Gold on the ground

I'm so glad I stopped for a few minutes during a busy week and snapped these photos on my street. 

Since then we've had a breezy cool front and some rain (not to mention that some of my neighbors actually rake their lawns! ha, ha! what a concept), so most of these guys are long gone.

But at least we had the dazzling ornaments for a little while.

Everyone can be rich when nature is this generous, right?

Getting ready for Christmas

In my last regular post I promised to explain how we got so cold in Salida that we just had to have some Cambodian Pho. You'll see we had a very good reason!

It was our first time ever to be there in November, and just by accident found out about a local tradition that, as prospective future residents, we felt obliged to attend.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, they light up the hill at the foot of F Street (which is the old town's "main street") for Christmas. And they do it in style. With a real, old-fashioned, small-town parade. As you can see in this photo, taken before the parade started, it's quite a well-attended occasion. So we were glad we got there early:

But it was a bit chilly. So walking around downtown, then standing to save our spot for the parade for a while, then watching it, made us more than ready for the hot soup.

But the whole affair was great fun. There were impressive parade participants on stilts (above)...

...and of course, in decorated cars. As well as musical entertainment while we waited...

Then, for the finale, the Christmas lights on the hill (unfortunately not showing up too clearly at the bottom of  this photo) were turned on, with an accompaniment of fireworks!

All in all, a very satisfying experience for a couple of visitors with an eye towards someday becoming locals. Maybe we'll even end up in the parade a few years from now.

Wordless Wednesday: ya think?!

Advantages of globalization

You wouldn't think of a little town in central Colorado as being a place to find great Asian food, but you'd be wrong about Salida.

One of our days there last month we actually had two varieties of this cuisine (Thai and Cambodian) in a single day!

First lunch at the Thai Mini Cafe in Poncha Springs (Salida's "suburb") capped off a morning of errands. I had the scrumptious mango chicken salad that you can see above. (It was different, but just as good as the one I had in Washington back in October. I guess you don't need to be in a big city to find great restaurants, eh?) Henry's in the background tossing down his Satay Chicken.

We were so stuffed after this great meal that we figured we could go without dinner. But due to circumstances that I'll explain in my next post, we found ourselves that evening in downtown Salida needing something warm to eat.

Voila! Little Cambodia! A recent addition to the Victoria Tavern and pool hall (you have to see the combination to believe it) in the heart of old Salida's historic district.

Their big bowl of yummy Pho was just what the doctor ordered. I'll fill you in soon on why we made two trips to town on this Friday after Thanksgiving and why we needed to be warmed up.

 But for now I just leave you with this meditation on how small the world has become. And how delicious!

Great timing!

I'm going to try and catch up with the postings I owe you from our Colorado trip in the next couple of days.

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First a quick look at the beginning and the end of the visit, which involved some very lucky timing for us.

Flying into Denver Friday morning allowed us to have a nice lunch with the Colorado relatives shown above before we headed up into the mountains.

We met our nephew William (in green above) and his very pregnant wife Mollie for a lunch near their lovely home. Fortunately, our other Denver nephew, Jeff, and adorable little Evie were able to join us. (So sorry mom Katie couldn't make it.) As you can see, it was a beautiful fall day in the Rockies.

(Our scintillating lunchtime conversation wasn't enough to overcome Evie's desire for a nap, but before the photo on the right was snapped, I got to hold her for most of the meal and the first part of the siesta. What a lucky great aunt!)

Fast forward 10 days to our departure, scheduled for Monday evening from the wonderful but remote Denver airport. Thanks to my anxieties about traffic and having time to return the rental car, we ended up back in the Mile High City with time to spare for another visit.

And did we ever have a good reason! While we were in Garfield, the very pregnant Mollie got un-pregnant (and on Thanksgiving Day, isn't that great?!). So we were able to visit our newest great-nephew, Hank, before heading back to the flatlands.

Here's hoping that more of our trips get bookended like this!

Wordless Wednesday: a sweet ride

Laminar flow over IH-70

I'm back home, and should be able to relax a little. But between über-craziness at work and that panicky feeling I always get when I realize how unprepared for Christmas I am, well, I haven't had the time or energy to think much about blogging.

However, I did take various series of interesting pictures while up in Colorado and I will try to share them with you over the next few days. Just don't expect much in the way of deathless prose to accompany them!

We really enjoyed our drive from Salida to Denver on Monday. The scenery was wonderful, with some bonuses like these really amazing cloud formations as we neared the metropolis...they almost look artificial, don't they?

The sequence of pictures is in the order they were taken, as we got closer to the clouds.When we actually got under them, there wasn't much to see, but from afar we thought they were pretty spectacular.

Perhaps some of my Colorado readers can tell me if this sort of display is common or unusual as one approaches the front range.