Hiking Before Breakfast, Really

We came to Colorado Springs because there were so many things to do; each day there's a possibility of something new.  Unfortunately, there are also trips to the grocery store, the post office (I go through stamps like a mad woman.), the gas station, and getting hair cuts.  Then, there's the vacuuming, car washing, bathroom cleaning, and general maintenance.  So, today, we decided to just jump into our hiking clothes and check out the Bear Creek Regional Park which is spitting distance from our front door.  I didn't even drink a CUP OF COFFEE. Afterwards, it was chore day.

Looking up toward the 'rim'

There's a regional hiking trail which circles the park.  Then, there are a series of interconnecting hikes in the center of the park.  This park includes a deep ravine as well as the rim around it.  One of its most popular features is the 'dog park'. This is dog country.  Bear Creek runs through the park, and this park is very popular, but not overcrowded because there are better hiking parks within five miles.  Today we did a 2.5 mile hike on the interconnected trails.  Then we went to eat the free breakfast at the dining room at the 'home'.  Boy, did we get the hairy eyeball striding into eat in our hiking boots.  

Apparently, the coyotes own Bear Creek Park because there are all kinds of signs up warning people about how to handle an encounter.  I'm covered there since there are packs which live in Sun City.  Coyotes really don't want to deal with people, just live around them.  Did you know coyotes and rock doves (city pigeons) are the two wild animals which have adapted best to co-existing with humans in an urban environment?  Some cities (like NYC) have actually imported coyotes to control the rat population.  In New York each one has a radio collar, so the parks department can actually track them. Coyotes also keep the Canadian Goose in check in some urban parks making them much nicer for people to use.  Coyotes have taught themselves how to cross busy urban streets.  They know how to look both ways and wait to cross.  Today, while hiking I spotted coyote tracks a couple of times on the trail, but we didn't see hide nor hair.

Spring has really just started arriving here in the past 10 days.  Today, I spent a lot of time photographing wildflowers.  I'd really, really like to know some of the names.  So, if you know the monikers of any of the flowers in the pictures, let me know.  If the picture label just says 'wildflower', then I don't know the name.
https://goo.gl/photos/zYDFCtZ6BBy1tpT57


      

Hog Heaven

It seems like we are going and doing something every day.  I'm in hog heaven. Even though the weather was really nice today, we try to stay off the hiking trails on the weekends, especially on Saturdays.   This Saturday we were sorting through possible things to do, and we decided to take in the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Museum.  Good choice.  We were practically the only people there.  Not surprising since the winter is long, and now is the time the native 'Springers' want to be outdoors.

Now, we all know I love museums, and I can generally find SOMETHING interesting to see in each one even if I have to look really hard.  My expectation of 'fine art' in this relatively small town (500,000) was pretty low.  As we entered, I immediately was transfixed by the introductory piece in the lobby, and I began to get the sense this museum was going to be quite special.

One of three Dale Chihuly glass chandeliers owned by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Museum

Doesn't this lovely glass chandelier make a great impression?  Ought to; it's from the premier world glass artist, Dale Chihuly.  The art museum is between 'downtown' and the southern edge of the Colorado College, founded in 1874.  The college is full of lovely Victorian buildings and is a lovely campus.  The art museum, while more modern, seems fresh and attractive.

One of the things I'd admired while looking at the museum's website was one building but three functions:  Fine Art, School of Art, and Performing Arts Theater.  In 2005, the museum brought in a major Chihuly glass exhibition which revitalized interest in the museum, sparking the 2007 expansion and remodel. The theater was especially upgraded, but the non-profit museum purchased some major glass pieces to enhance the new portions of the building.  Here's the second chandelier purchased from Chihuly.  It took two days to install.

There is actually a Chihuly 'room' in the museum

One of the concepts which impressed me about this museum is their commitment to buying excellent art.  There are no second rate 'old masters' here.  Instead, there is a wonderful assembly of Hispanic and Western art as well as some excellent modern abstract art and a couple of magical realism paintings which took my breath away.  Here's one.

This is called "David and Goliath"

As we went from gallery to gallery, we were just marveling at what was being exhibited, and we started talking about our next visit to see the new exhibitions opening in a week.  It dawned on us perhaps we should become members of the museum.  So, before we left today, we bought a membership, and we will be attending the member's cocktail reception and preview next Friday night for the new major exhibitions of the summer.  

