Teller County, Colorado

You gotta love those farmers’ markets. Yesterday we checked out the one in Woodland Park and while some of the vendors were the same as we see weekly in Old Colorado City, there were lots of fresh faces. True to the nature of Woodland Park, lots of the booths contained local photography and art, alpaca wool and homemade lotions and soap. I bought apricots the size of peaches, ripe and luscious. When we got back to our car, we found a flyer for a chili cookoff under the windshield wiper. So today, we were back in Woodland Park, sampling chili.

LeRoy has learned that even things that seem least likely can contain chocolate and since he doesn’t relish having a migraine, he always asks about recipe contents. Several of the chili recipes used chocolate as a “secret ingredient”. After wading through samples of several bland, sweet chilis, we both settled on a very good green chili as our favorite. We didn’t stick around for the results, though.

We looked through several of our favorite shops before we stopped for lunch. One of them, Cowbells, belongs to a woman who was raised in Great Bend, KS until she was 7. She and her husband revamped the cutest little camper, which is parked in the lot behind the store.

Who knew that taking your “log cabin” on the road was an option? Some of the walls inside were covered with tanned hides and even the drawers and doors followed the theme.

Cutest touch of all was the cream can cover for the propane bottle on the front.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I love the scenery in Teller County. No matter where you are, somewhere on some horizon is Pikes Peak. We saw it from just about every angle today as we went from Colorado Springs to Woodland Park, Divide, Cripple Creek and Victor before coming back. We drove through the high mountain meadows we love so much and through forested valleys, on twisty gravel roads as well as paved ones. We drove into familiar towns that no longer have the same familiar landmarks, Cripple Creek especially. I have to say that the town of Cripple Creek is cleaner and has amenities it didn’t have before casinos started infusing money into the community, but we miss the small town atmosphere. What we find there now are casinos, one after the other down both sides of the main street everywhere you look. Even the Brass Ass of Cripple Creek, which used to be a gift shop, is now a casino with the bronze statue in the window. Bob and Karen Ward, you’d have been salivating at the sounds of the slot machines dinging!

The mile high scoops from the old ice cream shop/general store are still excellent and that’s one of the few old time stores remaining. We’re planning to take our granddaughter to check out some of the other attractions like the Molly Kathleen gold mine and the Cripple Creek-Victor narrow gauge railroad when she gets here at the end of the month. Some things haven’t changed!