Today was a travel day so we got up late, prepared in a very leisurely manner and departed Goldfields RV Park in Colorado Springs and took off for a change of scenery. We drove east on US-24 to southbound I-25 to CO-115 south through some really gorgeous terrain. We merged onto US-50 westbound and, after about 10 miles arrived in Canon City, CO. As we passed through town, we noted there was a Chinese restaurant with the name of “Fu-King” which we will certainly return to in order to check out if their food is as funny as their name.
We continued through town past a myriad of Federal, state and local prison facilities and started up a pretty steep incline to an area called Royal Gorge where we turned south on County Road 3A and into our destination, Starlite Classic Campground. Some earnest, but small-minded, individuals might be scared away by the initial appearance of this treasure. Those expecting an outdoor, jungle-like park will certainly be disappointed because this little oasis is perched at about 6,000′ and those kinds of parks just don’t exist here.
Those of us that think like me (and I am always right, some of the time) and blindly charge ahead will be rewarded with a stay in a old-fashioned park, complete with vintage trailers and automobiles that have been restored by the operator of the park. Those who neglected to bring their own trailer are in luck, as well, because several of the restored vintage trailers are available for rent.
The owners, Larry and Sylvia, have introduced to me what should be SOP for RV parks. Instead of large scenic ponds, marginal quality restrooms and all the sales offices inside nifty recently-built rustic buildings infesting the park, these folks have chosen to provide a big porch with numerous chairs and a free juke box during pot-luck happy hour or maybe two hours. This excellent and enriching ritual seems to kick off at about 4:00 PM. Good conversation with locals or travelers is available on the porch and right behind the porch is the office and store.
The store has some objects that I am not familiar with like an electric Jiffy-Pop hotplate that even provides the required pan shaking, a phone / singing figure of an Elvis with great thrusting hips and games of Trailer Park Wars, including bonus packs. The owners have embarked on a mission to revitalize a dead weed lot and turn it into a unique park with excellent service, ample RV site size, fully-functioning water, electrical and sewer systems complemented by a pool, a currently evolving gorilla mini-golf course and big, squeaky-clean restrooms. The easily frightened will need to cowboy up to come here but once they get used to the place, their personality defects will probably go away.
Ohhh! I stupidly forgot! The view from the happy hour venue / porch is absolutely stunning with tip-top views of the Sangre de Christ mountains on the horizon, the top and part of the deck of the Royal Gorge Bridge accenting the foreground and everything else in between looking very spiffy in the changing afternoon light. The porch is available for guest use I imagine 24 hours a day as long as you pipe down when folks sleep. Staff is onsite 24/7. We spoke with Sylvia when we checked in and she got us squared away with good answers about stuff to do and good places to eat before making sure to tell us we were cordially invited to the evening get-together. We went. It was great. Nobody got hurt and they had dogs. This is my kind of place.

We were so dazzled by the drives through Garden of the Gods Park yesterday that we decided to return today to hike around a bit. It was pretty hot today and we hoped for shade along our route.
The park has a few parking areas strewn about the loop road and we picked one and bailed out of Charlotte. The contrast between the superb temperature inside Charlotte’s air conditioned cab and the outdoors was immediately evident. We moseyed down the first trail we found and were almost instantly rewarded with gorgeous scenes inside this Colorado Springs gem.
After a few hundred yards, we approached a little plaza right next to a formation they refer to as Sentinel Rocks. Several other visitors were there and I stupidly struck up a conversation with a former Marine from Michigan who was visiting his son here. The Marine whipped out his cell phone and sat down next to me to show me numerous tiny pictures on his phone of animals he had killed utilizing a sniper’s blind near his house. He had pictures of dead skunks, dead opossums, dead deer and also was generous enough to show me pictures of his death blind where he apparently spends his winter in a dedicated attempt to kill all the fur-bearing vermin near his home. When he asked if I wanted to see more of this gore, I declined but that didn’t stop him from continuing on about all the little inedible creatures he had blown to bits with his guns. When I made a half-hearted attempt to get away, I thought he was going to grab me so I wouldn’t miss any of the carnage shots. Finally Peggy came and rescued me from the suffering and I was delighted she did so.
