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!

Wordless Wednesday: so purply-pink!

A Walk in the Park

One of the true jewels of our city is Brackenridge Park, located near the headwaters of the San Antonio River (of course, another jewel) and also near my house.

One morning early this year—yes, I'm up to 2026 in my catching-up-blogging-adventure!—we learned a lot about its history, which, naturally, made us appreciate it all the more. The Brackenridge Park Conservancy put on a free history walk that was a real eye-opener. (This a group I've been associated with the last few years as the Tuesday Musical Club's representative on their stakeholders committee.) You can take a virtual version of the walk, and learn more about the structures I'll show you on this page in the Conservancy's website.

The walk took us to a corner of the Park that I wasn't too familiar with, on the far north side. One of the landmarks here is an old bridge, crowned with this impressive ironwork:

An even more spectacular structure is the Joske Pavilion, built in 1926.

Isn't the stonework on this place both beautiful and wonderfully random and disordered?! Here's a closeup of part of the outside:

Another set of structures on this side of the park was a bathhouse, used back in the day when you could swim in the river. This area's been turned into a kind of maze/playground (which the Adorable Grandchildren enjoyed exploring on a later visit).

And, finally, crowning the walk, was this fauxbois masterpiece:

I've written about these quirky sculptures before; there are several along the river downstream of the park, as well as just scattered about the town, serving as bus stops, benches, and whatnot. But this walkway, seen from below in the photo just above, was really beyond any of its siblings.

Here's how it looks from street level, on approach...

...and here's what it looks like as you start to walk through it:

So very cool! We learned more about the artist, Dionicio Rodriguez, and how he worked this concrete magic. All in all, a very nice way to spend an alarmingly warm February day.

'Round about town

 

After our trip to New England last fall, there weren't any major excursions on our agenda, but we did some stuff around town. Like go to a tailgate at sunset before an SAFC soccer game. Henry even took his camping firepit for grilling:

There were also "No Kings" marches, with lots of imaginative protest signs and costuming...

Then, in November, we were invited to a friend's party on the river walk. It was pretty cool to see everything lit up along our river at night. Especially from the nice vantage point on the second floor of the club where the party was:

The water taxi boats looked especially fancy...

...as did some of the party attendees...

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!

Catching up

Yes, I know I've been *very* remiss about blogging lately. I think I was somewhat burned out from the massive blog-a-rama that followed our trip to the UK last year. After putting in a few posts later, when I went somewhere interesting (Santa Fe, Colorado, Maine), but then I just ran out of steam.

So, as a spur to myself, I decided to finally respond to Google's occasional "You're almost out of storage!!!" notices and subscribe to a larger chunk of The Cloud. So now I have no excuse but to fill that up with photos and text, I guess!

Another advantage is that I get to go back thru the photo gallery and remember some of the less-than-spectacular junkets that have happened over the last year. To keep things straight for myself, I'm starting with July, 2025...

...when Henry and I went on a walk I'd never been on before, back up and behind the Japanese Tea Garden you can see above. I've shown you pictures from it before, but not from this vantage! Looks pretty amazing, does it not?

The trail we took goes behind the Sunken Garden Theatre...

...where we actually attended a concert some time ago, courtesy of the Brackenridge Park folks. It's a pretty neat place to catch a show. Here's a better view of the seating area:

Note the somewhat hazy view of part of downtown (the Hemisfair Tower, which we ascended during a visit from grandkids a couple of years back, is a dead giveaway) in the background here. This trail gives you some pretty nice viewpoints!

The whole jaunt was Henry's idea, so I thought it only fitting he should appear in the post:

I hope to be able to get back in the blogging habit and show you some other round-about-town sights in the coming weeks. Wish me luck!

Wordless Wednesday: a state that knows diversity is a strength!