Friday, January 4, 2013

October 31, 2012 Colorado Plains

My daughter Jaime, her husband Jered and two of the grand kids live just about seventy miles east of our home in the community of Strasburg, Colorado.  That's pretty much out there in the plains of Colorado east of Denver.  I often kid her about living in Kansas.  I can't blame them though, it's a great community with great schools for the kids and it's away from the hustle of the big city of Denver.  It's petty much a day trip to go out and see them

If I were to move out of the mountains west of Denver I would likely move into the plains where Jaime and Jered and the girls live.  I like it there.

It's wide open, the air is clean and you can see where the clouds hit the ground.


It reminds me of my childhood home in Wyoming.
 
I drove out there for a Halloween costume parade at the grand kids school on Halloween day.
 
I try to stay off of the highway any time I can.  Sometimes I think highways were invented so people could pass life by as quickly as possible.
 
I took a back road to Strasburg and back on Halloween day.  I'm glad I did.  This beautiful guy was there watching for me from his perch on a fence post.  It was as though he was waiting for me.  I noticed him watching me as I drove by.  He kept right on watching me and gave me time to turn around, park across the road from him and mount my long lens to the camera.
 
 
He kept his eye on me the whole time I was there watching him.

 
 
I don't think he was so sure he could trust me too much.

 
 
I don't suppose I can blame him for being nervous.  We humans can sometimes do pretty stupid things.

 

Eventually he'd had enough of me.  I suppose he decided he had given me enough time to take his photo and besides it was lunch time and I'm sure there was a mouse or two out there that were waiting for him......

 
More of the hawk Red tailed hawk
More Colorado wild life: Colorado wildlife
More Colorado scenery: Colorado
 

October 9, 2012, Autumn in New England

I know, I know, I know.

This is supposed to be a blog about traveling the Rocky Mountains in the Sammi.  I know.

Sorry about that.  I had to add this little excursion to New England.

I took a business trip to Portland, Maine to attend a conference.  Having lived in Saratoga Springs, New York for several years some time ago I had to take the opportunity to spend a couple extra days in the area and take a drive back to my old stomping grounds after the conference. 

It was autumn and you simply can't pass up a driving trip across Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont into upstate New York that time of year.


Portland Head Light, Fort Williams Park 
 

 

 
 
 
 
A stop along the way to upstate New York to visit with my niece Melisa and her husband Scott in Hanover, New Hampshire took me back to my youth.  What a great visit we had.  Bunking down in their living room for the night made me feel like I was in my early twenties again and the walk around the Dartmouth College grounds the next day was inspirational. 
 
Wow! The library there is impressive.  I could sit and read for hours on end in that beautiful place. 


 
 
 I'm not sure where this was but when I drove over the bridge you see in the background I simply had to stop and take a walk to the bottom of the gorge.
 
 
An Autumn festival somewhere in New Hampshire or Vermont

 


Back to the old stomping grounds of Saratoga.  I spent several years there thirty some odd years ago.  I felt like I was back home again.

Somewhere on 9P next to Saratoga lake.

 


And then on the outskirts of Saratoga there's Yaddo. 

There has always been something calming and enchanting about Yaddo.  Kind of like leaving the earth end entering a sanctuary.  I used to spend many an hour simply wandering around the grounds here.  Rumor has it Edgar Allen Poe wrote "The Raven" here but that's a claim of a lot of places. I wouldn't doubt it though. 

The entrance to Yaddo


 
 The rose gardens at Yaddo
 


There's more information all over the web about Yaddo.  You might find it interesting: http://yaddo.org
 
 
 Saratoga Springs city park
 
Main street Saratoga Springs
 
 
And then a couple nights with some dear friends of mine; Lee and Karen Hutson.
Lee and Karen build a log home on thirty some acres of ground with their own hands just a few miles outside of Saratoga.  It takes a good three quarters of an hour to walk around the perimeter of their yard.  Nice, real nice.

Lee and Karen's back yard

More photos from New England:

More photos from Autumn in New England

September 25, 2012, Cisco, Utah

I WANT A TIME MACHINE!

I want to be able to push a button, or turn a knob, or look through a looking glass or something that will allow me to break the shackles of time and transport myself to a time that was but is no longer.

I love old abandoned places.  Places that were but aren't any more.

On our return trip from Southern Utah and Canyonlands we once again got off of the beaten trail and visited the town of Cisco, Utah.

