Megan’s Take
Today was a longer travel day as we had about 3.5+ hrs of driving from our campground in Glenwood Springs area to Garden of the Gods RV Resort in Colorado Springs. The highlight of the day was stopping at a small but well-known barite mining claim in a very small town named Hartsel. We had to go into the Bayou Salado Trading Post, pay $10, and sign a waver, and then we received a map to the mining claim about 2 miles away.
We almost bailed on this opportunity, because I was really worried about dragging the camper out on a dirt road. But we decided that we could turn around if the road was too bad, because $10 wasn’t too much to be out – basically a $10 gamble. The road actually ended up being okay. We just drove very slowly, and it was less than 2 miles. Once there, we figured out what we were looking for and used Phil’s hammer to excavate. (If we make it back some day, we’ll bring a pick axe and shovel.) There were little shiny pieces of barite on the surface, but you have to dig for the bigger chunks. We had so much fun digging around. The wind was a bit intense, gusting dust into our faces, so we (especially the kids) were pretty dirty afterwards.
But it was fun to just see everyone dig around and find “treasures”. We set a time limit because we had other places to go, although we later wished we had stayed longer at the barite mine.
Emilia was very excited about searching for fossils, and we had told her that we were headed to the Florissant Fossil Quarry. You pay $20 per adult (kids under 5 free) for the hour, and they provide shale and tools. Then you split the shale to search for fossils.
Overall, it felt expensive, disappointing, and a bit scammy despite its good reviews. But the kids were excited and interested, and Emilia has a few new leaf fossils. I would not recommend this place, though. After that, we had barely enough time to stop by Florissant Fossil National Monument. We picked up Junior Ranger packets and glanced at the exhibits in the visitor center before it closed. We felt like we got a sense of the place, but I would have liked more time there (and not getting ripped off splitting shale).
Phil’s Take
The barite mine was fun, even the scenery was good. Here you can see both the great scenery and the dirt road Megan mentioned.
I was really conservative driving that with the camper. We would be in a very bad position if something happened that far out. It was actually not even close to the worst dirt roads we’ve seen this trip, but it is the worst we’ve taken the camper on.
This experience at the barite mine confirmed my suspicion that I would like this part of Megan’s hobby. I do enjoy the digging. It’s like fishing without the stench.
The fossil splitting experience was a waste of time, in my opinion. We would have been better off mining for more barite than going there. It was $40 and we didn’t really even get much. It was bad enough that I wrote up a google review with the following details:
I did manage to capture a shot of something cool at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Again, I would have rather spent more time here than at the fossil quarry. This is a cool petrified stump.
This shows that it doesn’t take a fossil quarry to make the kids happy. This was on our way into the visitor center at the national monument.
Our campground in Colorado Springs is definitely not my favorite thus far. It’s incredibly cramped, but that’s par for campgrounds in cities. They do have a cool arcade with a ton of pinball machines though. It’s clearly someone’s collection that they’ve made available. At $.25 per game, they’re not making a killing. Some of these machines are very old, so it seems to me to be a collection. I didn’t have the wisdom to grab a pic, but maybe tomorrow.
Here’s the gallery of pictures from the day.
