In Colorado Day 4

Here is a CO sunrise. Taken from my balcony.

On day 4 we spent the morning driving around a “brown” mountains.  I think they call it brown because there are less trees on it than on some of the other mountains here. Much of the land is leased and the county roads that go through this area have cattle guards. We drove over quite a few cattle guards. We saw quite a few prairie dogs as well as a lot of holes.

Rocky Mountain Bumble Bee Plant

In the valley is one of the several cow herds we saw.

 

This is a picture of Mt. Princeton. that we took on our way home for lunch.

In the afternoon we went to St. Elmo, a ghost town were there are still some old buildings from mining days.Then we continued on up a “green” mountain on a very narrow road. We went a long ways  up and then there was a hiking trail that lead to a railroad tunnel. Nate and I started the 3 mile hike to see the tunnel but did have time to finish it. But we got some great views of the valley and we were at an altitude of 11,380 feet above sea level.  Our uncle has a GPS and it’s fun to use it to track your path, know your altitude and clock your distance and speed.

We passed the hot springs and all this very white rock. I guess some how the hot water running down the mountain turns this rock white. Pictured above and below are the chalk cliffs.

On the way we stopped by cascades.  Here is Nate out in a big rock in the middle of this creek.

This is a little waterfall in the misted of the big cascades.

This water was moving right along and was pretty cold.

The next few are pictures of the view from hiking the railroad grade. .

The path wasn’t all this bad but there were plenty of wet spots to go through or around.

It’s a long ways down!

We found a small patch of snow at 11,300 ft.