Slow Travel to Las Vegas – Florissant Fossil Beds NM

When we finally finished our work on the Aurora house and there was nothing more we could do but wait for the sales paperwork to begin its slow progress through inspection, appraisal and closing, we began our trip back to Las Vegas. We breathed a sigh of relief to be finished with the work and made the determination that the ride back to Nevada would be the slow way.

We packed up the Kia to its full capacity, leaving our fence neighbor a wheelbarrow and donating a few things to Good Will on our way out of town. By the time we reached Colorado Springs, it was late afternoon and we stopped for the night. We were so tired, we checked in and went directly to our room for a nap. Three hours of comatose sleep later, we managed to gather up our overnight bag and our coffee pot (yes, we always bring our own coffee and pot with us!) and headed back to the room, kicked up our feet and watched a movie. Delightful decadence!

The fossils at Florissant Fossil Beds aren’t the usual dinosaurs and woolly mammoths, but instead plant and delicate insect fossils… even a tsetse fly! Where did that come from?

On our way to Colorado, I'd noticed several national monuments that we'd never stopped at before or even heard of before... hmmm... when did the NPS sneak those in? We decided we'd check out a couple and the first was Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument located in... you guessed it... Florissant, CO. Fossils aren't usually that interesting to us, but we'd never visited this monument before and it was on the way, so what the heck. It turned out to be more interesting than we anticipated.

It was in 1969 that President Richard Nixon signed the bill that established Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and yet we'd still never heard of it. This park in south central Colorado has pine and aspen-covered hills and grassy meadows and, according to the NPS brochure, is one of the world's richest fossil deposits. Who knew? Certainly not us. The fossils, however, aren't the usual woolly mammoth or dinosaur bones, but rather plant and delicate insect fossils from the Eocene era 33-55 million years ago. The plant fossils that amazed us most were those of the giant redwoods, now only found in California and Oregon.

The walking trail took us past Big Stump, once a giant redwood, now fossilized stone with a trunk 12' in diameter and a circumference of 38'. Big stump, indeed.

Here’s a close-up of the Big Stump. An attempt was made to saw the stump into pieces to send to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The attempt was unsuccessful and, as you can see, the saw still remains embedded in the stump.

Unfortunately, the Visitor Center was closed, but several paths led past the excavation sites and fossilized giant redwoods. We took the Petrified Forest Loop, an easy one-miler, to get a taste of what the park had to offer. Indian paintbrush, blue flax and black-eyed Susans were still in bloom and graced the path along which we walked, adding a splash of color to the verdant valley.

This area was once privately owned and in the early 1900s was a commercial enterprise which allowed visitors to 'sample' the fossilized trees. In fact, in 1956 Walt Disney purchased one of the petrified stumps and it is still on display at Frontierland in Disneyland.

The Hornbek Homestead

Still within the 6,000 acre park, but further down the road, was the 1878 Hornbek Homestead. Though the indoor tours were also currently closed to visitors, we walked around the homestead itself and read the signposts which provided an interesting story. Twice-widowed and single mother of four, Adeline Hornbek moved to the Florissant Valley in the 1878 and claimed 160 acres of federal grant land to homestead. Despite the limited opportunities for women at that time and the hardships endured by early settlers, Hornbek and her family thrived here as cattle ranchers and even ran the general store. I can't even imagine what a challenging life this must have been.

After Florissant Fossil Beds, the plan was to visit Brown's Canyon National Monument, known for the headwaters of the Arkansas River. Located between Salida and Buena Vista in the Arkansas Valley and the Sawatch Range of the Rockies, we headed in that direction. President Obama declared this area a national monument in 2015 and it is jointly managed by the US Forest Service and the BLM. We found the 'monument' was the actual 21,000+ land acreage itself with lots of camping, backcountry hiking, trout fishing, and rafting opportunities. This wasn't quite what we were anticipating and gave it a pass. Maybe next time we’d stop when we had our camping/hiking gear with us.

No matter that Brown's Canyon NM was a no-go, we figured we'd retrace our previous route along scenic US-50 and head to Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP. We'd visited this park before and it was gorgeous. Lo and behold, US-50 was closed for construction on weekdays between Gunnison and Montrose! We'd traveled on this road to get to Denver because I-70 was closed, but now construction had resumed on this scenic route and we were out of luck. Without backtracking we'd need to figure out yet another route.

Hmmm... Plan C? When in doubt, get a hotel room and veg out for the night and figure out what to do in the morning. We reminded ourselves that this was a 'slow travel' trip. It seems the gods were conspiring to make sure we didn't deviate from the slow travel plan. Join us next time as we slowly… very slowly… wend our way back to Las Vegas.