wait.

I walked next door to Cripple Creek Candy and bought turtles the size of hubcaps for my wife and me.

A friendly guy welcomed me and I asked him how his day was going. He spent the next 10 minutes telling me how he and his wife had lived in Minnesota but retired there and bought the old store which was in pathetic shape but they’d fixed it up and had a lot of fun running it and his wife made the candy and if I didn’t like it I could bring it back and would I like to try her red velvet fudge (it was very good) and how they get enough business during the winter to pay the electric bill and there’s never been a day when they’ve been skunked although their slowest day they did $56 dollars worth of sales and on their best day $6,000.

I liked the guy and could have listened to him for a lot longer — especially as this probably would have meant samples of most of his candy varieties. But I had to be back at my conference for dinner at 6:00 and it was swiftly approaching 4:00. I asked him where I could most likely see the donkeys that wander about the town. (I’d seen their tracks in the mud along the road near where I’d parked.) He called the shuttle bus driver (who brings in the gamblers from outlying parking lots) and asked him. The driver said the donkeys were “up by the barn.” The shop owner pulled a baggie of brown pellets out of a basket and handed it too me. He said “Donkey food. They’re friendly, they’ll come right up to you.” I’d noticed a similar basket of baggies in the diner and wondered what they were. They hadn’t looked particularly appetizing.

I thanked my new friend and headed back to the car. When I walked outside, I couldn’t help noticing it was snowing. I saw somewhere that it was 32 degrees out.

I must have misunderstood my directions because I drove up and down pretty  much every street in town before I found the barn. The donkeys were out in a pasture, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to wander out there in the snow. (I left the pellets in my hotel room as a tip for the maid.) The fine folks of Cripple Creek like to pretend these donkeys are descended from those brought by miners during the gold rush, but I find this difficult to believe.

When I’d gotten in my car, I set the GPS for Colorado Springs. As it became apparent that I wouldn’t find the donkeys right away, I unplugged it and threw it in the glove compartment. It switched over to battery power and for the next 10 minutes, I heard a muffled voice saying “Turn right on 1st Street. Recalculating. Turn right on 2nd Street. Recalculating. Turn right on 3rd Street …” No matter how many wrong turns I made, the voice wouldn’t give up. For reasons I’m not sure I can explain, I found this funny.

I headed out of town and promptly found myself behind a line of traffic stuck behind a slow-moving truck. And so began my third adventure in time management.

The snow had started accumulating on the pavement just as the road dipped down to a lower elevation. By the time I hit Woodland Park, it had turned to rain — but a rain that slowed traffic considerably. Colorado Springs was dry — and packed with Friday rush hour commuters. I got to my hotel at 5:47, brushed my teeth, did what I could to comb out my hat-hair and walked into the conference dining hall exactly at 6:00.

My trip home the next day was without adventure.

There was just one problem with this road to Cripple Creek — I was driving it and not walking it. Otherwise it was perfect. There are few things I enjoy more than exploring — I refer to it as “the lure of the next bend.” This road is exactly the sort of adventure I love.

Mule Deer. When I first saw them, the nearer one was on the road side of a six-foot fence. As I approached, it leaped over the fence from a standing position, clearing it easily.

I may have passed a car or two, I don’t recall. There weren’t many. This is the only person I remember seeing …

I decided to skip a few conference sessions. This gave me about seven hours until the closing banquet. But what to do with the time?

I figured my best shot at a lifer was to look for MacGillivray’s Warblers along Hayden Creek which, as an added bonus, could only be reached by driving Route 50 through Bighorn Sheep Canyon where I might see … Bighorn Sheep.

I’d rafted the Arkansas River through the canyon back in 2002, with one eye out for large mid-stream rocks and the other for sheep on the rocky slopes. I saw plenty of the first but none of the second on that trip.

I recall being a little offended that somebody had ruined the ambiance of the canyon by running a highway through the middle of it alongside the river. But I’ve grown up since then, and it didn’t bother me at all that they’d put a river there next to the road.

The state of Colorado has little parks along the river which require a $7 parking pass. But the road also has wide shoulders every quarter mile or so that I could stop at for free. I opted for these. I headed west from Canon City, stopping about twice a mile to look about. I’d heard that sheep frequent the upper slopes of hills during warmer weather, so that’s where I looked.

I should have been looking at my gas gauge. I suddenly noticed I was down to about an eighth of a tank. It was 20 miles back to Canon City, and I was in no mood for a 40-mile backtrack. The next town of significant size was Salida, about 40 miles ahead. That was pushing it, but I decided to go for it. I figured all my stopping and starting wasn’t doing my gas mileage any favors, so I didn’t pull over anymore. I hoped there might be some tiny community in between where the residents use gas.

There was. It was called Cotopaxi, and the one business was a diner/grocery store/bar/gas station/who knows what else.

A sign by the register informed me that the community had been named after an Ecuadorean volcano. The surrounding hills reminded an early miner of his days in South America.

Hayden Creek wasn’t much further. I turned north on a road that soon became dirt as it entered San Isabel National Forest. Rain was forecast later in the afternoon, and the higher I climbed the closer I got to the clouds. (Yea, I know this is always true, but you know what I mean.)

The road ended at a campground cul-de-sac with about 15 sites, only one of which was occupied. The government wanted my money to park there too, but I didn’t give them any. I got out and walked along the creek for about 45 minutes, willing a MacGillivray’s Warbler to sing, but my power to compel birds to do what I wish has never been strong. It would have been the perfect setting for a lifer …

In fact, there weren’t many birds around, lifers or not — except Robins. Almost everywhere I went in Colorado, from desert to foothills to high-mountain passes, I saw Robins.

I headed back east along Bighorn Sheep Canyon, stopping every mile or so and scanning the slopes.

My quest began to feel pointless after a while. Still, I figured I had a better chance of seeing sheep by looking for them than by not looking for them … But I soon began to pick the places I pulled off based on whether there were fast-moving cars and trucks gaining on me.

I was nearing the end of the canyon and had already decided to head back to Colorado Springs by a different route, through Cripple Creek. I was driving slowly, scanning the hillsides more out of habit than hope by this time. A car came up behind me and I pulled off at yet another wide spot — and almost hit three Bighorn Sheep. But that’s a story for another post.