January 11-19, 2025
We had been to Cripple Creek before, toward the tail end of the COVID pandemic, but only spent maybe a couple of hours there before moving on to the next stop on that trip.
This time, we went for a week, the main draw of this trip being the Ice Castles.
Normally we would have left on a Friday, as I am normally off on Fridays and it gives us an extra day for travel and/or to set up when we get to our destination. As we knew driving to Colorado could have been done in two short days, we decided to leave on Saturday, January 11, instead. We would later wind up regretting that decision.
Prep and Departure
I had done most of the packing I needed to do the week before we left, save the couple of last minute things I had to take care of the morning of (mainly my CPAP and phone charger, that kind of stuff.)
I spent my Friday flex day instead in Des Moines. I’d had a cardiologist appointment at Iowa Heart and needed to get established with them so I could start being seen in Ottumwa, instead of driving all the way up to Cedar Rapids for my annual follow-ups.
My appointment was late in the day, at 2:40, but after I picked up Brandy’s shots, I headed up early, leaving at about 9:00. I made my first stop at the Barnes and Noble at the Jordan Creek Town Center to pick up a couple of books to take with me on the trip.
Next stop was Scheels, in the same mall, to see if there was anything worth spending $50 in gift cards on. Nothing struck my fancy so I left there empty handed.
I left from there and ran Clyde through a nearby Mister Car Wash before heading to Walmart to get a small sticker printer I’d found online.
I made my way to the nearby Office Depot to pick up a pack of my absolute favorite pens, then I headed to B&B Grocery, Meat & Deli, where Brandy had shared a TikTok of someone visiting there touting their pork tenderloin sandwich.
The store is a dumpy little place with what I’m sure is the best meat counter in the city. Tucked in the back is a small deli where the sell the aforementioned pork tenderloin sandwich. I placed my order, a sandwich, fries and a can of soda, for $12.99. After a short wait, I was given my food, I paid, and sat in the small dining area on the other side of the store.
The place is an absolute shithole, but I have to tell you, I’ve had a few pork tenderloin sandwiches since moving to Iowa and that was the best one I’d had yet. Yes, of course, the pork was much larger than the bun, it was dressed perfectly with lettuce, onion, pickles, ketchup, and mustard, it was cooked perfectly, nice and crisp on the outside, tender and moist on the inside and seasoned to absolute perfection. The fries were pretty good too. Not the most amazing fries I’ve ever had but again, seasoned perfectly.
I polished off my food then, with some time to kill before my doctor appointment, I found a nearby park with a view of the city. I circled the park (in the truck. It was entirely too cold to be walking anywhere…) then stopped for gas before heading to Iowa Heart.
After my appointment, I headed home, packed up the truck, got high, then settled in for a last sleep before we took off Saturday.
Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado
The trip was largely uneventful. We took Interstate 80 to North Platte, Nebraska, making a stop at the Fort Cody Trading Post. It reminded me a lot of Marsh’s Free Museum that we visited in Long Beach, Washington, also on our Summer Tour.
Just like Marsh’s, they had an oddity, a la Jake The Alligator Man. Fort Cody’s entry is a two headed calf which was an actual thing that actually lived for a few days, unlike Jake which is, like, papier-mache.
Tucked into the corner of the museum is a large diorama depicting Buffalo Bill’s Wild West traveling show. This display includes over 20,000 miniature pieces hand-carved over 12 years by Ernie and Virginia Palmquist. This diorama was reminiscent of Tinkertown, one of my favorite attractions in Albuquerque. The diorama is animated and narrated but the show runs every half hour, and did not run in our short time in the store.
We picked out some stuff- stickers, magnets, shot glasses and more- then headed to our nearby accommodations.
The next morning, we continued up I-80 to I-76 into Colorado, through Denver and Colorado Springs, then on to Woodland Park where we stopped at Walmart to pick up some groceries for our short week.
We continued on, steadily climbing in elevation, then, as we turned off of Teller County Road 1 toward our AirBnB, Brandy began complaining of terrible chest pains. She had been complaining for a few days that her chest had been hurting but we figured it was a muscle pull or something. This, she said, was worse. She was nearly in tears as she clutched her chest. She reported tightness in her chest and difficulty breathing. I asked her if she wanted to find an ER to go to but she was ok just pulling over and resting for a minute. We did not have a signal on our phones so I couldn’t even use it to find a nearby ER even if we wanted to.
