Eclipse

Yes, I did manage to see the eclipse while in Colorado.

I was staying at the hotel in Canon City, with nothing to do.

So, a quick trip to Subway and I was armed with a foot long BMT sandwich and a large bottle of water.  I headed for Cripple Creek.

I drove up Phantom Canyon, an old narrow gauge rail-bed.  Not a great pathway but one of the few between Canon City and Cripple Creek.  It was a great drive up the sometimes four-wheel drive road, in the Nisson Sentra. At the appointed time, I found a nice pull off with scenic views, had my lunch and enjoyed the anti-climatic solar event.

And then all hell broke loose!

It began with a wind, growing in scale to well over 100 miles per hours (my best guess!).  Aspen leaves filled the air.  Pine needles were sucked off of the trees!  And then everything just fell to the ground.  Then came the hail .... covering a 17 by 20 mile area to four inches deep!  And then came the rain.  Huge chucks of the roadway was collapsing in the canyon, the hail swirling like styrofoam balls down the creek.  Animals (mostly deer) stood confused and panting in terror!

Such is the surprise of finding  yourself in an upper air tornado ...

And the sun continued to shine.  The river gurgled away.  The animals slowly limped away, bruised and beaten.  All I could wonder was ... "what the heck?!?!?!?!?!?"

Cripple Creek was a silver-gold mining area which came on-line in the 1890's after the huge silver crash almost destroyed the USA's economy!  In just a few short years this area produced the majority of the gold reserves in bank vaults around the world today ... And then war, union strikes, open warfare and the age of the mines was over.  Although it took 50 years to shut down mining completely, it was over  by the 1920's just the last gasps of a once productive area kept decreasing amounts of ore to the smelters.

Today, someone came up with the idea of piling all of the ore dumps into a MOUNTAIN of debris and then spraying them with cyanide ... yielding 1,100 ounces of gold per day!  So, very ugly - very rewarding - an ecological disaster in the making!

Victor, once a thriving mining town, now dead.
Cripple Creek is now a gambling mecca.

One nice feature of the Cripple Creek town area is its steam train which runs most of the way to Victor.  Beautiful scenery, great history related by the engineer/conductor/coal shovellor!  But, this is Colorado, so by 2:30 it is time for thunderstorm and rains .... it only lasts less than 30 minutes, but you can almost set your watch by it!

Time to move back towards Canon City but with Phantom Canyon washed out, I was forced to drive many hours in a huge circle to get back to the hotel.

Wore me out and I will never forget that storm!