Vacation: Day 11 - Grand Circle...

We made a grand circle today, starting by driving to Silverton, then up Stony Pass all the way through to state 149, then north to Lake City, and over the Cinnamon Pass back to Animus Forks and then to Silverton and back to Ouray.  It was a long, long day on the road: 13 hours in all.  But it was a fantastic day for scenery, wildflowers, and wildlife.  Also great: by choosing this out-of-the-way destination, we avoided almost all of the July 4th hordes.  We didn't see any beavers, but we saw dozens of beaver ponds and their lodges, as in the photo at right...

None of the wildlife we saw were close enough for a decent photo.  The highlight of the whole day was two separate viewings of fawns and their mothers.  First was a doe with twins that looked to be a few days old at most.  It was still early when Debbie spotted them, around 7 am, and we were able to watch them without interference by other people for 15 minutes or so. The doe was browsing on willow leaves while the fawns alternated between nursing, playing, and lying hidden under a willow bush.   When the doe finally moved off out of sight, we drove down the road for about five minutes and Debbie spotted another doe with a fawn.  This time the fawn was even younger – wobbly on its feet, and the doe was still cleaning it off.  We're guessing that this fawn was close to newborn.  Delighted, we watched the two of them for another ten minutes or so, until they moved off into the willows.  Beautiful.

As if that wasn't good enough, we also saw lots of other wildlife.  Deer were especially easy to spot; we saw perhaps 20 of them today.  One sighting (other than the fawns!) particularly stands out: an adult fording a large and raging stream, making it look effortless.  We saw dozens and dozens of chipmunks, but one caught our eye as looking a bit odd, and we got it in our binoculars – it was a mother chipmunk carrying a baby.  It looked a lot like the marmot mother we saw carrying a baby.  We saw several marmots, including one crazy marmot that ran straight toward us and ducked under a rock just a few feet away.  A pika showed himself, and we saw pine siskins feeding on dandelion seeds.  We even sighted a couple of mountain bluebirds (seeing anything other than robins and white-crowned sparrows is unusual enough to record!).  To top it all off, on our way up Cinnamon Pass (from the Lake City side), Debbie spotted three adult Rocky Mountain Goats, over a half mile away and 1,000 feet higher than us.  We were able to watch them for over a half hour, with stabilized binoculars.  It was even better viewing than the first group she spotted a few days ago, though this time there was no baby.  These goats were shedding their winter coat and looked distinctly grubby.  While we were watching the goats, something like five or six vehicles and three hikers passed us.  Only one vehicle had any curiousity at all about why we were standing next to the road staring up at a distant mountain with binoculars.  That carload was very interested, and jumped at our offer to show them the goats.  Debbie even shouted an offer to view the goats to a couple of passing cars, but they weren't interested.  Sad...

The dogs had a great time today, too.  We let them out to go bounding around a knoll at 12,000 feet south of Stony Pass – what joy and happiness!  Race in particular loves to look around out the open window as we're four-wheeling around.  His nose is going a mile a minute, which surprised both Debbie and I, as he's never before shown much interested in scenting...

Midway through the day, we passed through Lake City (east of Ouray, across the mountains).  It's a tiny little resort town, very old-fashioned in appearance and spirit.  We stopped at a local BBQ diner that had takeout and got a couple of burgers – outstanding.  The town had some kind of a shindig going, involving an amplified announcer and lots of hooting and hollering.  We're guessing a rodeo, but we don't know for sure.  Lots of homes had red-white-and-blue bunting up, and every home and business was flying American flags.  We saw quite a few locals dressed up for the holiday as Uncle Sam or other patriotic characters.  We felt almost like we'd gone back in time to the '40s or '50s, except that cell phones worked and there was an espresso joint in town...

Here are the plant and flower photos from the day:

Vacation: Day 10 - Imogene Pass and Yankee Boy Basin...

