Back home in the mountains...

Sorry for the blogging hiatus. I've been in internet-deprived- and/or 2G-land for the past week and a half. But today I'm devoting several hours to sipping from the delicious high-speed trough in the newly expanded computer room of the wonderful Salida Regional Library. (It's always been wonderful, but is doubly so now with the many more outlets for plugging in thirsty laptops.)

This lovely park is right across the street from the Library and I just spent a peaceful (and COOL) lunch break there before getting to work again, and determined to blog.

Faithful readers will know my fondness for this little central Colorado town, and I'm lucky enough to be back here again.

I've been busy working on our vacation home here, but have also had time to do some actual vacation-ing as well, and will spend this and the next few posts telling you some of the highlights.

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First, as much time as we've spent in Salida over the years (and especially, recently) there are still new things to see and do here.

For example, the hill with the "S" on it, called Tenderfoot Hill, that you can barely see, all lit up for Christmas, at the end of this post.  Here it is in daylight, with the beautiful, and highly recreational, Arkansas River in the foreground:

I can't believe, that after all these years, this year I'll finally make it to the top. We've always known that there's a road up there, and have seen cars on it. But I guess it takes having guests that you want to show around, to provide the final motivation. My sister and brother spent a delightful several days with me here, and one of the sight-seeing highlights was this little junket.
What great views! You can see not only the whole town, but also a good bit of Salida's wonderful mountain setting. There are at least three 14-er's (14,000'+ peaks) in this view to the west:

You can also see a little of the road. And that little bit is really all there is! It's quite an exciting, one-lane, corkscrewing little spiral. Adding a bit of adrenalized fun to the expedition.

In addition, it's not real easy to find the road's starting point. I can understand the city's reluctance to make it too easy to motor up such a precipitous roadway. There were a couple of other folks up there while we were (one looked like a professional photographer snapping those peaks). But most of them had ridden their bikes up. It would be a pretty strenuous ride and climb, and we were glad we had driven, in spite of the extra excitement that provided.

As you might imagine, given the growing artsiness of Salida, that there is interesting graffiti on the little white building at the top of Tenderfoot. Too much for some, I guess, but too restricted for others, as you can see on the left.
I hope I don't have to wait another 30 years to get up here again, and have a view like this....

Next up, some more spectacular, but quite different, scenery.