Maria's Road Trip to the Rockies, Part 6: Estes Park to Kansas City

(Click here to read any or all of the first five installments of my "Road Trip to The Rockies" adventure.) Here it is, Allene: the final installment in my travelogue series! It's a long drive back to Kansas City, so let's get goin'...

Friday, June 5, 2009

We're all packed up and ready to check out of Mary's Lake Lodge. I'm a little sad to leave Estes Park, Colorado, of course, but I'm ready to see my kids. Anxious to see my kids, honestly. I hope my parents aren't too exhausted; I hope my son didn't sleepwalk; I hope my daughter ate something other than fruit and chicken nuggets; I hope the kids didn't fight too much; I hope my parents aren't scared to babysit them now...

We've programmed the GPS to take us to the Argo Gold Mill in Idaho Springs, Colorado. From there, we'll jump back onto I-70 and hopefully avoid Denver rush-hour traffic, and then drive east until we can't take it anymore.

I don't know why Dan ever turned on the GPS voice feature, but I'm ready to turn it off. That robot-lady's voice is annoying. "Turn right onto Blah-Blah Street. Proceed west on Blah-Blah Street for blah-blah miles. Merge right onto Highway Blah-Blah. Drive off the blah-blah nearest cliff." SHUT UP, would ya?! We can drive off the nearest cliff without your prompting!

We're winding south on CO-7. It's iPod time once again-Eminem...Beyoncé...some other hip-hop stuff that makes me sigh and ask Dan what happened to all the "good" music. Oh, here's a good song! The Toadies' "Do You Wanna Die?" (Oops--the song is actually called "Possum Kingdom." Thanks, Bat Canary!) It's about vampires, according to Dan. I never knew that. This song should be used in one of the Twilight movies.

Now we're on CO-72, also called "Peak to Peak Highway"--very appropriate. (I'm just telling you what Google Maps tells me: From CO-72, we must have hit CO-119, and then CO-279, and then County Highway 281, and, finally, I-70, right before Idaho Springs. It doesn't look that complicated when you see the route on a map.)

I make Dan stop for gas in Nederland. He thinks we have enough gas to get to Idaho Springs. Yeah, well, I don't, and he knows I'm not going to shut up about it, so it's easier to just fill the tank now. I swear we drove a solid 40 miles without passing a single gas station.

As long as you're not running low on gas, this drive is awesome! Spectacular scenery the entire way! Mountains, water, deer, aspen trees. Who cares that I'm trapped in hip-hop hell? I'll admit to liking a couple of Eminem songs, but I burst out laughing when we get to Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'" as we're puttering through Black Hawk, Colorado, an adorable little casino town. I can't listen to this much profanity in one song without getting the giggles. This song also makes me think of Howard, a former coworker of mine, who would sing all the words to "Big Pimpin'" as he did data entry. He'll never read this, but Hi, Howard!

We see lots of old, crumbling mines in the hillsides. I imagine myself as a gold prospector in 1895: I have a long beard; I'm wearing overalls and carrying a pickaxe. Now I'm humming "The Beverly Hillbillies" theme song. I know Jed found oil, not gold, and he wasn't even looking for it...Forget Jed. Can you imagine being one of the families that moved west, hoping to strike it rich in these mountains? Maybe I'll find a giant gold nugget lying in a field somewhere near the Argo Mill. Hey, it could happen!

We've just entered the little town of Idaho Springs, Colorado, and I can already see the Argo Gold Mill. (See figure 1.) Let's take the tour! First, I'd better pose for a picture in the old-timey jail cell. (See figure 2.) Our tickets cost $15 per person. In retrospect, I'd say that the tour is slightly overpriced, but still worthwhile if you're interested in the history of mining in The Rockies, and especially fascinating if you care about how gold and other valuable minerals are processed. These things have to be removed from the rocks and separated out, you know.

Our tour begins with a short, informative lecture and video about mining in general and the Argo (Newhouse) Tunnel and Argo Gold Mill in particular. I enjoy this portion of our tour because I really am a big, information-absorbing nerd-possibly a closet geology geek (remember how much I enjoyed the Gems and Minerals Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science?).

We learn that the man who built the Argo Tunnel, Samuel Newhouse, owed a lot of his good fortune to his wife. See, she was a nurse who took care of a rich Englishman who was dying of pneumonia; she saved his life, and the Englishman later repaid her husband by financing his ingenious tunnel-digging idea. The Argo Tunnel was completed in 1910. This 4.16-mile-long tunnel, originally called the Newhouse Tunnel, collected all the ore from the hundreds of mines connected to it, and took it to the Argo Gold Mill to be processed. Lots of people got very rich. (Read more about the history of the Argo Tunnel and Mill here.)

Now that we've all passed around a little gold nugget and learned something about the Argo Tunnel, our tour guide, an affable guy in dirty blue jeans named Charlie or Frank or something like that, takes us outside to demonstrate some pieces of mining equipment. Not to get technical, but one of the gadgets drills stuff (very loudly), and the other thingamabob sorts out gold from other minerals. Then we pile into an old school bus so Charlie/Frank can drive us up a steep gravel road to the Double Eagle Mine, which happens to be on the Argo property.

