Today I headed up to the mountains with Brian and Carl to do a little photography trip to a few abandoned mines up in Park County.  The trip was a pretty good success although I think I’m still trying to dry out!  Jeans and rain soaked meadows are not a good combination.  No one to blame but myself as I was the one who forecasted some rain showers up there in the first place.  Anyway, we met up at my house and took off up 285 reaching Fairplay by about 12:45 or so and stopped at the Brown Burro for lunch.  I’ve never eaten there before but have chuckled at the name of the place the few times I’ve driven by.  Whoa momma, that place is insane good!  Totally homemade mexican food and the best enchilada I’ve ever eaten.  I would seriously consider driving back up there just to eat there again.

So the day was off to a good start!  We then proceeded further up 285 and then took another road toward Mosquito Pass.  On this road is where we reached our first target and first abandoned mine, the London Mine.  As we pulled up and started unloading cameras, I noticed some wildlife was already keeping their eyes on us.

Yuup, three moose.  Image a little blurry as I had to go to the telephoto lens and didn’t have time to tripod.  They bolted as soon as we started making our way closer.  So here’s the mine!

Of course, as we got in to the building, it started raining.  We took shelter and explored a little more finding another interesting wildlife discovery.  A porcupine!  Err, well, a dead one that is.

It's just sleeping right mommy?!

With no end in sight for the rain, we decided to walk over to another abandoned house that was about 100 yards or so away where we got a few more photo’s.

And now the nomination for gayest picture taken of the day:

With the rain still coming down we decided to get back to Carl’s Jeep (no the top wasn’t off and no, a gasoline fight didn’t break out) and move on to our next target, the Paris Mill.

The rain finally let up and the sunshine came down which was much needed as I was completely soaked from trogging through the wet brush while wearing the ultra absorbent material of denim jeans.  Like I said before, not a smart combination.  We loaded up and gave Brian a few mulligans as his navigation skills weren’t quite getting us to where we needed to be.  He recovered nicely though and guided us to the town of Alma where a quick jaunt up Buckskin Road brought us right to the Paris Mill.  This building was incredible!  I couldn’t believe how well in tact it still was.  So here’s some photos:

Pardon the last two pictures of me being a loser!  Hahaha, anyway that was definitely the highlight of the day for me.  We decided to go back to the car and continue up to Kite Lake and it was uhh, well, a lake.  Not much to see there.  We then rattled our way up a decent 4X4 trail to Windy Pass (I think that’s what it was called?) where the trees up there get blown over by the high winds but still grow somehow or they get rooted differently…I dunno, it was kind of cool though.

After that we decided it was time to head home.  We went over Hoosier Pass and found our way into Breckenridge and ate at Rasta Pasta.  It was okay but was up against stiff competition compared to the awesomeness we had eaten earlier at the Brown Burro.  I couldn’t believe how lame Breckenridge was.  Tourist central, yuck.  After dinner, we came home on I-70.

Overall it was a pretty fun day.  Thanks go out to Brian and Carl for taking me up to see some cool stuff in ‘their world.’  I’m not big on mountain pursuits, or really going to the mountains at all for that matter but today was pretty fun.  I look forward to taking them out east where I’d really like to get back to the Buckingham area to check out all of the other abandoned towns out there.  Maybe next weekend!

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