Carry on my wayward son...

Having climbed 4 14ers, visited almost all of my friends from last summer, attended Brewfest in spectacular fashion, driven part of Route 66, and hung out on an Indian reservation for 2 days, it was time for me to head home. I set out early from Pueblo, after informing a man that his Ford Taurus with 115,000 miles on it could probably make it to Florida. He seemed encouraged by the fact that mine had 190,000 and could make it to Colorado. I considered my road-tripping duty done.

However, it would have been irresponsible of me to have gone through Kansas without stopping at a ridiculous roadside attraction. This is the land of the world's largest easel, the world's largest ball of twine, and the 6-legged steer. Oh, and don't forget the world's largest prairie dog. I decided to stick with my accidental theme of state highpoints, and made my way to Mt. Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas. At 4,039ft, and only a half-mile from the Colorado border, Mt. Sunflower is a formidable peak. The dirt road leads through miles of treacherous farmland, and you must be ever mindful of the danger of native cattle attacks. However, the summit is built up quite nicely:


Approaching the summit- note the picnic area

After a strenuous hike, I made it to the summit, and rewarded myself with a picnic lunch. I took a couple of summit shots of myself and my travel buddy, signed the summit register, and began my long descent.






After making it back to the car, I continued on my way to Lee's Summit, Missouri, where I stayed with Molly and Chris for the night (thanks Molly!). Gotta love the Midwest. Or something.

Pikes Peak or Bust!

Disclaimer: I'm actually home now. But I got behind on my adventures, so I figured I'd still share.

After my shenanigans in Fort Collins over the weekend, I decided to go for just one more peak before I hit the road to go back home- Pikes Peak. For the record, there's nothing particularly special about Pikes Peak. It's not the tallest mountain, or the prettiest, or the hardest to climb. Zebulon Pike didn't even climb Pikes Peak. It just happens to be the first mountain most people see when they're coming from the eastern plains, so there's a slight obsession with it. There's also a road and a train that go to the top of the mountain, where there's a restaurant and a gift shop. So basically there's no reason to climb it. But I did anyhow.

There are two generally accepted ways to climb Pikes- the Barr Trail, which is 25 miles and 7,500ft of elevation gain, round trip. Then there's the Crags, which is 11.5 miles and 4,200ft of elevation gain. I decided that in the interest of self-preservation, I would go for the Crags.

After spending the night sleeping in my car at the Lake Pueblo State Park, which provided me a gorgeous sunset and sunrise (added benefit of camping and hiking: you tend to see both), I hit the road around 6:00am, and drove to the other side of Pikes Peak, putting me on the trail around 7:30am, since I had to gather my gear that was now dispersed throughout my entire car. It was a beautiful morning, and I enjoyed the trail through the forest, which brought me past some cool rock formations.



As I continued on, I met up with a few other hikers who seemed to be on some kind of scientific expedition, since they were carrying a tackle box. While there is a wide variety of hiking gear that seems to be designed to look dorky, a tackle box is not normal. I found out later on that they were collecting tree growth data.

Once I got above treeline, the trail quickly began to roughly follow the road that leads to the summit. This was sort of a trippy thing, because normally hiking involves seeing maybe a dozen people all day. Instead, I sort of felt like my own tourist attraction, waving to little kids staring out car windows at the crazy person who decided walking up the mountain would be fun. And since it was such a nice day, there were a lot of people going up.


My fellow climbers

The last 500ft or so of elevation involved a lot of rock-hopping, which was slightly hindered by attempting to avoid some snow and ice patches still hanging around. But I made it!



After fielding some goofy looks and the inevitable "Did you actually hike up here?" I went inside to get myself the only warm meal I'll probably ever get on the summit of a 14er. As I devoured my cheeseburger and fries, I remember thinking they were worth every penny of the $10 I had to cough up for them (prices up there are outrageous, of course). And then I began my descent. About half an hour into it, my stomach started to feel a little funny, but I just figured it was the usual fatigue that starts to set in around that time. Nope. Apparently my digestive system was confused by the whole real food thing, because I felt sick for at least half of the hike back. That $10 didn't seem so worth it anymore.

Around the time I hit treeline, I began to recover, and I felt fine by the time I got back to the car. I changed into semi-clean clothes, and headed to Pueblo to grab a slopper at Coor's Tavern and to spend my very last night in Colorado :(