There is not much left there.  Too many years, too many thieves, too many vandals I suppose but nevertheless one of those places where a time machine would have been such a great thing to have at my disposal.  I'd love to be able to take a look at the 'goings-on' when there was something going on here.

Just a few miles off of the interstate between Moab Utah and Canyonlands on our return trip to Denver sits the abandoned town of Cisco, Utah.  Once a thriving town whose industry was mining is now nothing more than a memory and a few scattered artifacts from a time long past.


It can be a little frightening to wander through an abandoned town like this.  Even though you have nothing but good intentions you never know who is going to happen by.  Especially so many miles from anywhere.......

While Pamela and I were wandering around town this big husky dude drove up and started talking to her.....  She hightailed it back to the truck!  I was several yards away behind some buildings and had no idea the guy was even there.  Boy she was pissed at me when I came back around to where she was.  I guess it could have been a little problematic but as it turns out he was a deputy sheriff just checking on us.  Lots of people have done a lot of damage to this place and he was just trying to make sure we weren't doing the same.

I better stick a little closer to her from now on when we are exploring these old ghost towns.



 
 

 
 

 
 

 
It's obvious this was a hard working truck in its time.  It's also obvious it was a tow truck of some sort.  Too bad it can't talk.  Now it just sits there and provides winter shelter for prairie animals.  You have to admit though that there is a certain beauty that this old truck still exhibits.
 

 
 

 
I'm reasonably sure that in its prime this old bus served as a school bus for taking kids back and forth to school somewhere.  Not any more.  Now it is full of old artifacts from years gone by: cupboards, a refrigerator, countless household items and who knows what else.

Wasn't this once considered a 'muscle car'?
 
 

Do you think these dolls were forgotten?  I wonder what little girl might have forgotten to take them and if she misses them.....
I wonder if the dolls get lonesome and cry at night when it gets dark.....
 

How many little ones had to endure getting their ears cleaned by mommy at this little sink.
 

Cisco even had a post office once.
 

Pamela loved this place.  You'll find a book she put together with some of her photos, thoughts and impressions  at Exploring Cisco.

If you're interested there are more photos of Cisco Utah at: Cisco Utah

PLEASE EVERYONE!  If you happen upon these wonderful old abandoned relics of the American past enjoy them, admire them but PLEASE don't vandalize and take anything away from them.  Old places like this should be considered nothing less than a grave.  Please respect them and the relics that exist there as though they were the resting place of your grandmother.

If you enjoy old ghost towns here's another one you might want to take a look at.  We ran into this one in South Dakota a couple years back:  A ghost town in South Dakota


September 24 2013, Canyonlands Utah


This is another one of those posts that maybe doesn't belong in a blog about the Samurai.  This trip to the back country has nothing to do with the Sammi. 

I wanted to add this entry though because we went down here this year and by this time next year I hope to be able to say I did the same trip with the Samurai.  There were four of us on this trip and since we wanted to explore Canyonlands together there simply wasn't room in the Sammi.  It doesn't have a back seat, I removed that right after I purchased it.  We rented a Jeep (OMG!)



If you have never been to southern Utah it is a place you simply have to go. 

I know there are a lot of beautiful places in the world but having seen many of them I have to say that the three favorite places I had ten, even twenty, years ago are still my three favorite places: 
  • The Pacific Coast Highway along the California coast between Monterey and San Luis Obispo,
  • The million dollar highway between Silverton to Ouray Colorado,
  • Southern Utah.
I'm not really a church going man.  You don't see me in church often except for an occasional wedding or funeral and maybe a couple times a years at Easter or Christmas.  To me celebrating God is visiting his work in places like Canyonlands, Utah.  Truly magnificent.  And the best way to experience his work it is to totally emerse yourself in it and you can't do that by standing on the edge looking down.  You have to go down into it.

The Green River merges with the Colorado at the bottom of the canyon many, many miles before the Colorado goes on to the Grand Canyon where over the centuries it has carved out some of the most wonderful geological beauty that exists anywhere in the world.




This is Pamela (Rosebud) and Margo, her childhood friend from the Netherlands looking out over the expanse.


 

The road you see at the bottom is the road we traveled.
 



That's Ed out there on that rock bridge.  He's probably 400 feet above the canyon floor.


 














More from Canyonlands with Ed and Margo: Canyonlands


(Note for my bucket list:  Spend two weeks camping alone at the bottom of this canyon.)