Escaping down one of the loop trails led us to absolutely stunning views of the salmon meat colored rock formations that appear to be sedimentary but turned vertical. There are big holes throughout the rocks that make them look like enormous Swiss cheese pieces. There are also some almost white formations that erosion has treated differently so they look like they have secret writing on them. This park is pretty neat, especially since it is free. Free stuff around here is extremely rare. Seven Falls at the Broadmoor Resort is $14 a head. The cog railway to Pike’s Peak is $37 a pop. The May Museum of bugs is $6. Even the visitor center at Garden of the Gods cost $8 but they reward you with an 18 minute movie in which alleged experts speculate on how the rock formations were formed although they are not sure.
From our hiking expedition through the park we returned back to Manitou Springs where we checked out the possibilities regarding non-resident marijuana purchases under Colorado’s enlightened reefer laws. We selected a very affluent-looking outlet and headed inside to browse. They checked our identification and ushered us into an impressive showroom with numerous dope varieties and vehicles for getting well. They offer buds, edible products, oil products for vaporization and even some sprays and rubs with alleged fantastic pain-killing properties.
Indica and sativa varieties are arranged on tables in little bins that you can see into with magnifiers and also that have little sniffing ports so you can sample their odors. It was marvelous. Since this was not a “medical” dope shop, the prices are higher than those catering to those miserable bastards with true or imagined afflictions requiring marijuana to alleviate the pain, boredom, anxiety or other crises pervading their fogged-out minds. If I lived here, I would almost immediately contract some ailment that could only be remedied by frequent and dedicated application of reefer cures.
We finished up our drive for today by checking out CO-115 which is the road from Colorado Springs to our next destination in Canon City, CO. It looks like that’s the way to go tomorrow instead of taking the interstate. The road runs along the foothills and also has unique and beautiful rock formations on both sides of the road.

We had a nice surprise last night. US-24, which passes within about 75 feet of our RV space here at Goldfield RV Park, is not heavily used by noisy traffic at night. It was almost nearly sort of quiet last night and we were able to sleep without the ear-splitting racket, rail traffic and tire whine that we encountered at the Bison Ranch in Wyoming. Whoda thought that a place in downtown Colorado Springs would be quieter than an RV park in rustic rural Wyoming? Our RV site is still skinnier than Twiggy and the wi-fi is almost slug-like for data transmission rates but we only stay here at night so we are okay.
We saddled up for some exploring today and decided to start by going to the local park called Garden of the Gods. Right after we left the RV park, we crossed US-24 and noted an interesting little store advertising some goods unique to this area. Due to the wisdom and efforts of Coloradans, marijuana sales and possession are legal here and the cute little store was offering eighth ounce units for $18 and full ounces for $110. The progressive laws here even allow non-residents to take advantage of the sales, with certain volume restrictions, which seems infinitely realistic and very reasonable unless you are among those that believe in the archaic, regressive and stupid former laws. Let’s see….we have no fixed agenda and we certainly have $50 or $75 to spare….uhhh….more on this later, perhaps.
Garden of the Gods Park access is free and we almost could not believe it. This park has spectacular red and white rock formations set in a magnificent garden with ample spots to park and hike within the park. We slowly crept along the few miles of roads admiring the varied views of the fantastic geology for about an hour and then vowed to return later in the day when the light would be different.
From Garden of the Gods we hopped back on US-24 westbound to make a return trip to Cripple Creek, a small community located at about 10,000′ elevation on the west side of Pike’s Peak. The drive there climbs rather steeply from our park in Colorado Springs and the roadside scenery is beautiful passing through conifer forests with big groves of Aspen trees that are beginning to turn colors as autumn approaches. Peggy and I went to Cripple Creek in 1979 and, at that time, it was a small town with about five streets, three of them paved, and some funky touristy stuff to do like buying shot glasses and panning for salted gold in a small wooden box attended by a ginger dressed up like a 19th century miner complete with embarrassing hat. In ’79 we stopped at a gift shop called the Brass Ass and purchased a souvenir shot glass. The main drag then was pretty cute.
