America 2009

Leadville to Eagle

Woke bright and early on the 19th; actually we got woken up bright and early by the bikies leaving from the motel. Seems Leadville rises early. Was very brisk out, a cool –1°C was the overnight low! Made an important phone call to reserve some seats on the Leadville and Colorado Southern Fall Photographers Special. Had only found out about it the evening before after arriving in Leadville so my timing was immaculate. Was told they would start boarding the train at 9:30am and depart at 10, so at 9:29:59am I drove past the depot looking for a park. Even at this stage the lines were amazing! Apparently the train seats 260 people and I doubted that in a town of 2600 there would be 260 people on their train, but boy was I wrong! Got a seat right up the front on the open carriage, right behind the loco. Loco was a trusty old EMD GP9; similar in many ways to our DA/DC class. The seat was freezing cold; even by the time out 10am departure rolled around my bum was still freezing...

Aspen to Leadville

Woke up early on the 18th, after a fairly broken sleep (probably too worried about porcupines and bears!) and packed up camp. Headed back up the road to East Portal; sounds fancy but really it's just the eastern parking lot of Maroon Bells forest park. Went for a walk up there, more amazing scenery. The aspens were really starting to come into colour.

After that we hit the road, back through Aspen and it's road works, then out onto highway 82 and over Independence Pass. What a drive! What a pass. It's only open during the summer, and closes pretty much as soon as first big snow of winter hits. Here we are driving up one of the narrow sections, barely wide enough for two vehicles (vee-hickles as they say) to pass. And here in the States, roads this narrow are as rare as $2 bills.

 

Glenwood Springs to Aspen

Firmly in Colorado now, and boy has Fall hit here! The aspens are turning more and more golden with every passing minute. We decided to head up the hill to Aspen, home of the rich and famous. Before that though I had some scoping to do on the other side of the river; had seen something I had to investigate. Eventually got over there (Glenwood Springs have roadworks in all the most inconvenient places) and found this:

Was fairly excited to see an old Chicago and North Western loco at the front of the LUGO (laid up, good order) queue. These locos are all locos which are in good order, but are stored pending a rise in the economy. Also saw a few ex Southern Pacific locos there too which was good. Then it was back on the road to Aspen…

Was an ok drive, basically just highway that jumps between 35 and 65mph often with no pattern or warning. The further up the mountain we went, the fancier the houses. I was confused as to why...

Moab to Glenwood Springs

It's goodbye Utah, hello Colorado time! So we headed out of Moab and hit the highway for Green River. Soon we were cruising along Interstate 70; all things considered not a bad interstate. It's much quieter than the I80, and doesn't have those **** head high barriers on both sides preventing you seeing any scenery, and it was quiet.

Many moons ago I remembered stumbling across a ghost town out this way, so I was curious if I could find it. My maps weren't much help, but I remembered it being around Cisco, UT. So I pulled onto the old highway when I saw a sign for Cisco, with the intention that I'd stop there and ask if there were any ghost towns around. Haha. This is what greeted me at Cisco:

Think I've found my ghost town! We weren't the only ones here gawking at the town; another car stopped and asked us what on earth had happened here. To expand a bit… the whole "town" of Cisco looks like some kind of junk yard. Ther...

Arches National Park

Big event for the 15th was Arches National Park. We packed up the tent, hopped in the car and trundled over there. Drove past the US Dept of Energy UMTRA project site (a 19 year uranium mining clean up project) and into Arches. Even from the visitors centre the view is impressive:

We then drove up a fairly steep access road to the park itself. Part way up there is an info board illustrating the tectonic plate movements that created the valley.

  Note how the section in front of the road slopes under the section aft of the road. Pretty impressive.

From the same vantage point I could make out an UMTRA train, which ships the uranium mine tailings from the old mine site between two national parks, and the disposal cell at Green River. The containers are all special US DOE nuclear approved ones. The scale of the project is amazing; two loaded trains of containers every weekday until 2019. ...