All kinds of fun on the Western Slope!

Colorado National Monument from downtown Grand Junction

...western slope of the Rocky Mountains, that is. A nice trip to Grand Junction last May—primarily for baseball, as you will see—provided opportunities for great touristy experiences of many varieties.

In addition to the great views (above and below) from an observation tower downtown...

the Book Cliffs and Mt. Garfield

...we took an interesting hike near Fruita (named for the great produce from this area), the Paleo Loop:

It included this picturesque cabin, once actually inhabited until the not-so-distant past:

Fruita's just down the road from Junction, but we also took a longer trip, to Meeker, further north along the Western Slope. A museum there was displaying a very interesting exhibit from the Smithsonian about the influence of native American stories and myths on mainstream culture. The museum itself was full of fascinating objects and would be worth a side trip. This is just one of the items that caught my fancy—an unbelievably ornate fireplace surround:

There was more history on display closer to home. This beautifully maintained torpedo bomber lives at the Grand Junction airport, watched over by the Rocky Mountain Wing of the Commemorative Air Force.

I got a special tour of the plane and the adjacent museum, since one of my hosts is a member of this august organization. Here's another shot of the highly polished engine of this TBM-3 Avenger, a model first used in WWII at the Battle of Midway:

This particular craft wasn't in that battle, but it did fly over the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II!

So many fun activities during this visit, including a very interesting and entertaining talk by David French, the NY Times columnist, sponsored by Restore the Balance, a group working to blunt political extremism in our national discourse. Yes, there are progressives in the intermountain west!

But the main reason for the visit was, of course, baseball. It had been several years since I was last at the Junior College World Series, held every May in Grand Junction. (I blogged about an earlier visit here.) What a wonderful celebration of the game, the earnest young men who play it, and the joys of, if not small-town, then at least small-city, life.

I don't want to wait that long before going to experience it again!

The lovely weather is a big reason they hold the tournament here every year

new pressbox since my last visit; there were new seats, too

fun music between innings, including, of course "YMCA"

Last good snow

It was not a very good snow year in the Rockies, but we lucked into a few days of good skiing and even sledding. They say our area gets its best snow late, and this year that was certainly true.

Pike's Peak on a clear day, from the ski area

But of course the melting happened pretty quickly...

However, not before those few days of good skiing, and with such accomplished companions! They occasionally waited a bit for Gramma to take pictures, but then were off onto their hard blues and blacks. See you at the lodge, kids!

Before the big snow, our skiing days were short, leaving time for other activities. Like a hike across the highway, that affords great views of our little town, like this one:

And a nice dip in one of the areas fabulous hot springs. We opted for the Charlotte Hot Springs this time, smaller, but a good deal less expensive than the big boy, the Princeton Hot Springs that we sampled in 2025.

Snow or no snow, traveling with this family is always great fun!

Colorado 2025

Continuing to move forward thru last year's photos...

One of my infrequent posts last year covered a good bit of a New Mexico-Colorado road trip in August. But I found a few things that didn't make it into that recap. One of which is the amazing Great Sand Dunes National Park, in the San Luis valley not too far from our cabin. As you can see above, yes, it is certainly great! How many gigatons of sand have collected up against the west side of the Sangre de Cristo mountains over the ages? The size of the dunes literally—and I mean "literally" literally—beggars the imagination.

You can see the tiny dots that are, in fact, people in the photo above. And here's another shot with an Adorable Granddaughter likewise miniaturized:

But of course there's water in the Centennial State, too, in spite of the ongoing drought. Here's "our" waterfall, located along one side of Mt. Shavano...

...and this lovely river, fed by the tributary above, along with others, until it makes for a major Mississippi tributary itself, many hundreds of miles away:

Adorable Granddaughters enjoying the Arkansas River in Salida

We also did some work on this trip, upgrading some of our cabin's furniture. A new sleeper sofa was much needed, as was a new dining set for the deck:

I'll try to continue my journey down memory lane in the next few days, filling out some more details from 2025, and perhaps starting 2026!

Wordless Wednesday: Colorado skies

 

Working vacation

 

Of course, when your working vacation happens in a place like this, it can hardly be called working. Especially when you know that at home heat indexes are well into triple digits!

Yes, more work was needed at our Colorado cabin. And more work was accomplished! Just take a look at the rainfall beautifully beading on the newly re-sealed deck!