Cripple Creek has changed rather dramatically in 36 years. There are many more streets, tract houses abound, all downtown business now seem to be casinos with entry alcoves reeking of cigarette smoke and there is no such thing as free parking. We found the Brass Ass again but the former tourist trinket shop has transformed into a large casino and we had to ask around to find out where to purchase a newer shot glass. It turned out that shot glasses were available in a small snack bar downstairs in the casino where we picked up the new, revisionist version of the old-style unit. The glass may be an bona fide old western authentic Chinese-manufactured specimen with cheap paint.
There were some gorgeous old cars cruising around town and we scoped out a few before departing town and heading for Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument which is only about a dozen miles away from Cripple Creek. Although the area scenery is dramatic, no fossils can be seen at this monument except in the visitor center where I was fortunate enough to be able to snap a nice picture of some fossilized fish puke. Using our federal access pass we got in free, saving another $10. We ate our picnic lunch near the visitor center surrounded by great scenery, colorful birds and the sound of the breeze passing through the trees.
From the fossil beds, we drove back east on US-24 and re-entered Garden of the Gods. We did right this morning vowing to return later in the day. The light had changed and the scenery had changed right along with it. This park is gorgeous and Peg and I are going back in the morning for some leisurely strolling on the trails between the rock pinnacles.

Differing from our usual travel day technique, we started the day by dining with our friend, Claude, that we knew in San Diego before he had to move away some five years ago to find work in this part of the world. We contacted him by phone a couple days ago and he returned our call last night. He had some business close to our camping spot and agreed to meet us for breakfast this morning.
We met at a place in Loveland called Mimi’s. The restaurant has very attractive furnishings but, unfortunately, they do not seem to have much talent when it comes to making breakfast. The food was nominal and the prices were pretty stiff for ordinary fare. I suggest to other diners that they seek food elsewhere. Nevertheless, we sat down and were able to hobnob with Claude for about 3 hours. He seems like he is getting along okay but, despite being born and raised in the Denver area, he has come to dislike what this place has become; a large metropolitan area with all the conveniences, disappointments, overcrowding and accelerating living costs that seem to pervade all mega-cities.
Peggy and I came through Denver, Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak area back in the late ’70s and the transformation is startling. Traffic is a nightmare. The drivers here seem to enjoy being pricks, butting into traffic where there is insufficient space, running red lights, gabbing on the phone while holding up traffic and generally being shitheads. The sprawl around Denver now seems to extend about 40 miles in all directions and the inconsiderate driving extends right to the end of the housing tracts. We passed through Denver on a Saturday this time but backups, stoppages and uncontrolled swerving by the local drivers made the passage miserable. We got through the middle of the city and the outbound traffic was a bit better than the inbound and after about 35 miles cleared up to a point where we could actually drive near the speed limit.
We pulled off I-25 and turned west on US-24 in Colorado Springs. A couple miles later we turned into Goldfield RV Park where we had a reservation for a three day stay in this locale. After our wonderful experience at Terry Bison Ranch and the all night howling traffic on I-25 adjacent to the park, we thought we had done well making our reservation at a place a couple miles from the hellish noise. We didn’t. Goldfield RV Park is located hard up against US-24 and the traffic noise is extraordinary. Straight-pipe Harleys, semi tractors and folks who seem to think that high volume bass stereo din is spiffy regularly drive the adjacent road, sharing their signature sounds with those of us stupid enough to book ourselves into this cacophony Hades.
Since we left late after our long breakfast, we arrived late here at skinny spot RV land. On the driver’s side of our trailer where the slide-outs extend to give us more living space the clearance to the next RV is less than 2 feet. On the passenger side of the Invader, we do not have sufficient room to extend our awning. The park has cable TV but not the channel lineup that would allow us to watch today’s NASCAR race. The wi-fi is sluggish when it works. I hope the scenery around here is good because the lodgings are a bit noisy and space, one of the true benefits of camping, is non-existent. We will endure but it is highly unlikely we will come back to this park because it is doo-doo.

We might have been able to do some exploring today but we both selfishly slept late and elected to loaf around until about noon. We decided we needed to get some provisions for the next few weeks travel because we have no idea when we will be in another place to access both Trader Joe’s and Costco within a short drive.
