On Tuesday I rode the Harley over to my Dad’s house to help him load a log-splitter into his trailer.  My Uncle Alan (Dad’s youngest brother) needed it at his house for some logs that are too big to do by hand.

Stilla chauffeured our visitors from Germany around town in the Silverado to do their own thing.

Meanwhile, I chauffered Dad and Stepmom Elaine in their Jeep with trailer attached up the pass (I-24 West from COS) to my Uncle Alan and Aunt Beverly’s house.  They live on approximately 10 acres that borders the Florissant Fossil beds.  It is halfway between Florissant and Divide, CO so my Uncle calls his homestead “Floride”.  Get it?

Here we are after unloading the heavy log-splitter from the trailer.

My Uncle Alan (Dad’s brother) got a quick block of instruction on how to operate the splitter from Dad.

Here’s the wood he wants to split.

And here’s some of the wood he already split (by hand!).

And here’s more piles of wood he already split!… Unk – I think you got enough to last awhile…

Here’s a picture of the Hobden homestead in “Floride”, CO.

We then had a picnic, complete with campfire, at a spot near the house that Alan keeps on the ready with picnic table, chairs and fire pit.  Here’s Uncle Alan burning some hot dogs.

Stepmom Elaine and Aunt Beverly set the picnic table.

Dad & Elaine tried out the comfortable swing while waiting for the dogs and beans to finish cooking.

After our fine picnic, Uncle Alan loaded the extra picnic accessories into his little trailer to take back to the house.

We had a little fun touring around the property in Alan’s older model ATV.  Here’s Dad going for a spin.

Off into the horizon…

For the afternoon, Uncle Alan suggested we go on a hike to take a look at a house that sits on over 300 acres located on the West side of Pikes Peak.  Us folks from COS would call it the “back-side” of Pikes Peak but my Uncle says it’s the “front-side” for him.  I guess it’s a matter of perspective.

Interesting story – a gentleman by the name of Harvey Carter owned the land and house until his passing in 2012.  He was a pioneer rock-climber and entrepreneur that envisioned a ski area being developed on his land, but alas, it wasn’t to be.  Here’s a couple links for more information on the guy: Link here for obit and here for a short video.  It seems that the Broadmoor Hotel bought the land and house after Harvey’s passing and worked some sort of trade deal with the National Forest Service.  It is now NFS land.  The Colorado Springs newspaper, “The Gazette” did an article on this here.

My Uncle is a real-estate agent by trade and met this guy a couple years ago.  He got an exclusive personal tour of his land and first- hand account of Harvey Carter’s vision.

We had to park about a half-mile away from the house and hike in.  The spot where we parked at is at the end of the dirt road past the Crags campground.  It was good to walk off the hot dogs we had for lunch, but it was slow going due to the high altitude.

Here’s a view of the trail we hiked on the backside of Pikes Peak.

Many of the Aspens still have their leaves, but not for long…

And here you can see one of the peaks just coming into view as we hiked the road on the back-side of Pikes Peak.

We came upon a tree that had fallen across the road.  Unsure what could have caused it – maybe high winds.

Once the trail we walked joined the main road.  We could see that the road had been clearly widened and graded recently… not a good sign.  Alan speculated that the forest service may have already demolished the house and had widened the road to get the dump trucks and bulldozers in.

We hiked and hiked… Alan kept telling us that it’s “just around the next bend”.  And he’d say the same thing after the next bend…

When we finally got to the end of the road, we found that the house had been demolished.  All that’s left is dirt and boulders.  Hardly any evidence that a house was ever there.

Sure must have been a nice view from the house back in the day.

We tromped around on the dirt that had been brought in to cover the old homesite.  There was still some glass and electrical wiring mixed in with the dirt.  Whoever did the demolition for the Forest Service must have been the low bidder as usual.

We enjoyed the scenic views… and then headed back down to the Jeep.

We said our goodbyes to Uncle Alan and Aunt Beverly when we got back to his house.  Thanks for another memorable day Unk!  See you soon.

We hooked the empty trailer back up to the Jeep and headed back down the pass.  Dad treated at Wendy’s in Woodland Park where we stopped for supper on the way down.

It was already dark by the time we got back to Dad’s house.  So after storing the trailer, I jumped on the Harley and went straight home to see what Stilla and the Germans did for the day.  I think they spent some time at Helen Hunt Falls and did some more shopping.

In other news – I heard about the eclipse of the moon tonight, so I set the alarm for 4:15 AM and got this picture.

Hopefully you can see the moon almost eclipsed.  I took the pic with my iPhone and probably should have pulled out the Canon S100 but didn’t.  As usual, if you click on any of the photos in this blog, it should enlarge for easier viewing.

Until next time… stay tuned…