It was a series of mistakes on my part that lead us to Eldorado Canyon State Park in Colorado on this particular Sunday in June. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, we were up at the butt crack of dawn to watch the sunrise over Red Rocks Amphitheater. After that, we retired back to our AirBNB to get a little bit of rest.
Being so close to the mountains, I was itching to do some exploring, but I admittedly dropped the ball as our excursion leader. It turns out to get into most of the National Parks in the area (like Rocky Mountain National Park), you either need to get there before 9AM or you need to have a "Timed Pass".
Apparently the timed pass system is something the parks use to limit the amount of traffic in and out of a park at any given time. I'm sure @livinguktaiwan had to deal with this system on her recent trip, but it's something that slipped right past me.
Unfortunately, we had already missed the window for getting into the national park, so I started looking for state parks that we might be able to access. While the rest of our group was eating breakfast and falling back asleep after our morning trip, I was mad at work on my laptop trying to find a new destination for us.
Thinking back to my home state of Michigan, I realized while the national parks might have a timed pass system, getting into a state park might not be as difficult or complex.
Eventually, I settled on Eldorado Canyon State Park. It was just a short 30 to 45 minute drive away from Thornton where we were staying and the photos I found on Google Maps looked pretty stunning. I'm sorry to tell the folks in the #silvergoldstackers group that despite the name, we didn't find any legendary cities of gold here.
The six of us piled into my rented Ford Explorer and we made our way west towards the mountains.
Once we got outside of the city, the drive to Eldorado Canyon was actually quite beautiful. It was winding and twisty and all sorts of fun. My nieces (who apparently suffer from motion sickness) didn't enjoy it quite so much, but we all made it.
I pulled up to the park ranger station and the first thing the worker asked me was if I had a reservation. A what? This is a state park, I don't need a reservation do it? Sure enough, I did. The ranger explained that we could drive all the way back down to the closest town to get signal and apply for a pass or park down there and ride a shuttle up.
We were already here, I wasn't going to drive all the way back down the hill to the town. We turned around and found a local parking lot to apply for a timed vehicle pass. Let me tell you, it was quit the process. It took three people to figure it out and my brother in law had to enter all kinds of info including his SSN to finally get the pass.
Then we have our next problem... We got our pass for 11:00 AM and it was only about 10:30. Knowing the worker was clearly a stickler for the rules, we had little hope he would let us in before the 11:00 window. We sat in the parking lot waiting for someone to tell us we had to move waiting for 11:00 to come around.
At 10:55 we pulled up to the ranger station window hoping for the best. Once again he asked if we had a reservation. Yes we do! I don't think he even glanced at the QR code on our phone before he was handing us maps to the park and waving us through! Pretty funny!
We were finally in though!
We drove the very narrow road back into the park a bit before we found a place to park near the trail we had planned on hiking. There are miles of trails in Eldorado State Park, but we settled on The Fowler Trail. It looked pretty easy and considering it was only our second day in Colorado, we were a bit concerned about over exerting ourselves and altitude sickness.
You might think we were being silly, but the elevation of the town where @mrsbozz and I live is about 617 feet. Meanwhile the elevation of the town where our relatives live is about 900 feet. Eldorado Canyon ranges from 5800 feet to 8800 feet, so you can see that is a significant difference.
What we failed to take into consideration is that my oldest niece and my brother in law are deathly afraid of heights. As you can see in the photos above, there is a pretty pronounced edge to the trail and the drop is significant enough that it would hurt if you fell.
The Rattlesnake trail is an offshoot of the Fowler trail, but as you can see from the second photo above, it's a bit rougher and more demanding than the path we were on. We decided to skip it. Meanwhile, my brother in law and one niece hugged the edge of the cliff as close as they could to stay away from the other edge. You could sense their anxiety anytime someone would come from the other way and they had to get over.
The trail was actually quite busy. I forgot to mention yesterday that we saw ladies with weighted vests running up and down the stairs at Red Rocks. I understand why people come to Denver to train in the thinner altitude. It really gives your lungs a workout. We were on a pretty easy path and even I was getting a bit winded.
The other thing we failed to realize was that Eldorado Canyon State Park is apparently a huge destination for rock climbers. You can't see them in the first photo, but that second one is a zoom in of the first photo and you can clearly see some of the climbers. They were literally all over the rock faces as we were taking our hike.
About halfway down the trail was this huge rock slide area. It was crazy and impressive just how high up the rocks went.
I just realized how long this post is getting, so I am going to have to split it up into two parts. Don't worry, I have a ton more photos to share with you. You would have been scrolling all day if I didn't stop here. Tomorrow is Friday, so I will be doing my regular Friday Finance post, but check back Monday for the continuation of our time at Eldorado Canyon.
Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports
Is there still some gold left to be found? I mean if I went there and kept searching, are the odds in my favor?
You might get lucky if you panned in that stream along the road. Then again, you might spend a lot of time and get nothing to show for it! I think people do still find stuff occasionally, @thebighigg would probably have some good insight on that.
