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!

New tricks under the sun...for an old dog

Here I am, at 76 (!) and experiencing stuff that I'd refused to do before! Two new things fall into this category just this year—I must not be dead yet.

The adventures I'm referring to are two which I'd previously considered 1) too expensive and 2) too cheesy. But I'm not too big to admit I was wrong!

First up, on our trip to the UK a few months ago, was the London Eye (see my blog post about that day's adventures here). When I was there in 2008, we shunned this souped-up ferris wheel, but now, with grandchildren, we thought it would be worth a go.

And was it ever fun! The great views of London—changing so slowly as you rotate—were just spectacular. Of course, we were fortunate this day as most of our days on that vacation, to have fabulous weather. So the Eye is expensive, but well worth it, I now believe.

Next up was an attraction somewhat closer to home. On a road trip to Colorado with daughter and granddaughters, we spent two nights in Santa Fe to allow a visit to the original Meow Wolf—again, a place I had just thought was not for me.

Was I ever wrong again! It was a blast! All those oddly interconnected rooms, the super-clever art embedded everywhere, the corridors leading to unexpected glorious weirdness—it was so much fun!

This was my favorite room: all the walls are covered in found objects of trash. You can't really see the best examples here (I should have taken more pictures!). But there were old toothbrushes, old cassette tapes, about a billion bottle caps, and so much more.

How long it took the incredibly creative artists to do all this, I can't even imagine! Another example of the amazing Meow Wolf art is at the top of this post.

And here is a shot of a room the kiddos particularly enjoyed...

"Under the Sea"...sort of

We didn't even get into the mystery story that's supposedly embedded in the "house" you wander through. I guess that will have to wait for my next visit. And there are Meow Wolfs in different cities...must sees for me now!

Of course there was lots of other fun to be had in Santa Fe. I particularly enjoyed these pieces of rocky public art:

And monkey grandkids couldn't resist climbing on this one:

This wasn't exactly "public" art, but I was very impressed with this carved doorway in our Airbnb. Isn't it lovely?

I guess the old saw about grandchildren keeping you young is a truism. If they can get me to spend $$ and embark on adventures I had thought were not for me—and end up thoroughly enjoying them. I am for sure one very lucky Gramma!

Space City, USA

We packed a lot of sight-seeing into a mini-family-reunion long weekend in Houston last week. Along with, of course, lots of visiting and catching up with far-flung family members. 

A highlight of the trip was the NASA's Space Center Houston. It's changed a lot^{[citation needed]} since we last visited when our kids were little. Wow! What a lot of cool exhibits! Including the space shuttle Independence (see above) that you actually got to go inside. Here's the insanely complicated cockpit:

And it's not just the shuttle that you get to see. It's actually perched on top of a giant airliner, as it was when being transported across the country from the High Desert in California back to Florida for its next launch. Sorry I didn't get pictures of the whole thing for you. But of course the Space Center website has better ones than I could have taken, with video, too.

We also took a couple of their tram tours. Motorized transport is required, since the NASA campus is nothing if not sprawling (so apt, being located in the capital of sprawl itself ). 

We took the two free tours that come with the price of admission. One was to a gigantic building where astronauts train for space station missions. The space was full of space station module mockups and was quite a sight to see. I liked this Russian module that sported decals from all the space station missions:

I took the picture from the raised walkway that you take along one side of the building. You can get a better idea of the scale of the place from the picture on the Space Center's website.

The coolest part of the visit, though, was the tram tour to the "Rocket Park." Inside this massive (because it has to be!) building they've put a Saturn V rocket on its side for you to examine in detail. (You can learn more about this workhorse rocket type from the video in the link above.)

Here's a shot of the gap between stages of the Saturn V:

Note tiny people on the other side of the display for scale!

Probably the most impressive part of this rocket is the hind end. Think about those videos you've seen of rockets blasting off as you stand in front of these behemoths! Again, grandchildren and son-in-law are providing scale for you:

The "hangar" where the giant rocket is housed has a whole side devoted to details of the different Apollo missions, starting with the ill-fated Apollo 1, including the almost-ill-fated Apollo 13, and ending with the last trip to the moon, Apollo 17. Super-interesting stuff.

But the NASA museum wasn't the only flight-related attraction I visited. The other was the Lone Star Flight Museum. It's located at what used to be Ellington Field, an old USAF base that I can hazily remember visiting as a child and where my father did his preflight training after enlisting in WWII.

No longer a military base, it serves small commercial flights and has this very interesting museum, full of vintage restored aircraft, and emphasizing the roles Texas has played in aviation development. We discovered that making it through all the informational exhibits just wasn't possible, given our short time frame. But gawking at all the planes was enough to justify the visit.

I didn't catch the name of the cute Union-Jack-decorated craft hanging from the ceiling, but this one was prominently labeled:

This B-25 wasn't the actual Doolittle raid aircraft, but was intended to show what that plane was like.

