Well, I guess I can get the fever anytime. Nice days, decent weather and a back road I have not been on – mostly inspired me that I needed to make a trip. We didn’t start till late… I wanted to have it done before noon but I was the only one up early enough to get out… I fixed me some breakfast (bacon!) then waited and waited and caught up on reading and well we left about 10:00 or a bit later… I had not been on the Mt Herman road and figured it was an easy trek and if we did it right could have lunch in Woodland Park then circle through the springs and get cheap gas and home… That all worked out fine…
Heading up I grabbed this pic..
Lots of trails in and around and think it is the Monument Rock … We headed on up and passed multiple hardy individuals riding bikes up the road… slow going as it is pretty steep… but they were riding… I would be dead on the side..
About half way up you start to get a view of Pikes Peak to the south…
On the first few miles there were a lot of narrow passages and winding road with multiple switchbacks and I guess Sherrie was not sure of my driving as at one point I wanted to pull over and get a picture of the “down” side… at the point she was worried I was still 8 to 10 feet from the side… so I got out and walked over to get this.
It is a ways down if you miss a turn,,,
Along the trail you pass “under” this leaning rock… I wonder how many more years it will stand before erosion and ice kick it over or some stupid traveler?
Really interesting and different rock formations and this is aimed back out toward the open area.
It is that time of year and lots of flowers starting to pop out…
I was surprised to find way more people camped at the very upper end of FS 320 and a lot more on the Rampart Range Road..? We had been on that last summer and seldom saw any campers out there?
Yep one of the campers near the top and had a tent off to the left… also noted several bags hanging in the trees?
We made it on to the Rampart Range road and then on down to Woodland Park… I was hungry but should have waited a bit longer. We opted to stop at one of the places on main street and I tried their chili burger with green chili… I ate it but it was not so good and not what I expected… so no pics… It wasn’t “Green Chili” rather it was loads of chopped green chili. Now the chilies were ok but would have been much better had they been cooked down with a bit of pork into a sauce? oh well, live and learn… I figure that place was pretty good as it had a lot of people there but most of them were ordering breakfast stuff (at noon). That looked much better so if we have to stop there again we will try breakfast stuff…
We came on down the road into the springs as I needed gas and Sherrie wanted some yarn that the Walmart in Woodland didn’t have and the next two shops didn’t have neither did the Hobby Lobby in SW springs… About that time the chili was working over time on me so I figured I needed an ice cream cone from McD’s and a huge unsweet iced tea for the road… as we are about to leave I spot this sign…
In todays world I suspect he is like the Maytag repairman… Not many carburetors left in this world..
We found the yarn at a Michaels after making a huge circle in south springs then zipped up I-25. As usual there was a huge slow down so we had to get off way early and take the back streets up to the Sam’s gas… then as it turns out we got back on I-25 and on back to monument and again as normal just about the county line road (our turn off) there was a huge back up… I could see cars stacked for miles to the north… glad we were getting off… So were a lot of other people likely going either over and up 105 or over east and up 83?
Now if I could just get my stuff up here and find a decent fishing spot that is not overrun and not too far off? Next trip up we will have to check out the Rampart Lake and a few of the other roads on the range…
WD0AJG