The infamous Pikes Peak, one place I decided I had to go to, and I did not realise I could drive up it to the summit on the same route that the rally cars use each year until a day before I went there!
The summit lies 14,110 feet (4,300 metres) above sea level, and you really notice it at that altitude!
For those with motorsport enthusiasm will know the Pikes Peak story - a brief intro for those who don't:
In the 1980's Group B class rallying was removed from international competition due to safety fears, the cars, although still based on road going cars you could buy, had too much power and the crowds of people were too dangerous. So Audi decided to take its rally beating Audi Quattro S1 to the American Pikes Peak Hill Climb event, held annually. Audi were laughed at by the competitors who ran specially built custom cars for the event for entering a "family saloon car". The laughing soon stopped when their nigh-on 1,000 horsepower saloon car took the Pikes Peak climb record, and took a massive chunk of time out of it too. Peugeot also decided to give this a try and further bettered Audi's record time. The Peugeot set the fastest hill climb time of that decade, and all years previous to that.
So as a rally enthusiast and especially interested in the Group B cars, this was a place that I had to visit, and and really pleased I got to follow the same route as used by the cars - even if my car is far from being rally car material!
But it is not all about cars, at 14,110 feet up, the views are spectacular, the oxygen is barely noticeable and the wind is biting cold. All in all, a very memorable day, I took a lot of photo's although I only added these few that I felt portrayed Pikes Peak that little bit better.
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And, as I mentioned, I did visit another dinosaur place after Pikes, I wouldn't have mentioned it had it not been brilliant.
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Colorado Springs is right in the heart of dino lands, Morrison formation, Hell Creek and other famous dig sites are all within a few hundred miles, and this place actively finds dinosaurs.
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It is really interesting, they dig the bones, they preserve and rebuild if necessary, then create casts of the bones and put them together to display the skeletons. They even showed some creativity with their displays, from a feasting Albertosaurus skeleton eating an Edmontosaurus skeleton, being interrupted by another Albertosaurus looking for dinner. Cleverly done.
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As a research centre they show you how it is done, below the skeletons they often had the real bones, as discovered in the rocks, often with the plaster wrap cut away that they use to safely remove them from the ground as they are so decayed. They even have part of the studio for you to watch them working (added some pics of that too).
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The only actual bones you could touch were those of the Triceratops, as they are so abundant in the region that they carry virtually no value.
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They also had a large section on marine dinosaurs, from very scary looking fish to ancient sharks - Sharks that have been around longer then the first dinosaurs appeared on the planet.
They also had a young Mossasaur, a very scary looking monster of the deep, it's living relative these days are the much smaller monitor lizards found today across the globe.
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Very interesting following some traces of evolution where they exist, although of course not all ancient creatures survived the toils of time and have ancesters alive today.
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I do believe I have written more about the dinosaurs than I did about Pikes Peak, well, for what it is worth, I had a truely fantastic day, learning a lot as well as enjoying some lovely scenery!
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freshly extracted bones waiting to be 'processed'
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