Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Madness! Madness!
What an exhausting weekend we had!
You can see our as yet unsold green tent in the background. Our family had a lot of good times in the company of that tent, and we hope its new owner enjoys it, too.
I hope to get back to work on the Mesa Verde pictures soon, and get a post written up about my tour of the park before preparation for the next trip brings a new wave of madness to our household.
I had hoped to work on my Mesa Verde photos Saturday and provide you with 
a more complete travelogue of that wonderful park. But I had no idea how tiring sitting in a hot garage and taking people's money could be.
a more complete travelogue of that wonderful park. But I had no idea how tiring sitting in a hot garage and taking people's money could be.
Several of our paddling friends collaborated with us in a multi-station garage sale of gargantuan proportions in our yard, driveway, and garage. Everyone was pretty happy with their takes (except a couple of paddlers who ended up buying more than they sold!) and it made the chore much less onerous to have a bunch of friends around. But it was still quite a undertaking!
Customers were around more or less constantly from 7 to 2, but I was surprised to see 
this evidence of the extent of the foot traffic: on the left is a section of our front lawn that was fairly trampled in front of a couple of the tables.
this evidence of the extent of the foot traffic: on the left is a section of our front lawn that was fairly trampled in front of a couple of the tables.
We sold some rugs and an antique table that Henry had selected from among his mother's amazing collection of quality stuff but that we had no space for and the kids couldn't use. (Someday I will do a blog post showing you all of the wonderful pieces that we inherited and how they are making our house so much more classy than it was before.)
We also unloaded two old backpacking tents, since Henry recently purchased a snazzy new one for us with a birthday gift certificate from his siblings. [These are the same folks that gave us a canoe for a wedding present—they know their brother!] This new tent will get a field test next month when we take an overnight paddle on the Rio Chama in New Mexico. More about this expedition later.
But for now, I'm still recovering from the weekend. Not only was Saturday a workout, but we had different kind of exercise on Sunday when we took a nice paddle along the upper Guadalupe River with many of our garage sale buddies. I didn't even take my camera, though, as I felt I needed to relax as much as possible to get over the sale fatigue.
Here's a final look at our over-crowded front yard during the sale. I really didn't notice the Ronald Reagan picture when I took the photo, and someone must have bought it because I didn't ever see it again. Fortunately! I hope the caption under it was sarcastic because normally we don't go in for Reagan hagiography in our house.
You can see our as yet unsold green tent in the background. Our family had a lot of good times in the company of that tent, and we hope its new owner enjoys it, too.I hope to get back to work on the Mesa Verde pictures soon, and get a post written up about my tour of the park before preparation for the next trip brings a new wave of madness to our household.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
No SADness here
...at least not yet.
Thanks in part, no doubt, to its very high elevation, the area where I spent the last week hasn't
seen the massive aspen die-offs that some lower and warmer locations have in the past few years.
"Sudden Aspen Decline," or SAD, is the oh-so-appropriate name for the phenomenon. How very, very sad it would be if these lovely trees were to
disappear.
Best known for their showy display of bright yellow in the fall, contrasting with their evergreen neighbors, I think they're almost as beautiful in their summer greens.
On my neighborhood walks, I was also quite taken with the slender, incredible heights reached by the mature trees you can see in the photos at left and right.
Here's another photo of some of the neighborhood trees, where Joan is admiring the view from a roadside just being cut into the forest. Development has slowed somewhat, no doubt due to economic conditions, but I'm sure it won't halt altogether in this gorgeous, and reasonably accessible, area. Fortunately, they seem to be taking the trees into in their roadbuilding, at least as best they can, and nice stands still remain in these newly developed parts of town.
Back in the originally settled area of Garfield, where our place is, the trees are also a big part of the scenery. Here is a nice shot looking up from the stream that runs through town. The gray-painted house in the background is where I got to spend the week.
The view from the deck that extends along the whole back side of the cabin is pretty spectacular. I was particularly taken with the trees on display. So many, many shades of green! While the pines are the most numerous, the aspen accents really make the view. Notice the little patch in the middle of the pines on the ridgeside, as well as, of course, the foreground lovelies.
And here are the trees that sprout through the cabin's great deck. What a genius idea it was to cut out the deck around these beauties and allow them to shade your afternoon reading time!
You can get a better idea of just how closely the house and trees are connected in this photo of the sunset over my roof. Here's hoping the sun never completely sets on these aspen, and that someone finds a way to arrest the SAD outbreaks elsewhere in the Rockies as well.
Thanks in part, no doubt, to its very high elevation, the area where I spent the last week hasn't
seen the massive aspen die-offs that some lower and warmer locations have in the past few years."Sudden Aspen Decline," or SAD, is the oh-so-appropriate name for the phenomenon. How very, very sad it would be if these lovely trees were to
disappear.Best known for their showy display of bright yellow in the fall, contrasting with their evergreen neighbors, I think they're almost as beautiful in their summer greens.
