The Rocky Mountains had been on the list of vacation places that Sharon, my wife and I have always wanted to see. The oportunity presented itself when I had a three day break between classes at the National Center for Employee Development, a US Postal Service training facility. This facility is located in Norman, Ok. Upon doing some checking, We found that Pueblo, Co and the Rockies were within a day's drive. So we each packed an overnight bag and went sight seeing. The view in the photo at the left was the first time that we were able to identify Pike's Peak, Colorado. We were getting near Pueblo, Co. when we took this picture.

The picture on the left was taken somewhere west of Fowler, Co. At this point we were able to differentiate between the clouds and the mountains.

Pike's Peak, near Colorado Springs is shown in the picture on the right.

Scenes from the Pike National Forest. A few other people were out siteseeing as we were.

I was unable to learn the name of this mountain peak.

Another nice scene, except for the power line, a little further down the road.

I felt sad for the people who live here. While I had seen fire damage that the pictures in the above frame don't show very well, it was wilderness land and not someone's home. It doesn't show it in this picture, but for about one hundred yards around this house, all of the trees had been cut down and removed.

These pictures were taken near, as the crow flies, the Breckenridge Co. area. Note the area below the power lines in the picture at the left. There was so much beauty here mixed with great devastation.

As one can see by looking at the Pike's Peak frame above, the day started out as a beautiful fall day. As afternoon approached, the sky became mostly cloudy and a rain/snow mix descended upon the landscape. By the time we arrived at Monarch Pass, it was all snow and the road crews were plowing the road. Visibility was poor as one can see in the picture of me standing next to the "Monarch Pass" sign. The van's thermometer read 32 degrees F. (0 degrees C.) and the only coat that I had with me was a light wind breaker. I jumped out of the van while Sharon took this picture from inside the van where it was warm. We then carefully retreated to the valley where it was a more fall like 50 degrees F (10 degrees C).
I say carefully because there were locations that were without guard rails and if one were to skid off of the road, it is hard to say how far one would fall before he/she stopped. We didn't get to see what was beyond the mountain that day. Perhaps another time.

At the risk of this frame being anticlimactic, I left the story of getting there and back to Norman, Ok. for last. The top three pictures are scenes from along Federal route 270 through the Oklahoma panhandle. At one point I picked a prominent landmark on the horizon and noted the odometer reading. When we arrived at its location, it turned out to be a grain elevator in a small town twenty-two miles from where we first saw it.

A short time after we started on the second day of the trip, we passed through LaJunta, Co., and I noticed an Amtrack train at the town rail depot. I added that part of the story to my Trains pages.
This cluster of four photos were taken along route US 50 heading West bound.

We stayed in Pueblo, Co. the second night of our trip and then beat a hasty retreat back to Norman, Ok. through the south west corner of Kansas and clouds of yellow butterflies. They made such a mess of the windshield that we could not shoot pictures while on the roll and we were running out of time, so this is the end of the pictures.

Shortly after we turned north bound into Colorado from the Oklahoma panhandle in the evening of the first day of the trip, we saw this beautiful sunset. We were on the way to Lamar, Co. where we spent our first night on the road. So this was a fitting end of the first day and the close of this story.

Other vacations that we have enjoyed

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