Even more impressive, I think, was the transformation of the much-weathered railing. You might remember my railing tales from a post from several years ago. Well, lots of sun and snow can really do a number on even the most carefully painted surfaces. Here's a look at one of the worst sections, after some serious scraping...

...and then after priming and repainting—doesn't it look almost brand new?!

(If you look closely at the rear of the top photo you'll see our old DirecTV dish, which friend Garry—who was indispensable in all this work, BTW—thanks so much!—was able to take down, only after we'd both bonked heads on it more than once. And why, you might ask, did we cancel that service? Hint: it wasn't just because the dish was a head-cracking hazard. Because we have good internet in the valley now! Thanks to the ring of satellites put up by someone I'd rather not mention. But they sure work wonderfully, so that we can stream, email, chat, and do everything else we used to have to go somewhere else to do.)

Another reason the "working" part of the vacation was only partly accurate is that there were often afternoon showers, which makes this kind of work impossible. So we really only had to work half days, leaving the afternoons for lazing about, reading, and enjoying displays like these:

Here's a closeup of an even more impressive example of refraction:

Pretty sweet, eh? And the best part is that soon after arriving back home to the sauna of San Antonio, I was able to escape it again for a while. In a completely different direction! I'll tell you about that next time.

Wordless Wednesday: Now *that's* an airport* bathroom!

 

*new part of C concourse, Denver International

Now, THIS is Colorado!

It's hard to believe, but it's been five years since we've been skiing! First covid, then other trips and other responsibilities...but we finally got back to our favorite ski area, and were rewarded with some of the best snow so far in their season.

And they always have some of the best snow in the state, partly because of their high elevation. The picture above was taken from a run that goes along the Continental Divide, at over 11,000'. I had been a little worried about taking in such thin air, since a couple of respiratory bugs had laid me low recently, but the adrenaline must have taken over and I didn't have too much trouble. Whew! I would have hated to miss views like these. 

The mountains in the near distance above are Ouray and Chipeta. Ouray was an influential Native American chief and Chipeta was his wife. You can learn more about them here, although I don't know if it will explain why the mountain Ouray is as far away from the town Ouray as it is. Geography is fun!

You can see some of the work that's involved when it snows this much at the right. Hal is using our new roof rake—we didn't even know that was a thing!—to take some of the snow off the roof of our garage. We're glad he did; after we left they got gobs more snow and it piled up there again!

Enjoy these these other views of the ski area and the surrounding countryside—home to a boatload of 14'ers and some of the most beautiful peaks in the Rockies...

We had perfect weather for our first days' runs, but it got a little cloudy for our later outing. However, don't the clouds look impressive in such surroundings?!

Snow on the trees makes you feel like Christmas, doesn't it? This is a shot along one of the roads leading down from the Divide.

In the distance you can see the top of the gondola you can ride in summertime up from Monarch Pass. The elevation of the pass itself is 11,312', so we're a good bit higher here and at the gondola's top.

These are some of the most recognizable peaks in the area. The flattop on the left is Mt. Aetna, and next to it is Taylor Mountain, right across the valley from our cabin.

There are fun items presenting good photo opps here, too. Like this sign identifying a green run (mine) called Skywalker and a black (never mine) called Mirage. If you can find the names under all the stickers!

And finally, there are amenities to mention. The ski area lodge has been remodeled since our last visit, and most of the changes are positive ones (although no hot cider on the main level is not one of them!). There's even appropriate artwork on the way down to the place where you can get hot cider...

I sincerely hope it won't be five years before we can come back to this magical place!

Midas taking his time

We got to see much better color this year in mid-September than last. But, as you can see from the photo above, taken the day we left, things still had a way to go. (For how they looked a few weeks later, see the end of this post.)

But I thought that the progression from just turning to about midway there was interesting enough to share with you.

I got pretty excited on Sept. 17, when I saw the leaves starting to get yellow-y green...

On the 18th things were a little yellow-y-er...

On the 19th, it really started to pick up...

And even though we knew better times were to come, on the 20th things looked pretty good...

We really thought the surprise snowstorm (and accompanying low temperatures) would turbocharge the color change, but eventually we had to admit that Midas was determined to be slow. The color was pretty nice before we left, but we only learned how much further the old guy had to go when our nephew and his family dropped by on their way to Utah a few weeks later. Yikes! It really got gold!

out the windshield along Highway 50

our sweet niece, adorable great-niece, and friend on our deck