Henderson's Travel Blog: Creede, Colorado

We began our Creede adventure with a leisurely drive up from Taos, over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and up through the southern part of the San Luis Valley. Towns like Alamosa, Monte Vista, Del Norte, and South Fork have had the audacity to have grown significantly while we were away. Although we have passed nearby to some of these towns over the years, it has been decades since we visited some others, including our destination.

The RV Resort we booked into is very nice. The owners have put a lot of money into landscaping design (aesthetically appealing rock, trees, bushes, water features, and attractive sculptures of local wildlife). We have a great site with views of the Rio Grande River and the surrounding mountains from our patio and our motorhome’s living room. Upon checking in, we discovered to our dismay that this 5-star resort does not have cable TV or Wi-Fi available at the sites of the owner occupied part of the park—precisely where we are located. Those services are available in the lodge and other places in the part—just not at the RV sites themselves. We were incensed. This outfit advertised that it has these amenities, but fails to say that they aren’t located at the RV sites. We hate being misled and threw a hissy fit, but to no avail. We also learned that we can’t use the fitness center because it is only available to lessees, not the renters of lessees’ sites. We tried to get them to placate us with access to the fitness center, but they could care less about what their customers might want or need. AAAARRRRRGGGGG!

Other than the disappointment of not receiving all that we thought we were supposed to get, we like the park and the area in which it is located. We anticipate having a wonderful month of exploration on foot and in our Jeep. If we are a little slow in responding to emails that you might send, it is because we lack services at our site and we are too pooped or too lazy to walk up to the lodge to login. ;-)}

We began our exploration of this region of Colorado with a visit to the town of Creede (a bit over a mile from where we are parked) on Monday. The Fourth of July crowd is beginning to arrive in earnest, but before 10:00 am the crowds in town were too bad. We walked the entire length of downtown—keep in mind that it is not longer than 10 or 12 short (by city standards) blocks from one end to the other. Creede is cursed with the usual tourist curio shops and other businesses designed to separate summer visitors from their hard-earned money. Most of the restaurants were closed on Monday, but we did manage to find an acceptable Mexican place on the edge of town that was open. We find that towns of Creede’s size (400-500 full timers) tend to be pretty loose when it comes to keeping regular hours and work schedules. That, by the way, is not criticism.

Downtown Creede

One of the most popular vehicle tour routes is the Bachelor Historic Loop Tour. Not wanting to be outside the loop culturally, we took the seventeen-mile drive through Creede’s primary silver mining district of the 1890s. It was a delightful drive on a fairly rough gravel road that could accommodate regular passenger cars, but we were glad we were in the Jeep. It always amazes us how the miners of the 1800s managed to extract minerals from regions of the Rockies at 10-12,000 feet in elevation. Remember, friends, that we spent many years living in Leadville at 10,000 feet and still marvel at the determination that effort must have required.

Old Mining Works

We helped America celebrate her 236th anniversary on Wednesday by attending a humongous Fourth of July parade in downtown Creede—it went on for over an hour—and by attending a hot dog roast at the RV resort where we are staying. There was also a concert, of sorts, by a pretty talented guy who sang songs commemorating many of the states—it was an entertaining hour. Because the state is tinder dry this year there weren't any celebratory fireworks. We met some interesting people from Arizona at the parade and it turned out that they were staying at the same RV resort., so we got together for cocktails the next day; too bad they are leaving Saturday as we got along with them quite well. We have an invitation to stop by the next time we are in Paradise Valley, AZ.

4th of July Parade

4th of July Parade - Mineral County Sheriff

On Thursday we continued our exploration of this region with a drive up US 149 to the North Clear Creek Falls and Spring Creek Pass between Creede and Lake City. It was a beautiful drive and the falls were stunning—overcrowded, but stunning. On our way to the falls, we saw a large herd of bighorn sheep rams not too far off the road, so we stopped and snapped a few shots. We don’t have really good telephoto lenses, but some of our shots weren’t too bad.

North Clear Creek Falls

Big Horn Sheep

In the early 1990s, the area was stocked with a hundred or so moose from North Park, CO in the area near the falls. We took a back road to see if we could find any. Obviously, mid-day is the poorest time to look for wildlife, but that’s when we were there, so what the heck. We found a likely place near the stream that created the falls in a wetlands area full of willows (a habitat moose love). We parked the jeep and made our way into the woods. Not too far in we spotted some moose tracks and then some moose, deer, and elk scat. Further down want appeared to us to be a game trail, we spotted some much too fresh bear scat. That terminated our exploration as the area was having some difficulty with bears.

For lunch, we stopped off at Freemon’s General Store at the historical Freemon Ranch on our way back to the Resort. It was excessively busy as most of the state of Texas is vising Mineral County this time of year. The place only serves hamburgers and soft drinks. We placed our order and were told that we could get whatever we wanted to drink (three choices), collect our food when it was done, and then pay up afterward. A nice trusting attitude on the part of the restaurateur; however, he failed to mention that our two cheeseburgers with fries would take an hour and a half to arrive because they had such a large crowd they couldn’t keep up with the orders. That was a bummer as we were already hungry when we got there. The upside is that we met a great extended family who was in the area for a family get together. Our conversation with several of them resulted in them getting to know one another better as a result of our inquiries into their lives; nosy busy bodies that we are. Anyway, the burgers finally came and they were delicious. It would have been a disaster if they weren’t.

Friday found us four-wheeling our way up the Stony Pass Road, which was an old mining road that connected Creede with Silverton in the days before the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad was built. It was a lovely outing with spectacular views of the continental divide, the Rio Grande Reservoir, and the Rio Grande River headwaters. The weather continues to be pleasant and typical for the mountains in the summer. We’ve had daytime temperatures in the 70s and lows in the mid-40s overnight. Each afternoon brings a rain shower and, occasionally, we get downpours overnight. All in all it beats the Texas heat.