Time Traveling: Taylor River Road, Tin Cup, Cumberland Pass

This is the second time-traveling post to catch up on the days missed last week. Let's back up to last Sunday...a week ago from today, and then we'll move forward from there. We had some breakfast and then got out early for our first ATV ride of the trip. Mike rides around our property at home quite often. I hadn't done much riding since our trip to Moab some four years ago, and so we took an easy trail this first day. As I mentioned, we were riding through open range most of the time.

As I also mentioned, we were sometimes mere feet away from our bovine friends.

For this first ride, we were on dirt, but also sharing the road with passenger cars. We simple rode along, getting reacquainted with our ATV's and their capabilities. (Mainly, we were boosting my courage for the more difficult trails ahead.)

On this particular trail, we got a taste of the beautiful mountains and the lush forests surrounding us.

I picked up this hitchhiker, who rode with me for several miles.

We saw streams like this one nearly everywhere we went, and lots of beaver activity. We were hoping for some wildlife and were often looking off left and right as we rode in search of something large, preferably with antlers. And, yes, this is bear country too.

We passed by this log cabin, and then stopped on our way back.

It has an interesting history, and you can read about it in this section of the accompanying sign. The last line was especially interesting to me.

It had a "closed" sign on the door, but I walked through the gate and peered in the window, peeping Tanya that I am. The back door was open, and it appeared to be in use. I don't know if anyone saw me looking in, but I was embarrassed just the same and quickly retreated.

There were big puffy clouds in the sky, and it was beautiful, but it still worried us some. The sky looked like this on our previous trip to Colorado, and so we were leery. You can read about the weather conditions from our previous trip starting here, and continuing here. We were almost literally running for our lives on that trip.

And we were still riding when the sky started looking like this:

In the image above, you can see the RV park, and we were still some distance away. So we sped up, hurrying to avoid the deluge.

Here's a panorama of the area.

We made it back safe and sound, but rain started falling before we could even get our helmets off. We hurried inside to watch a huge thunder and lightning storm roll through with pouring rain...a real gully-washer. Fortunately, it was all finished in about an hour. The next day, we awoke to blue skies and sunshine. 

The next day, we rode up to Tin Cup ghost town. This would turn out to be our longest day of riding at 38 miles. On an ATV, that is a long way, and we were wiped out by day's end. Tin Cup is a ghost town in the way St. Elmo's is. People are still living there, and there seems to be some attempt to revitalize it. I loved this old store. Look to the extreme left and right, and you'll see the ancient gas pumps. I'm even old enough to remember seeing some of the ones like the right side still in use.

Here's what Wikipedia tells me about Tin Cup:

In October 1859, prospector Jim Taylor panned some gold from Willow Creek, and carried it back to camp in a tin cup; he named the valley “Tin Cup Gulch.” For years the area was the site of seasonal placer mining, but no year-round communities were established, partly because of the danger of Indian attack.

In 1878, lode deposits were discovered in the area, and the town of Virginia City was laid out in March 1879. By the 1880 census, the town had a population of 1,495. Virginia City was incorporated in August 1880, but confusion with Virginia City, Nevada, and Virginia City, Montana, caused the residents to change the name. The town was reincorporated in July 1882 as Tin Cup.

Early Tin Cup was a violent place. Town marshal Harry Rivers died in a gunfight in 1882, and marshal Andy Jameson was shot to death in 1883.

The town population declined when the mines were exhausted. The post office closed in 1918, and the last town election was held in 1918.

So that was kind of fun. Riding on, we reached Mirror Lake. Isn't this lovely?

To reach Mirror Lake, we'd ridden over some very rocky terrain. Remember what I said in my previous post about how our navigation unit would have us riding over forest roads to reach our final destination. Well feast your eyes on the image below:

These roads were not nearly wide enough to accommodate even a small street vehicle. Can you imagine if we'd tried to drive camper and towed trailer over this? It kind of makes you wonder about our navigation unit. So anyway...we decided that we'd ridden far enough to call ourselves "men," and we turned around at this point in search of smoother terrain. Also, we were a little worried about the ATV tires. They are the original tires on our 12-year-old ATV's, and there were some sharp pokey rocks sticking up, just itching to puncture our tires...and let me tell you, that would have been a disaster. We've decided to replace all of our tires when we reach Moab, just to be safe. And, honestly, it's time.

So we headed back the way we came. Since I couldn't blog, I didn't take pictures of every blooming thing, although I dearly wanted to. The wildflowers of Colorado will have to bloom themselves out without my documentation. Still, I stopped for this one, new to me.

We headed off on another road that took us through and past Tin Cup. Along the way we stopped at the Tin Cup Cemetery. (I love a good old cemetery.) The Jewish and Catholic portions were sectioned off from the "Boot Hill" portion, which was kind of curious. In the image below, we crossed over a small bridge that led to the Boot Hill section. You can see the "hill" in the middle of the image.

Along the way, we crossed over a stream. The sound and look of the sparkling, running water was so inviting, and so I paused briefly to make a short video so you could see and hear it. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

From the top of the hill, we could look into this beaver pond below. Look near the right edge of the pond, and you'll see a small beaver lodge.

There were some modern graves in the cemetery with modern chiseled headstones. And there were many very old markers with the names and information worn away long ago.

Looking back the way we came, we saw this beaver dam.

From there we rode higher, and higher, and higher, until we reached the Cumberland Pass summit at 12,015 feet. Here, Mike congratulated himself for the "rejetting" he did on the ATV's before leaving home. I'm not a mechanic, and so I can't explain this beyond saying that without rejetting, our ATV's would not have run at this elevation.

From here, the view was simply breathtaking.

We got off our ATV's and walked around a little. We had to watch our steps because there were open abandoned mine shafts around.

Here's another non-panoramic view of the valley below and the mountains off in the distance. Stunning.

From there, we rode back to the camper and called it a day. And let me tell you, we were tired pups.

The next day turned out to be windy and cold. Also, there was another big rain storm. We were tired from this day of riding, and so we took the next day off. That left me plenty of time for slow-stitching and some baking. I'll tell you about the rest of our visit to Taylor Park in my next post.