Roadtrippin' Colorado Style

Excuse the fuzziness of this shot. My camera was kinda pissy by this point. The yellow signs say Skagway - Phantom Canyon —> and Gold Camp Road - State Hwy 67 <—. This is CR 81 (remember that from the last page?) to your left and CR 86 to your right. Don't ask why they didn't keep this as CR 67. It's a mystery to me.

Uhmmm... something's not quite right here. Isn't the fence supposed to be between me and Mr. Bull? How would you explain that one to your insurance company? "This bull jumped out of nowhere and gored my car.... seriously ... stop laughing at me!"

Dueling Dancing Arrows! Wow! To the left is Skagway and its namesake reservoir. To the right, no long loads. We're going right. This is also the intersection of CRs 86 and 861. Wonder where they came up with the second number?

The last county road marker we'll see for quite some time. This is also typical of the wider parts to this road, where the extra dirt acts as your guardrail. Or the trees will. I'd prefer the dirt.

Hey! I thought we were supposed to be in a canyon! This don't look like no canyon to me!

OK, that's better. Those are pretty shot up signs, though. The wrong side of road one is funny, considering the road's only one lane wide ahead. Are they under the road? And the coolest sign award goes to "Danger High Risk Road." That'll scare off the tourists.

Now this is a wordy little sign. Good thing we're only going about 25 mph here or we'd miss something. And look! There's so many words on this sign it needs two legs to hold itself up. Heavy, man.

And it's a long... way... down. And there's nothing but your life flashing before your eyes to keep you occupied on the way to the bottom. Remember the state law, folks: yield to uphill traffic. And remember where the last wide spot you passed was 'cause you're going to have to back up to get there if you encounter another vehicle.

Yup. This is all BLM land back here now, not national forest land. We're also starting our descent into Phantom Canyon now. Seat backs and tray tables in their upright and locked positions, pleeze.

Continuing to drop into Phantom Canyon. This dark and light is messing with my camera, so some of the next pics may be kind of dark. Deal.

Now this is a descriptive sign. And it's leading the pack in one heckuva Sign Convention™, as you see in the background and in the next two shots.

Sign Convention™ pic 2. And they've all graduated from the Redundant School of Redundancy. I think this could be summed up in half the signs. And who puts "unit" on a sign anyways? Heh heh... unit. Yes, that's plywood covering a hole on the bridge deck. Remember: High Risk Road!

After the bridge are the latecomers to the Sign Convention™. Anybody else unnerved by the winter warning? Good thing it's the middle of May now. This doesn't always mean we're in the clear, though. I've seen snow on this road into the middle of June before.

Did I mention that this is quite the scenic drive? No? Well, it is. It's also quite the narrow drive, too. We squeeze through quite some tight rock formations on this drive.

This is one of the better maintained bridges on this drive. And its name is 229.

More walls of rockitude. Getting deeper into the canyon now. So how did this road come into being, you ask? It used to be a rail line that carried gold south from the mines. You'll learn more in a few more pics. I'm such a tease.

What's this? A rest stop on a BLM road?!? There's something you don't see everyday. This is the Adelade Rest Stop according to the sign to the left. Adelade is one of the many "towns" along the way. They were actually water stops for the trains way back when.

Informational sign on the rest stop. My five things I can do for wildlife consist of getting them beer, getting them into clubs, and the such. I didn't see those items on the sign though.

Here's another water stop along the way. As you can see, we're slowly dropping in elevation from Victor as well. If you're taking this drive the way I am and are looking for this sign, you'll have to keep an eye on your rearview mirror. It's only signed going northbound.

A wide spot further down the canyon. This does get more treacherous, folks. I promise. It's not too well seen in the shade, but there's a turnoff to the right that leads down to a little campsite by the creek. I wanted to go there, but my car didn't. That's a steep step down.

Bridge 228 sports a unique feature: a cattle guard in the middle of the bridge. Call me weird, but since the creek isn't that far below the road here, I think the cows would just cross the creek and miss the cattle guard altogether. Or am I leaning too heavily on the idea that the cow can think of this itself?

