Roadtrippin' Colorado Style

Just after the END 67 pic from page one, we see the Douglas County 67 reassurance shield. Okay, boys and girls, what is wrong with this picture? ...... *bzzt* Time's up! It's supposed to be a blue shield with yellow letters. On the plus side, DougCo is at least signing the route, which is more than I can say for CDOT with the northern section of 67.

And lookee here. Our friend the shoulder stripe is back to visit us. Is it a bad thing that the county road is wide enough to support shoulder stripes while the state highway isn't? And for you non-Colroadans, the lighter green tree on the right is an aspen tree. We get a pretty good color show in the fall with the yellow aspens against the deep green evergreens.

This is a snazzy new fire station. Comes in handy around here too. The faster the firefighters can get to a fire up here the less chance the fire has of becoming something very very big and nasty. And I don't know what that is under the wrapper at the end of the guardrail, but why am I suddenly craving Chipotle?

Yeah, I didn't think the asphalt would last long up here in los montañas. But at least it looks smooth enough. And that white line between the two legible signs sez Residential. Helluva time for my camera to start having issues. As for the wet spot, I think the Jolly Green Giant is vacationing here and had to use the little sprout's room. No rain around here so far...

Yup. Nice and smooth gravel road through here. Too smooth, really. Hmmm... By the way, did I mention how beautiful of a drive this really is? No? Well it is. Just watch out for random beer bottles alongside the road if you get out to explore. I also recommend waiting until we're back into the national forest. These folks don't take too nicely to trespassers.

Our friend the dancing arrow finally gave up and went on strike. He'd have to be hangin' around every ½ mile or so for the next 9 miles according to this sign. Union regulations say that's too much. So surrogate sign here stepped in to take up the slack.

Back into the Pike National Forest now. Rules and regulations abound yet again. And they tell us we're now on Sugar Creek Road. Haven't seen a creek, tho. Too busy following dancing arrow's recommendations. Yes, that's a wooden sign with carved out letters. Yes, somebody had to paint all that. It's a living.

Evergreens, road cuts, and switchbacks, oh my! This is much tighter than it looks, too. Either that or going 35 when trying to navigate this and take a picture isn't a good idea. The r-dub-mobile didn't like me too much right after this shot. Nothing major. Just a panicked jump on the brakes and a nice skid out.

This is the national forest's version of a guardrail. Looks nice, huh? Wonder how well it works. Nope. Not going to find out today, thank you very much.

Mix together one big honkin' rock, bored people (prolly teenagers), and spray paint and what do you get? This mess. *sigh* Methinks we should find these people and make them scrape off the paint with their tongue. And someone should come up behind them and mash the offender's heads against the rock. Hard.

National forest's way of saying what can and can't go on this road. Short and sweet. But it means that my Segway isn't allowed up here? Bah! Can't use that thing anywhere!

I thought this road was too damn smooth. And this also explains the caravan of 4 18-wheel dump trucks, 2 regular dump trucks, and two crew cars that went racing by me earlier. So what do you do in this situation? Wait. My car ain't making it over that mound of dirt to go around. Plus, there's not enough road on the other side of that mound anyway. The guy was nice, tho. His vehicle can make it over that dirt, any by gum he did it for me!

I spy with my little eye something blue and shiny and called the South Platte River. But that road's way down there and I'm way up here! All hands, brace for zigging and zagging that would make dancing arrow blush!

Getting closer to the paved road we saw from oh so far away in the last shot. Going towards 285 is another great side trip, but we're going to go to Deckers up ahead. That shelter thingie in the background on the left is an official Colorado Information Presenter 3000, complete with diagrams of what do do in case of Flash Flood (run like hell! Uphill!)

And we've made it to that road we saw now. As you can see, we're very imaginative with road names around here. See? We're at the South Platte River, but only on Platte River Road. Remember: always mess with their heads. (Bonus points if you know what movie that quote's from) The orange sign hints that if you see smoke, it's OK. They're doing it on porpoise. (Heh heh... doing a porpoise)

So that guardrail that orange sign was guarding? It connects to this bridge. Which, coincidentally, is the same bridge we saw about three pics back. Six degrees of bridge separation! Woo-hoo! By the way, is that a wooden railing I see? Cool.

Continuing the six degrees... at the end of the guardrail we can see on the right from the previous picture lies this sign. A correct Jefferson County (or JeffCo to us little people) road sign.

So we were warned about this narrow bridge about 700 feet back, and I slowed down for it, but I was paying attention to getting this wonderful snap for you. Let's just say that the sand on the right of the bridge got moved a little and my shorts got stained a little. Does roadgeeking get hazard pay? At least enough for me to get a new pair of shorts?

Note to engineers everywhere: placing a road directly next to a river does not a straight road make. Also means you get to go swimming in times of high runoff. But damn if it isn't fun to drive on.

This is a road to one of many campsites along the river. The big sign pronounces that you can only use artificial lures and you're limited to two catches you can keep. Make your own jokes here about using anything artificial to lure things. Wigwam Club is a private fishing club about 3 miles upstream, and Scraggy View is (I think) about 6 miles downstream at the junction of the North and South forks of the South Platte River.

So I continually get asked this question: "Why do you like Colorado so much" My answer: shots like this. Mmmmmmm... Here's the full sized, untouched shot right out of my camera if you're like me and love this shot. Oooo... you love it so much you want to marry it and have its babies... *shakes head* gotta stop hanging around high-schoolers at work...

Annnnnnd.... we're in Deckers. Yes, that store to the left is it. Let's get our bearings. We're on JeffCo 67 looking south. Colorado 67 goes to the left in front of the store. Continuing straight puts you on Y Camp Road (Guess what's at the end? Cheeseman Reservoir... and a YMCA camp-- couldn't call it YMCA Camp road: too obvious) and going over the bridge puts you on JeffCo 128, another decommissioned state highway, and gets you back to US 285 and either Denver or Buena Vista. PS: Pine Grove is at the northen terminus of JeffCo 128; Pine is a town along the way.