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The town of Victor, Colorado, established in 1894, is largely boarded up now. After a fire burned it to the ground in 1899 (as nearly every mining town in the Rockies was razed at some point in their lives), the brick buildings erected from the ashes have stood the test of time. 

The Victor town mural below reads: "For many who came West, their biggest dream was to find gold. With small grubstakes they came, over 12,000 of them, making Victor the fifth largest city in Colorado by 1900. The glory days brought entertainment as well. Jack Dempsey trained at the fire station and Soapy Smith promoted bull fights at Gillette. Victor was also the boyhood home for Lowell Thomas, international radio and TV commentator. At its peak Victor had three trains, two trolleys, 20 doctors, six churches, 12 labor unions, 15 attorneys and 48 saloons. Victor burned to the ground in August of 1899 and was rebuilt "overnight" with the brick seen today. Gold was discovered by Bob Womack near Cripple Creek in 1890. Through the years over 500 mines have employed more than 6,000 miners. The Cresson Mine produced 60,000 ounces of gold from a room-sized crystalline "vug" [cavity inside rock] located 1,200 feet below the surface. The Portland Mine was 3,500 feet deep.And the American Eagle was one of the highest at 10,750 feet. The legendary Independence Mine was sold by W.S. Stratton in 1899 for $3,000,000. The district has produced over 22 million ounces of gold." The bicycle obscures the rest of the text, but you get the idea -- once a major mining town. 

There are actually a lot of fun murals around town.

We were walking beside this one at night and ran into a local who told us how much he loves having this mural. A columbine and a mountain lion. The eyes seem to follow you as you walk.

Nikola Tesla on the left. You can stay in the Nikola Tesla room in the Black Monarch hotel, a boutique hotel with themed rooms. Why Tesla of all people? In 1899, he built a laboratory in Colorado Springs to conduct high-voltage experiments and study wireless power transmission. People say that he wired the original hotel for electricity in 1899, but there does not appear to be any actual documentation to support this. Whatever. It's a fun totally random thing to run across! 

We stayed at the historic Victor Hotel just down the block on both of our trips here. I don't seem to have taken any photos of it, but the coolest thing in that hotel is the old elevator. (And why have we come to Victor twice? To participate in the Rocky Mountain Rambler 500. As Team Killer Rabbit, "Pinzy," our Pinzgauer, is our official entry but last year we had to bring our more cushy 4Runner, Chewie, as I'd just had shoulder-repair shoulder.) 

A lot of old buildings stand unused and deteriorating. I like the 1/2 number in the address, I'm not used to seeing that. I'm glad they're not just crumbling into rubbish piles, but it is sad to see so much potential not being realized with these lovely buildings.

There are a few shops opened in some of the old buildings for tourists, and a little grocery store. A couple restaurants. We stepped into an artist co-op gallery with some interesting work and had a nice conversation with the artist on retail duty that day. Another store we stepped into was an antique store where they also make traditional brooms. (random!) They had a great collection of old bottles and these old crates. We always enjoy looking at the labels on these things.  

Here's a list of the labels I could make out in this stack, above. I find them to be a very interesting look into the lives of people in an 1890s mining town:  DuPont Explosive Gelex No. 2; Atlas something Accordion some kind of parts; Searchlight Mining Candles; Victor Box Works; Seasons Greetings; Animal Yeast; American Institute Chicago; Sapolio [cleaning product] Morgan's Sons; School Chalk; Crystal White Family Soap; KC Baking Power - "Same price today as 45 years ago 25 ounces for 25 [? dollars? cents? donkeys?]"; Lenox Soap - "lathers freely in hard water"; Grinding Compounds; Sears Roebuck crackers, biscuits, cakes; Peruna The Great Tonic -- the drug was reportedly so popular that babies were named after it, When Prohibition came into effect, Americans began to drink large amounts of Peruna and other similar products as a way to get intoxicated. a kind of snake oil; Corn Starch; Giant Boosters; Penetrating Beta-Dioxin Re-Concentrated Embalming Fluid; Number 5 Diamond Brand Matches; Nails , Solder, Sterilized Tack (different companies and boxes); Chloride of Lime [i.e. basically bleach]; W.C. Nevin Candy Co of Denver; Carpenter's Chalk.

