Note to self. When pitching a tent do not pitch it on an incline side ways. A nylon sleeping back on top of a nylon thermarest pad might as well be a slide. I did not sleep well at all. The temperature continued to drop until it got good and cold. The last time I got up and checked the bike the thermometer read in the 30's and it got alot colder later in the evening.

I got up around 8. Getting dressed in that small tent of mine is a challenge.

Ha was making breakfast. She is so failing at getting rid of me.

The plan for the day was to tour the Bachelor Syracuse gold and silver mine. This mine had been operational for decades and had been turned into kind of an educational attraction.

Outside there was an old school blacksmith that sold what he made.

Unbeknownst to me, Bruce bought me a spork the guy had made. Cool! (I really like hand made iron items.)

The view from outside the mine was spectacular.

(as an aside, I am so going to rewrite the image manager in the htmleditor component I use. Uploading and sorting these photos the way I want using the current one is just tedious as hell ... and as I write this I am being stalked by a deer which is moving ever closer to me from behind. It's currently chomping on a small tree not more than 10 yards away ... but I digress.)

...

Writing these entries takes time and the "save draft" feature I built is not working for some reason on YML.COM. I've just been told there's a hike happening.

... some hours pass and I have some more time to write ...

The tour started at 11. There are many mines in the Rockies, most apparently abandoned and are very dangerous to explore. There was a placard of the hazards present in mines.

The tour was pretty simple. It consisted of a short cart ride in and a talk.

The tour was full, our group having 18 people. It meant getting up close and personal on the little cart train.

(I think Ha was getting a little worried. ;) )

The mine "adit", which is the term used for a horizontal mine as differentiated from "tunnel" which has openings on both ends, was some 3500 feet through hard rock.

The slope is uphill to allow the massive amounts of water that collect the mine to drain. The stream out of the mine was a good several inches deep.

Calcium could be seen leaching out of the walls. At 1800 feet we disembarked for a talk about the history of the mine and the techniques used. Miners had crazy hard lives.

The guide demonstrated some the techniques, such as the single jack, a hammer and drift approach to boring holes into rock very slowly.

Normally I don't enjoy these kinds of talks, but this guy did a fantastic job. He was able to convery very vividly the condions under which these miners worked. Interestingly, in all the years that the mine had been in operation there were only two recorded deaths. For mines dating back to the 1800's, that's apparently a very good record.

Of course, there needed to be the obligatory group photo.

During the day, the attacks had continued where "that girl" would instigate attacks on "that guy" from all angles. Surreptitiously, I caused all the noisemakers to occupy the first car figuring the could be contained quietly in the mine, but foiled again I noticed I had guided them to the lead car. Foiled again.

I sat outside and pondered other ways to stop the attacks, while the noisemakers went on a gold panning expedition.

We coraled the troups back into the transports. On the way back I caught a pretty good shot of the view over Ouray.

It also appears that someone built what should be my house.

We got back to the campsite. Everyone else wanted to head to the hotsprings. These aren't actually natural hotsprings, but instead are swimming pools fed by hot spring water. We had passed them on the way back and they looked crowded. I was feeling quite ill. I guess I had eaten something that disagreed with me. Guts in a painful uproar, I decided to stay behind.

Once all the noisemakers had left, the campground was eerily quiet until a group of incredibly loud ravens showed up. They would fly over directly over me only a couple of feet over my head. Of course, they refused to sit still to let me snap a photo. Cursing, I eventually caught one sitting still.

These things can be seen flying around all over the place. I guess crows/ravens are to Ouray what squirrels are to College Park.

Tired out of my mind, guts still bothering me, I decided to make some espresso. Civilization.

I sat and wrote for a while. I had gotten some apple slices at a grocery in Gunnison. Between that and the espresso and copious amounts of water I started feelinig better.

I finished my work and decided to check out route 550 out of Ouray towards Silverton, a 24 mile run that has over 400 corners. Figuring there wouldn't be many place to stop I set up the helmet cam and set it to take photos every 2 seconds. During the run out and back it took over 1200 photos. I tried to pick out the best ones.

From below the Ampitheatre Campground you can see why they named it that. When I first approach the grounds, I couldn't imagine a camp ground could be up there. Our spot is virtually at the boundary where the trees stop and the hard rock begins right in the middle of the shot. The view from up here is incredible.

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Route 550 is in places incredibly curvey winding it's way along sheer cliff walls.

In other places, wide open expanses.

And crazy 10mph switchbacks.

Stunning valleys.

The scenery here is so striking, so distracting and the road so treacherous. There is no shoulder. in many places there are sheer drops hundreds of feet down just inches past the pavement. Crazy switch backs and #!$@## tourists doing all of 5 mph behind blind corners conspire to make it a challenging ride.

In places, especially with the angle of the sun, an interesting and somewhat dangerous illusion presented itself. This doesn't quite capture it but in places the double yellows around a blind corner would line up perfectly with the double yellows from the level below it, deceiving you into thinking you can take the corner much faster than you actually can.

This would be a fantastic road if it weren't for the fact that it's the main thoroughfare between Ouray and Silverton, so there's alot of traffic. And don't get me started about the tourists. Guys in sports cars driving way too slowly and not pulling over. Very annoying. In one passing zone I had to fly by 10 cars all doing about 15mph.

When I got back to the campground, the troops had not yet returned. Eventually, they returned and dinner preparations started. I snapped this shot of Bruce and Ha which I am particularly fond of.

Dinner was steak. Excellent. Minding my own business I was sitting at the picnic table. At one point one of the noisemakers shouted "deer!". I looked up and only a few yards stood a deer.

It had walked by much closer and I failed to notice. I found myself thinking I need to be more vigilant. It could easily have been a mountain lion or a bear.

Later in the evening, the kids wanted ice cream so the troops were packed up and we headed down into town. Of course, I can't eat ice cream so I hung around outside. There was some kind of Victory Motorcycle gathering in town.

I passed a little tourist shop and saw a coffee mug that called to me.

And finally, heading back home I snapped a photo of a waterfall I had been trying to capture since arrived.

This area is amazingly beautiful, almost dangerously so because driving around you're endlessly distracted by incredible sights. If you find your way into Colorado check this area out. You won't be disappointed.

Now, because I promised, I have to go chase some noisemakers around ... the natives are getting restless.