2016 (Our Momma Remembrance) Colorado Trip: Day Two

Day 2: Wednesday, October 5, 2016

If you have read any of my previous blogs, you know how much Doug and I love eating breakfast at IHOP or as it used to be known, the International House of Pancakes. And as it happened, there was one on our way to the interstate (I-70) on the west side of Denver. After a nice, leisurely meal of bacon and pancakes, we were on the road westbound before 9 AM. Our journey on this day would take us to the small town of Carbondale, Colorado, a journey of around 185 miles, but not before we took a side trip, north of I-70, to see the Gore Mountains. Although this range does not contain any of the fifty-eight “14ers,” as the mountains that top 14,000 feet in Colorado are called, it was an area my brother wanted to check out for fall color. Still, there were indeed, some impressive, jagged, snow-capped peaks within this group of mountains, with Mount Powell topping out at 13,534 feet.

As we traveled west on I-70 Doug spotted four female sheep, or ewes, near the exit to Georgetown. This town was the setting for the 1986 John Denver film, The Christmas Gift, a heart-warming, not-so-well-known film about a widower and his young daughter on a Christmas/business vacation to Colorado. A Territorial Charter Municipality of around 1,150 people, Georgetown is the county seat for Clear Creek County and sits at 8,540 feet in the Front Range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The charming little settlement, nestled in the mountains near the upper end of the valley of Clear Creek, is about forty miles west of Denver. The aspen in that area, at about 8,500-9,000 feet had peaked and, in some areas, been stripped of their leaves by high winds. As so often happens, unfortunately, high winds can wreak havoc on the delicate aspen before they reach their peak color. We found out about that on our 2020 trip to the Wind River Range in Wyoming.

As we approached the Eisenhower Tunnel, around fifteen miles west of Georgetown, the snowline extended down to about 11,000 feet, where we encountered it at the tunnel. The Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnels are actually two tunnels on I-70 about sixty miles west of downtown Denver. The Eisenhower Tunnel covers the west-bound lanes of the 2,150-mile long interstate highway that traverses through the middle of the United States from Baltimore along the east coast to the western portion of Utah.

The year 1973 saw the dedication and opening of the westbound bore, or the Eisenhower Tunnel, which was the highest vehicle tunnel in the world, climbing 11,155 feet above sea level, at the time of its completion. The Eisenhower Tunnel was the first of two bores to open to help facilitate easier transportation between Colorado’s eastern and western slopes. The second, the Edwin C. Johnson Memorial Bore, was completed six years later.

Officially designated the Eisenhower-Edwin C. Johnson Memorial Tunnel, this dual-bore, four-lane vehicular tunnel carries I-70 traffic under the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. At an altitude of 11,158 feet above sea level, it is the highest vehicular tunnel in the United States and one of the highest in the world. The westbound bore was named after famed-general and thirty-fourth president of the United States of America, Dwight David Eisenhower. The eastbound side was named for long-time U.S. Senator and Governor of Colorado, Edwin C. Johnson. The Eisenhower Memorial Bore is 1.693 miles long while the tunnel named for Johnson is just a bit longer at 1.697 miles.

Another ten miles saw us leaving the interstate at the small town of Silverthorne, Colorado. With a growing population of just over 5,100 living souls, this Home Rule Municipality is second only to Breckenridge in Summit County.

It took approximately forty minutes to traverse Colorado State Highway 9, from Silverthorne to Kremmling following the Blue River for the most part. As we traveled north through the valley bordered by the Ten-Mile Range to the east and the Gore mountains to the west, we saw that the aspens had definitely peaked and much of their foliage had been stripped. There were, however, pockets of orange and orangish-red aspen there. Much of the valley was covered with sagebrush, and the Gore Mountains, although not as well-known as others, were still impressive. The Blue River State Wildlife Area, to the west of CO-9, was about halfway through our journey, and it did contain some excellent aspen viewing areas.

Colorado State Route 9 ends at US Highway 40 in the small town of Kremmling, population of 1,560 as of 2021. US-40, coming into town from the east, passes through before turning north by northwest just a couple miles past Kremmling. Just a handful of minutes north of town brought us to Wolford Mountain and the Wolford Mountain Reservoir. The 12,296-foot peak is in the Rabbit Ears Range to the right, or east, of US-40. Another couple of minutes brought us to the junction with Colorado-134, an east-west thoroughfare that took us over Gore Pass (9,527 feet) to the town of Toponas situated on Colorado Highway 131. This highway is a slow, winding mountain road of a little over twenty-seven miles.

As Doug noted in his writings, access to the Gore Range is limited, and we only traversed the first, or lower, half of these mountains, but they are definitely worth taking another, longer, look at, time permitting. I’ll let his words do the talking:

“Because of their exceedingly steep profile, access to the heart of the Gore Range is limited, but initial impressions of this rugged range warrant further inspection.

*** For future reference, research the route that circumscribes the northern half of the Gore Range: (1) from Kremmling via US-40 over Rabbit Ears Pass (9,426 ft.) to its junction with CO-131; (2) take the latter highway south to Toponas and (3) take CO-134 back to its junction with CO-9 (just north of Kremmling).“

From  this wide spot in the road, known as Toponas, the trip back to the interstate took about forty minutes to travel the thirty-three miles to the CDP, or census-designated place named Walcott, Colorado.

South of Interstate 70, lie some of the most beautiful of all the Colorado Mountains, the Sawatch Range. Well over 100 peaks top out at over 13,000 feet, with fifteen of them being 14ers. Mount Elbert, at 14,440 feet is not only the largest pinnacle in the range, but it is also the highest mountain in the state. Only Mt. Whitney, of California’s Sierra Nevada range, stands taller in the lower forty-eight. Other mountains of note are Mt. Massive, just a mere twelve feet shorter than Elbert, Mount of the Holy Cross and the Collegiate Peaks, three of which are named after famed Ivy League Schools, Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

We arrived at the Carbondale KOA just as dusk was approaching and proceeded to set up camp in our quarters. With a full kitchen, I was able to take advantage and whipped up a nice supper for the night, using the oven, while frying a batch of bacon and sausage. I waited until the next morning to bake the biscuits so they would be fresh for our first real day of traveling through the Colorado branch of the Rocky Mountains. Since we wanted to be sitting at the edge of Maroon Lake when the sun rose, we took our showers before turning in for the night.