We arrived at Mountaindale Campground about 10 miles south of Colorado Springs on Thursday, and we will be here for 11 days. On our second day we drove to the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, in Florissant, just outside of Cripple Creek. After the Visitors Center, we walked a 1 mile trail and saw numerous petrified redwood trees. There are no redwood trees in Colorado today, but they were here 35 million years ago. Numerous volcanoes cut the trees off near the ground, and years of silt, more eruptions, boiling water and muck infiltrated the trees and over the years they became petrified. (they turned to stone) After that walk we met with Ranger Amanda Miller in the yurt that they use for training and display. We cut open rocks that had layers of volcanic silt, then water, leaves, fish and other organisms, then more silt from another volcanic eruption, etc. Then many more layers from future years of life covered by more silt from eruptions.
Later we drove into Cripple Creek, stopped at a veteran's memorial for servicemen who were either born in or were once stationed in Colorado, who died in service since 9/11/2001. Then we went into town and had a picnic, shopped, stayed out of all of the casinos and walked the old western streets.
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| Our Campsite |
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| A petrified stump (about 12 feet across) |
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| Petrified wood |
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| On our walk through Florissant Beds |
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| Downtown Cripple Creek |
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| An old advertisement |
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| Cripple Creek's City Hall & Fire Department |
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| Veterans Memorial Park |
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| Debbie at the Veterans Memorial Park |
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| A rock formation known as Castle Rock |
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