I had such a good time today.  I hope you enjoy my pictures of this great museum.

https://goo.gl/photos/5tXa21QKkoeKGybi9

Spring Time at Altitude in Colorado

When we live someplace for a long time, we tend to equate the seasons with that locale.  After twenty years on the Gulf Coast, it took me a couple of years to realize springtime didn't start in February in North Texas; instead, it waited until March.  When we traveled last year in Maine and Canada, we got the treat of multiple springs as we headed west in May and June.

Now, this year when we arrived in early May in Colorado Springs (6300 feet in elevation), the trees were just budding out, and there weren't really even any spring flowers in evidence.  This week, the first week of June, we've noticed more flowers, and the weather taking a definite warming trend.

Searching for some interesting hiking, we discovered Mueller State Park, just west of Colorado Springs, and straight up into the mountains.  Mueller advertises itself as 'What you think of when you think of Colorado'.  We drove up about 3000 feet up and tried our hand at, well, actually our feet at, hiking at 9200' feet.  Mainly, it was walk, stop, gasp, - repeat.  You only get about 2/3rd the amount of air we were used to in Sun City, but it certainly was much cleaner.  It takes awhile to acclimate to high altitude since you must make more red blood cells to compensate for the lowered oxygen levels.

Since we were taking it easy to avoid contracting altitude sickness, there was plenty of time to take pictures.  I thought you might enjoy Colorado in the spring.

https://goo.gl/photos/LLe76JTEynTrUC8r5

Garden of the Gods

One of the many things I really like about the city of Colorado Springs is the commitment to park spaces.  One of the most popular national attractions is Garden of the Gods.  What most people don't know when they arrive here to see it, is they are going to a Colorado Springs city park.  Furthermore, it's free to see these rocks, and it always will be because that was one of terms of the deed in 1909.

Garden of the Gods entered human consciousness as a landmark.  It's an easily recognizable group of rocks which are bright red!  You can see them for quite a ways from the east since they are in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  They were like a beacon first to Plains Indians, then to the Spanish, the Mountain Men, and the wagon trains full of pioneers.

The core 409 acres was deeded to the city by the children of one of the founders of Colorado Springs.  While his will did not specifically  direct his children to give the land to the city, they honored his wishes and deeded the land to the city with only a few stipulations.  Over the years the city has bought more acreage, and one wealthy and influential Colorado Springs woman gave the money to build the visitor's center, and make access to the park more like a good national park.  It's needed because there are about two million people who visit each year.

One of the things we learned is the park was almost 'loved to death' - just too many people.  The CCC re-seeded the park with native plants which had almost been trampled to death and completely eliminated in some cases.  Gradually, access to the 'named' rocks got a controlled path through the rocks.

The park is also the trail head for more than a few trails up toward the higher mountains as well as easier hikes in the foothills.  The townspeople have named the 'rocks'.  See is you can find the 'kissing camel' or the three graces in the pictures.  This won't be our last visit.  There are parts of the park as well as the 'fundraiser' movie (you have to pay to see it) which we want to do.  

We can see the Garden of the Gods from our back deck.  I'm already starting to notice the differences in the rocks at different times of day.  Supposedly there's a few minutes at dawn (why, oh why does it always have to be at 'dawn'?) in which Pike's Peak catches the rising sun's light and within a few minutes the Garden of the Gods rock blaze with color.  The park opens at 5am, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be seeing this phenomena.

Enjoy the pictures.

https://goo.gl/photos/CJ6vAWHDNtmGbdedA  

The Alphabet Song

Have you thought about the alphabet recently?  Of course not.  The only time it even rises up into our consciousness is when we have to either teach it or learn it. Therefore, I didn't realize there was so much to be said about those 26 English letters until I read Michael Rosen's book Alphabetical, How Every Letter Tells a Story.

The book is structured with each chapter representing a letter.  Rosen traces the history of each letter, then does a somewhat whimsical few paragraphs of what each letter sounds like when paired with other letters, and how those sounds have evolved over the centuries.  In modern English many of these sounds are a result of the 'Great Vowel Shift', a 200 year period (1350 - 1550) when the modern sounds of the letters were mostly established.  The bulk of the book, however, are about topics that are loosely related to the alphabet.

