Colorado

For Labor Day weekend we headed north to Colorado. The car passed 100,000 miles on this trip! First stop was lunch at Great Sand Dunes National Park. Sands accumulating between the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountains form enormous dunes, the largest in North America. We attempted to climb to the top, but when we made it to what we thought was the top, there were just more higher dunes beyond. Still, the view looking back was great.

We spent Friday night in Colorado Springs with Jake's friends Mike, Maureen and kids Noah and Maggie. Mike greeted us with cocktails and Maureen with wonderful home-cooked food. The kids made brief appearances between disappearing with a large group of neighborhood kids playing kick-the-can. No "nature-deficit disorder" in this neighborhood! In their surburban wooded yard they have seen mountain lion and bear and Jake and I watched two large deer and a baby rabbit roaming the front yard. We went to Garden of the Gods Saturday morning, a park with interesting rock formations. It is a very civilized park with paved paths, but the scenery is really beautiful. Afterwards we went to the town of Manitou Springs, formerly famous for its waters. While waiting for a table we all played in the neighboring arcade which had some of the oldest arcade games I've seen. They had some that still accepted a penny or 10 cents. Noah was quite taken with the penny arcade clown that could be made to dance by pushing buttons - I think because he was fascinated that that was all it could do (compared to modern arcade games!), and because it was funny.

We spent Saturday night in Denver with a former colleague of Jake and his wife. They took us to a great restaurant called Potager that uses in season ingredients and local foods. The next morning we walked past Jake's former homes near Washington Park and North Cherry Creek, a trendy neighborhood with lots of shops and restaurants. It seemed to be getting more chain stores though and Jake was disappointed that a branch of the Tattered Cover bookstore had been replaced by a furniture store.

On Sunday we continued north to Ft. Collins where my friends Helen and Feike live with their daughter Margot and Helen's mom. Helen's mom had gotten some great produce at the farmer's market that Feike grilled and Helen had made a great peach pie for dessert. In the morning we took a stroll to a park just a few blocks from their house in the foothills. There are some great rocks there too and grassy plains with Liatris and other flowers in bloom.

Monday was a long and boring drive home via the interstate, alleviated by a good lunch at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Castle Rock, CO. I25 through northern NM had different scenery with huge expanses of rolling grasslands dotted with cattle.