One of the ladies in our tour group doesn't want to go into the old Double Eagle Mine, which was excavated in the early 1890s. I don't see what the big deal is. It's not like old mines ever cave in on people or anything...

Dan and I put on dorky hard hats and go in. (See figure 3.) It's not scary at all-just a little claustrophobic and chilly, like a long, narrow cave. I don't find any gold inside. Darn!

Charlie/Frank has left us to wander the premises on our own. We knew it was a self-guided tour from this point on. We walk over to the entrance to the Argo Tunnel. It's been closed since 1943, when some miners accidentally blasted open an underground body of water. A massive flood swept through the tunnel, causing extensive damage and killing four people. Flood water still drains from the tunnel. (All of these handy facts come from my Argo Gold Mill brochure.)

Now it's time to visit the historic Argo Mill, which was forced to close after the Argo Tunnel was ruined. Our brochure instructs us to "imagine the deafening sounds of crushing and grinding machines, the continuous movement and spillage of liquids and solids conveyed overhead through chutes and troughs, the dust and chemical smells which once filled the air, and the ever-present excitement and anticipation as the men of the Argo pursued the earth's most eagerly sought treasure-gold!" I have a good imagination, but I simply cannot imagine all of that as I make my way through the dark, deserted mill.

Our brochure includes a map of the Argo Gold Mill and an explanation of all the rooms and equipment (what's left of it). Check out that "rotary tipple"! Uh, yeah, so it's kind of boring in here. I'm trying to imagine the ore flowing through here, getting crushed up, and all the "excited" men who used to work here 70 years ago. Do we want to read about "amalgamation"? Dan sure doesn't.

I do think the mill would make a fantastic haunted house. It's just this hulking shell of a factory, full of old wood and metal. A lot of the original equipment is gone, so there are tons of good hiding places for ghosts of dead miners. I'm sure it would be very spooky at night.

In the bottom of the mill, there's a small museum with more mining equipment and ore samples. I go inside the mill's old cyanide leaching tank to look at black-and-white pictures of miners and prominent citizens of Idaho Springs, circa 1900.

When we return to the gift shop area, several folks from our tour are already panning for gold in the troughs of water out front. Dan and I take out our small bags of sand (purported to contain genuine gold), which we were given when we paid for our tickets. Now it's time for our free lesson in gold-panning. Sweet! I really am going to strike it rich!

"If you wanna learn how to pan for gold, come over here and I'll show ya," says the tall man with shaggy hair (not Charlie/Frank) who sold us our tickets earlier. Okay. How hard can it be?

We watch Shaggy's demonstration. He really knows how to use the ridges in the bowl. Yeah, work those ridges, Shaggy! Slosh the water in...Swirl it around...Let the sand catch in those ridges...The lightweight, non-gold stuff washes right out. Scoop, slosh, swirl, don't forget to use those ridges!...Rinse...Repeat. You're a good teacher, Shaggy! So when we get down to the thin, black stuff, we should start to see gold in our pans.

Dan's ready. He doesn't practice with "plain" sand first, as Shaggy has recommended. He's just going for it, with his bag of sand/gold. Well, I do practice with a scoop of plain sand first, and I "pan" it all the way down to the black stuff. I even find some gold that others must have lost in the trough of water-the tiniest, cutest little pieces of gold I've ever seen. I'm a natural.

I'm very thorough and patient, slowly, methodically panning for gold. I don't want to leave a single gold fleck in that trough of cool water. This is kinda relaxing...

Dan has long since finished. He's getting sick and tired of holding my little Ziploc baggie open so I can deposit all my hard-earned flecks of gold into it. "You're taking forever," Dan huffs. "You're like an OCD gold-panner."

"You're just jealous because I'm finding more gold than you," I retort. (It's true. See figure 4.)

Once I finally finish panning for gold, we leave to find a good place to eat lunch. We don't see anything real promising in Idaho Springs, so we settle for McDonald's. Hey, for McDonald's, this is really good-it's the best Filet-o-Fish sandwich I've had in months (not that I eat them often).

Dan keeps dipping his fries in my ketchup. I give him a disgusted look, so he gets up to get his own ketchup. "I didn't know it was your ketchup," he grumbles.

"Maybe I'd be nicer if you hadn't called me an OCD gold-panner," I say.

After lunch, we hop back onto I-70. It's a steady, gentle descent to Denver. (See figure 5.) We're out of the city before rush hour, which was Dan's plan all along. See? It's totally okay that I spent so much time panning for gold in Idaho Springs.

Before I know it, I can no longer see mountains in the rear-view mirror. Eastern Colorado is a huge, green blur.

We eat supper at Taco John's in Goodland, Kansas. (Taco John's is one of Dan's favorite restaurants, if you can believe it.) The Potato Olés aren't as good as usual, but my supreme nachos (with no meat) are yummy.

We're thinking that we should see a movie later. In fact, that's how we decide where to stop for the night. "Which towns in western Kansas are likely to have movie theatres?" I ask myself, and I look at a map and play around with the GPS.

Hays, Kansas, is a college town. They're certain to have a movie theatre there, I reason. The Garmin Nuvi confirms it.

