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Lake City, CO 4 Wheeling, Ghost Towns, etc

Created on: 10/04/18 11:10 AM Views: 957 Replies: 1
Lake City, CO 4 Wheeling, Ghost Towns, etc
Posted Thursday, October 4, 2018 11:10 AM

A couple of months ago we received a call from Janet Moreland Adcock and had the opportunity to visit with her, her husband, Sam, and James and Karen Welch Dodd at the Dodd's home in Coldwater (Hagewood).  Janet & Sam do some RVing also and thought it would be great if we could meet up somewhere.  We first met up with them at Capulin, NM for one night but we had to run on out to California to visit with our youngest son and his family, a lady on the Hopi Indian Reservation in AZ and another friend in Mesa, AZ.  So about 10 days later joined Janet & Sam at Lake City, CO to do some 4 wheeling in the mountains.  We rented a side by side 4 seater 4 wheeler for two days planning on spending those two days on the mountain back, dirt roads.  Janet evidently got some bad food our first meal out and was ill for the first day but Polly & I were able to go ahead and spend the day looking for a site we had seen a couple of years earlier.  We accidently found it by taking the wrong fork in the road, if you can call it a road to the old ghost town of Carson, CO.  It is a very high point on a cliff where someone has placed a 5 gallon bucket of concrete in which they planted a flag pole with an American flag.  We have some photos but they are on our cell phones so will have to add them later.  The next day Janet was up and about so we rode the Alpine Loop, about 60 miles from Lake City, CO over Cinnamon Pass to the ghost town of Animas Forks and on to Silverton where we were able to eat at Handlebars Cafe, known for it's Chicken Pot Pies and Elkburgers.  Fortunately, Silverton now allows 4 wheelers into town but rigorously restricts them to two streets.  After eating we returned to Lake City via Engineer Pass.  Both of these passes are at about 12,500 feet above sea level and Engineer Pass has a 17% grade.  Everyone recommends going over on Cinnamon and returning on Engineer because of that steep grade, if you meet another 4 wheeler your passenger will not be looking over the edge just inches away, the passenger in the other one will.    Polly & I had breathing difficulty we attributed to the altitude.  Had never had the problem before, don't know if it means we will have to let that be the last one or not.  Made it back just in time to fuel up the wheeler, and even wash it, very dusty travel and return it to our RV park where we had rented it.  We've been told it is easy to make that run and be back in time in turn in a wheeler but we don't find that to be the case, so a 2 day rental that you can keep overnight seems to be better.  It really is a beautiful drive especially when the Asplens are in their glorious orange/gold colors.  We always stay at the Elkhorn RV Park in Lake City, not a picturesque one but nice and they now rent the 4 wheelers, side by side type, at or better than other rentals in town.  It was fun being with Janet & Sam and hearing some of his experiences having been a train engineer with the Union Pacific tho some of his experiences are as bad as those police officers have to endure.  Will try to add photos later.  Hope all our classmates are well but know at our ages there are problems.  Thoughts of a 60 year NHS reunion come to mind but no plans.

 
Lake City, CO 4 Wheeling, Ghost Towns, etc
Posted Thursday, October 4, 2018 09:15 PM

My ex-neighbor cousin always went to Creede, CO for the aspen.  Creede is not that far from Lake City and is just off the Rio Grande whose headwaters is not too far up in the mountains.

He often talked of Engineer Pass but I've never been.  Maybe I need to add this part of the US to my bucket list (iend of Sept and first of Oct)

Looks like you, me and Johnny Gongre are lonely up here on the website??

 
Edited 10/04/18 09:16 PM