June 2, 2012 - Gunnison, Monarch Pass and Leadville.

June 2, 2012 - Gunnison, Monarch Pass and Leadville.  Tonight finds us above Leadville - no small feat inasmuch as Leadville is 10,200 feet above sea level -  in Molly Brown campground, a part of the National Forest Service.  Molly Brown, you'll recall, was the wife of a wealthy Leadville miner.  She is best known for surviving the Titanic disaster and cajoling the passengers in her lifeboat to return and pick up other passengers swimming in the icy sea.  A play and movie characterize her as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."

The campground is nice.  It is located on Turquoise Lake, a large body of pretty green water.  There are no services here.   That's fine.  We don't need no stinking services.  Harvey has all we need. 

I cooked pork loins on the grill tonight along with potatoes and onions.  It wasn't bad.  I've had worse and paid a lot more for the privilege. 

We visited the old Farm and Home cabin this morning on the Taylor River.  It has changed over the nearly 40 years since we stayed there with a one-year-old Casey.  The green asbestos siding has been replaced with redwood.  The old one-car garage is now a two-car garage.  Otherwise, it looks much the same.  There were six bedrooms along a long corridor between the garage and the living area.  The home bends at a 45 degree angle where the living area begins.  The living room is lined with windows.  We had a good time there on our first family vacation. 

We crossed over Monarch Pass again coming back to Leadville.  Annie gets nervous on passes.  I noticed she was leaning toward the middle of the van.  "Why are you leaning this way?" I queried. 

"I am trying to use my weight to keep the van from rolling off into the ravine," was her response.  I don't think her slight weight mattered all that much. 

We passed a biker near the top of the mountain.  We stopped at the top and found his companion, a woman, probably in her sixties.  She was admiring Harvey and we struck up a conversation.  It turns out that she was raised in Fairway, KS, in a white house across from the old mission.  She and her husband, the straggling cyclist we passed, began their ride in San Francisco and planned to finish it in Pueblo, CO, another 100 miles or so from the pass. 

He soon joined us.  They are retired from the information technology field.  They mentioned that they have hiked the Mexico-to-Canada Pacific Crest Trail five times.  I looked it up.  That trail is over 2000 miles long and passes through six of the seven ecozones including high and low deserts and rain forrests.  I guess I belive them.  It seems pretty incredible that they would have done it five times.  They looked to be in shape to have done it. 

We may stay here again tomorrow night.  There is a lot of history in Leadville and we'd like to explore the town on foot.  And, why not?  We have nothing else to do.