We arrive at Hays around 8:30 p.m., and drive straight to the theatre-the Dickinson Mall 8. We're hoping to maybe catch a 9 o'clock showing of Angels and Demons. Dan just finished the book, remember (I read it several years ago), and I'd like to see it because I think it has the potential to be a better movie than The DaVinci Code. We wander all over the Hays mall, looking for the movie theatre. Turns out, it's not in the mall, it's behind the mall. It's fun being dorks from out-of-town!

We buy our tickets for the next showing of Angels and Demons. It doesn't start until 10:15, which gives us plenty of time to find a hotel. Something cheap would be good. But not so cheap it's scary. How about Econo Lodge? We stayed at one of those before, and it was fine. It's close to the mall and close to the interstate and not too expensive, so, fine, we check in.

Let me tell you about the Econo Lodge in Hays, Kansas. In particular, let me tell you about the bathroom in our room. I first notice the black whiskers scattered around the sink-like a hairy guy had just shaved for the first time in a week. Then I make the mistake of looking at the floor, thinking, "Hmm. If they forgot to clean the sink, maybe they also forgot to clean the floor." Sometimes I hate when I'm right.

Seriously, when was the last time someone mopped this floor? That's quite a collection of hair in the corner-blonde, brown, black...And, here I am, standing on the dirty, hairy tile in my bare feet! EWWW! Dan doesn't get worked up at all about the hairy bathroom. He collapses on the bed and turns on the TV.

"Now we can't trust anything in this room!" I say, eyeing the neatly-made bed with suspicion. Dan's watching sports bloopers on TV and couldn't care less. Honestly!

We go back to the Dickinson Mall 8 around 9:45. Every single guy in the lobby is wearing khaki cargo shorts, including Dan. How weird. Oh, strike that. There's one guy coming out of a theatre wearing long, black nylon athletic shorts and white socks with thong sandals. Uhhhhh, no comment.

We're the only people in our theatre for quite awhile. My aisle seat is extremely squeaky. I can't even take a drink without making the seat squeak. Instead of moving to a different seat, I wiggle around to make my seat squeak as obnoxiously as possible (Dan's not amused, but I am) until 10:05 or so, when five other people wander in with their popcorn. Dan says this theatre takes him back to 1984. I get that. There's no stadium seating; no THX sound system; the screen's pretty small. We have a lot of leg room, which, in my experience, is unheard of in newer movie theatres.

In the middle of the preview for My Sister's Keeper, the film blacks out and there's a cool, slow warping of the audio recording until it finally stops. One of the Hays natives in the theatre remarks, "We came here for Angels and Demons. That must've been one of the demons." All seven of us laugh and try to look up at the projection booth to see if someone's in there trying to fix things. The film resumes about five minutes later, still in the middle of the preview for My Sister's Keeper, but it dies again before the damn depressing preview is over.

Finally, someone gets the film fixed, and we watch Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor doing mostly interesting things with Dan Brown's source material. It's 12:45 a.m. when we exit the theatre. We're the last non-employees in the building. We should do this late-movie thing more often-finding our car in the parking lot is a cinch!

Now it's back to our hairy bathroom and cheap (possibly dirty) sheets at Econo Lodge. Gosh, I'm so ready to go home.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

I'm going to see my kids and my messy house today! Yay! We eat donuts for breakfast in the Econo Lodge lobby, and check out. Will I ever return to Hays, Kansas? Well, if I do, I won't stay at the Econo Lodge here!

Here's some of what we listen to on I-70: Soundgarden's Superunknown album. Pink Floyd. U2. Weezer.

We don't stop at the General Custer House and U.S. Cavalry Museum in Fort Riley, Kansas. Mr. "Museums Suck" is driving, and, honestly, I'm just as eager to get home as he is. But I really would like to stop at those museums on another trip.

Dan spends a good hour telling me all the ways that the Angels and Demons movie differs from the book. This is why I don't see movies based on books I've just read. Dan and I both liked the movie, and we both thought it was better than The DaVinci Code movie. Book-wise, I think The DaVinci Code is better than Angels and Demons.

We stop at Junction City, Kansas, for gas and snacks. I discover that Lipton Citrus Green Tea + Softbatch chocolate chip cookies = "flat beer taste." Interesting. Try it for yourself.

It's my turn to pick something to play on the iPod, so I choose Mitch Hedberg. I miss Mitch. (If you're not familiar with Mitch Hedberg's stand-up comedy, read some of his jokes here. Even better, watch some of his routines on YouTube. I have a lot of favorite Mitch Hedberg jokes. Here's one of them: "This shirt is 'dry-clean only'...which means it's DIRTY.")

Oh, good, this is the part where all the scenery starts to look very familiar...and we're home! My house is just as messy as I left it. Nana and Papa will bring the kids over in an hour. Woo-hoo!

This has been a great trip! Thanks for coming along! Now we can all stretch our legs and do something else.

Sources:
Personal experience
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1836567/marias_road_trip_to_the_rockies_part.html
http://www.historicargotours.com/
Did figure 5 make my fellow AC writers laugh? I hope so.