Epic Vacation Part 3: Breckenridge, Colorado

Overlooking Breckenridge



After Ft. Collins, we headed west, to spend 4 days in Breckenridge, Colorado, where my dad was going to be doing the Firecracker 50 race.

The highlight for me was Maggie Pond. In the winter, the pond is frozen and they use it for ice skating. In the summer, it was great for fishing. There was a cool tackle shop in town where I got some nice flies and lures that helped me catch a really big brown trout. Look at the size of this monster!!!

Of course, I released him back into the pond and watched him swim away. In Breckenridge, there is a catch and release rule, but I would've let him go anyway, even if there was no rule.

In addition to fishing, we also did some other cool stuff, like hiking and touring an actual gold mine.

Check out this tree. It grew really weird, but made for an interesting place to sit and rest along the trail.

In this picture, my mom and I were counting the rings on the stump of a tree that had been cut down. By our count, this tree was over 100 years old!! It's kind of sad that it was cut down after surviving so long.

The scenery here was just like something out of a book. It was really awesome!

This is a covered wagon like the kind people moved west in during the 1800s. It seems awfully small to have carried whole families and all of their things, and makes me appreciate the minivan that we have to take us across the country.

This is Ryan and me inside the mine. He looks really goofy in this picture, doesn't he? (LOL)  It was VERY dark, cold and wet down there. That's why we have on rain coats. Our tour guide told us that kids our age used to work in the mine as 'blast monkeys,' meaning that they had to set the dynamite charges and blast the holes in the rock for the miners to mine. It was very dangerous and they only got paid 10 cents a day to do it. Whew! Glad I wasn't a kid in Breckenridge at that time.

After the tour, we learned how to pan for gold in the stream. It wasn't easy. I kept thinking I found pieces of gold, but it turned out to just be fool's gold and I was totally disappointed. I wanted to keep panning until I found some real gold, but my parents made me leave before I found any.

The tour guide also explained to us how donkeys were used around the mine. Four of them were roaming around outside the mine the day we were there for people to pet and take pictures of. This one came right up next to my mom when she was panning and posed for a quick picture. Isn't she cute?

The Firecracker 50 race that my dad was doing was held on the 4th of July. It started with all of the racers riding through town on the parade route. After they went through, the actual parade started. There were 750 people in the race, so it was huge. The course was 2 laps of 27 miles each and according to my dad, was extremely tough because of how much climbing it had in it. Of course, it wouldn't be a race without a race video, and Dad made a cool one to show what went on during this one.

For those people who wanted to participate but couldn't do the whole 54 miles, there was a shorter course, called the 'Sparkler', which was for beginning riders and Juniors, and it was only one lap of about 14 miles. My mom rode it with my dad during his pre-ride one day and said it was tough, but very fun. I would've loved to do the Sparkler race, but there was an age requirement of 13, so I guess I'll have to wait a couple more years.



The finish line



This is my dad coming down the mountain for the last switchback section before the finish line on his final lap.

My dad did great for his first time racing in the Rocky Mountains. There were 79 people in his class who actually finished the course and my dad came in 28th, with a time just over 6 hours. He was totally wiped out afterwards.

The next morning we left Breckenridge to start our drive back towards Huntsville, Alabama for SERC #9.