We picked up my prescriptions and a dumpster full of food at the nearby Costco and supplemented it with even more food from Trader Joe’s. Aboard our Barbarian Invader we now have provisions ample to feed a sizeable army, maybe more than once. We also joined Passport America, another discount camping service, but other than that, the rest of the day was pretty droll.

Today was an exploring day so we took off from our spot at Boyd Lake SP and headed west into the Rockies. From where we are camped, it is only a couple miles to US-34, the road through Big Thomson Canyon and up into Rocky Mountain National Park. The starting elevation today was about 4,500′ and we took Charlotte up and over the Trail Ridge Highway which peaked out at 12,200′.
Not far from our campsite, the traffic thinned out and we were able to maintain a pretty low speed which was great. The reasons for our slow progress were the extremely twisty road and the terrific scenery as we climbed up through the canyon cut by the Big Thomson River through pure rock. It is a very steep canyon, maybe 100 feet wide at the bottom and not too much wider 400′ up between the rock cliffs. Most of the drive is in the shade unless you drive through around noon.
As we drove up to Estes Park, we noted a few structures like bridges, garages, roads and residences that were wrecked by floodwaters with fractions of them still standing. Must have been an expensive spring. We emerged from the canyon and took the bypass around the really touristy, disgusting part of Estes Park which is located at an elevation of 7,500′. A few miles after leaving town, we crossed through the Rocky Mountain National Park entrance station where we didn’t have to pay $20 because we have a new federal access pass. We bought this gem in the Badlands and have already come out $30 ahead on federal entrance fees.
The road gets steeper past the entrance and continues pretty much without downgrades until we got all the way to the park visitor center up on the Continental Divide at around 12,000′ elevation. Charlotte ran like a top all the way up. We fooled around and took some pictures at the top of the world but pictures are poor reproductions of the absolutely stunning views from here. The road is way above tree line and the mountains are stark monoliths of rock with many-colored tundra, pikas (puny rodents), chipmunks, marmots and some Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep as the only inhabitants. The horizons are a great deal of distance from this vantage point. On the way back down, we pulled out at almost every turnout along the road and were rewarded with more magnificent scenery. We descended through some really tough but dinky conifers and some colorful aspens grimly hanging on in a very tough winter environment. We kept descending to a campground called Moraine Park where Peggy and I stayed on our honeymoon trip back in 1979. The scenery is just as gorgeous now as I remember it back in ’79. The magnificent scenery of this park makes it a true bucket list destination.
We headed down through Estes Park, this time with all the repulsive enterprise dedicated to separating suckers from their hard-earned dollars plainly evident as we traversed the main drag of town before continuing down the spectacular Big Thomson River canyon. It is an extraordinary chasm this river has cut and the evidence that the river rises during the thaw is widespread. There are very few roadside turnouts so this drive may be more rewarding for passengers than for the driver who must keep his eyes on the twisted road to avoid certain death from a plunge into the river or an abrupt stop into the adjacent cliff faces. This is a good road to creep along if you can get away with it because the views are very nifty.

We had a travel day, of sorts, today as we pulled up stakes at Terry Bison Hellhole in Cheyenne and took off south down I-25 to Loveland, Colorado. The distance we covered was a whopping 48 miles in less than an hour and we were lucky and the Garmin took us nearly to the campground entrance at Boyd Lake State Park.
We got an early start from Cheyenne mainly because the traffic noise at our former spot was almost biblical in proportions and the volume level seemed to increase in the early morning hours. We cruised into the campground only to find that, in addition to the relatively high nightly cost for scant amenities (+/- $25 for power only), there is an $8 charge, per vehicle per day, for entry past the park entrance kiosk. The park surfaces are paved roads and RV spots with thirsty grass in between spaces. We are located at the end of a loop and have a nifty view of Boyd Lake out our living room windows. It is very nice.
