HIKING TO THE TOP OF SPRUCE MOUNTAIN

One morning, with a brilliant blue sky overhead, we traveled south about 8 miles to the area that used to be the town of Greenland. Greenland was a small cluster of commercial and ranch buildings which acted as a central shipping point for farm products and lumber for southern Douglas County, with a post office and two railroad depots. The school opened in 1892 and was closed in 1957, as the town had too few residents to warrant their own school.

Cattle were held in this corral before being moved about 75 yards to the railroad siding.
  

This was the loading area where the cattle were loaded onto the train cars for shipment to a slaughter house.

We enjoyed this view of Pikes Peak taken from the parking lot at the trailhead. There is not nearly as much snow on "America's Mountain" now in mid-June as there was when we first arrived in Colorado in early May.

Here is a view of Spruce Mountain from the trailhead. Yes, we are going to climb up above the limestone rock areas you can see in the center of this photo.

As we hiked upward through the trees along the side of the butte, we knew that the view from the top was going to be spectacular.

We are almost there.

Paul at the top of the mountain at the Upper Loop Lookout!  Yes, the snow-capped mountain in the left background is Pikes Peak. You can tell the weather has warmed up since we are wearing shorts. The long sleeved shirt is for protection from the sun. We had a great view of the Palmer Divide to the east (Paul's right). The Palmer Divide separates the Arkansas River basin from the Missouri River basin.

Our hike took us along some shaded parts of the trail. The shade came from tall Ponderosa Pine trees and Douglas Fir trees. There was lots of scrub oak for a ground cover. Not a cloud in the sky.

We headed back down off the mountain and walked through meadows of brilliant wildflowers at the end of our hike.  We saw two new flowers on this hike. First, these Orange Paintbrush.

And, Columbines, the Colorado state flower.

We could see the rocky Raspberry Butte as we journeyed down the mountain. There are limestone buttes rising from valleys all over this part of Colorado, the foothills just on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains.  We thought this view looked like a miniature Castle Rock.

This hike had an elevation gain of about 600 feet and was about 4 1/2 miles long. We are acclimated to hiking at 7000 feet now and enjoy the challenge of getting up and back down the hiking trails. Lots of great views of the scenery but no wildlife on this day.