We couldn't resist buying this little old bottle for our collection, with the giraffe neck -- for cough syrup. 

Nicely kept-up City Hall.

We're kind of museum nerds and we enjoy all types of museums and period houses. We've been to numerous mining museums around Colorado. Although there is a lot of crossover in the types of displays and artifacts from the Colorado mining towns, they each end up having unique and unexpected things that always make the admission price worth it. So naturally we popped into the Lowell Thomas Victor Museum. Here is an interesting old relic from an old casino -- a penny slot that doesn't give back money for winning poker hands, rather, cigars. 

The really unexpected room in the middle of all these mining artifacts and mine history, and rooms of Victorian furniture and clothing and domestic gadgets, was the Lowell Thomas room. Silly us, we didn't know who Lowell Thomas was! With his name on the museum, I figured he was just the major patron of the museum, financing it or something. Some of you are probably laughing now at our ignorance, and the rest are waiting for me to tell you who he is. This room seemed so utterly out of place showing black-and-white photos of this guy around the world with wild African animals and indigenous tribesmen. What did this have to do with a gritty mining town? So then we learned Lowell Thomas, who went on to fame as a journalist and world traveler, was born and raised here in Victor. Worked in the mines as a kid. 

Well I became so interested in this guy who seemed to have lived the life I dream of, that I promptly went and bought his biography by Mitchell Stephens, "The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th-Century Journalism." The biographer makes no attempt to whitewash Thomas's early tactics to get ahead (he was pretty much the poster child for "fake it 'til you make it"). And in the end he did "make it," so the tactic worked. Just goes to show you can come from anywhere and end up everywhere.   

There is also a fire truck and machinery kind of museum. The first year we went to it, they were serving home-made ice cream -- the old crank and paddle style -- and the second year there was a guy showing visitors everything they could want to know about how the machines worked, and he basically just gave demonstrations all day long.

So this is by no means a comprehensive guide to Victor, but should you find yourself there, these were some of our favorite things. 

We popped over briefly to the more well-known town of Cripple Creek. It's larger and more well-known today primarily because it legalized gambling and is a casino destination. But in their heydays, Victor was the larger of the two towns. We went mostly in search of the cemetery, but also followed our nerd nose to the museum. The Cripple Creek District Museum was quite a nice museum, with several outbuildings you can walk to along a path showcasing period furnishings of the assay office, and two miner's cabins including the cabin the renowned prostitute, French Blanche, lived in. So I guess technically, that is not a miner's cabin haha. The gift shop is reputedly the oldest wooden commercial structure in Cripple Creek and survived the fires of 1896. 

It's housed in an old train station, The Midway Terminal Railway Depot. Here is the scale they used to weigh luggage.

To make it more fun, we did the scavenger hunt -- you get a piece of paper with questions to find the answers to throughout the museum, and then you enter your responses into a big box from which a winner who has found all the right answers is drawn, and the prize is a big nugget of gold. Sadly, we did not win but we had a fun time looking for the answers in the various displays. This was not part of the scavenger hunt but I thought it was cool, below. The docent working that day was super helpful answering any questions we had and pointing out tidbits of interest. This looks like quite the formidable cash register! I remember one of my favorite toys as a kid was a little cash register, probably like a tenth of this size. Not being familiar with antique cash registers, I wondered what the letters on the left were about. Do you know?

So each one corresponds to a drawer with the same letter. Each employee had a different letter assigned for their drawer and it unlocked only their drawer when they pushed it to complete a transaction, allowing managers to track sales, assign responsibility, and balance cash at the end of a shift. I only ever worked one retail job but I remember so clearly sitting in the back room with an adding machine balancing my shift. 