Ever wonder how old the alphabet is?  Well, it goes back mostly to the Phoenicians at roughly 1100 BCE.  Those were the people who sailed around the Mediterranean trading with everybody.  When Rosen reproduced the Phoenician alphabet in his book, there are more than a few recognizable letters.  The Greeks adopted and changed it and then the Romans changed it even more.  It also surprised me early printers using moveable type designed what most of the letters we take for granted look like today especially they lower case versions.

There are even a few letters older than the Phoenician alphabet.  Care to guess the oldest?  Well, it's "B", 4000 BCE years old from an Egyptian hieroglyph meaning shelter.  Surprisingly, "K" is also from an Egyptian hieroglyph and goes back to 2000 BCE.  (It meant the palm of the hand.)  "J" by contrast isn't really used until the 1500's.  Samuel Johnson in the 1700's still regarded it as a variant of 'I' and unnecessary.  And poor "H" doesn't have an etymology (history) at all.

Some of Rosen's chapters are more interesting than others.  I thought one of his the best chapters was "K".  He discusses deliberately designed alphabets created in their entirety rather than evolving over a long period of time.   Rosen tells us about the Korean King Sejong who in 1446 commissioned the design of a 28 letter alphabet, so 'his subjects could have a simple way to write him their grievances'. Was I floored! Think about this.  Two really progressive ideas encapsulated in an alphabet:  Everyone should be literate, and a king should be responsive to those he rules.  In the United States, the most famous designed alphabet was  by Sequoya, who devised the Cherokee alphabet in about 12 years in the early 19th century  It's still in use today, and you can get a Cherokee keyboard.  "Q", "P" and "W" are also really interesting.  "Q" was about typewriters and why qwerty came into existence.  "P" is about shorthand writing, and "W" was about dictionaries.

The conclusion of the book was the author's opinion the uses of the alphabet which have held sway for more than 1000 years are fading due to the world wide web.  Alphabetized card catalogs?  Gone. Telephone books?  Gone.  Dictionaries with their little finger dimpled alphabet tabs?  Gone.   Paper maps with alphabetized street indexes?  Gone.  And the real culprit in all this alphabet bashing?  The smart phone.  If you are interested in a fascinating book with lots of interesting ideas, which can be picked up and read a few pages at a time read Alphabetical.     

      

The 'Other' Springs

Drake said, "You couldn't pay me to drive this highway."

Colorado Springs is known locally as 'the Springs', but in actuality, the sobriquet should belong to Manitou Springs, a small town just at the base of Pike's Peak. Manitou is the home of the famed 'cog railway' which crawls one cog at a time up to the summit of the famous mountain.  The reason to pay for a rail ticket is to avoid driving the Pike's Peak Highway.  This road was originally built in 1915 and was 19 miles long.  Today, it's still there.  It's two lanes, just about straight up (most of it at a 7% grade), with hair raising, hair pin curves, one after another, and to make it even more fun, there are no guard rails.  Give us the Pike's Peak Cog Railway any time.

As you can easily see, there's still snow on Pike's Peak.  We took the trip on May 23rd.  It was 70 degrees at the base, and it was 25 degrees at the top, with the wind chill in the teens.  (If you want to see the pictures from the rail trip, see below.)

Today, though, we visited the town of Manitou Springs.  This town was founded in the 1870's as a 'scenic health resort' by two railroad magnets who founded the Denver/Rio Grande Railroad.  The health claims were based upon the natural mineral springs which the Ute Indians had been drinking for years.  We of the 21st century think we have invented 'healthy living', but this is an old concept ruthlessly exploited for profit in the last quarter of the 19th century.  Any place there was weird water, there were claims it promoted 'health', and it became a site of a sanitorium and sometimes a vacation destination.  

There are wells scattered throughout Manitou Springs each of which has a free fountain of carbonated mineral water.  While strolling past one today, we saw a local woman filling a gallon plastic jug explaining to her two children the water she was collecting was. "For Daddy to help him get well."  Even today, somehow mineral water is supposed to promote your general well being.  At another fountain, a city employee was measuring the 'flow rate' of one of the fountains.  As I was chatting with him, he told me they actually bleed off a great deal of the natural carbon dioxide since their teens started 'huffing' the carbon dioxide cutting off oxygen to their brains.  At one time, there was actually a pavilion in town, the center of which was a 'spring'.  It became a small geyser every seven minutes.  So much of the spring water is under natural pressure there are no pumps needed to keep it flowing to the fountains.  

The red sandstone building in the background is actually the well of this spring

Manitou Springs has been a tourist town for more than 140 years, and they know how to do it.  It's a town filled with Victorian and Edwardian architecture still housing 'guest houses', souvenir shops, restaurants, art galleries and various snack food emporiums as well as an arcade.  As always, the pictures tell the whole story.  There's one other town feature, 'the incline' which is now a killer hiking trail (2000' elevation gain in less than one mile), but it was originally a funicular up the side of the mountain to a view of the other town with 'Springs' in its name.

Here are both sets of pictures:  First one is the railway trip to the 14, 111' Pike's Peak summit, and yes, it was hard to breathe up there.  The second set is a pictorial of Manitou Springs.

https://goo.gl/photos/LwE6VB5yCQsd2wwS6  

https://goo.gl/photos/vSvDVeURbtYRAPD57

On the Road to Colorado Springs

When we first started vagabonding, it was super exciting both to us and to people we met.  Now, people are still fascinated, but for me and Drake it's old news.  We have our story down pat.  What doesn't get old is meeting new people and going new places.  Just this morning we met a woman whose husband is a Ranger - the park kind, not the army kind, and she would have been willing to talk to us for an hour about how we got into this vagabonding lifestyle, but we were in a hurry.  It was move in day.  We still had to drive 45 miles to meet the realtor and get the key.  We are staying in the west this year.  I'll be writing my travelogues from Colorado Springs, Colorado and Prescott, Arizona.

Once again, the drive was interesting because we drove from the low desert to the high desert.  We drove Interstate 40 east to Albuquerque, then turned north on Interstate 25.  We wished would could have driven state highways, but when you are dealing with mountains, generally, there's only one viable road and it's an interstate.  I just seems like the low desert is all dirt and cacti while the high desert is grass, grass, grass.  The low desert is flat while the high desert is rolling hills and even small mountains.  Today, when we crossed into Colorado, Pike's Peak just popped up.  At 14,111 feet, it's pretty obvious.  In Colorado, they call these tall mountains the '14's'.

We pulled up to the Colorado version of our Arizona doll house.  Sometimes you just get lucky.  This place is amazing.  Two great chairs plus a sofa, table and chairs, lamps, lamps, lamps, and a desk.  And, as a bonus, there are two decks both of which have nice furniture and a grill.

Whenever we rent something before arriving obviously, we don't see it before we plunk down our money.  This time, it's a jackpot.  This house is so unusual because it's part of Brookdale Skyline Village, An Independent Living Community.  Yep. We are going to be living in a community which is inhabited by what I call the uber elderly.  (Before it was a car service, 'uber' means a supreme or outstanding example of a person or thing.)  There are 44 patio homes, a three story apartment house, an assisted living apartment house, a health center, and a memory care center.

My mother-in-law's independent living community back in Arizona prepared me for this lifestyle. First and foremost: it's a small town.  Everyone knows everything.  We have yet to meet ANYONE, and we've met lots of people in just the first week, who didn't know our 'story'.  I can already tell we are going to be a source of new stories and will be of great interest to everyone.   Our 'section' leader dropped by today, and she will be returning next week with my welcome bag and for a visit.  (Note to self:  make sure house is perfect next week.)

So far, we've been in 'shake-down' mode getting settled.  This community seems to be a great deal for us.  Duplex, all on one level on the 'tourist' side of town. Some of the direct benefits are a daily continental breakfast, a dining room with a meal plan, an indoor heated pool, and a fitness center.  The monthly calendar is taped on the fridge, an 11"x17" piece of paper chock full of activities.  This housing choice has opened up a whole new idea for vagabonding.  Stay tuned!

P.S.  Already been on two great hikes.  Here's my favorite picture from the one today

Jan's imitation of a grizzly.