On my neighborhood walks, I was also quite taken with the slender, incredible heights reached by the mature trees you can see in the photos at left and right.
Here's another photo of some of the neighborhood trees, where Joan is admiring the view from a roadside just being cut into the forest. Development has slowed somewhat, no doubt due to economic conditions, but I'm sure it won't halt altogether in this gorgeous, and reasonably accessible, area. Fortunately, they seem to be taking the trees into in their roadbuilding, at least as best they can, and nice stands still remain in these newly developed parts of town.
Back in the originally settled area of Garfield, where our place is, the trees are also a big part of the scenery. Here is a nice shot looking up from the stream that runs through town. The gray-painted house in the background is where I got to spend the week.
The view from the deck that extends along the whole back side of the cabin is pretty spectacular. I was particularly taken with the trees on display. So many, many shades of green! While the pines are the most numerous, the aspen accents really make the view. Notice the little patch in the middle of the pines on the ridgeside, as well as, of course, the foreground lovelies.
And here are the trees that sprout through the cabin's great deck. What a genius idea it was to cut out the deck around these beauties and allow them to shade your afternoon reading time!
You can get a better idea of just how closely the house and trees are connected in this photo of the sunset over my roof. Here's hoping the sun never completely sets on these aspen, and that someone finds a way to arrest the SAD outbreaks elsewhere in the Rockies as well.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Epic journey
I've been pretty lazy the last few days up here in the high Rockies (Garfield, CO, elevation 9600'). There's been some great soccer to watch, wonderful scenery just out my window, and cool breezes most of the time.
So I don't have much to blog about now that I'm at my final destination of the trip. But I hope you'll agree that I'm entitled to a little R&R after you see the road I had to travel to get here.
Actually, I didn't have to come the way I did, as there are other roads that take you from the Pacific to the Atlantic drainage in Colorado. But the most direct route from Grand Junction to Garfield isn't particularly scenic (although this is a relative assessment up here). And an even more adventurous route than the one I chose involved some unpaved driving, and I've never been particularly fond of that.
So, with my sister's encouragement [typical comment: "it's not nearly as scary as Red Mountain Pass on 550 and I do that all the time"] I took off east on I-70 Thursday morning, exiting at Glenwood Springs on CO 82, with my sights on the second highest pass in the state (the first one takes you across Rocky Mountain National Park). Independence Pass. Where, as a child experiencing altitude for the first time, I ran around and then thought I was dying when I started to wheeze.
As you can sort of see in the photo of the Pass sign above on the right, it's well above treeline, so there are wide meadows that looked pretty inviting for a kid who'd been stuck in a car for hours. Nowadays, we have a better appreciation of the fragility of the alpine tundra ecosystem, and so there's a paved path to which your walking (or running) is restricted.
But getting to the Pass is the adventure! I have never done much driving in the mountains except on pretty nice, wide roads, and was more than a little anxious about attempting the long, very narrow, and very curvy road up to the pass. And I did take advantage of many of the pullouts along the ascent. For several reasons: 1) to let less wimpy drivers pass me by, 2) to take
pictures, and 3) to take deep, calming breaths before tackling the next section.
Unfortunately, for my anxiety level, on the way up the northern side of the pass, you're in the outside lane. Fine, or almost fine, if no one is coming the other way, but if they are, then you have to be all the way over into your very narrow lane, and there's not a lot of real estate between you and the edge of the mountain. The picture on the left will give you some idea of how this looks, although it was taken at one of the pullouts and not while I was in motion!
Most of the time the road is wide enough that there is actually a center stripe, but there are a few sections, which I came to dread, where the road was really just one-and-a-half-lanes wide. Talk about white knuckles on the steering wheel!
Here's another shot of the road ahead from one of the pullouts:
As you can see, the weather was gorgeous. If it had been raining or precipitating in any other way, I might not be here to tell the tale. The road is completely closed in winter, which at these altitudes is a majority of the year.
I had a nice rest and walk at the top (a nice, slow, walk, remembering my childhood fright!) and as you can see I had plenty of company. Fortunately not all those cars were on the road at the same time!
I was a little worried, as I took in the amazing views on offer at the top of the pass, about what the descent was going to be like. But it turned out to be not nearly as exciting at the road up. There weren't any of the really narrow stretches, and by using my engine braking, I was able to keep my speed down well enough to take the hairpins at a comfortable, secure pace. You know it's going to be a real hairpin when the warning sign suggests 10 mph, as this one did!
It really is a gorgeous, awe-inspiring place, and it's worth the journey. Although I will happily let Henry do the driving next time we come this way. However, I have proved to myself that I can do something like this if I need to, and that's a nice thing to learn about yourself at my advanced age.