 Cripple Creek also had a nice central, kind of a picnic area, with very nice wall murals. These are good images for you to right-click on and open in a new tab to view all the details. 

Lastly, here's an old photo of the main drag in Victor from back in the day, 1895. 

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The city of Swakopmund is situated at the edge of the Namib Desert, at the southern tip of the Skeleton Coast. It was founded in 1892 as the main harbor for German South West Africa and today it's a popular beach resort town and holiday destination. It's renowned for the beautiful colonial German architecture, but the city had its dark sides, too. During the Herero and Nama Wars, just past the turn of the 20th century, when German soldiers wiped out 80% of the indigenous Herero population and 50% of the Nama population, a concentration camp for Herero people was located here. The "Wars" were eventually and rightfully re-termed as genocide. Swakopmund was also known for its continued glorification of Nazism after World War II. Today, though, it's primarily focused on tourism, and I have found it to be a delightful town in which to be a tourist.

One thing to note if you plan to come here, is the very different climate from most of the rest of Namibia. It has very moderate temperatures compared to inland, and can be downright cold at times. In October 2023, I came in from 100+ degree days in the Kavango and Etosha to 60s in Swakopmund, and colder at night. The hotel I stayed in didn't have heaters -- I sat in my room trying to work at nights with two pairs of socks and slippers, lounge pants on top of my pajama pants, a long sleeve shirt on top of a short sleeve one and then the sweater I brought for the airplane. And finally my friend, Poppie, loaned me a coat to top it off with. Then we left a few days later for the central part of Namibia, Mariental, and drove right back into 100+ degrees.  

I've stayed here in this European-flared town on several occasions. Usually for periods of a few days. But in February 2025 I stayed a couple weeks in an apartment in one of the finest and most well-known colonial buildings in Swakopmund -- the Hohenzollern Building, just a couple blocks away from the ocean. The most obvious feature, on the roof above the front door, is the statue of a kneeling Atlas holding up a globe of the world. It's one of the oldest buildings in the city, built in 1909. I had the corner apartment on the lower level, and it was a lovely space. 

I've stayed at the renowned Hotel Schweizerhaus several times in the past, stuffing myself with confectionaries each day from Cafe Anton, located on the bottom level and perhaps Namibia's most famous cafe. The hotel and cafe have been in the same family for three generations. However, I appreciated having a full kitchen this year for my longer stay, and lots of space in my apartment. Not that I didn't walk to Cafe Anton to buy sweets! These are views out the windows of the apartment on each side -- toward downtown and the beach, respectively. 

The beach, straight down the hill from me, was mesmerizing to sit above on one of the plentiful benches. Here the waters have a chaotic nature to them as they hit the eastern end of the shore and move to the west, eventually interacting with the pier that is a famous landmark of Swakopmund. The building you see on the end of the pier is an upscale restaurant, quite delicious -- I've eaten there a couple times. I love watching the motion and energy of waves swelling as they approach shore. Here there were no big long lines of breaking wave -- the water is more sloshing and unordered -- lots of little waves building, cresting and falling, some out in deep water, some on shore. Sometimes two lines will meet just before crashing on the shore. Sometimes one incoming wave overtakes another. Some come in perpendicular to the shore. It's a lovely spot of chaos. 

This seashore didn't produce the iconic gentle whooooosh whooooosh lullaby like sound machines make as a soothing ocean sound to relax to. The sound had a quality I haven't heard elsewhere. The waves pound on the beach like every other wave in my experience and they build up with the same swirling steady ocean noise of any beach with a surf, but just before the waves hit the sand they make a noise like the crackle of thunder -- very close thunder just as the lightning is splitting the sky before it breaks into the big boom. Other times it is more akin to the roar of a jet plane flying very low over your house. And sometimes the waves produce a kind of a hollow sound as they land and recede. I walked to the beach nearly every evening shortly before sunset and watched the ocean polish stones. Rounded smooth stones, quite small, are embedded in the sand; the water pushes up over them and pulls back down creating little fans of water behind them as the water recedes. It's these tumbling rocks that are responsible for the crackling thunder sound.  

