Driving Down the Front Range

I wasn't in a hurry to get home one day last week, so I took a bit of a more scenic drive with my ultimate goal of stopping in at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden Colorado, basically right across the highway from the Coors Brewery (which is truly massive by the way, a valley full of concrete structures and heavily served by, I think, the BNSF). Well the weather didn't cooperate with me at all but I did stop to take a few pictures. You will see a number of these slowly worked their way through the banner (at least when I remember to change it).

These are the full size pictures, just color corrected a little bit.

Longs Peak, the highest point in the picture. There is a reason they are referred to as "purple mountains" in songs

South of Boulder on Highway 93, those are the Flatirons just above Boulder. Its raining in Boulder  Valley but the peaks are clear. Highway 93 follows the foothills between Boulder and Golden (yes, the foothills). These pictures are in sequence from north to south.

I'm just below a ridge line here so after that very clear demarcation between the grass and the foothills is a steep drop into the valley. This valley is one thing that kept Boulder somewhat isolated there are only a couple of ways into the valley that don't involve really steep grades.

South into Golden, passing by one of the hogback formations. If you are high enough and in the right spot you can see a line of these heading north and south. These parallel the foothills and Highway 93 basically goes north and south with the hogbacks on the east side and the foothills on the west.

It was to rainy to bother going into the museum that day (most of it is out doors, and of course the only stuff I want to see is outside). But I did catch BNSF 1600 doing a little switching on the north side of Highway 52 (which goes between the museum and the Coors Brewery). I think he was working the Coors facility that is on this side of the valley.

BNSF is a SD40-2, the pictures definitely suffer from raindrops on my car windows. I guess I need automatic windows now.