a brief stop in FairPlay Colorado

Museum In Fairplay Colorado.

By 8 o'clock this morning I was packed up and headed back down the miserable Jeep trail that got me up to this National Forest campground where I spent the night. Surprisingly enough I made it back to a paved road in less than half an hour with no damage visible. Of course its not always the visible damage that gets you, it's the internal damage to the tires that worries me the most.

I stopped in Buena Vista, the locals call it Bueny "rhymes with puny" and took a few pictures, it's really hard to drive through Buena vista without taking a few pictures it really is a pretty place, I guess that's why they named it Buena Vista.

Then it was on to Leadville which is really an interesting place and has more history you would think one town could have. It's an old mining town of course and was saved from ghost town status by being on a major highway, and realizing early on the value of tourism.

I'm boondocked in the National Forest tonight and since I'm kind of in the middle of nowhere I have no phone service or Internet so when you see this it will be Friday

Whenever you see a bunch of stones piled next to a river that means the river had a gold dredge on it back in the 1800s. The dredge dug deep into the riverbed pulling up the rocks and the muck and separating out the gold. It was an efficient way of placer gold mining but it destroyed the river for a long time.

Narrow gauge steam locomotive In Fairplay Colorado.

Courthouse In FairPlay.

What passed for computers in the 1800s.

It looks like boots were a popular style for women in the 1800s. And looking at some of the muddy, manure filled streets they had to deal with it makes perfect sense.

The Arkansas tumbles out of the high country and roars through the valleys below washing everything in its path downstream. Including tons of Texas tourists that pay good money to ride a raft down this river.