Further down the beach from the pier, the waves are a bit more orderly. One of the most amusing things to watch was the lines of foam that the receding waters leave on the beach. They dry and start to solidify – not rock-solid, but just congealing to stay together like one entity. Then the breeze comes and breaks them apart into smaller globs. First the line of foam jiggles in the breeze like barely-set jello on a table you’re shaking. Just jiggling and wobbling. And then one piece will break away and roll across the sand like a tumbleweed. Sometimes lifting up like a small feather might. Sun sprinkles the ocean surface with sparkling diamonds. Birds fly by like ribbons in the sky, or the tail of a kite in the wind. Ahhh.

The only distraction to one's peace is the continual accosting by the guys selling little ball things as souvenirs. It only takes one encounter to know how to spot them a mile away with their little bags of balls. They approach you saying, "Don't worry, I am not a criminal. Do you know of the bushmen? I am a bushman." Then they sit down on the bench next to you, "Where are you from?" Trying to draw you into conversation. I soon learned to walk over a couple blocks from their central hub, where they all seem to emanate from, before hitting the beach and selecting a bench. Distraction dissolved.  

The downtown area is compact and stretches from a few blocks inland right down another pier to the ocean's edge. The ocean on the far side of that pier is surprisingly different than the scene closer to me. The beach is sandy all the way into the water, the surf is lighter and more consistent, and I usually saw people in the water (even though it is cold!) whereas I never saw people on the other beach. The lighthouse is another well-known landmark, first built in 1903, its height then doubled in 1910 to the height it stands at today. The buildings at the foot of the lighthouse were originally the lighthouse keepers' accommodation and storeroom. Over the years they were expanded for commercial purposes and now house a restaurant.

My favorite happy hour hang-out is the ocean-front Brewer & Butcher restaurant, part of the Strand Hotel near to the lighthouse. No nonsense with the naming of the place. I love their Marzen beer and their game carpaccio. And enjoy a little company from the avian wildlife. 

I walked a delightful seaside path between my apartment and my happy hour location. 

I just love guinea fowl. In the wild they are often found in large groups and are hilarious to watch as they run around like a school of fish, all moving together this direction and then that, but with no discernible rhyme or reason to what causes them to switch directions. Appropriately, the official name for a group of guinea fowl is a "confusion." I was tickled to find several on the lawns around Swakopmund along my "happy hour path." I only had my phone camera with me, but I think you can make out how pretty their heads are.  

Then one day I noticed a bunch of babies! I didn't see them at first, as they are brown and have their heads buried in the grass; they just looked like little lumps of dirt. 

At the edge of town I met some camels.

I come to Swakopmund to visit my friend, Berrie. He took me to Walvis Bay to see the flamingos in February 2025. They were quite far out in the water, and I had injured my arm so that I couldn't handle my zoom lens. The only lens I could lift and hold was my fixed 100 mm macro. Not the greatest selection for far away birds, but I was still able to capture a few fun scenes. 

In this little drama, one bird was politely walking behind another when he suddenly decided the front one needed to move faster. He pecked at her back feathers. She told him to get lost and then the chase was on.

But eventually a truce.

And then kiss and make up. I really don't know what their behavior was, I'm anthropomorphizing them a bit, but this is how the story appeared to me.

Another time, during October, we came to Walvis Bay to see the seal colonies at Pelican Point, hoping to see baby seals. Sadly, a lot of the babies we saw were lying dead in the sand. Perhaps there wasn't enough food to support the population. Berrie didn't know what caused their death, but this didn't appear to be a particularly unusual sight to him. Jackals trot along the beach, their orange coats blending perfectly with the orange sand, as if the sand itself has gathered into shapes. Although they didn't kill the seals, I imagine the dead ones are a gift to the jackals.