The highlight of today's drive was sighting two does and their fawns.  The two fawns were no more than a few days old, and quite possibly less than a day.  We were the first people up the Imogene Pass road from the Ouray side, and we saw quite a few deer and marmots – nobody had scared them off yet.  We didn't get close enough to those two fawns to take photos, dang it.  We actually got to see them twice – after the first time, I saw what direction they headed off in, and then found a road headed there.  After a few minutes drive, we came around a corner and there they were again!  This time, the doe took off at a rapid pace, and the little fawn bounded after her like an antelope.  It looked to Debbie and I like the fawn wasn't used to this mode of locomotion – it looked sort of like the fawn was saying “Whee!  Look what I can do, mom!”  But we could have imagined that...

We were on the road by 6:30 am, and saw nary a soul all the way up Imogene Pass (despite it being a long holiday weekend, and the presences of a bazillion four-wheelers in Ouray).  I guess most people just don't get up early.  My web research indicated that Imogene Pass was open, meaning that we could use it to get to Telluride.  I had planned out a nice loop, having us come back through Ophir Pass to the south.  But my web information turned out to be bogus: Imogene Pass was very much closed.  At right you can see the last plowed part of the road.  We were foiled by snow – a whole lot of snow!  I don't think this will be open while we're still here, dang it.

On the way back down Imogene Pass, still on the Ouray side, we began to meet people.  First a few, then more and more. We drove back on the northern-most fork of the road that connects Imogene Pass to Yankee Boy Basin road, and met some more people.  Then it began to rain.  As we drove up toward Yankee Boy Basin, it began to rain hard, and to hail.  Inside Yankee Boy Basin, it was like an L.A. traffic jam – jeeps and ATVs everywhere.  Pullouts that usually hold one or two cars had 7 or 8 cars parked in them.  On one memorable occasion, we watched one jackass park his jeep on the (narrow!) road, behind several other jeeps parked nose-in.  Then he and his wife walked down to use the outhouse nearby.  Meanwhile, vehicles are backed up in both directions as they shared what little remained of the road beside this obliviot.  By the time we got halfway through Yankee Boy Basin, Debbie and I were thoroughly irritated and ready to drive back home.  Oh, and I forgot to mention – the flowers in Yankee Boy Basin are still not in bloom.  And it was still raining and hailing.  Sheesh!

But if we could just forget the Yankee Boy Basin portion of our trip, today was actually very nice indeed.  Spectacular scenery, some flowers (but nothing like yesterday), lots of beautiful waterfalls, and great weather in the morning.  The rain doesn't bother us, though it puts a crimp in my photography.  The holiday crowds...that's another story.  We don't enjoy that at all.  Oh, well, just one more day of that!  Here are some more scenes from today's trip:

And several waterfalls:

And the few flowers I managed to get today:

Vacation: Day 9 - High Altitude Adventures of the Unplanned Kind...

We set out today with our friends Dick and Marsha Y. to go up Corkscrew Gulch, go as far as we could up toward California Pass, and then take a bunch of side-trips on the way back down to Silverton.  Our plans went well until we traveled up the road toward California Pass.  Just two days before, we had been turned around by snow when attempting to come up from the other (California Gulch) side.  But today when we got to the top, we met someone who told us that the pass had been cleared – so we could go all the way over the California Pass and down California Gulch.  So much for our carefully made plans – an instant revision took place!  Now we went through the pass, down California Gulch, then up Placer Gulch – where we had been turned around by snow just yesterday.  On the way up that gulch, we met some people who told us that it was open now!  So all the way across we went, and met up with the road from Animus Forks down to Silverton.  What a nice day it was – great scenery, great weather, and great company!

As if that wasn't enough good luck, we also discovered the very best wildflowers we had seen up to this point in the trip.  We ran into vast fields of dense wildflower carpets, including several species we had not yet seen in bloom, like the phlox at right.  Lots more photos down below, as usual...

The one slightly disappointing part of the day was the lack of wildlife.  We did have an enjoyable 15 minute or so viewing of a marmot colony at the top of Corkscrew Gulch.  There was an enormous male, several females, and several babies playing in the rocks.  But only saw one deer (on a distant meadowed knoll), no elk, no mountain goats, no moose, and no pika.  But the rest of the day more than made up for this...

We explored several sites with interesting mining artifacts, including another steam boiler:

Here are some scenes from our day's travel, including a few shots of us and our friends Dick and Marsha, taken by a friendly fellow we met at California Pass:

And here are the plants and flowers: