Colorado miscellany

I had a very nice time in Colorado after my California adventures, but not much blog-worthy happened during that refreshing, cool, two weeks.

Visiting with old friends, working a very challenging puzzle, talking over old times, etc., is great fun, but not of much interest to general readership. Here are some highlights, though...

Babysitting my adorable great-niece involved a lot of throwing rocks into the stream; here she is taking some pre-gathered rocks from Grammy prior to another fusillade

Though already late in the summer, there were still lots of nice flowers around

We happened into Salida on the day of a big bike race...

...where our main chore was running a shuttle for the boys to take a brief paddle

The time in the mountains was something more of an adventure than we're used to, since we had very little water service almost the whole time. Kudos to our good-sport friends who not only still came up to visit, but who brought us enough potable water that we didn't have to make emergency runs to the stream. But we all decided that we take running water much, too much, for granted in our normal lives.

Very little water came out of the pipes, but for several days during our visit we had nice rain showers up in the mountains, like this one, at the photographically perfect time to catch some sunset color:

We don't begrudge this moisture, since the whole state is still in drought and fire danger is almost omnipresent. This summer, with more than usual rains, has been much better on that front than last year.

And, as it turned out, Henry and I had absolutely perfect weather for our only big hike (which wasn't all that big) of the trip. I'll show you some pictures from that activity next time.