The location descriptions and maps are adequate to actually find the various places in the book. The color photos of the specimens are excellent but often give the rockhound false hopes of what will really be found. I guess my expectations were too high of what could actually be found in Colorado by the casual rockhound. Virtually every site that I have visited that was described in the book has been picked over for multiple decades with good specimens almost nonexistent. Anyone thinking that he/she can just go and get anything like the book's photo specimens is in for disappointment. I've come to the conclusion that the really good sites are never described in books like this.

About 100 hikes are listed with good descriptions of each one. Almost all the hikes are moderate to easy in difficulty. Very few of the hikes are peak climbs or multi-day excursions. A good book for the avid day-hiker but for those who like backcountry, you will want more.

Entertaining read with Longarm on one of his usual U.S. Deputy Marshal escapades. Enjoyed the touch of American history concerning the Meeker Massacre of 1879 involving the Ute Indians enough to do a little personal research on my own after reading the book.

I realize that the above description of this book states it is only 52 pages long but I was still surprised that it's basically the size of a pamphlet. I have been looking for this book for years because I have an interest in Southwestern history and was elated to find it on Amazon. Then it arrived in the mail... "Our Trip to Mesa Verde" reads like a private diary: characters pop up and disappear just as quickly with no explanations, little backstory is given for each situation the girls find themselves in, and the writing style is personal and chatty. While it's a charming 30 minute read--the photographs are priceless--I wish there was more and I'm vaguely disappointed I spent money on it.

Though I thought this book would have worked better once we had gotten to know the characters better - I truly loved this book. It was fun to see the recently weathly decide how to spend their money - get vengence on some bigots and have a tour of famous monsters all in one book!! The monsters were the best - Author Greg Sanchez really took some time and effort to discern what these twisted and tragic figures could teach us and gave this Poe fan a new and wonderful Halloween story to share with friends and family.

The Rio Grande Southern was an extremely photogenic narrow-gauge railroad running thru very rugged areas of southwestern Colorado, from 1891 to 1952. It was probably the most scenic railroad in the United States, replete with breathtaking trestles, high mountain passes (4 of them, no less), and twisting track through narrow canyons.

This is a 40-page book of photographs from Philip Ronfor, a noted rail photographer. His daughters produced this book after his death, assembling a number of color photos from fan trips over the RGS during it's last days, specifically the Memorial Day trips in 1947, 1949 and 1951. The RGS was dismantled in 1952, so there's a lot of historical value to these photographic memories.

The photos are from fan-trips, and don't show the railroad in normal, daily operation. But, they are all color, of very good quality, and are printed large. The text consists mostly of notes about the photos, and a bit of history of the line.

This is a decent book, and makes a nice addition for those researching the Rio Grande Southern railroad.

Although this book contains some extremely helpful information on climbing in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, this homage to Mr. D'Antonio's ego is, at best, painful to read. Mr. D'Antonio's pioneering climbing in this area undoubtedly opened a premier sport climbing region for the benefit of hundreds, if not thousands of climbers. Nonetheless, the qualitative descriptions of the climbs oddly coincide with routes that the author himself developed. The density of self-congratulatory comments becomes choking as one continues to peruse the enclosed information. Climbers visiting the area will buy this book because it contains the best information on the area (it does lack some routes that have been up for a while, but blatantly ignored by the author, a good example being the routes to the right of Mysterious Redhead in Penitente Canyon), but as the day goes on, one may find themselves as exhausted by the insipid writing as the climbing in this gorgeous climbing region.

This has been a good reference book for me in my rockhounding in Colorado. I am glad to see the Author is publishing a second edition. I will purchase it when it comes out. My current copy is copyrighted in 1995. Unless I had a burning desire to purchase this book I would wait until the new edition comes out. I like the authors site format including the best season to collect. Colorado seasons and weather should be taken seriously. I would also suggest that you fully read and follow the introduction section. I have given the book three stars based mainly on it's age. If I were to use the current edition for collecting I would try and verify that the desired site (s) were still open with a local rock club. My one wish for both the Falcon guides and the Gem trail guides is that they include GPS coordinates in the directions. At least for the main turn-off and the starting collecting point. It's real handy to have these coordinates for both the field locations and for Mapping software at home to preplan the trip.

At first glance the deserves five stars for the sheer ability to create a comprehensive guide (it's thick!) to a large and beautiful area like the South Platt... unfortunately it must drop to three stars after actually using the guide. You must be able to think on your feet while using this guide. While it may contain large amounts of information, some of it is just wrong and even conflicts with itself. (i.e. Bucksnort Slab is on one side of the road on one map, and on the other side of the road on another) It also contains GPS locations for most rocks (another accomplishment) but at the same time it's in a format specific only to a specific GPS receiver. I'm an Electrical Engineer and it took me a lot of work to be able to convert them into something usable.

A couple of stars for the most comprehensive book out there, and probably the best choice at this time. But it definately isn't a bulletproof source of knowledge, and requires you to question the book.

There's a lot of information in this book. Unfortunately, in this book the author promotes the use of techniques that permanently scar the very canyons he claims to want to protect. How absolutely absurd is it to chop a big hole into pristine sandstone instead of using natural anchors that are just a foot or so away! I personally would recommend boycotting this book. But since that won't happen (there really IS a lot of information in this book), I hope readers will be more careful than Mr. Kelsey's new book when it comes to the environment.