Book Ends

Like many of you, I was fascinated by the recent Artemis 2 trip around the moon in anticipation of mankind, and now womankind, reestablishing our long delayed relationship with our 4 ½ billion year old celestial neighbor. It's been 53 years since the last astronauts, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, left their last footprints on the lunar surface and apparently it will still be several years before another man or woman gets moondust once again on their pricey footwear.

I read that only 25% of Americans alive today were around on July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong first took that “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” I’m one of those 25 percenters (Whoop! Whoop!) and the time that stretches between Neil’s first tentative step and our latest foray to old Luna has been long enough to serve as bookends of entire lives lived and lost. I was a mere lad of 12 in 1969, my lovely wife of most of those in-between years was only 3, and here we are today in our sixties.

There are some folks who don’t believe we ever landed on the moon. Not quite sure what they make of the latest trip. Maybe one day when they can book a flight to the moon and find themselves gallivanting about in 1/6th of the earth’s gravity that will make believers of them. Or when they tee off at the first ever Trump Lunar Towers golf course and see how far their slice careens off into the lunar rough. They say golf is but a good walk ruined and that may be doubly true in the not quite zero gravity of the moon.

When I was a kid my parents got me a subscription to Life Magazine which was perhaps the combination TikTok/Instagram/Facebook of its day. If you wanted to know what was happening, Life was the place to find out, at least once a week which is how frequently it came out. I remember clearly looking forward to it arriving in the mailbox. Life Magazine probably taught me as much about, well… life, as did sitting in a classroom. Although to be fair, I probably paid as much, if not more, attention to the magazine than to some of my teachers. 

I still have a couple of those 50+ year old Life magazines, including the three weeks leading up to and including the first manned landing on the moon. Up until the Artemis 2 mission I really hadn’t given them any thought but just for grins I pulled them out the other day for a look back at 1969 through a 2026 set of eyes. 

As I browsed through the three issues I was more intrigued by the other news of the day. The scientific facts, figures, and details of the first moon landing are well documented so I focused on the cultural context in which the flight took place - what else was going on, who else was in the news, what were Americans fascinated with beyond just going to the moon. After all, this momentous human achievement that would ripple through time was framed by the world around it when it took place.

In 1969 America was at war as we still are in 2026. Vietnam and Iran serve as bookends for all the conflicts that have occurred in between. While few servicemen and servicewomen have died in the latest Iranian conflict, back in 1969 the average monthly death toll was more than 900. It was within this context that State Farm Insurance ran this ad highlighting another challenge of the times - the nation’s deadly highways. Bear in mind that it was only one year before, in 1968, that seatbelts became mandatory in all new American cars (not that you had to use them; mandatory seat belt usage did not become widespread in the U.S. until the 1980's). Today’s Iran conflict has much to do with highways as well, though now we seem more concerned with the price of gas than the price in human lives.

Our love affair with soft drinks, alcohol, and tobacco was alive and well in 1969. Pepsi and Coke were advertising their product in ice cold bottles though by the end of the year canned soda would outsell bottled for the first time. Celebrities were hawking hard liquor - Johnny Carson pushing Smirnoff and Telly Savalas (prior to his becoming television’s ‘Detective Kojak’ in 1973) plugging Johnnie Walker. I wasn't quite sure so I asked AI to identify the celebrity in the Johnnie Walker ad and it told me it was indeed Mr. Savalas. 

My trust in AI would soon get challenged however when I asked it to identify the two wholesome young people telling me that L&M was the cigarette for me. Can you identify this cute couple? I thought they looked familiar, which after all is part of the point of the advertising but when I queried AI I got interesting answers. At first AI identified the young lady as Twiggy who at the age of 16 became one of the world’s first supermodels. It's not too far of a stretch to see Leslie Hornby, AKA Twiggy, being an influencer if she had come of age in today’s TikTok/Instagram world but then perhaps I’m not giving enough credit to Miss Hornby as influence the world she indeed did.