After loafing around for a while, we drove up to a Colorado visitor center and picked up a ream of publications about this state. Departing the VIC, we headed for Horsetooth Lake which is actually a reservoir but it does have neat rock formations along the edge of the lake. It might have been better if they named the place Horseteeth Lake because the brilliant, multi-colored rock formations around the lake look like a horse’s lower teeth except a lot bigger and not green. The road has some pretty steep sections and abrupt drop-offs adjacent to the road which made Peg a bit nervous because she is not too skookum on routes with deadly hazards about. We headed home from the lake after some exploring and got drunk so I don’t remember too much after that.

Our site at Terry Bison Ranch turned out to be worse than we expected despite their expensive and colorful advertisement in the Good Sam Campground Directory touting the abundant wonderfulness of the place. The ad may be attractive but it is merely an ad and turns out to be something less than accurate. We probably should have figured something was awry when we noted that the Terry Bison Ranch consists of 28,000 acres but the owners have elected to put the RV park, the campground, the restaurant, the general store, the shower and restroom facilities, the laundry, the child amusement areas and the stock pens right next to the northbound lanes of I-25. The views from the RV park consists of prairie that extends to the horizon uninterrupted by anything other than the park’s alleged amenities, large hideous billboards along I-25 and a bit of the stock pens.
The access roads at this alleged resort have big potholes and muddy spots that are liberally distributed among the poorly graded recycled gravel covering. I think the recycled road covering is composed of broken asphalt, sharp gravel aggregate with a bison poop binder.
The individual camping spaces are almost directly atop one another and after our neighbor pulled in, we could have easily slapped his face as he exited his trailer without leaving our trailer. The RV spaces closely resemble a Wal-Mart parking lot except Wal-Mart does not have acres of unmowed dead grass and the paving is worse here but the lighting is about the same; treated poles with ugly exposed streetlights giving the place a nice penal institution ambience. Additionally, there are quite a few trailers in spaces here that look like the residents have elected to live here and have brought all of their belongings with them including multiple rusty dead propane cylinders, bicycles that should be classified as unicycles since they lack the proper number of wheels, old lawn mowers, many colorful torn plastic tarps, shade structures without fabric covers or shade, ceramic pots that formerly held plants, myriad useless twisted fencing components and many broken trash receptacles that have blown over in the stiff winds that pervade this country. We could tell the cans had blown over when full because there are plenty of bottle caps, cigarette butts, used Q-Tips and various product wrappers well distributed throughout the dead grass and on the windward side of the grubby unpainted cabins that line the east side of the RV area. Many folks with dogs have left their animal’s droppings in the tent areas so others can enjoy them until they desiccate and blow away in the stiff breezes.
As the evening wore on, we noticed a clearly audible roar coming from nearby I-25 and, just when we thought it couldn’t possibly get any louder, a long freight train came by that made the ground tremble. Due to the relentless background racket, the only way it could be any less restful at night was if they moved the campground 100 feet west directly onto I-25’s divider, right next to the Union Pacific’s multiple tracks. Traffic, both trucks and freight trains, aggressively continue their activities throughout the night at a sound pressure level that makes slumber difficult except for the hearing impaired.
The guy who owns the place fancies himself as an engineer and he has made some very primitive-looking kiddie rides with exposed operating mechanisms without the pesky, nanny-state guards to keep fingers, legs and hair from becoming entangled in the wheels, sprockets and gears of Wyoming commerce. Nobody seemed to be taking advantage of these child mashers and I soon found out why; a ride on the Barrel-O-Death or the Whirl-and-Hurl is $4 a pass with probably a surcharge for amputations of those troublemaking limbs children have. A pony ride for the kiddies is $8.
You can be treated to a one-hour ride on one of the resort’s four-wheelers through the surrounding bison ranch for $30. The owner/engineer has created his very own train out of repurposed farm equipment and truck parts that scuttles about the ranch and one can take a dinner trip of two hours for a mere $95. We did spot some bison here but we walked to the spot where we could see them which is an oversight on the owner’s part because he missed out on charging us for the privilege of seeing some bison on a bison ranch. They also offer trail rides on horses of an hour or two for $80 a head as long as you are more than 8 years old and weigh less than 250 pounds.
We did not have the honor of using the restrooms or showers because we read some frightening news about the restroom cleanliness and maintenance on the internet after we arrived. When Peggy and I took a walk through this sylvan wonderland, I noticed some turds strewn about that made me believe that others may have found the restrooms disgusting as they had elected to crap on the dead grass instead of encountering the frightening hazards of public restrooms or showers that have not suffered the burden of occasional maintenance.