We eventually stopped on the beach next to a seal colony, and I asked if I could get out to take photos. Berrie said, “Yes, you can try. But they will run away if you approach them.” I was reluctant to believe him. I know I can be pretty stealthy, though there is nothing on the beach to hide or disguise me. And I really wanted to get pictures of seals. So I crept toward the seals on my right, clicked a few shots with my camera but I was still quite far away for my zoom lens's range. I stepped gingerly forward … one step, two steps, and now they’re running into the water so fast I couldn’t even get a picture of their flight. They were already in the water surfacing like dolphins as they swam beyond the surf. OK then, I would be even more stealthy as I turned around and headed for the seals on the other side of me. But they took off before I was even as close as to the first group. So of course my friend was correct, but here are a couple photos I managed in spite of the little devils' flight.  

One of the most interesting things Berrie showed me was a drive through the “informal settlements” on the outskirts of Swakopmund where many of the Black residents live -- basically shantytowns, but like an upscale shantytown. As we were driving to there along the highway, Berrie first pointed out a long stretch of condominium-type houses along the highway. Perfect squares that look decently constructed, very neat and tidy, painted with cheerful colors, though they're like an island with no other housing or shops in view. “Do you notice how no one is living in them?” Berrie asked me. I looked more closely. Maybe one in four had a car and signs of life. “The government built all those but nobody will live in them.” My first reaction was confusion why someone would prefer to live in a bodged-together tin or wooden or plastic-tarp shack with no running water instead of these prim, if small, neat houses. “Well then you have to pay rent,” Berrie explained, “and a water bill and such. But if you build your own shack in the informal settlement, no rent – you own it, you live there for free.” These settlements came into being all around the country after Apartheid ended, as suddenly there were no rules and regulations anymore about where you had to live based on your classified race. (You could not declare your own race (!) under apartheid, the government decided what you were -- there were four designations -- and registered you, and that registration dictated every single thing you could and could not do in the country, including where you could and could not live.) City codes now specify you can't build like this in the city limits, so these settlements are all just outside of the cities. 

While the individual accommodations might look haphazard and ramshackle, the settlement itself is not just a random jumble of shacks. There are nice wide streets and all kinds of shops. I saw a preschool with bright murals painted on the walls, and places advertising many other community services, and shops selling everything from auto parts to chewing gum and broom handles. Some of the shacks even have two stories. And a few are being built of cement and look more like a regular house. Everyone uses the building materials they can afford. 

I asked Berrie what they do for toilets and such. “I don’t know,” he realized. “Let’s ask.” He slowed our car beside two women walking on the side of the road and rolled the window down. I’m not sure why, but I was suddenly alarmed, self-conscious of my whiteness and somehow embarrassed that we were going to stop and ask these people where the toilets are in their houses. I was curious, though, if they have individual outhouses or community bathrooms like in Chinese hutongs I stayed in years ago. But the ladies weren’t offended or put off by our question. They politely explained that most people have holes at the back of their abodes they use for a loo. Berrie told me we could get out and take pictures of the settlement. I declined, again feeling a little awkward, but later I realized it’s not really any different than taking pictures in the hundreds of other villages, towns and cities I have around Namibia and all over the world. So if I have the opportunity to go back, I will take pictures. I think it's a very interesting place -- no HOAs to homogenize everything there! 

Lastly, I want to share a few photos from Alzheimer's Dementia Namibia (ADN) care home. My whole reason for being in Namibia for three of my five trips there was to document in various mediums the life and work of my friend, Berrie, founder and CEO of ADN. He founded the first home in Namibia dedicated exclusively to the care of dementia patients. The original location was several hours northeast of Swakopmund in a renovated farmhouse surrounded by many acres of open land. In 2015 they moved to this current location a short drive outside Swakopmund and built a place from the ground up, tailored to the needs of both the residents and staff (who live on-site). I could go on and on about the quality of the individualized care ADN gives each of its residents, with a non-pharmaceutical approach, but I'll sum it up by simply saying that, in all seriousness, if I come to have dementia and get to the point where I don't recognize people I know anyway, I want to come here, even though it's a foreign country.