So I don't have much to blog about now that I'm at my final destination of the trip. But I hope you'll agree that I'm entitled to a little R&R after you see the road I had to travel to get here.
Actually, I didn't have to come the way I did, as there are other roads that take you from the Pacific to the Atlantic drainage in Colorado. But the most direct route from Grand Junction to Garfield isn't particularly scenic (although this is a relative assessment up here). And an even more adventurous route than the one I chose involved some unpaved driving, and I've never been particularly fond of that.So, with my sister's encouragement [typical comment: "it's not nearly as scary as Red Mountain Pass on 550 and I do that all the time"] I took off east on I-70 Thursday morning, exiting at Glenwood Springs on CO 82, with my sights on the second highest pass in the state (the first one takes you across Rocky Mountain National Park). Independence Pass. Where, as a child experiencing altitude for the first time, I ran around and then thought I was dying when I started to wheeze.
As you can sort of see in the photo of the Pass sign above on the right, it's well above treeline, so there are wide meadows that looked pretty inviting for a kid who'd been stuck in a car for hours. Nowadays, we have a better appreciation of the fragility of the alpine tundra ecosystem, and so there's a paved path to which your walking (or running) is restricted.
But getting to the Pass is the adventure! I have never done much driving in the mountains except on pretty nice, wide roads, and was more than a little anxious about attempting the long, very narrow, and very curvy road up to the pass. And I did take advantage of many of the pullouts along the ascent. For several reasons: 1) to let less wimpy drivers pass me by, 2) to take
pictures, and 3) to take deep, calming breaths before tackling the next section.Unfortunately, for my anxiety level, on the way up the northern side of the pass, you're in the outside lane. Fine, or almost fine, if no one is coming the other way, but if they are, then you have to be all the way over into your very narrow lane, and there's not a lot of real estate between you and the edge of the mountain. The picture on the left will give you some idea of how this looks, although it was taken at one of the pullouts and not while I was in motion!
Most of the time the road is wide enough that there is actually a center stripe, but there are a few sections, which I came to dread, where the road was really just one-and-a-half-lanes wide. Talk about white knuckles on the steering wheel!
Here's another shot of the road ahead from one of the pullouts:
As you can see, the weather was gorgeous. If it had been raining or precipitating in any other way, I might not be here to tell the tale. The road is completely closed in winter, which at these altitudes is a majority of the year.I had a nice rest and walk at the top (a nice, slow, walk, remembering my childhood fright!) and as you can see I had plenty of company. Fortunately not all those cars were on the road at the same time!
I was a little worried, as I took in the amazing views on offer at the top of the pass, about what the descent was going to be like. But it turned out to be not nearly as exciting at the road up. There weren't any of the really narrow stretches, and by using my engine braking, I was able to keep my speed down well enough to take the hairpins at a comfortable, secure pace. You know it's going to be a real hairpin when the warning sign suggests 10 mph, as this one did!
It really is a gorgeous, awe-inspiring place, and it's worth the journey. Although I will happily let Henry do the driving next time we come this way. However, I have proved to myself that I can do something like this if I need to, and that's a nice thing to learn about yourself at my advanced age.
Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
Friday, July 2, 2010
Another great national park
Readers of this blog might remember my account of several good instances of tax dollars at work during our recent trip east.
Now, I've got a western park to add to the list.
As many times as I've been to Colorado, I never had been to this jewel, tucked away in the far southwest corner of the state: Mesa Verde.
I hope to have more time later, when I'm back home with a constant internet connection, to give you a fuller account of our quick, but fascinating, visit here. For now, just some teasers (note: for larger versions of a picture, just click on it):
This was my first glimpse of any of the cliff dwellings: Spruce Tree House, the best-preserved of the sites. Doesn't it look like a cozy place for little city?
Close-up of Spruce Tree House structures
Cliff Palace, the largest site, seen from across the valley. Unfortunately we didn't have time for the tour of this place—definitely a reason to come back. (Click the image for a better view)
Now, I've got a western park to add to the list.
As many times as I've been to Colorado, I never had been to this jewel, tucked away in the far southwest corner of the state: Mesa Verde.
I hope to have more time later, when I'm back home with a constant internet connection, to give you a fuller account of our quick, but fascinating, visit here. For now, just some teasers (note: for larger versions of a picture, just click on it):
This was my first glimpse of any of the cliff dwellings: Spruce Tree House, the best-preserved of the sites. Doesn't it look like a cozy place for little city?
Close-up of Spruce Tree House structures
Cliff Palace, the largest site, seen from across the valley. Unfortunately we didn't have time for the tour of this place—definitely a reason to come back. (Click the image for a better view)
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