That's cool :)
A good rule of thumb when looking for gold is to look where people have found significant quantities of gold in the past. If you pan in a river that doesn't have much gold you'll be wasting your time.
I see, thanks :)
I know there are some spots in Colorado that people work, but the richest places will have gold claims on them already. Plus there are a lot of places that have almost not gold so you would be wasting your time looking for the motherlode is it there in the first place.
Thanks for the insight! I knew you would be the right person to ask!
You'd be really surprised at how closely this looks like Russia.
That actually does surprise me. Like the Ural Mountains? Are those in Russia?
Yes, actually. It was the Urals that I was close to when in Russia.
Well it looks like it was a workout, especially for the altitude there in Denver. Beautiful scenary though, so appreciate you sharing the trip there. Did you happen to run into any wildlife there?
Not there, but at another park we did.
Hopefully you can grab some shots of them.
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Sorry to hear you missed entering the Rocky Mountains but I often feel like everything happens for a reason. And maybe the trip to Eldorado Canyon was even better! For me, they both look stunning. But I don't believe in coincidences and random happenings in life :)
Just wait, we made it another day and as awesome as Eldorado was, the other park was even better!
Looking forward to it!
Lots of beautiful pics, thanks for taking us along virtually 😂 !DUO !DOOK
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My Pleasure!
Wow, amazing photos, bozz!
First time I've heard about this. Interesting. I wonder if Japan will implement something like this in the future for Mt Fuji. Traffic there is increasing a ton every year and it's getting to the point where the litter is overwhelming and it's becoming dangerous due to so many people.
I heard a while ago that there is a gas station where you can see a great view of the mountain in the background and they started closing it down so people can't loiter and take photos. I think it was a gas station anyway. I am quite certain it was Mt. Fuji. Thanks for stopping by. Believe it or not, these are just foothills, the good stuff is still coming!
The natural scenery is very beautiful, my brother♥️♥️
I am very entertained, thank you for sharing🙏🙏
Thanks for stopping by. It was literally breathtaking to be there!
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Wow 😲 amazing view 🤩🤩🤩
Yeah, it was just stunning!
What a good place, good high quality photos, greetings from Argentina!!!!!!!!
Thanks, I appreciate it! I've heard you have some pretty impressive mountains down there yourself!
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We went to the Rocky before the peak season so luckily we could just rock in 🙃 but we did have to book a timed entry for the Arches in Utah. Luckily you found out about it before you went there otherwise it would have been a wasted journey.
That trail inside the park does look a bit scary, I'm not a big fan of heights either, if there are shrubs or trees on the side and I can't see below then I'm a bit better. I just try to pretend the drop isn't there 😅
Ah, okay, that is cool that you were able to get right in. You are right, it would have been pretty annoying if we had driven up to Estes Park and hadn't been able to get in. The trail was quite fun for me. I can understand why it was scary for some of the others though.
Wow! @bozz, what a great post, and spectacular photos, beautiful views. the adventure of going in the company of you virtually to that beautiful and interesting place, left me exhausted. because of the rush I forgot to take sunscreen, and good sneakers (although I don't like them much), but this is worth it, for the next one I will do it. Grateful for showing that spectacular part of elcañon dorado, waiting for part 2.
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It was my pleasure. This was a really cool place. I have a lot of respect for the people who were climbing the mountains. I decided to stick to the nice relatively flat paths!
High altitude takes time to adjust to, hiking up along ledges I fully understand the concern not being one for walking under those conditions.
Gorgeous views all around, well worth jumping hoops to get into the Canyon with excellent photography telling the path taken.
!BEER
Thanks, it was definitely a journey for us! I think everyone was really happy in the end. I'll talk a little more about that next week.
Rock formations are stunning!
Enjoyed region at the end of the day in good company.
beautiful state park! That rock slide is crazy! Wouldn't want to be in the way of that lol
No doubt right! I just kept looking up and it seemed to go on forever. I can't imagine what it must have been like while it was happening.
That's a nice park with some good trails. I heights aren't your thing I could see that path being a little more than distressing! I love the mountains, and the Rockies have a lot to offer! Just a bit of trivia, the mountain range of the Rockies runs from Canada down to the southern end of South America!
Great shots, you can very easily get winded at those altitudes coming form 600 feet. Last time I was at 8000 feet it was very hard to do any serious physical exertion!
All the parks have that system now, especially the National Parks. It does make them less crowded which is nice, because places like Zion's in Utah and Yellowstone in Wyoming/Montana are really crowded anymore.
What a trip! I can't wait to see more pictures! Looks like you guys made the most of that trip!
It's quite scary how many photos we took and how early I am in the trip even after a couple weeks of posting. I love it though. I shouldn't want for content for the next couple of months which is great. I knew they went up into Canada, but I didn't realize they extended that far south! Impressive!
What an amazing natural place 💯
It really is!
Despite the inconveniences with the parks and reservations, I'm glad you were able to do your tour of those beautiful mountains, I'm so scared, I would be like your nieces hahaha. Greetings from Argentina!
Too bad there wasn't a city of gold :D
I know right! I was totally hoping for some riches to stash in my pockets! It was a beautiful area.
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