Ride~About: The Best Autumn Color in 30 Years!

When local folks say they haven’t seen such gorgeous autumn colors in 30 years, you know you picked a good day to take an autumn road trip into the mountains! Come along on this glorious trip to see Nature’s annual end-of-summer spectacle.

Today we’ll travel 130 miles round trip on the west side of Pikes Peak. From my home we drive 25 miles up to Colorado Highway 67 which begins our trip south. Then County Road 81 which is paved, and our true destination, Phantom Canyon Road. For 25 miles the road is dirt, the last 5 miles paved. This dirt road, which is part of the Gold Belt Scenic Byway, has rave reviews for scenery, but cautions for the many tight U-turns around rocks that are the canyon’s walls. The real warning is that those U-turns are only one-lane wide on a two-way road–YIKES.

Well, here we go, first along CO-67 S:

Looking west:

OK, I don’t take very good videos yet, but the glittering leaves as the wind blows are still glorious 😉

Fourteen miles later we turn left onto County Road 81. High mountain farm country, mostly cattle. See the lump of a mountain with a cloud atop? That’s Pikes Peak. Have to say, much better view from my home.

As we head downhill and turn a corner, yikes! The north end of the massive Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine, an open pit gold mine that covers seven square miles. Only the outer walls are visible since the pit is over 2,000 feet deep. We aren’t taking time to explore the Visitor Center or take a tour today, but will bear left ahead to continue on Co Rd 81. See the dark area near the top of the picture? Do you see the heavy equipment bulldozing up there?

Those monster machines certainly are miniaturized against those walls!

Further down the road, what a spectacular view looking east. See the largest mountain mound at center? That’s the west side of Pikes Peak, yup, much better view from my home. You can almost make out the new Visitor Center that opened for the first time this spring and part of the new cog-railway track, also began running again this spring after over two years rebuilding.

Needless to say a tight messy crop, but at least you can see it now.

On the outskirts of the town of Victor, near the turn for Phantom Canyon Road, is a self-guided tour of historic mining structures. They look like erector-set constructions to me, but then again I know nothing about mining. Will have to come back and explore the area one day.

Here we are! Left turn onto Phantom Canyon Road and the gorgeous mountains to our left as we leave the 20 feet of pavement for the dirt road drive south. Off we go!

A short way up the hill we see Victor sitting right against the mine.

The dirt road is wide and well maintained, what a nice surprise, but oh the dust covering my poor Highlander!

Much of the land here is owned and maintained by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), one of the agencies of the National Department of Interior. There is also private property scattered along this upper part of Phantom Canyon Rd. We saw some farms and a mountain resort along the way, but this was unexpected. I’ve never seen a pig ranch before!

We are beginning to see canyon walls!

What a nice wide pull-off area. In the shade my SUV doesn’t look as dirty as it already is, but hey! It’s just this kind of road and worse, offering wonderful adventures, that convinced me to buy a big all-wheel drive vehicle.

We are hearing lots of birds chittering above and finally saw one. A Mountain Chickadee.

Here begins the gnarly part of the road with two tunnels coming up and a number of bridges crossing over Eightmile Creek. The road follows the creek, but we’ve heard no water. Standing on one of the bridges, the creek is finally in sight. Not much of a creek this late in the season though.

The road gets narrow in many places, so I can only stop where it widens or has a pull-out area. The good news is there’s very little traffic. We’ve only seen a handful of vehicles, all coming from the opposite direction. There are many very sharp turns around rock walls, always one-lane wide! There is a small but adequate pull-over area on either side of the U-turn, but here’s hoping any car coming our way is going SLOW around the turn!!

This rock formation is so interesting. Looks like layers of pancakes.

The rocks are almost as orange as the ground cover.

One of the bridges is up ahead.

Was able to pull over here before that gnarly U-turn ahead so you can see the nail-biting turns, and there are LOTS of them!

Tight enough turn coming up to see our road over there. At least here we can see that no one is coming our way.

Here we are, the end of the dirt road is just ahead and what a scenic, slightly hair-raising trip. Luckily we only met one car at a one-lane U-turn. When that happens one vehicle has to back up to the created pull-over area so the other car can drive through. Those pull-overs are not very wide and some are along steep drops. So when I met a car coming around the U-turn, happily he was thoughtful and backed up. The pull-over was not far behind him with a massive rock on one end, but my pull-over was back around the corner which would have been VERY dangerous. Even with one car in the pull-over area, it is tight getting by, but we made it!

Other good news is we were going downhill most of the way, so put the Highlander in 2nd gear and saved gas too!

The pavement starts just ahead, and we’ll be driving through farm country near Penrose, CO. Penrose sits at 5,300 ft elevation, but for most of our trip we were above 9,500 ft. Now that we are lower, there are cactus, a landscape of low hills, no aspen, and few plants than change color in autumn, but from here it is just a short trip back into the mountains for the gorgeous colors of autumn.

Nice surprise–a cactus I’ve never seen before–Walking Stick Cholla cactus. They can grow five feet high and almost as wide. Definitely have to come back next June/July to see the flowers on these big prickly plants. Seeing something for the first time ever is such a fun way to end a great trip!

Hope you explore the beautiful autumn colors in your neck of the woods!

Until next time my friend . . .