We sat on the side of the road for a few minutes then continued on toward our AirBnB. We continued climbing in elevation until we finally arrived at the mobile home we had waiting for us.
I got us in and connected to the Wi-Fi, and Brandy sat and rested for a bit, the pain in her chest subsiding slowly. She used the good ol’ internet to make the determination that she was dying, convinced she was suffering from HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema.) She only presented with the one sign, the chest pain, so we carefully monitored and concluded that it was just severe altitude sickness. This is where making the drive in two days became a regret.
We left Iowa where we live under 700 feet above sea level, and in two days went up to over 10,000 feet above sea level in two days. We absolutely should have made it a three day drive, stopping once in Nebraska, once in, maybe Denver, or Colorado Springs, then gone in to Cripple Creek.
Lesson learned.
Anyway, I got us unloaded, walking to and from the truck was increasingly breathtaking… thanks to the elevation, not the stunning views from our accommodations, and set up to work for the week then I laid down to try to sleep but was incredibly worried about Brandy the entire night. I slept terribly, and woke up way too early Monday, but I powered through.
The Rest
The AirBnB sits high in the mountains just outside of Cripple Creek on a well-worn dirt road marked almost the whole way in washboarding. The unit is a 2 bedroom 1 bath mobile home with queen beds in the rooms at opposite ends of the house.
The bathroom had a “tub” that was maybe 4 inches deep, nowhere near enough for Brandy to take a bath so she showered during our time there, much to her chagrin.
The kitchen was one of the most well-appointed kitchens I’ve seen in an AirBnB. It had everything we needed; I wanted for nothing.
Aside from our visit to the Ice Castle (separate post coming soon), the week was fairly unremarkable. We worked, as we normally do, Monday through Thursday, and I found myself busier that week than I usually am when working from home.
We did check out from our respective jobs early on Tuesday and headed into town for some more shopping. We went to Aspen Mine Center, a community center that also holds a thrift store, where Brandy picked up her quirky acquisition for this trip.
After that, we headed to the nearby dispensary to try to find our preferred sleep product. They only had one bottle in stock but recommended a couple more options. Over $370 later, we left there and headed to Rocky Mountain Canary General Store where we did a little more browsing around, picking up, among other things, a little over a pound of house-made fudge.
After that, we crossed the street to The Creek for dinner. They had an item on the menu called the Slopper Burger, an open faced burger smothered in pork green chile stew, much like the Stewburger at the 66 Diner in Albuquerque. It was pretty good, the fries that came with it were well seasoned but slightly undercooked.
We then made a stop at a nearby gas station for a can of oxygen before heading back to the AirBnB where Ash eagerly greeted us.
Wednesday we worked again, checking out at about 4:00. We headed up to try and find Rita the Rock Planter.
Rita the Rock Planter
Rita is a 21-foot tall troll that fell asleep in the mountains near Victor, Colorado. Upon waking up, she found her mountain pocked with holed left by humans as they mined gold in the area. Fearful that someone would fall into these holes, she took to the task of filling them back in with rocks.
A hundred suns is how long a nap takes for the trolls
Thomas Danbo
When Rita woke again, her mountainside was full of holes
The humans must have dug them in their search for shiny rock
But someone could fall in, so Rita went to tidy up
Rita was sculpted by Danish recycling artist Thomas Danbo. He has, to date, constructed over 100 similar trolls around the world, including in his homeland of Denmark, Australia, Chicago, Seattle and much, much more.
Getting to Rita can be done a couple of ways. AllTrails recommends a nearly 2-mile loop trail upon which you meet Rita about 3/4 of a mile into it.
If you bypass the trailhead for that trail and continue up a rutted out service road to another dirt parking lot next to a few buildings that had been relocated from the nearby American Eagles Mine. Some informational plaques talking about the history of mining in the area and the equipment that is on display can be read before picking the aforementioned trail. This parking lot sits about half a mile on the trail so we still had about a quarter mile to hike.
Now, keeping in mind that there was plenty of hard-packed snow on the trail, it was a slick walk almost the whole way. Coupled with the fact that we were at such a high elevation, it was the longest quarter mile I’ve ever hiked.
That’s OK though, the view was worth it.
After snapping a few pics, we made our way back to the truck. We headed back into town for dinner at Dynamite Dick’s Dining Emporium, located in the Triple Crown Casinos. I ordered a Smothered Burrito:
Chicken, Black Bean and Corn Relish, Cilantro Lime
Dynamite Dick’s menu
Rice, Flour Tortilla, Pico de Gallo, Guacamole, Sour Cream,
Queso Fresco, Smothered in Green Chili & Queso Fundido
It was OK, nothing real spectacular.