Just one of innumerable thoughtful decor details -- look at how they decorated the sliding glass doors between common areas. So fun!

And lots of open outdoor space that residents have free access to in the daytime (no closed doors to confuse or frustrate them). ADN staff recently made this spiral in the yard with rocks, thinking it might be something of entertainment or interest to the residents. Turns out it's a huge hit -- people are far more engaged with it than they even imagined, carefully walking the path outlined by the stones, outside in the fresh air. 

I first visited the ADN home in 2016. It was a new experience to spend so much time around people living with dementia. It was uncomfortable but also an epiphany I'm grateful for. You can read about that in my Tuesday Tale, Bridging Dementia -- Lessons in Dignity. I've since visited two more times and have learned gobs and gobs about dementia from Berrie. And Berrie and the ADN staff continue to learn gobs and gobs through practical experience every single day through every single patient. 

And one last peaceful look at the ocean on the tip of the Skeleton Coast ..... You'll have to imagine the sound of seagulls for yourself.

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Read about driving through the dry Swakop Riverbed, a place with wondrous geology

Read about the Dune Belt, a desert sight to see near Swakopmund (about halfway through the article)

Read more posts about Namibia in Archive I and Archive II

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Our first time in Victor a few years ago, we stopped here at the Vindicator Valley trailhead at dusk. The most imposing sight, visible from the road and beckoning you to come check it out, is the impressive headframe for the Theresa Mine.

We had time only to look at this but resolved to walk the whole trail if we were back in the area. And lo and behold we were in September 2025. So we walked the whole two-mile Vindicator Valley Trail. It's full of old mining ruins from many mines. It's actually hard to fathom that so many were running in the same small area. 

The Vindicator Mine was the largest and operated near the former town site of Independence. Independence has been erased by 21st Century surface mining operations. Though Goldfield is now technically the closest "town," it's an unincorporated community. In the 2020 census, population was recorded as 63. Victor is the closest "real" town, which still exists with a population of about 400. In this mine's heyday, around 1910, it alone employed 350 workers. It was the fourth highest producer in the Cripple Creek and Victor Mining District. Vindicator Lode was marked in 1893. It was years, though, before the claim started to pay but the owner had faith in the property. He was quite a wealthy man and put his money into his faith, reaping vast rewards when the mine eventually became one of the best properties in the state. Mining began in 1895. Significant expansions began in 1906. By 1908 there were over 25 miles of underground workings to depths of 1,200.

As with all underground mines, water drainage eventually becomes the consuming problem. Many early mines ceased production solely because the cost of pumping water became too prohibitive, it ate the profits. Similar to the Argo Mine closer to us, a drainage tunnel in the area was first started in 1907 but never reached the Vindicator, which therefore required pumps to handle 300 gallons of water per minute. The Vindicator was so productive, though, it was worth the cost. Finally in 1921 another tunnel was driven down to 3,000 feet to connect to the earlier tunnel to dewater the mine.

The mine shut down permanently in 1958 as the expense came to far exceed the revenue in the face of the price of gold at that time. In the 1980s the ore dumps -- the ore originally discarded as not worth processing -- were sent off for processing to recover all remaining gold from the earth that had once been so generous.

The Vindicator Valley Hiking Trail provides interpretive signage and access to the surviving historical structures that were once part of the Vindicator complex. Below is the Vindicator ore house, still an imposing structure even in ruin.

Crushing and screening building where ore was transported on a conveyor belt. 

This is quite a jumble! 

I believe this is the headframe for the Anna J. mine. 

Although others lived there after them, this is known as the Bebee House. Mr. Bebee was vice president in charge of mining operations of the Golden Cycle Mine. The Vindicator Consolidated Gold Mining Company bought the Golden Cycle Mine in 1915 for 1.5 million dollars. That's a lot of money today; imagine how much that was in 1915! The Bebees apparently hosted some pretty lavish parties and there is a large dining room, and if I remember correctly from the info plaque, dances were also held there.

