This morning, I was curious to see where the fire road we dispersed camped on last night went, so I broke out the bike and took a look.  It was tough going, not only due to the poor road quality and climbing grade, but also because of the altitude, as we’re camped at 9800 feet.  I rode up about a mile to a forest service campground, and the host told me that most people camp here as a base camp to climb Pike’s Peak.

Driving out from our overnight location was easier in daylight, and once we hit pavement we drove another 10 miles or so to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument:

The fossil beds contain a wide array of very well preserved plant and insect fossils:

The kids worked on their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

It happens that stage 5 of the USA Pro Challenge is passing through the town of Florissant, so we took a break from the visitor center and drove back the 2.5 miles to the highway to watch the race come flying by.  It’s a slide downward slope coming into town, so the riders would pass by at over 40 miles per hour.

Here comes the lead entourage:

The breakaway was within sight of the peleton:

The peleton thunders through:

Team cars and team busses:

We returned to Florissant Fossil Beds and hiked a short trail that took us by the stumps of petrified giant redwoods that thrived here in the Eocene.  A volcanic lahar buried these trees in 15 feet of mud which then hardened.  The tops of the trees rotted away, and the buried portion of the trees were fossilized.  These fossilized stumps are as large as modern redwoods, with the largest being about 14 feet across:

Here a ponderosa pine grows out of the top of a petrified stump:

The hike also took us by a place where the Florissant fossil-bearing shale layer is exposed:

On the way out of the park, we visited the homestead preserved by the park:

We drove West and South to stop for Shabbos on BLM land just South of Sunday’s destination, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.  It’s very pretty here:

Good Shabbos from the BLM’s Zapata Falls Recreation Area!  See the trip map for today’s driving details and our current location.