Now we're getting into the heart of Phantom Canyon. I still am trying to find out the history of the name of Phantom Canyon. Once I do I'll update the page. But for now enjoy the narrow, winding one lane road through here.

Deep in Phantom Canyon lives some older bridges. The rock cut on the other side of the bridge is just wide enough for the lane of road. And I was complaining about no shoulders on the state highway earlier...

Here's another narrow spot that's fun to travel through. I had to back up to that pullout you see on the right because of an oncoming vehicle. We met just on the other side of this rock formation. And yes, there's nothing much but air after that pullout.

This is by far the coolest bridge I've ever been on. It has a steel structure and a wooden deck. And it curves. Plus, my favorite color is red.

On the Bridge of Coolness. You can see how the sections are put together to allow for the curve of the bridge. This bridge is not rickety at all either. You feel just as safe driving on this as you do any normal highway bridge.

The side view of the Bridge of Coolness. You don't feel as safe after looking at it this way, but it's still a cool bridge. That's some decorative latticework on the legs there.

Remember I said earlier that you'd get more information about how this road came to be? Here it is, along with the information on the Bridge of Coolness that we just went over.

Now we start going in and out of BLM land. If you have some spare cash to throw around, I saw a couple of Land For Sale signs up in here. Because it's so far to anything up here, the land's hella cheep too. How 'bout 35 acres for $144,900?

There's every bridge railing style you can think of on this road. And it's only about to get worse. This is the last of the curving bridges. I didn't check to see if it had the same type of steel legs the other two did, but I'm thinking it's a safe bet to say yes.

When you are facing a steep rock face and too sharp of a bend for a train to safely navigate, what do you do? Yup. Go through the mountain. They don't make 'em like this any more, that's for sure.

Why do I have a strange feeling this railing wouldn't stop a car? And that wood on the left is only attached to the pipe. It's just sitting on the ground. Scary. Good thing this bridge isn't that long.

No, this isn't a repeat of the first rest stop pic. This is rest stop #2. Is there a company that prefabs this kind of rest stop? It's identical to rest stop #1. I can hear that company's ad now: "Now with deeper waste collection bins! Service this rest stop only half the times you used to!!!"

How to tell we're starting to get back to civilization: this is a state-issue rock fall sign. It can also be found on US 50 west of Cañon City. I didn't see any fresh rock movements here though. This looks pretty growm over. And what happened to that P in the no parking sign?

Another tunnel here. I didn't realize that there was somebody behind me here. I slowed way down to look at the interior of the tunnel, and he beeped his horn. Inside the tunnel. Remember that stain in my shorts from a few pages back? It's bigger again.

Is that a steel I-beam railing I see? Why yes, yes it is. Man, if there was a spare railroad tie laying around, they probably would have used it for a bridge railing. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't.

Here's where the midget gymnastics team practices. What else would these pipe railing be good for anyways? Not traffic control. But there they sit, pretending they could stop a wayward vehicle.

Look, ma! Paved road! We must be exiting Phantom Canyon! Yep, we are. There's still a few miles to US 50 though.

Here's a typical county road shot after Phantom Canyon. We still have to snake around that ridge ahead, but there's not any major issues from here on out.

The last water stop the BLM decided to post. Look at how much elevation we lost in 23 miles. The trucks entering sign is here because we're approaching the Phantom Landfill. Insert joke here.

Sign of Fugliness™ alert! I think that's supposed to be a straight-pointing arrow on the top of the shield, but I'm not sure why this sign is out here in the first place. Yeah, you can turn on some other county roads now, but logic says that if you stay on the road that was posted to get to US 50, it will reach it without any random signs.

Yup. Only Teller county was odd enough to change the county road designation from 67 to something else. Fremont county puts the road right back to what it should be—CR 67.

Approaching US 50. The Gold Belt Tour continues south on SH 67. As do we. We could turn on US 50, but since we're documenting SH 67, I suppose it's best to stay on that roadway.

Here's how Colorado signs US and state highways on traffic light mast arms. The ones over US 50 say SH 67. I'd like to see some type of shield-based sign, but I guess this will have to do.