As for the good looking young lad AI easily came up with a name, at least at first. You'll know him in today’s world, if he is who AI says he is, as he’s had a long and illustrious film career spanning hits like American Graffiti, Witness, and The Fugitive. Not to mention some minor blockbusters like Indiana Jones and Star Wars. Yup, AI identified the man in the ad as a young Harrison Ford. Trying to verify what AI was telling me proved far more problematic - asking AI “Has Harrison Ford ever appeared in a tobacco ad?” elicited the following response: ‘There is no record of Harrison Ford appearing in a tobacco advertisement. While he has starred in numerous international commercials, none have been for cigarettes or tobacco product.’ Hmmmm… ‘no record’ is not quite the same as ‘never did’ so I then turned my attention back to Twiggy and asked the same question about her. Once again, the answer was somewhat ambiguous: ‘Based on available records, there is no evidence that the British model and icon Twiggy (Lesley Lawson) appeared in tobacco advertisements, particularly during her rise to fame in the 1960s.’ 

Bearing in mind that this L&M ad appeared in an issue of Life Magazine with a circulation of over 8 million I pushed a little deeper and AI (at least Google’s Gemini) finally changed its mind telling me the female model was not Twiggy but was instead Sally Struthers before she rose to fame as Gloria on ‘All in the Family’: ‘In the late 1960s, before she became a household name on All in the Family, Sally Struthers worked as a model and appeared in several tobacco advertisements. The image you shared is one of the most famous examples, featuring her alongside a young Harrison Ford for L&M cigarettes in 1969.’ Who, and what to believe? I guess the term “GIGO” or Garbage In, Garbage Out” applies as equally in 2026 as it did when it became widely used in the ‘60’s. Bookends.

If some of AI’s answers were slightly malodorous then Life in ‘69 had the answer from an advertiser most of us will still recognize. No matter we were rocketing men to the moon it was still a good time to ‘Take a vacation from odors and household germs’. Just like today. The July 4th Special Issue had a lengthy article on the ‘Lunar Laboratory’ which would house and potentially decontaminate the astronauts if they happened to bring back any lunar germs. I wonder if the 'Lunar Laboratory' had a fully stocked supply of Lysol? Talk about product placement.

Cars were perhaps more popular in 1969 than they are now with gas prices exceeding $4/gallon in many places thanks to our latest military foray. From an MG Sprite at $2,081 to a new Toyota Corolla for just $1,686 (girl in bikini optional) the dream of ‘two cars in every garage’ was becoming a reality. Even Ford was getting into imports with the Ford Cortina fresh from Great Britain for only $1,849. Not to be outdone, Volkswagen perhaps had the cutest ad without even showing their car. Their 1969 Volkswagen Beetle cost $1,799, slightly less than the cost of the Lunar Lander shown in their ad.

No discussion of the sixties would be complete without a mention of race relations - specifically that between blacks and whites. This ad acknowledges the difficulty in teaching about what was phrased then as a ‘racial crisis’ and advertises educational materials to help teachers address the issue. How did that ‘racial crisis’ unfold in the years since? In 1969 Martin Luther King was barely gone having being assassinated the prior year. Reading these summer issues of Life as a boy I had yet to learn the names Eric Garner, Michael Brown, or George Floyd. This ad would never fly in today’s world of alleged wokeness and DEI exclusion. Bookends. 

There was even an ad for Bill Cosby bringing his comedy to life in a two-record set. Pre-Fat Albert, pre-The Cosby Show, pre-allegation and conviction of indecent assault. Back when he was still funny.

Speaking of vinyl records, back in ‘69 the times they were a’ changin. All the dollars spent sending men to the moon had some payback in terms of giving Americans access to the latest and greatest state-of-the-art technology. The 8 Track tape had been introduced to the world in September 1965 in an effort to bring stereo music into cars (FM music wouldn’t become popular until the mid to late ‘70’s) and you could get three 8 tracks for just $4.95 by joining the RCA Stereo 8 Tape Club. The precursor to Pandora, I-Tunes, and Spotify delivered to your mailbox with a monthly subscription that would keep on giving for years to come!

