It's a Ghostly Kind of Day

We're way behind in getting travel posts published because we were having way too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

August 2, 2023

We woke up to a face-time call early this morning. Our grandchildren are early risers, and they are an hour later in the central time zone than we are here in the mountain zone. So we were awake early and ready to start a day of exploring. We started on a drive west of Buena Vista, to the Narrow Gauge Trail. This is on the rail bed that was built to support a train that brought miners up and precious metal down the mountain.

The rails have been gone for years, and it leaves behind the ghosts of trains past. It looks like the only passengers going up are flying overhead. One bird left a orange-veined feather behind. Nice!

This is an unusually flat trail for this mountainous area, and we enjoyed the 2-4 percent grade that the railroad required. From the trail we looked out over Mount Princeton for a great view of the Chalk cliffs.

It was while we were enjoying the views of this very flat trail that we realized this would be a great place to ride our bikes. The bikes haven't gotten any use since we arrived in the mountains. So we decided to save this trail for another day. After just a half-mile, we headed back to the pickup today.

We drove further into the foothills, where we stopped to check out Cascade Falls.

With a little rock scrambling, we could get right next to the river that helped to form this valley between Mount Princeton and Mount Antero.

Even though we have enjoyed a couple stops already, our real destination of the day was to the town of Saint Elmo. We found there to be miles of aspen between here and there.

St. Elmo is an old mining ghost town situated at the base of more of the high peaks of Colorado.

This is one of the most accessible and best preserved ghost towns in the west. It is a popular drive with beautiful scenery that attracts lots of tourists in the summer months. This town sprung up in 1880 when gold and silver were discovered in these mountains.

But when the metal market collapsed, it didn't pay to run the railroad to this remote location to transport people and gold and silver any longer. Most of the town's inhabitants rode the last train down off this mountain in 1926. Dishes were left in the sink and food was left in the cupboards as the 2,000 citizens made a mass exodus. The railroad company literally pulled up the tracks right after that last train ride.

One family chose to stay. The Sparks family would buy up the property in town as it went through foreclosure. They kept the roofs repaired so the buildings didn't fall down like most ghost towns. They also stayed around to protect their property from looters. So visitors today can walk the streets and see the 38 buildings that look much like they did in 1880.

As we walked the dirt streets, we found the church, and the school house, and the fire department. For some reason "St. Elmo's Fire" sounded familiar to us. A google search found that was the title of a 1985 movie--that had nothing to do with St. Elmo, Colorado.

After taking a picture for a three-generation family touring the streets of this old ghost town, they reciprocated and took a picture of us in front of the town's school house.

Just like the houses, the school was left intact, frozen in time.

Totally unrelated to the mining ghost town, we noticed many of these blue bags stapled to the trees close to St. Elmo. 

A sign on the community building answered our questions. These are blue bags of repellant that are attached to the pine trees in the spring to protect them from the pine beetle blight. 

While the old ghost town buildings were the main draw to most visitors, we saw that something else was drawing a big crowd on Main Street.

A colony of friendly chipmunks were the most popular citizens of this little ghost town. The local general store sells bags of chipmunk food for fifty cents. That's the hottest item for sale in St. Elmo.

Young and old chipmunk feeders were instructed to display a hand-full of seeds and sit very quietly in one spot. These very fat chipmunks stuffed their cheeks as they accepted the handouts.

The other popular wildlife sighting was humming around the entrance of the general store.

We spent some time taking pictures of the hummingbirds that were enjoying the nectar.

We even caught this one with its tiny tongue still hanging out.

The ruby throats glistened in the sunlight when they raised their heads.

Several different types of hummers were posing for pictures around the feeders, and Denisa felt obliged to take pictures of all of them.

St. Elmo was a fun place to visit, and we were surprised at the large crowd of people there on a summer week day.

As we headed back towards home, we took the longer scenic route to explore more of the area. Mount Princeton rose up straight in front of us, and it looked like the pickup would literally bump into this massive mountain.

Since we quit early on our first hike of the day, we decided to try another trail. From the beginning of the Agnes Vaille Falls Trail, we could look across the valley and point to the Narrow Gauge Trail that we were on earlier today.

Then we headed up on this scenic trail that was named for a woman that loved to explore this area. Agnes Vaille was a young woman when she fell while she was hiking by herself, and then froze to death in these mountains. This sounds like a ghost trail! Knowing that these hikes can be perilous, Mark still insisted on exploring the caves along the way.

We climbed up a very steep spur trail to get our first glimpse of the waterfall. It was so far away that we could barely see it. It was an underwhelming view, and we were a little disappointed.

Mark's theory is that "a waterfall hike isn't finished until you get wet from the spray of the falls." So we headed down from that viewpoint, crossed the creek, and then scrambled up the loose rocks.

Eventually we would both get wet from the water tumbling over the top of the mountain and spraying off the rocks below.

Now that was a successful waterfall hike as we wandered under another of God's wonders.

We were really enjoying all the tall mountain views and wonders around Buena Vista, Colorado!

We had to hustle to get back to town in time for the 5:00 Army band concert in the park. 

It was cut short when the lightning started at 5:45. We ran for the cover of the pickup as Buena Vista got the biggest rain of the summer. The rain continued for the rest of the evening as we had a soggy view out the motor home window. We wanted to take personal responsibility for bringing the much-needed rain to this dry valley. Perhaps the summer monsoon season had finally arrived after our ghostly kind of day.