Colorado

Because we have settled down for a bit (2+ months) in a familiar (to us) place (Buena Vista, Colorado) my inspiration for travel blog posting has waned some.

However, I noticed that my phone had accumulated a lot of photos and I thought, perhaps, one or two of my faithful readers might be hungering to know where we are, what we’ve been doing and what this place looks like.

But before I get to that I’ll reflect briefly on the California wildfires and the fortunate timing of our travels there. Avid readers of the blog may recall that we spent a lot of time recreating in the mountains south and west of Yosemite National Park; and that, on a brief foray to the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, we passed through Redding, California.

Not long after we were there fires caused Yosemite to shut down and a “fire tornado” ripped through Redding killing several residents and incinerating dozens of homes.

Meanwhile, here in central Colorado there were some fires followed by large storms and mudslides near Buena Vista, just a few days prior to our arrival. 
Fortunately, since we got here, the weather has been quite pleasant and “normal”.

So, to say the least, our timing has been good.

Our home at the Snowy Peaks RV Park in Buena Vista, Colorado.

 

Given what we left behind in California this lecture we attended in Salida seemed timely.

So far we have been sticking pretty close to Buena Vista and enjoying the scenery and the cool weather. Betsy did decamp to New Mexico for a few days this week to visit some friends and she has gotten involved with a Presbyterian church in the nearby town of Salida.

Unsurprisingly Betsy found time to attend an Albuquerque Isotopes AAA minor league baseball game during her trip to New Mexico. The mascot's name is Orbit, so Betsy felt an immediate kinship (...because Orbit is also the name of the Astro's mascot).

I’ve done some volunteering with the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative and we’ve both spent a lot of time hiking on the many trails in the area. Many of our evenings have been spent in the trailer, binge watching the FX series The Americans.

In a nutshell, that's what we've been doing since the last post. Following is photo documentation.

Buena Vista, Colorado is well-named. But not necessarily well-pronounced.

More BV from a higher vantage point. If it seems like a tiny spot in a vast sea of open space it is. According to an article in the Salida Mountain Mail 77 percent of the county’s 1,015 square miles is public land, managed by a combination of the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Colorado State Forest Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

We've been coming to BV (population 2,800, of which less than 150 are not non-Hispanic whites) since 2012 and so have lots of other (white) people. This year especially we have seen and sensed the strain of the town's growing popularity. For one thing, BV got it's second stop light this year. But you also feel the tension in the shops and restaurants where owners are struggling to keep pace with the growing demands for service and because they can't find people willing to work in jobs that don't pay enough for the worker to afford to live here (housing costs are increasing rapidly). The strain on the community is perhaps most acutely evident in the packed parking lot and aisles of the town's only grocery store.

Looking south toward downtown BV (if it's not obvious already to blog readers, I love photos with big skies and lots of clouds).

One of our favorite drives in the BV area is this former narrow gauge railroad right-of-way that parallels the Arkansas River and includes several (narrow) tunnels.

This is Salida, a town of about 6,000 - the county seat and commercial center for Chaffee County - about 25 miles south of BV. Betsy attends church and does much of our food shopping here. Chaffee County has a population of just under 20,000, an increase of more than 10 percent since 2010. 85 percent of the residents (and virtually all of the visitors) are non-Hispanic whites and 25 percent of the residents (and, probably, the visitors too) are over age 65. Chaffee County voters favored Trump over Clinton by 4.5 points but 8.6 percent voted for someone other than Trump or Clinton.

There is a prominent hill overlooking Salida that has a large "S" emblazoned on the side and an observation hut at the top. There is a road and you can drive to the top but there is also a network of hiking and biking trails on the hill, known locally as "S Mountain". One day we hiked to the top of S Mountain.

S Mountain from the town's biking trail.

Even though we have mostly focused on the mountains during our trips to Buena Vista the most important geographic feature here in the Arkansas River Valley is, arguably, the Arkansas River and we finally got out on (and in) it by taking a raft trip from (more or less) Buena Vista to Salida. We don't often mention this factoid to our Colorado hosts but most of the Arkansas River Valley, including the towns of Salida, Buena Vista and Leadville were once in the state of Texas (according, at least, to Texans) long before Colorado was even a state. Thus it was more than a little ironic that our four raftmates for the float down the Arkansas River were Texans. Please notice in the photo that the two guys in the middle are the only people in the boat that are actually paddling! Also, isn't it interesting that all of the Texas clients are at least attempting to try to paddle while the Colorado guide is waving at the camera? 😡

One weekend I worked with a Colorado Fourteeners Initiative crew repairing and maintaining a section of the trail to the summit of Quandary Peak, a popular and overused 14er near Breckenridge. What we did, basically, is gather relatively large, relatively flat rocks and use them to build a small retaining wall along the edge of the trail to prevent erosion and gravity from covering over the trail over time. I'll be working on at least one more trail crew before we head home; trying make up a little bit for the thousands of size 15 footsteps I've trod on these trails over the years.

This photo on the summit of Quandary Peak gives you some idea of the crowds it attracts - hundreds per day in the summer. Notice the backpack with the flowers in the center-left of the photo. Those flowers were used in a wedding ceremony that took place on the summit.

These are the newlyweds hiking down the trail from their wedding "venue" on the summit. The top of a 14er seems like a pretty cool place to get married (literally) but it also seems like it would be a little unsettling to get hitched on a mountain named Quandary. By the way, in case you were wondering, none of the parents or grandparents made it to the top of the mountain for the ceremony.

Flying my (borrowed) Colorado colors at the summit of the 14er Mt. Democrat (sorry red-tinged readers, there is no 14er named Mt. Republican).

This is the "summit" of Mt. Cameron, quite possibly the weirdest of Colorado's 58 14ers. First of all, even though it is a named "peak" it does not meet the USGS standard for "prominence" of 300 feet from it's nearest "official" 14er neighbors, which are Mt. Democrat and Mt. Lincoln (in the background). Aside from that quirk, Mt. Cameron looks more like a bump on hill than a mountain "peak". Perhaps that's why no one in this photo seems to be taking this summit too seriously.

Read it and weep folks. There is only one 14er that bears the name of a state and that one state just so happens to be my native state of Missouri! P.S. I have no idea who this guy is or why the hell he brought his dog with him. I just grabbed the sign for the photo op.

This photo is quintessential Colorado. I hiked a 16-mile section of the Colorado Trail one day with one of our neighbors at the Snowy Peaks RV Park. Unsurprisingly, he is a fellow retired Texan who spends his summers in Colorado.

Speaking of our neighbors at the Snowy Peaks RV Park; we often see this lady out walking her pig.

This is primarily a photo of flowers, but it's also a photo of Mt. Cameron, the aforementioned "weirdest" 14er. Also, not far from this meadow, there is a pretty waterfall.

More flowers at a different place on a different day.

And, finally, this hardy bunch.