And if you were part of the ‘Action Crowd’ General Electric had you covered with their purse-sized Mini-Swinger transistor radio for only $12.98. Not to be outdone, Kodak (anybody remember them? Kodak at one time held roughly 90% of the film market and 85% of the camera market in the U.S. In 1969 Kodak had record sales of $2.74 billion} had the latest in camera gear with the Instamatic S-10 Camera. For less than $35 you could afford to capture all the not-quite-yet-invented selfies your heart desired. Even the mundane act of cooking was improved by technology - G.E., which just six years earlier had introduced the self-cleaning oven to the world, was showing off their latest model available in 4 decorator colors: Harvest, Coppertone, Avocado, and White. Who needed DoorDash, Uber Eats or Grubhub?

You may be aware that King Charles III and Queen Camilla are paying an official State Visit to Washington this week. The then Prince Charles was equally in the news in 1969 though for a slightly different reason. The Life Magazine of August 8, 1969, who’s main focus was, like, the actual landing on the moon, featured an article titled “Birds Fit for a Future King - a classy selection of possible mates for the Prince of Whales”. The future Princess Diana was just 8 years old in 1969 and Charles would not meet Camilla until 1970 but Life Magazine had a bevy of beauties, ‘birds’ in the vernacular of the day, purportedly anxious to catch the eye of the future monarch. No mention of Prince Andrew, Jeffrey Epstein, or the future abuse of countless women at the hands of rich and powerful men.

Marriage, which has undergone its own fair share of changes since 1969 was not forgotten on the pages of the moonshot editions of Life and the explicit chauvinism of the times was on full display in this ad from De Beers. The copy reads: “Look at you, happy girl. All dewy and smiley and sure of everything the promise on your left hand means.” In today’s context the woman in the ad doesn’t appear to be a ‘girl’. Nor does she appear to my 21st century eyes to be

particularly “happy”, “dewy” (whatever that means), “smiley”, or for that matter “sure of everything”. Perhaps she was prescient of all the turmoil surrounding marriage that was about to unfold and that continues to this day. The tagline of “A diamond is forever” would go on to be named as the ‘Best Advertising Slogan of the 20th Century’ by Advertising Age in  1999. The divorce rate in 1969 was 3.2 per 1,000 Americans. 1980 would see it peak at 22.6. In 2023, the rate per 1,000 was 14.4.

Speaking of the fairer sex, Nationwide Insurance ran an ad that was as much a sign of the times as the aforementioned article on lofty royal affairs. Highlighting the accomplishments of 22 of its agents, only one is a woman. Kudos to Ms. Portnoy for being an early representative of what women would go on to accomplish if only given the chance. 

I mentioned Artificial Intelligence earlier as I attempted to identify celebrities in some of the Life ads. Back in 1969 there was no AI but there was the 24 volume Encyclopedia Britannica available via an “Easy Book a Month Plan”. The ad highlights that the ‘largest, most complete reference work published in America’ contained a staggering 36,000,000 (36 million) words! In today’s world that would equate to about 200MB of data. The average cell phone today has storage measured not in megabytes (MB) but in gigabytes and terabytes. A terabyte would hold approximately 200 billion words - more than 5,000 complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannicas. A terabyte of storage can be had for as little as $50 today; a full set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1969 cost several hundred dollars, roughly equivalent to $3,000 in today’s currency. In 2026 you cannot buy printed versions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Instead, for just $8.99/month -"free 7-day trial"! - you can subscribe to their online edition. And of course now we have AI. Cheating on homework has never been so easy. Book ends. Literally.

Back in 1969 the cover price for a Life Magazine was 40 cents but if you subscribed you could get 25 weeks of Life Magazine for $2.95 or 12 cents an issue. Roughly 48 cents a month. Life certainly was not only advertising and there were some notable articles in the moonshot issues. One highlighted all the famous people who lived at the Watergate apartments in Washington, D.C. Just three years later a small matter of a break in at the nearby Watergate office complex would topple a presidency and change the political landscape forever. Presidential shenanigans it seems are nothing new. 

