Leftover Colorado, part one (June 2013)

Written by ceddammit

During the spring of 2013, after more than 20 years living in Colorado, I made the decision to move to North Carolina by the end of the year. You would think that 20 years would be enough for me to see everything I wanted to see around the state, but no. There remained vast stretches of southern and western Colorado that I had not yet seen. So, in late June 2013, I set out an 11-day trip to “finish” seeing the state. Of course, I didn’t really finish it. Several years later, I completed two more “Leftover Colorado” trips (in 2020 and 2022) and I have at least one more planned. But I infest digress. I started the 2013 trip with a drive from Denver’s western suburbs to the town of Alamosa, Colorado. This would normally be a four-hour drive, but I allotted an entire day; this was after all my first full-fledged trip with my Good Camera, and I intended to stop and take a lotta pictures on the way! My first photographic stop was Kenosha Pass. I posted those photos last week. West of Kenosha Pass, the highway descends into South Park – a vast sea of gently rolling grassy plains, surrounded by the Rocky Mountains. In addition to its natural beauty, South Park is also home to many abandoned farmsteads and other dead buildings. Please enjoy this sampling of South Park scenery…

Park County Courthouse in Fairplay, Colorado.
Built in 1874.

After crossing South Park, the highway turns south, following the Arkansas River. Along the way, I decided to explore the town of Salida. I quickly discovered that downtown Salida and the residential neighborhoods next to downtown are a cornucopia of Victorian Era buildings, many of which are still fancifully painted in the “gay” color schemes of the 1890s. I was thankful I had allocated the entire day for this drive, as I spent hours walking and photographing Salida. Here are some (OK, most) of the gems I encountered…

Many Salida homes are quite subtle with their Victorian attributes…
…others are a little less subtle…
…and some are downright flamboyant.
OK, so they aren’t all gems, but I think this one’s still pretty cool.
The Bridge of Sighs, it ain’t.
Cool buildings, cool bikes…what more could you ask for?
Well, how about a cool car? (This appears to be a 1970-something Plymouth.)
I’m not sure whether this is a tiny house or a giant dreidel.
When you’re not looking at the buildings, you can look at the mountains instead!
The side of this building has seen better days…
…but the front has been beautifully restored – especially the cornice.

Let’s offset all that Victorian beauty with some good old-fashioned industrial ugly, shall we? Just north of Salida sits an area known as Smeltertown. Here’s what it looks like:

Hey, it’s Homer’s pig crap silo!
At the time, this was my NEW CAR. Now I’ve had the beast for a decade.

I left Salida and continued south to and through the San Luis Valley – another sea of plains surrounded by the Rocky Mountains. But the San Luis Valley is more vast, drier, and flatter than South Park. By this point, I was starting to run low on daylight, so I didn’t take many pictures on this last stretch to Alamosa. But I did get these…

A gigantic male chicken? Hmmmmm…I have no comment.

That’s it for Day One of my 2013 Leftover Colorado tour. I took nearly a thousand pictures on this trip (more than I took on my 2020 Yellowstone trip!), so it should occupy the next few ThrowBack Thursdays. Stay tuned…

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