Rocky Mountains

First on my itinerary around the mountains was the Rocky Mountain National park, one of the most visited areas in Colorado. I tried to do some exploring by foot, but because of the high altitude I quickly became out-of-breath from just doing some easy hikes.

In the evening I arrived with my rental car at a beautiful serene mountain lake. A few times I stopped and explored its large beaches and a deserted campsite.

Next day, on the way to the village of State Bridge, I discovered a beautiful gorge with a river.

I had to climb down for an hour to get to this river, which I then followed upstream for a few kilometres.

In the evening I arrived with the car into Glenwood Springs through a ravine that was so steep that the road was built hanging off its walls, with opposite traffic running on a road built underneath. Glenwood Springs, where I stayed for the night, wasn’t my kind of place. Apart from two bars serving beer to loud snowboarder types there was not much entertainment to speak of.

The next day I drove to Aspen, one of the most famous ski resorts in the US. As the weather was quite rainy I decided to continue on with the car.

About half an hour outside Aspen the weather turned very snowy and the road took me up some steep mountains. With only a few months of driving experience I was a little nervous driving along this icy road.

My next stop was Leadville, an intriguing little mountain town full of trashy but eccentric houses / trailers. I spent a good hour just driving round with the car, marvelling at all the odd architecture. Each house was a spectacle of its own.

From the local museum I found out that the town had been a significant silver-mining town some hundred years ago. Things used to be very rough here with gunfights, train robberies and drunken brawls. The town also used to feature countless brothels and saloons. A few people became rich and built themselves grand Victorian villas on the hills. Most residents however remained very poor, even to this day.

Many original residents were of Slovenian origin but at this graveyard I also found tombstones with several Swedish names.

The Swedes used to live in this part of town called Chicken Hill, named after a local fortune seeker called “Chicken Bill”. They moved here after having driven away the Irish whom they were constantly in fights with. Before I came to America I had not seen many trailer-houses, but this place was full of them. I suppose it’s a cheap alternative if you cannot afford a house.

This used to be the Swedish church.

This bearded man, bearing the unusual name “Cosmos”, was a walking museum of his own. He had lived in Leadville for over 20 years, but came from Armenia. He had many interesting stories to tell about his life as we sat and talked on his front porch.

I found Leadville so intriguing that I decided to stay there overnight. These people were a couple from Denver who I met in one of the local pubs.

The next morning I went up the mountains to explore the remains of the old silvermines above town. Among these mines I met some local skateboarders who were shooting a skate-video to raise money for rebuilding their local skatepark.

I left Leadville feeling that I had seen a a place left untouched by business interests and large-scale tourism. There were some grave social problems with poverty, unemployment and drug addiction, yet I felt that people maintained a lot of pride in their place. It was a fascinating blend of redneck trash and arty bohemia that I did not encounter anywhere else on my travels. The town even had a college, several bars and restaurants, an opera house and its own film festival - so it was definitely not lacking in entertainment.

written by  niklasbergstrand on January 17, 2009 from Leadville, United States
from the travel blog: Niklas in America
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