Exploring Fairplay's Historical Museum and Burro Days

Martha and I drove over to Fairplay to check out its museum with particular emphasis on the Burro Days event happening this weekend.

Most of the events, such as the International Burro Race (who knew there was such a thing?) happen  Saturday/Sunday but we won't be attending those.  

This exploration was something to do under heavily overcast skies and cool conditions.

As usual, the pics I share are things that caught my eye.  The museum is quite large, encompassing over 40 buildings, some original to the town, some moved here from nearby towns.  The buildings reflect the services provided by mining towns of the day.

The fee was $12/person but it was worth it to us, as the offerings were well curated and appropriately marked.

At the bar at Rache's Place

The Burro Room, was dedicated to photos and paraphenalia related to the Burros used to haul cargo around back in the day:

In case you ever wondered how they got the

lumber up the mountains to build the shacks

The Burro in the middle seems unhappy

Here's a link to info on the Burro Races: LINK

The main race is to run up to the top of Mosquito Pass and back.  The Burro with a standard miner equipment load and the human running alongside.

The train station:

We checked out the inside of this caboose:

On a different part of the transportation spectrum, there was the Stage Coach Stop and it's accommodations for travelers:

The one room schoolhouse.  It looked to me the kid below was fleeing from the wrath of the ruler-wielding teacher.

At the Ranger Station, the sole moto content for this post:

The most fully stocked drugstore with offerings from back in the day:

We posed in front of the Soda Fountain, not from the pioneer days of course but latter days:

You can glimpse some of the buildings which are part of the museum behind the gate:

While wandering through the souvenir/art stores lining the tourist trap portion of town, we saw this sign:

A Homage to Prunes

Fairplay's Beach

Nearby the above picture, there was a wooden gazebo with flower displays: Below are variations of the Columbine, Colorado's state flower.

And, in case you ever wondered what WTF means:

Sadly, the Burro Days display advertised to be near the courthouse wasn't even set up yet.  The event is billed for three days but really, it's only Saturday/Sunday.  We saw that all the vendors were still setting up tents and such while we were there.

Back at camp, we just rested in the VRRV:

Displacing to Mushroom Gulch Road, near Buena Vista, CO

Tired of the crowding we'd seen and experienced, and with mounting evidence of even more inbound fifth-wheeled/SxS-laden campers, we displaced away from Taylor Park this morning.  In turns out, this area is a widely known and reported on as an area for OHV explorations.  Too popular for me, I doubt I'll be back.

Someone must have spotted us packing up because no sooner had the VRRV left the campsite but two fifth wheel trailers where positioned at the mouth of the access road to grab the spot!

Although there were six large fifth wheel rigs ahead of me trying to leave the area, I saw more rigs and cars and SxS/ATVs roaring inbound in clouds of dust.  It was almost a traffic jam.

At the turn off towards Cottonwood Pass, I turned left and all the damn rigs kept on going towards CO 135.  Martha had gone ahead towards Buena Vista to get some groceries.  I saw her CR-V parked at the pass summit.  She apparently spotted me and filmed the VRRV as it made its way down from the summit.

Pics by Martha of the Cottonwood Pass Summit area:

I cruised on through to Buena Vista and got onto US24 heading east out of town.  I turned onto County 307's eastern entrance and soon turned left onto County 308 aka Mushroom Gulch Road.  Found a nice, almost level campsite.  It's part of a long narrow group sized site but there was only one other rig at the other end from me.  It also looked like someone had left a portable canopy to "hold" a spot but not sure.

Here's a couple of shots of our campsite.  It's quite better, in terms of surrounding environment, than the Taylor Park site!  Not as great a view but the lack of people is so much better.

After lunch, before which Martha had rejoined with me, she relaxed in the VRRV while I went on a recce ride with Yagi, my TW200 to scout out possible future campsites.  There turned out to be several more site, some large, some small, most all doable by the VRRV.

County 308 provides access to this wide open valley/meadow area....quite nice.

The site we're in has no cell signal so it's definitely a Starlink site!

Short Hikes for Wild Flowers and Mountains

Martha and I took the Honda CR-V the 45 miles or so to Crested Butte, CO this morning.

Our first stop was the Brush Creek Trailhead, which is a few miles from the city of Crested Butte itself.  The skies were overcast while we were on the trail and the distant mountains and hills were quite hazy due to the Canadian Wildfires' smoke.

Here's Martha's point of view of the same trail's offerings:

As you can see, the flowers are a little bit past "peak" bloom.  The Crested Butte Wild Flower Festival was last week so I guess they timed it right this year.

We next drove through the traffic morass that was summer traffic in the cities of Crested Butte and Mount Crested Butte (Ski Resort) in order to get to the historic town of Gothic.

Crested Butte

The town used to be a ghost town I think, but now is quite revived with the operation of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.  Apparently started as a place for college kids to study in the 1900s, now more of a research effort.

We drove right through town and to a nearby trailhead overlooked by Mount Gothic's regal rock formations.

Mount Gothic

Martha's take on this trail:

On the way back, the Moose Cow and Calves we'd seen on the way into Gothic were still there.  I stopped safely off the road, unlike the idiots who decided to block the narrow road, to allow Martha to walk towards the moose's location about 2 tenths of a mile away.

Momma Moose

Can you spot the calf?

Once I could tell Martha was done with pictures, I drove up to her and picked her up.  The lane of traffic heading towards Gothic was blocked with parked cars while their Touron passengers continued viewing the moose.

Fortunately, the outbound to Crested Butte lane was open for us to leave the area.

We drove back to camp, to find we had new neighbors.  Oh well.

Then, the techno-crap music started.  We thought it was the new neighbors and tried to tolerate it for a while, no good.

We walked towards our new neighbor but it turned out the noisome bass noise was actually coming from further away!  So we continued onto that campsite and encountered a bunch of teenagers with no apparently adult supervision.

We asked the kid who walked up to us to please turn down the music.  Nurse Martha has her suspicions about the level of impairment evidenced in the kid's eyes.  Still he and a nearby girl agreed to lower the volume.

It took a few minutes for the noise levels to come down but they finally did.  We're hoping things will stay quiet but if not, we do have connectivity and the County Sheriff's number!  

So, an imperfect end to a good day of wild flower hunting.  Such is apparently camping in Colorado during the school summer vacation period.