Jaydoc1
New member
So even before my two JKs I have always enjoyed off/back-road adventures. My dad got me started early in life by dragging my family and I on some truly ridiculous roads in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, etc... in a 1970s conversion van. As I look back it's actually pretty frightening some of the places we went in that thing. When we moved to Colorado in 1978 we had an International Scout that got the job done quite a bit better than the van and we also had a street legal sand rail that made quick work of the Colorado back roads when the weather was nice enough.
Later in life when my wife and I were broke and in medical school I bought a used '93 Sahara that my father actually gave me all kinds of trouble about because it "was going to be broken down more often than it was running". Turns out it never stopped running until the day I sold it in 2007 or so. My dad ended up liking it so much that he bought himself a 2003 and drove it so much that it actually did die somewhere just shy of 200,000 miles.
Well one of the things my father and I (and a few other relatives) have always enjoyed doing is getting together to elk hunt every year around Creede, Colorado. It is just a beautiful area (they shot the mountain portions of the recent Lone Ranger movie there). As time went by we found that we were hunting less each year and spending most of our time just exploring the area. After I sold my Sahara (I had lifted it by that time) I had no real way to get around in the mountains with them anymore so went looking for a new 4X4. I ended up finding an absolutely mint 2003 H1 that had been owned by the third baseman for the Denver Rockies (can't remember his name) that was on consignment at a Lexus dealer in Lakewood, Colorado. That became my hunting vehicle for several years.
Since a lot of this site is dedicated to the way of life of off-roading, and since I was just taking a little trip down memory lane and looking at some pics from that trip, I thought I'd share. Don't worry, Dad had his Wrangler along in case I got stuck.
This particular trip took us to the top of Bristol Head. A very commanding sight from any of the roads below it and something we had wanted to get to the top of for several years.
Hope you enjoy.
Here is an overhead image to get your bearings. Highway 149 is the route to this area from Creede. All the roads surrounding the fishponds and Santa Maria Lake can't be seen from the highway as they sit down in a valley. Some of the later pics will show the true scope of this amazing place.
Our rides for the day. 37s don't look that big on an H1, do they?
How to start a day off right!
The bighorns didn't seem to care at all that we were there. No, we had no sheep tags for this trip. These pictures were shot as we were actually nearing the top of Bristol Head (you can see the road we were on in the first aerial image just below the top where it makes a sharp cut to the left into the finger of darker olive colored vegetation as it circles around the peak to come up on the far side).
Here you can see the road actually cut left into the darker vegetation. Lots of sheep up there that day. 30 or 40 at least.
My nephew kicking back on Dad's Sport watching the sheep.
We've arrived at the top.
I think the only cellular tower in the county resides up there. Great signal from there. :crazyeyes:
It is seriously high!
It is truly a vast area. This is looking down on Saint Maria Lake from the top.
Sometimes we do stupid things for good pictures. :shock:
This is as close as I could make myself get to the edge. I could just see my brakes going.
We actually did do SOME hunting on the trip. Just no shooting or killing. :doh:
The night before the last day of the trip it snowed which gave us a whole new environment to play in.
Hope you guys enjoyed the pics. For most of us the experience is the payoff no matter what the vehicle is that gets us there. For a lot of us no one will ever see most of the photographs we take on our excursions so this was a chance to "dust them off" again.
Thanks for looking!
Later in life when my wife and I were broke and in medical school I bought a used '93 Sahara that my father actually gave me all kinds of trouble about because it "was going to be broken down more often than it was running". Turns out it never stopped running until the day I sold it in 2007 or so. My dad ended up liking it so much that he bought himself a 2003 and drove it so much that it actually did die somewhere just shy of 200,000 miles.
Well one of the things my father and I (and a few other relatives) have always enjoyed doing is getting together to elk hunt every year around Creede, Colorado. It is just a beautiful area (they shot the mountain portions of the recent Lone Ranger movie there). As time went by we found that we were hunting less each year and spending most of our time just exploring the area. After I sold my Sahara (I had lifted it by that time) I had no real way to get around in the mountains with them anymore so went looking for a new 4X4. I ended up finding an absolutely mint 2003 H1 that had been owned by the third baseman for the Denver Rockies (can't remember his name) that was on consignment at a Lexus dealer in Lakewood, Colorado. That became my hunting vehicle for several years.
Since a lot of this site is dedicated to the way of life of off-roading, and since I was just taking a little trip down memory lane and looking at some pics from that trip, I thought I'd share. Don't worry, Dad had his Wrangler along in case I got stuck.
This particular trip took us to the top of Bristol Head. A very commanding sight from any of the roads below it and something we had wanted to get to the top of for several years.Hope you enjoy.
Here is an overhead image to get your bearings. Highway 149 is the route to this area from Creede. All the roads surrounding the fishponds and Santa Maria Lake can't be seen from the highway as they sit down in a valley. Some of the later pics will show the true scope of this amazing place.
Our rides for the day. 37s don't look that big on an H1, do they?
How to start a day off right!
The bighorns didn't seem to care at all that we were there. No, we had no sheep tags for this trip. These pictures were shot as we were actually nearing the top of Bristol Head (you can see the road we were on in the first aerial image just below the top where it makes a sharp cut to the left into the finger of darker olive colored vegetation as it circles around the peak to come up on the far side).
Here you can see the road actually cut left into the darker vegetation. Lots of sheep up there that day. 30 or 40 at least.
My nephew kicking back on Dad's Sport watching the sheep.
We've arrived at the top.
I think the only cellular tower in the county resides up there. Great signal from there. :crazyeyes:
It is seriously high!
It is truly a vast area. This is looking down on Saint Maria Lake from the top.
Sometimes we do stupid things for good pictures. :shock:
This is as close as I could make myself get to the edge. I could just see my brakes going.
We actually did do SOME hunting on the trip. Just no shooting or killing. :doh:
The night before the last day of the trip it snowed which gave us a whole new environment to play in.
Hope you guys enjoyed the pics. For most of us the experience is the payoff no matter what the vehicle is that gets us there. For a lot of us no one will ever see most of the photographs we take on our excursions so this was a chance to "dust them off" again.
Thanks for looking!