Another article “Don’t ask me, I only live here" raised existential questions on the meaning of life, what it means to be an American, where is God? All subjects that are as elusive today in terms of answers as they were then. Today’s podcasts cover the same ground ad nauseam. The article even joked that the computers were taking over. Book ends. 

Another ad hawked the advantages of computer dating, which admittedly was not quite the same as online dating today. But hey, it had to start somewhere. In 1965 two Harvard students had pioneered a computer-based dating service called 'Operation Match'. In 2004 another four Harvard students would roll out something called 'Facebook' which by the end of that year would boast more than a million users.Today Facebook has more than 3 billion monthly active users.

The final article I pondered over in the August 8th ‘On The Moon’ issue was about an American soldier in Vietnam, Sergeant John Cameron, nervously living out his last month of duty before going home. 11,780 U.S. troops would die in Vietnam in 1969 and Sergeant Cameron was determined not to be one of them. He would leave Vietnam the morning of June 23, 1969, alive, and he would live to see the first human being step onto the moon just a month later. I asked AI for information on what happened to Sergeant Cameron after he got home but sadly AI came up empty. Yet part of him lives on for those who go back and look through the now yellowing pages of a magazine documenting perhaps mankind’s greatest achievement. A whisper in time. That echoes still.

A study in contrasts…

 

One of the things I enjoy most about being retired is being able to pursue my passion for photography. I love to capture a scene that tells a story or triggers an emotion. I did not take them but the two images to the left, both taken in the last few days, do both and they represent a stark contrast in the reality of what America has become as we enter the year of our country’s semiquincentennial - the 250th year since the signing of the Declaration of Independence back in 1776.

The image at the top you may not be familiar with. It was taken at ‘The USA House’ in Davos, Switzerland where our President is hobnobbing with the world’s elite while simultaneously badgering and cajoling them into seeing things his way. 

From a photography perspective it’s actually an incredibly well-done photograph. The posters of Melania advertise the upcoming release, January 30, of a documentary about the First Lady’s return to the White House. The Trump poster is, well, a Trump poster but the gentleman holding it is the man who introduced Melania to her future husband at a party at the Kit Kat Club in New York in 1998. His name is Paolo Zampolli and back in 1998 he ran a modeling agency and it was he who helped bring Melania to the U.S. on an H-1B visa from her native Slovenia. The Freedom 250 logo surrounded by stars refers to this year’s U.S.A. birthday celebration. Paolo has since moved on from managing models and most recently has served Mr. Trump as the U.S. Representative for Global Partnerships. 

The bull statue is a replica of the bronze statue near the New York Stock Exchange where in 2008 (I know, ancient history...) demonstrators protested corporate greed in response to that year's financial crisis.And though it's somewhat hard to make out, on the armchair is a copy of Melania's 2024 memoir which is available for sale online for as low as $8.00 or more than $1,900 for a signed copy.

This is the face of America being presented to the world in Davos where the official theme is "A Spirit of Dialog" and 60 heads of State and more than 800 CEO's are in attendance.

Mr. Zampolli posed for the shot as an albeit very fancy and highly staged selfie and posted it to Facebook and Instagram. I came across the image while reading a Washington Post article. Regardless, its quite a photo. AI would be challenged to do better.

The second image, though lacking the production values exhibited in the Zampolli photo, you probably recognize. Its of 5 year old Liam Ramos with an ICE Agent's hand secured to his backpack, being used as bait to lure adults out of a Minneapolis home this last week. I don't care which side of the immigration issue you come down on but the image of a child wearing a hat with bunny ears being used by agents of our government was haunting. No posed selfie here, but this image will remain seared into my brain for the remainder of my days. 

