Gold Belt Tour
Shelf Road Part 2

There, that's the folks from Kansas ahead of me. I stopped to take this photo and to let them get ahead of me a bit. It turned out to be one of those cases where if I went faster, he didn't, and if I slowed down, he did, too. On a slope like this, the Trailblazer idles around 25 mph. Following this guy required that I put the automatic transmission in low and ride my brakes all the rest of the way out. I ended up stopping and taking a lot of photos but what you'll see here isn't nearly all of them. I tried to pick and choose the best for this exposition but I have uses for nearly all of the others, too.

This is just below Marigold but still above the single track road on the canyon wall. The aspen and spruce have almost completely faded away, the Ponderosas, cedars and piñon are coming back. Must be getting close to 7,500 feet in elevation. It looks like things are getting a bit drier, too. The road is still good but it's getting narrower with fewer turn-outs along the way. You can even see a bit of rockfall in this photo (including that boulder on the lower right).