We had part-time access to the internet because they offer part-time wi-fi that seems to only fail once you have tried to repeatedly establish a connection and temporarily succeeded. Our dreadful phone was only rarely able to see the park’s wi-fi network but, strangely, our HP computer was able to stream video from wi-fi with only periodic rebuffering. Sometimes the streaming video would attempt to rebuffer and would fail so we would have to re-establish the connection before the video would successfully run for a while.
There is a restaurant here called Senator’s Steakhouse where patrons can get a $15 bison burger, a half-pound bison sirloin for $32, chili and cornbread for a mere $15, a $20 chicken fried steak and the full meals only have a $5 uptick if you want soup and salad. We chose to refrain from eating in this steakhouse because, again from the internet, we read about some Air Force personnel who came here to enjoy a serviceman’s discount and left with the trots that even Imodium couldn’t cure. They elaborated voluminously about the cloud of flies swarming the soup and salad bar which may have contributed to their choosing the meal without the $5 salad bar add-on.
My conclusions about this place are as follows: go anywhere else because camping, amusement and dining prospects here are bleak. This place is ugly. In order to not be completely negative, I can state that they do have propane sales here and service was quite prompt although I found out after getting my cylinder filled that the price for propane was the highest I have encountered in my 15 months of travel.

Today was one of the longest drives we have taken in one day since June 2014. About 300 miles separates Sundance from Cheyenne, WY, and we were fortunate to get an early start for us – about 8:30 AM we pulled out of our site and took off south down WY-585. After about 30 miles, we connected with US-85 southbound to a town called Lusk. This road goes up to about 5600′ and drops to about 3300′ along the way.
Lusk is a nice little place with cute houses, good roads and one of the finest rest areas we have encountered. They had a playground for kiddies, picnic shelters with shade structures and really clean restrooms that we utilized fully. From Lusk, we headed west on US-20 to Douglas where we purchased inexpensive fuel and turned south on I-25. The weather started looking iffy as we continued south on I-25 but the terrain was gorgeous with bizarre rock formations strewn along the way.
The good driving weather went south and it started to rain, sometimes with considerable vigor, as we approached Cheyenne. We drove through Cheyenne and about 7 miles later came to our camping spot for the next two days at Terry Bison Ranch. We are about two miles north of the Colorado border.
According to our Good Sam Campground Directory this place is supposed to be an RV resort and the prices for camping here are relatively high ($40+ w/ the Good Sam discount). At first glance, it looks like the description might be highly optimistic because the place does not look too good; bad roads, tight camping spots and not too clean. Vegetation, except some trees, is nearly dead. Tomorrow I will be able to give a better report.

Regrettably, this is our last full day in the Black Hills area. Peggy and I have both fallen in love with the scenery here and the abundance of animals roaming around is amazing. Today we took a short drive up county road 858 to Warren Mountain in the Black Hills National Forest just north of our base in Sundance and returned via the long route down Highways 116 and 585. The views were great and we saw one kestrel, some meadowlarks, a few bluebirds, about 10 deer and not less than 200 pronghorn antelope. We also got to meet Max, the Warren Mountain fire watch tower lady’s pooch who stays in her pickup during her shift because he is not comfortable climbing the eight flights of steel mesh stairs into the tower. The elevation of Warren Mountain, if you don’t climb into the tower, is 6666′. The view from the top of the mountain is superb. I suppose that’s why they put the tower up there.
After our short drive and a fuel stop, we returned to the Invader to do the dreaded laundry, dump the waste tanks, top off our water reserves and generally prepare for our departure tomorrow. We have what we consider a very long drive tomorrow (300+ miles) and need to get out of here early to get into the Cheyenne area prior to dark.
This part of northeastern Wyoming is absolutely stunning to look at although I imagine in a few months it may still be beautiful but it will also be minus 20 degrees outside and we certainly do not want to be here for that. I am extremely wimpy in weather below about 50F. Some might say I am wimpy all the time but they are liars, according to me.