I can also attest to that Resharp is indeed a lead foot. He once raced a side by side Polaris on a shelf road up Mt. Antero and won! j/k

He does drive faster though.

 

Probably not going to be camping, wife prefers the hotel or rental cabin life. Yes love the old mining history stuff and thanks for the tips on the other attractions.

 

I did Moab and Colorado last year. My name is Matt and It's been 366 days since my last adventure. I based out of Silverton and for me it was the best choice I like the remote small towns though Ouray would be great too. They are experiencing snowfall already FYI think they got 6+ the other day. While there i did black bear, Ophir, engineer, and Imogene the alpine is a part of the engineer I think then it goes off to lake city. They were all great. If you are going to try to do this in 2020 check out bleeping jeep YouTube video on the back bear. The weather can change rapidly making things extremely dangerous.

 

If you want to be sure that the trails you are interested in are open... look towards July, maybe even the second week. We watched trails as they opened before our trip this year... and we were there over the 4th of July- Black Bear was closed the whole time we were there. We did run both sides of it until we hit the closed area. We were able to do Ophir, Alta Lakes, Imogene, and Red Mountain pass... As for mining sites Red Mountain road is very hard to beat... there are a lot of old mining sites on that road. It might be worth the trip if you want a tour inside of a mine to check out the Old 100 mine in Silverton... they take you in and demonstrate a lot of old equipment for you... I'll post a link to the video if you want to have a look at some of those sites on Red Mountain... . There are dozens of roads with mine sites... so a good map is really helpful. Also, if you are towing all that way- be sure to give yourself a few days at least... the area is amazing to explore!