M-Photo | Field Notes

Deadwood was a mining camp illegally established in the 1870's where prospectors traded their goods, drank in saloons and frequented brothels.  Wild Bill Hickock was shot here in the Saloon No 10.  Calamity Jane spent some time here and attended to those suffering from the small pox epidemic in 1876.  We walked around town, ate lunch at the Gem Restaurant, which today sits in the exact location of the Gem Theater.  Not so much theater, but a brothel and saloon.  We also visited the Adams Museum which contains a boat load of period artifacts, very interesting.





We drove up to the cemetery and visited Bill and Jane's graves then hiked up to the grave of Seth Bullock, the sheriff around these parts.






After a full day of exploring Deadwood we took a side trip to Spearfish Canyon to check out this amazing waterfall.  Used the 'Little Guy' on this trip, the FujiFilm X-T20.  I will be taking the 'Little Guy' to Greece and wanted to make sure that I am ready to travel wi…

Memorial Day trip to Devils Tower and the Black Hills of South Dakota. There were a several planned sites on the itinerary, maybe a few too many as I often do. Saturday we got to Devils Tower around 11:00 am and started hiking the red bed trail.  Only 2.8 miles, piece of cake, right?  This was a brutal hike!  We hike a lot, it should not have been that hard.  It was only 5000-ish feet above sea level and we were dying.  It must have been the heat, it was 90degrees and I guess we are not quite acclimatized for summer yet. We are still having that crazy spring weather in Denver and definitely no 90 degrees days yet.  We stopped and rested often and finally finished the hike in like 3 hours.

https://www.alltrails.com/explore/trail/us/wyoming/red-beds-trail
Wyoming is super green, they have been getting a lot of rain and the grasslands were amazing.  Mile after mile of emerald green.
Antelope Sightings Wyoming: 89 South Dakota: 4 Colorado: 7

Quick trip to Taos New Mexico to hike Tent Rocks National Monument. Hiking in the searing heat, what were we thinking? This was a rather spur of the moment excursion on a Friday night after work and hit I-25. We stayed in historic Taos arriving well after dark. The only goal on this journey was hiking at Tent Rocks. Beautiful scenery! The slot canyons were pretty fantastic too. There were a fair amount of people this time. Our previous visit was back in February 2013. Winter is definitely the best time to go for sure - cooler and less people. We saw a lot of people hiking without water, how is that possible?

We didn’t get a chance to see The Pueblo. That gives a reason to go back! We didn’t realize that Tent Rocks is a two hour drive from Taos which didn’t leave us much time to explore Taos either. On the way home we stopped at the bridge on the Rio Grande River. While crossing the bridge on foot I spotted some, what looked like sheep. Are those fake? You know, like some k…

James Bishop’s life’s work is this spectacular castle located off of Hwy. 165 in the San Isabel forest, about three hours from Denver. James started the project when he was 15 and continued work on it with his father for the next ten summers. Five decades later the castle is still unfinished and stands at 160 feet tall. Construction is funded by donations and the gift shop which unfortunately burned to the ground in March.
There are many narrow staircases that wind up to the various landings where you can get a bird’s eye view of the forest. The interior is vast and light fills the room from the floor to ceiling windows and sky lights. There is even an elevator, which appears to no longer function.

Bent's Old Fort was a trading post for trappers, traders and travelers on the Santa Fe Trail back in the 1830's.  The National Park is a reconstruction but it looks pretty authentic to me.  This place is amazing!  You can go into all the rooms and they are decorated with period artifacts.  Bent's Fort was constructed of adobe bricks and was a meeting place for traders and travelers.  Beaver pelts were traded and when the Beaver supply diminished Buffalo furs took their place.  In the middle of the fort was a press that flattened out the furs for shipping.  The two story structure was made up of guest quarters, dining room, a bar complete with billiard table, a blacksmith shop and storage rooms filled with gun powder and food stuffs.