556. Central City, Gilpin County (CO24)

The courthouse was lovely, on the main street of this tight and tiny town in the mountain passes. It looked, in some respects like a lovely little European town.

Of course, you can’t see the casino farther back down the road. I spent a little wondering if I had made the right choice in coming out here. I skipped over a destination to get here and I thought to myself that if there had been a good open road and not the winding mountain road I had taken to get here, I would have had more than enough time. But I made my choice and I was here despite the drive, both beautiful and harrowing. I was tired from just having driven it. Mountain roads do that to me, even when they’re not that serious. The things you learn about yourself when you travel alone…

I ended up at the local market fair for my cache. The was a virtual devoted to an old town that predated Central City at the site. It was also a nice chance to sit for a minute and have a sandwich before I got going again. I drove out of town by a different route and then realized an important truth. Remember I mentioned a casino that you couldn’t see? Well, anywhere there’s a casino is going to have a big open road leading to it. I took the three-lane-in-each-direction road out of town with minimal winding and zero harrowing. Large, well maintained, and with no signs of falling rocks, I flew over to a major highway and remembered a recurring theme in all my trips: I was a fool for not trusting my own planning. I spend so much time planning out these trips. Why can I just not trust myself to have prepared the best route? So now I was faced with a choice again: continue on towards my next destination? Or grab the one I had decided to axe previously? It would be so fast to go back, twenty minutes there and back. If I could grab a fast cache, it might only be an hour and I’ve made bigger detours for dumber things. I didn’t trust my original plan, but that was a situation I could rectify, making my way sort of backwards to…