As I often do at well-designed museums, I enjoyed the sidelights as well as the main attractions, such as this lovely display of wooden propellers:

The technological marvels on display in this part of Houston were only part of the fun activities that we enjoyed. Next time I'll share some wonders of the natural world that we were able to experience.

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!

21st-century playgrounds

Like many, many things that have changed since I was a kid, playgrounds....wow!

the blogger on unsafe jungle gym
circa. 1955

It's one (of the many) perk of having grandchildren: you get to explore these fantastic (and much safer) play spaces. And I've gotten to see many variations over the past seven years or so. 

But the playground at Austin's Walnut Creek Park is one of the most amazing, in my admittedly limited experience. The super treehouse you see at the top of the post is the centerpiece, and, no, I did not go down the incredibly long and twisting tunnel slide. But I did let my four-year-old granddaughter talk me in to climbing up to the top platform. Which is not straightforward; there are steps for a short while, but then you have to climb up short climbing walls to the next stages. Whew! It was a workout!

Here is a closer look at the top sections:

And that's not all that was unusual about this place. The swings, admittedly, aren't that odd, although there is a two-seater of a design new to me. Unfortunately, old-age middle-ear issues didn't let me go as high as my two-year-old partner wanted to.

But this is a merry-go-round setup that I hadn't seen before. Much safer than those engines of terror that I remember from girlhood, but still subject to issues when little kids are pushed faster than they like by bigger ones. An interesting concept, though:

You might notice that neither of my sensibly cautious grandchildren are in this picture, which is one of frightened tears waiting to happen.

There is a less intense area for smaller kids, and we did spend some time there, but I have no photos, sorry.

However, I have one more cool, and possibly unique, feature of this place to show you.

A more rustic (and closer to the ground) version of the big treehouse is this fun structure. In the picture excited granddaughters (who have been here before with their nanny) are leading Mom and Gramma. The colorful roof is made out of smashed cans...a wonderful example of upcycling:

The park as a whole (as you can see in the link above) is enormous and has miles of hiking and biking trails (some of which are—much to my daughter's disapproval—dogs-off-leash areas) and some sports fields. But the playground provided enough entertainment for our morning. And a stellar addition to my growing collection of up-to-date playgrounds I have experienced.

Finally, some white stuff!

 

When you go to spend a late Christmas just after new year's in Maine, of all places, you assume there will be snow everywhere. And you just hope the roads won't be icy when you go to the sledding hill or the skating rink. Right?

Well, because of climate change, or just the luck of the draw, we only saw the white stuff a couple of days before we left. And the poor Austin family didn't get to see any at all!

There wasn't too much for us, either, as you can see above, where an Adorable Granddaughter is waiting on the deck for everyone else to get suited up to come out and play.

Now they do have snow-making equipment up there, and everyone got to enjoy the man-made stuff at a tubing hill. Although some of the party just found the tubes to be comfy places to nap...

But the natural stuff waited until we were almost ready to go home to make an appearance. 

Even the little bit we got was enough to make for lovely coatings of bare tree limbs, one of my favorite winter photo subjects...

That last photo was actually taken from the car window as we headed mountain-ward. Yes, the two oldest Maine grandkids are taking skiing lessons at Lost Valley [and in the few weeks since we saw the first lesson they're already up on the big kid slopes and probably skiing faster than Gramma could keep up]...

Of course they have snow-making capability there, but they've been getting a lot of natural stuff since we left as well. Maybe our next winter visit will be with a more typical New England ambience.  

A bit of downtown Portland

I have often blogged about my fondness for Portland, Maine—not only special as home of more than half of my grandchildren, but also because it's just such a cool little city.

Our recent late Christmas trip was mostly spent indoors with family stuff, but we did get out and about in Portland's Oldtown a few times.

Much as we were looking forward to snowy adventures, the weather didn't cooperate with the white stuff until just before we left. So I don't have winter-wonderland photos for you, just a few randomly interesting structures and objects we happened to see.

Like the handsome building you see above, across the street from a park where the kids enjoyed climbing on rocks and generally running off the sugar from their Standard Baking pastries. I was quite taken with this edifice; here's a closeup of some of its cute decorative elements:

A rather cool thing about the park where we played, in addition to the rocks, were a couple of these at first mysterious post-boxes (it is Post Office Park):

I was immediately reminded of the post-boxes in London, and how you can tell under whose reign they were erected (see one at the bottom of this post). But the Asian characters were a puzzle...

...for a few minutes, anyway, until we saw this plaque (and you'll notice I was able to sneak a pic of Oldest Granddaughter into the story).

I saw another informational plaque down by the harbor when we went to one of our favorite eateries. 

Portland has been welcoming to folks escaping from bad situations for a long, long, time, and the tradition continues with their embrace of refugees from many recent conflicts. Like I said, a really nice city!

Wordless Wednesday: ready for winter

 

Wordless Wednesday: yes, we are