Changed circumstances and new discoveries

It will take a somewhat round-about story to explain the pictures in today's blog post, photos of a lovely gem that I—rather shamefacedly—only recently discovered.

The Library branch I normally patronize—that provides me with tangible books and DVDs practically at the snap of my fingers—is just a few blocks from my house, walking distance even in the summer heat. Plus it has a great playground that is very popular with permanent residents of the neighborhood as well as visitors from New England. [Note: When looking for previous posts about this Library and its grounds, I just realized that I haven't done any! geeez! that will have to be remedied this fall!]

Anyway, they are renovating this lovely old building over the summer, and while its playground and the convenient bookdrop are still open, I can't get inside to pick up my requested volumes. So I've pressed the next closest branch into service...

It's not too much further away, but definitely not summer-walking distance. However, it's part of a large complex of public areas, some of which I'll be showing you below.

One of them is here, the San Pedro Playhouse (which happened to be the setting for our local march in support of science).

Since there aren't a lot of plays going on during the week, when I usually need to visit the Library, and since it's just far enough away to provide a summer-appropriate amount of exercise, I've started parking at the Playhouse and walking over to the Library.

And in the process, I've discovered the absolute jewel that is San Pedro Springs Park. Wow! I can't believe this lovely, and historically significant, campus was a surprise to me! Some Hometown Tourist I am!

The first thing that you see heading south from the Playhouse parking lot is this amazing aquamarine shimmer, through the trees...

It's an enormous, and gorgeous pool that has seemed, at least when I've been walking by, to be seriously underutilized. Here's a look from pool level:

Astute readers will also notice another big plus for the area: fabulous trees. The ones on the right above keep a good chunk of the pool shaded, which is nice when it's really hot and sunny. And here's a real behemoth just a few yards away...

Another eye-catching feature is the gazebo, providing yet more welcome shade. Here's what it looks like from the down at pool level...

...and here's what the pool looks like from under the gazebo's handsome roof...

But the most surprising sight on my walk is this...

It's actually not one of the eponymous springs, as I originally thought, but a Victorian-era "grotto" constructed at one point during this site's long, long history of bringing cool relief to denizens of the region.

This website about our local aquifer will give you more information about the springs themselves than you probably want, but the historical marker at the site sums it up rather impressively...

Yes, that does say the park was established in 1729, making it the second-oldest public park in the U.S., after Boston Common. The springs were named even earlier, in 1709.

This handy slideshow provided by our local paper will show you scenes of the park during a good part of its illustrious history. 

Although it doesn't solve the mystery of this small building in the Library's back yard...

Apparently the experts can't decide if it was part of a colonial structure, a warehouse, or a feature in an Victorian amusement park that occupied the site in the mid-1800's. You can read more about the various theories here, also courtesy of the San Antonio Express-News.

Mysteries or no, discovering this gem of an attraction, not three miles from my house, was both a humbling and an exhilerating experience. I think that we San Antonians, being rather more awash in historically significant sites than residents of most major cities, tend to take that for granted sometime!

Fun Fourth in Luckenbach

I apologize for the earworm I'm sure I've just given you; I had it for days preceding and following our 4th of July trip to this iconic Texas Hill Country location.

It was hard to convince us to get out in the heat and drive to Luckenbach (even though it's not that far away) for we knew-not-what in terms of crowds and food/drink prices. But we're so glad our friend persisted and got us there.


The crowds weren't bad and the prices for beer and munchies weren't either. I did have to wait in line quite a while for what ended up being really scrumptious fresh-fried sopapillas. But you could hear the music from there (just the warm-up act; I wouldn't have given up my good seat for the main attraction for the world (...see below!) and it was a great place to people-watch some very interesting people.

The flag you see above was right over where they kept the fried items hot in this food booth...what better secondary symbol of America than deep-fried goodies?

Plus, our friend had an ace up her sleeve when she was working to convince us to take in Luckenbach: one of the musical acts set to perform, the afore-mentioned main attraction, was our favorite accordionista and polka-band-leader, Alex Meixner! He'd never been to Luckenbach before, but is a staple at New Braunfels' Wurstfest, where we saw him in 2015 and became instant fans.

The Luckenbach venue is much smaller and more intimate, and you can get much closer to the action here. Especially when Henry uses his super-power of finding good seats at crowded venues. So my pictures of Alex in action (the two words being pretty much synonymous with each other) are lots better...

What an entertainer this guy is! And we weren't the only folks who thought so...

At one point he stopped for a breath and a swig of gatorade and asked how many people hadn't seen his band before. A lot of hands went up, and I imagine he made a lot of new fans.

Getting work done

Now that I've told you the fun things we got to do on our quick trip to Colorado last month, I want to spend a few minutes assuring you that we did do the work we needed to while we were enjoying the coolness.

One of the things we were asked was to take some photos of what's going on at my brother-in-law's cabin, where last spring's heavy snows pretty badly collapsed his multi-level deck:

It's hard for us southerners to appreciate how powerful the fluffy white stuff can be!

I also got some heavy cleaning done (our new stove is really sparkling) and we made spiffy [readable] new signs identifying all of our circuit breakers, after testing them—a task that took an inordinate amount of time, but will be useful as future repairs are undertaken.

