Day 5 - SouthPark - Fairplay
Skye spent a good bit of the morning on the phone with insurance companies before we followed Angel out to the Evergreen gas station. It was already noon by time we reached the Florissant Fossil Beds. We picked up our stamps and went on to the Visitor Center for South Park on Wilkerson Pass. A group of bikes pulled in just before us, but the sky was turning dark, so they went on.
The NPS attendant, Donna, was appearing that night at the Wildwood Casino in Cripple Creek as "Trailer Park Patsy", covering old Patsy Cline songs. She has a beautiful voice! We were within sight of the sunshine at the bottom of Wilkerson when we got blasted by hail. Ow!!! We just pushed through since it was only a minute or two out from under the cloud. It felt like ten.
Hartsell was only 18 miles from Fairplay on CO-9, much closer than I had anticipated. The sun was shining on the road going to Buena Vista, with pure blackness toward Fairplay. We were looking at people's barns for possible shelter when we finally came into town, just reaching the Visitor Center when the rain started.
We decided on the Hand Hotel in the Old Town, over a slightly less expensive one on the highway. Fantastic choice! It was what I think of as an Inn, with a fireplace in the common room. The sky cleared by time we had everything up to our room. We left the bikes parked in front of the hotel and walked to a fantastic lunch at the South Park Fudge Factory. South Park City was at the end of the street, keeping us occupied for the rest of the afternoon and exhausting the batteries in all our photo equipment.
Back at the hotel, we spent the evening in front of the fire chatting with the other guests.