2007 Texas to Colorado Model T Tour
June 20th thru July 4th, 2007
joining the "Search
for the Mohigans Tour”
and the Model T
Club of Northern Colorado.
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We got up and left The Rocky Top
Motel at 7:00AM. Our goal was to get to Oklahoma to spend
the night but, first, we were going to do another run through
the Phantom Canyon Road. When we drove through it on the
way to Idaho Springs last week, we didn’t have Nicky,
Austen, Patty, Luke and Ross. Pike’s Peak is fairly
close to the Cripple Creek/Victor end of the road and we
decided to add that to our trip home.
The road up from Green
Mountain Falls gave us one last great view of Pike’s
Peak. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to wake up to that
every day?
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There is a fairly steep
mountain before you decend into Cripple Creek and, as you can
see, no one was saving the roadway for us. There is a 7%
grade on this descent and it is a two-lane road. We
haven’t had much troulble with 18-wheelers on this trip
but, occasionally, one pops up on your back bumper. This
one was being very courteous and giving us room.
Coming in from this direction,
the entire city of Cripple Creek comes into view at once.
We went through a lot more easily then we did last week.
Partly because it was Sunday mornning and partly because
there was no festival going on this week.
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We entered Phantom Canyon
from the nothern end in the town of Victor. Coming in
from this end of the canyon, we were going down much of the
time. The gold was in Cripple Creek originally; the rail
road tracks that were originally in the canyon transported the
ore our of the mountains. To the right: Bruce and
Barbara Lilleker are followed by Austin and Nicky Bromley
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At times in the Canyon, you are driving
literally on the canyon floor and stone walls tower above you..
At other times, you are hundreds of feet above the river.
The scenery is constantly changing and it is impossible
not to take one picture after another because it is so
beautiful and, in our case, so different from Texas. It
was hot as we drove through but a beautiful day.
We stopped along the way for
a little break and Barbara pulled out the rest of
Austen’s birthday cake from last night. Everyone
had a slice and the dogs got a bit of the frosting.
Marian Rose, who doesn’t
normally get to eat people food, was
overwhelmed with excitement and finally got a bite. Now
if she could just figure out how to get icing off her nose!
Phantom Canyon Road runs
between Victor and Canon City. You could go both ways in
a day but there is so much to do on either end that you may not
want to. We stopped in Victor at the Visitor’s
Center to see if they had restrooms and found an old fire
engine and jail from the days when the town held over 100,000
people. Now there are less than 300. And, of
course, Victor is only 7 miles from Cripple Creek which is one
huge gambling casino.
Canon City, on the other end,
has the Royal Gorge which is great for rafting but also has a
high bridge that spans the Gorge. Most people just walk
over it and look down at the water and rocks hundreds of feet
below. We didn’t go this time but there is a
sign on the bridge that says, “no fishing”.
One more thing: this is
a dirt road, very rough, maintained enough to be passable but
not suitable for RVs or speedracers. In the picture below, you
can see the potholes in the foreground. We tried to dodge
them, not always possible, but especially difficult for Martin
and Patty. Their little Toby trailer, with a single
wheel, hit every pothole they tried to straddle.
After leaving Phantom
Canyon, we turned toward the East on Hwy 50 and immediately
came into flat land. It amazes me that less than 30 miles
from mountians, you can have land that is flat and roads that
are blocked out in perfect one mile square grids.
We realiized after leaving
LaJunta, that it was going to be a challenge getting into Boise
City, OK, before 9:30 or 10:00PM. None of my guidebooks
listed any motels in Springfield, the next town of any size and
it was over 100 miles away. We discussed turning back to
LaJunta but decided that Ben and I and Martin and Patty would
go on ahead (we have the faster cars) and see what we could
find. If there was
nothing in Springfield, we would have no
choice but to go on to Oklahoma, an additional 50 miles.
Martin was having trouble with
his alternator so, 50 miles into the trip, we stopped along the
roadway and switched our fully charged battery for his pretty
dead one. It was getting dark when we reached Hwy 287 and
we were excited to find that there were four little motels.
The woman at the gas station recommended one and we
stopped long enough for me to confirm that they had enough
rooms for all of us. Ben left me there to sort things out
and he dashed back to catch the others before they turned south
toward Oklahoma. He saw them turning out onto the highway
but it took him about one-half mile to catch them. The
Starlight Motel is pretty basic but clean and, at that hour,
any motel not run by Norman Bates would have been acceptable.
