We decided to take a break from the Florida summer heat and travel to Breckenridge, a place where we first visited about 30 years ago. Our goal was to do some hikes at more than nine thousand feet above sea level for a change and test our golf skills with dramatic side mountain lies. We flew into Denver and decided to take the scenic route along US 285 and CO 9, avoiding interstate 70.
Along the way we visited the town of Fairplay and its South Park City Museum, a 19th century mining boom town. The museum accurately represents a mining town between 1860 and 1900. Forty-four authentic buildings are filled with over 60,000 artifacts. They portray most of the economic and social aspects of boom town life. Seven of the buildings are on their original sites.
Our first day of hiking was on French Gulch Rd hiking the Mineral Hill Trail to the remains of a rock crusher operation, the Reiling Dredge Trail – viewing the devastation from dredge mining, and then hiking the B&B Trail to the Country Boy Mine. Over$7M of gold was mined along with quantities of silver, copper & enormous amounts of zinc
On our third day we drove the Boreas Pass Scenic Drive – The 22-mile off road drive that leads you from Como in Park County, up over an 11,481-foot summit, down into Summit County and Breckenridge. The Toyota Camary rental survived the drive.
Off to the Keystone ranch golf course for a mountain challenge. All I’ll say is putting on the side of a mountain is a lot different than at sea level.
Back to hiking on our fourth day when we took an early morning hike along the Trollstigen Trail to see the Breckenridge Troll and the Illinois Gulch Trail (the pic of Sept. snow is really the remains of a Zamboni at the Breckenridge Ice Ring) as a warmup for our afternoon hike along the Lily Pad Trail. The Lily Pad trail is a 4+ mile round trip trail to an alpine lake.
Lily Pad Trail
On our way back to our condominium we spotted these two having an evening meal.
Our fifth day hiking plans were interrupted by an 80% forecasted chance of rain. But there was a bright side – we luckily saw on Facebook that friends from Pasadena were spending a week in Vail – so we drove over for a reunion 11 years in the waiting. Vail weather started out just cloudy, so we rented E-bikes (a first) to do a half-day ride through bike trails in the Vail area – about two hours into the trip the rain came (hard) so we raced back to the city center and dried out at Pepi’s Bar & Restaurant sampling spicy Bloody Mary’s and German food. After the storm passed, we tour the village and topped off the day with a great charcuterie board and of course some additional libations.
Stay tuned more from this trip to follow.
Travelling Photographer 