The cute little brick huts are powder magazines. The explosives (dynamite) and the primers were stored separately so they wouldn't get jiggy with each other in storage and go boom. Interesting that both of these huts have a tree growing out of the top! 

In the Cripple Creek mining museum is this display of a dynamite stick warmer ... they don't explode if they're too cold, so they would be stored in this metal container in winter, each stick in their own cubby, with hot water poured in the back of container at the top and kept warm a little ironically by a candle flame underneath.

Little Grouse Mountain Trail, just a short distance outside the town limits of Victor, has historic mining ruins and Rita. At the parking area there is a nicely restored headframe and large cabin. 

A short walk on a trail downhill leads to Rita the Rock Planter, Thomas Dambo's new troll sculpture (new in 2023). Made completely of recycled wood, she is pushing rocks back into the holes left in the earth from the vast mining activity around Victor. It took 50+ volunteers to assemble her, mostly from old wood pallets. The artist/designer has similar "trolls" built all over the world doing different activities. A friend told us about this, and I was surprised at how popular it was -- had to wait for a bit to grab a shot without people in it! 

I had read about and seen photos from two roads in the area that sounded like they would be pretty drives. It was mid-September, and while the aspens had started to turn in our area, there were only a few brave souls acknowledging the coming of winter here. But the drives were still splendid. Phantom Canyon is what I had seen the most about with its tunnels on an old railroad grade.

The other road was not as scary as it name, Shelf Road, suggests. Pretty much just a regular dirt road, with some interesting rock formations along the way.

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Information for the Vindicator Valley was almost exclusively sourced from the Victor Heritage Society

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Okay guys, this might finally be it -- the fabled "this is just going to be mostly photos" post. I think in general the posts I begin that way end up being some of the text-iest. I decide to look up just one thing but that one thing happens to be a very long rabbit hole, and whoosh! down I go. Taking you with me. 

These photos are from a little exploration adventure Erik and I had outside the town of Victor in Colorado. We'd seen some of the big ore bin from the road, and there was a convenient pull-off spot near it, so we parked and thought we would just see the one building. But once we were down there, we found all kinds of stuff. And then were too curious not to follow a closed down road to see where it might lead. Found some interesting things along the road, then rounded a corner and came upon a whole site with multiple buildings to explore. So the title of this post is one of the credos we try to live by in Colorado! You never know where you might end up even if you think you're just stopping to see one thing. Often, a whole little adventure lies beyond it. The worst is when we sense the adventure but it's too late in the day to follow it. Then it will eat at us until we go back and satisfy our curiosity.

I don't know this area so I have no idea what mines these could be associated with. This area was once chock full, literally hundreds of mines operating at the same time around the turn of the century and for varying lengths of time into the 1900s. I'm going to make a couple other posts about Victor itself and a public trail with lots of ruins, so I'll provide a little info about the area in those. In the meantime, I thought you might like to join me for a typical Erik-and-Shara type exploration. My arm is in a sling from shoulder surgery, so I could only just manage to take photos with my phone if I bent back into an awkward position. 

So this is the ore bin we glimpsed from the road. That pine tree seems to have made it his life's mission to grow taller than the bin! 

Some other buildings right near the bin.

Walking down the road, various machinery parts and this funky wood and metal wagon that I have absolutely no idea what it was used for. If you know, drop me a line!

Walking further, rounding a bend we came to a headframe. The mine shaft was half-heartedly fenced off. I looked closer and was surprised to see that the shaft did not appear to be collapsed in, as most abandoned mine shafts and entry tunnels are -- though we do occasionally come across ones that aren't. Sure, I was tempted to go closer and peer down the hole but I'm not quite a total idiot so I did not venture thusly. 

Other buildings and machinery near the headframe.

And some old vehicles whose traveling days are over.

Look at that -- no rabbit holes! Well not in text, anyway. I guess you can say our explorations are sometimes rabbit holes when we keep walking around the next bend to see what's there! So I hope you enjoyed a little afternoon adventure with me.

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