Doesn't that sound like fun?!

Our main job, however, was to pick paint colors for the exterior of our cabin, which has not been painted in a long time and needs repairs as well as new colors. 

We have wanted to replace the black-white-and-red scheme for years. The interior originally also followed this palette, at which I know the flippers on HGTV would scream "dated!" and fall down in fits, but we fixed that several years ago...

THEN:

note black paneling and—eewwww!—red shag carpet!

NOW:

we need to replace this furniture, but it is SO comfortable!

Now it's the outside's turn. Here's Henry with our two finalist colors for the main walls...

We picked the darker one on the left, which was almost exactly what I had visualized. Sherwin-Williams' "Fairfax Brown." We think it will look gorgeous!

Trim color was a little harder, but we think we found a good combination for the windows and facia boards. "Antler Velvet," which is weird, even for a paint color name, but it looks nice with the dark brown. Here's a sample of it on the deck railing...

However, we've decided to be bold with the railing and paint it (as well as incidentals like the doors) a dark forest green. (I'm leaning toward "Rock Garden," but "Foxhall Green" is still in the running. Wouldn't it be fun to have a job making up paint color names?)

And you'll be hearing lots about the railing later this summer because I've taken it upon myself to do that painting (along with a few helpful volunteers). It's going to be quite a job since we have over 200 feet (!) of railing and each inch has a lot of surfaces that need to be covered. I got the beginnings of an appreciation for the magnitude of the job as I started doing some scraping during the current visit. At least it won't be 100° while I'm doing this chore!

That wraps up our too-brief visit to the mountains. Before we knew it we were back on the people mover heading out to the Denver airport's C concourse...

...and home. Fortunately, it won't be too long before I can get back.

Wordless Wednesday: danged gov'mint regulations!

Stumbling into FiBArk

Ah, the wonders and pleasures of serendipity!

After having a totally-unlooked-for two wonderful days in Rocky Mountain National Park, we were finally on our way to do the work that we had come to Colorado for. Then, just by chance we were listening to a non-NPR station as we neared Salida (it was a local oldies station, our second choice option when traveling). And we heard something about FiBArk.

Was it possible? This famous festival celebrating the opening of boating season on the Arkansas River that we'd always thought it would be fun to see, and it just happened to be going on this weekend? With no planning aforethought on our part? How serendipitous can you get!

We did still get our work done (more about that next time) but we also were able to enjoy this wild and wacky weekend in one of our favorite little towns.

FiBArk stands for "First in Boats on the Arkansas," and although some boaters had certainly already been on the river this year, its flow was probably at spring peak this weekend. It might even be rushing more than usual, since the snowpack that feeds it was heavy this year (see our previous encounter with the results of this snowmelt).

This will give you an idea of how high and fast the water is on the Arkansas; the sidewalk on the right here is usually open all the way under the bridge and to the park in the next block, but not now!

On to the celebration that shows how much people around here appreciate this high water.

We've been to a parade in Salida before, but it was nothing like the FiBArk parade that we saw this time.

In some ways, it's like any other small town parade. There are guys in funny little cars...

...unicyclists...

...bands, although these didn't march (and it seems like a very sensible way to provide music without having to worry about the musicians having heatstroke—yes, I know it's Colorado, but it was close to 90° at parade-time!—although I guess it's easier to provide this kind of transportation when the band's not all that large)...

...and in addition to a collection of local politicians and officials (not pictured) there were some political statements, like this group marching for their grandchildren and against climate change...

(note the large polar bear who must have been very hot inside that suit!)

Then there were some participants that you'd only find here, like these ladies that I'm pretty sure are part of the ArkValley High Rollers, the local roller derby team...

...and some very energetic and creative librarians from one of our favorite local institutions, the Salida Regional Library...

...their wild book truck routine was a parade highlight...

But these fine folks aren't what makes this parade unique. It serves as a preview to another sort of parade that happens later in the day on water instead of pavement. It's called the Hooligan Race, and the picture at the top of the post shows the crowd gathered for it. Here are a few of the guys who participated in both...

yes, that's their "boat"

another political statement...and yes, that's also a boat

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the Kiss boat during the Race, but here's the "Border Boat" on the river:

And here are a few more of the delightful watercraft (loosely defined) that entertained us:

The groups above and below seemed to be having a little trouble holding themselves together, but they look like they're having fun anyway...

They weren't the only folks in "floaties"...

...and I suppose there has to be a "rubber duckie" each year. This one is just getting to the big play feature that swamped many of the participants (our vantage point was a good one, but a bit too far upstream to get good photos of the carnage at this reckoning point)...

Some of the "craft" were little more than boards and barrels, which seems like a really bad idea to me; at least the inflatables are soft when you get tossed off them...

But some of the participants were much more elaborate. Here are two of the best, a pirate ship and, in front, a replica of the snow cats that groom the slopes up at the Monarch Ski Area...

You might have noticed race gates in some of these photos. The Hooligan Race didn't use them, but there were kayak competitions throughout the weekend that did. Unfortunately we weren't able to see any of that action, but, after all, we did have some work to do!