After eating, we headed up the road to the reason why we were in Cripple Creek to begin with: The Ice Castles.
Ice Castles
We had initially planned on four of us going- me, Brandy, Christy and Hayden, but the other two didn’t make it so their tickets went unused.
Brandy showed up a little before our prescribed time of 6:30 and the air was already cold not being surrounded by giant walls of ice. As we entered, I made note of the nearly-ankle deep snow we were treading through. It wasn’t packed snow, though I supposed this was much safer than packed down snow would be, huh?
We walked through a corridor of ice walls towering 12, 15 feet in the air, then they suddenly fell away and we found ourselves in an open “courtyard” of sorts. There were smaller ice formations scattered about then more halls and tunnels that you could choose your own adventure and explore.
There were lights strung around here and there and speakers hidden in the walls playing mystical music only enhancing the fantasy-like experience.
We entered a tunnel low enough where I had to duck down pretty significantly to get through it when that too opened up on a room, with a ceiling and everything. In the middle of the room was a large ice formation with color-changing lights embedded in it. The lights wove their way through it’s pattern of hues as every 5 seconds or so, a thin stream of water would shoot toward the cover of ice above.
There were many ways to exit this room. We found one and perused around for a bit when I noticed some bar-height fire pits near one of the castle’s walls. Beyond that was a small bar dug out of the frozen walls. They sold mostly alcoholic drinks but I was able to order a virgin hot chocolate.
There were people there but it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I thought it would have been. As Brandy pointed out, it was a Wednesday evening, makes sense that not a ton of people would be there.
Trudging through this deep snow after already having put in massive effort to see Rita, we called it a night after about half an hour and made our way back to the truck.
The drive home up the completely black, winding roads up and up and up through the mountains was decidedly terrifying, particularly when we would have to make a hairpin turn with a nice, long, steep dropoff on the outside, absolutely no light (natural or otherwise) and my headlights don’t turn when I turn the steering wheel. We were both white-knuckling it the whole way back to the AirBnB.
Headed Home…
For a little bit, at least…
After we both logged off Thursday, I got as much packed up as I could and loaded up what I could. The next morning I packed the rest, loaded it, cleaned up and we were on our way back.
Conclusion
As we continue to travel, we continue to learn how to travel. We were able to pare down a lot of what we had to take with us on this trip. The bed of the truck was only one layer deep, save for the table, stepstool and wagon which acted as stops to keep the luggage and couple of bins we had toward the tailgate.
Additionally, we learned how to shop while at these stops. Gone are the times of making big pots and batches of stuff with the expectations that we would pick at them through the week. Instead, we bought singular meals where we could and minimized the amount of stuff we’d have to take home (non-perishable stuff) and stuff we’d throw away or leave behind (refrigerated stuff). The only things we took home with us were a couple boxes of crackers, half a loaf of bread and half a jar of peanut butter, and all we left behind was a stick of butter and half a jar of jelly.
Otherwise, this was a pretty great trip, except for the scare we had getting into town. We got to see some fantastic scenery, had a great time at the Ice Castle, and generally enjoyed the stay.
Pictures, as always, are up on my Photo Diary.
Up next, we will be leaving on Valentine’s Day for a 2 week stay in Montrose. Yes, home for less than 4 weeks and we’re headed back to Colorado. We do have some exciting stuff planned for that trip, so be sure to check back in March after our return!
Until then.
-Phil
Epilogue
Sunday, the day after we got home, Brandy became violently ill, throwing up like I’ve never seen her throw up. This accompanied terrible diarrhea and plenty of flu-like symptoms.
The next day, Monday, I started having problems of my own. I didn’t have issues with vomit or BMs, but instead had issues peeing, along with flu-like symptoms of my own. I had a terrible fever, I ached all over, it was nasty.
I decided to make a same-day appointment with my doctor (five stars to my docs for offering same day appointments on a holiday no less) where I was told I had a UTI brought on by e. coli.
That explains Brandy’s episode then…
She quickly recovered but I was placed on a 7-day course of antibiotics, today, the day I finally had the energy to finish this post, is day four, I should take my last one Sunday. The last of my symptoms are getting better and last night, I had the best night’s sleep I’d had in two weeks.
Now, it’s time to put the house back together…
-P
Pingback: Busy Year Coming – Wandering New Mexican