Rainbow cotton candy cliffs, candy cane spires, Neapolitan ice cream hills, and marshmallow mushrooms await the person who ventures out into the “waves of grain” fields in the shadow of Pike’s Peak near Colorado Springs. There are only a handful of places in Colorado that look like the Paint Mines near Calhan, Colorado and few people know of this little hidden gem stuck out in the middle of nowhere on the plains. A cross between the South Dakota badlands and Bryce Canyon hoodoos, the Paint Mines hide in the hills outside of Calhan, not visible from the road unless you park and walk up to the vast eroded canyon.
Built from thousands of years of erosion of the sandstone and clay layers covering what once was a tropical forest millions of years ago, this was a sacred place for indigenous peoples to gather clay for bricks and pottery, collect stones for tools, and marvel at its uniqueness. This is one of those blogs where the pictures tell the story more than the words. Enjoy the captions as I must have been hungry when writing these!