The folks in Davos perhaps can be excused for being too busy hobnobbing with their fellow elites but for us, myself included, just average Americans, this image, not that of Mr. Zampolli, reflects the real world we live in and that we have to deal with in America today. I suspect that long after the pageantry and imagery of our semiquincentennial has faded as a distant memory, little Liam's photo will resonate with the current generation much as an image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc helped in some small way end a war on the other side of the world for mine. (I'm not showing that image as to this day it remains very disturbing but if you're not familiar with it click on the link above.) 

Colorado Gems

If you’re fortunate (unfortunate?) enough to live along the Colorado Front Range your primary access to points west are I-70 that crosses Colorado from Kansas to just west of Grand Junction, and Highway 285 that heads west out of Denver and is increasingly becoming the alternate to an overwhelmed I-70 that routinely sees travel times doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled. Colorado Springs folks have Highway 24 and folks in NOCO (northern Colorado) have Highways 14 and 287 to escape the urban sprawl but increasingly it takes some real dedication and effort to explore the furthest reaches of this State we call home.

My better half (three quarters?) and I settled in the Denver area because that’s where the jobs were when we got hitched. Today, even with some employers embracing work from home, Denver remains the State’s population ( 3 million in the metropolitan area) and employment epicenter which is great if you relish the urban/suburban environment. For me, I spent my career in Denver dreaming of weekend escapes to my beloved mountains. I could tolerate 40-60 hours spent cube-bound so long as Friday through Sunday evening was spent at an elevation higher than a mile high (Denver’s professed elevation is 5,280 feet). The new work mode that’s taking hold in some places referred to as 996 (you work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days a week) would never have worked for me and negates the entire reason I live in Colorado rather than say, Ohio or Alabama (with apologies to both of those great States). Now that I’m gainfully retired (is that even a thing? It should be…) my ongoing quest for a routine altitude adjustment from the front range flatlands hasn’t changed though the advantage of retirement is I don’t have to wait until Friday evening to head out of town. 

Recently my wife and I headed out to explore south central Colorado. Hooking up the camper our first stop was a town many of you already know and love: Crested Butte. Known for wildflowers, mountain biking, as well as great skiing I’ve spent a fair amount of time in CB and never get tired of this beautiful and unique mountain town tucked into the far end of the Gunnison Valley. As you’ll see in the video below we hit CB during one of its street fairs which meant some crowds in town but the hiking and biking trails were not busy at all so I was in heaven.

After a couple of days in CB we journeyed south to the little town of Lake City which boasts a population of 413 (as of 2024…. Might be 415 by now!). I’ll bet your high school had a larger population than that. Heck, my neighborhood King Soopers (one of our local grocery chains) has more than that. Now, if you haven’t been to Lake City I’m going to encourage you not to go (just kidding) because it’s peaceful and quiet and kind of a hidden gem. True to its name it features a beautiful lake

as well as access to a spectacular high mountain route called the Alpine loop that connects Lake City to Silverton and Ouray (two other Colorado gems). The Alpine loop is not by any stretch a highway. It’s not even paved. It spends much of its time far above 10,000 feet and the two passes we drove over (Cinnamon and Engineer) were both over 12,000 feet. And no, don’t plan on driving your normal passenger vehicle. Even though I drive a 4X4 truck we rented a 4X4 Jeep from the good folks at the campground where we were staying and was glad we did. In the off-roading community the Alpine loop is rated as “moderately difficult” and all I have to say to that is ‘Amen!’ If it’s only “moderately” difficult I’m not sure I want to behind the wheel of what qualifies as ‘very difficult’. Engineer Pass especially was an eye-opener with a couple of “Oh S@$#" sections that introduced a pucker factor not usually associated with driving a motor vehicle. Put another way I was a little envious of the dirt bikes and OHV’s that were the norm on most of the route. All that said, the Alpine Loop is stunningly beautiful and with a little caution and white-knuckle driving its doable by mere mortals. Still beware that the route is not only challenging but remote as well and you’ll pass signs warning that rescue services (let alone cell service) may not be readily available. And the rescue services are busy down there - just a week or so ago a Florida couple had to be rescued after driving into a snowstorm (I know, I know) atop Engineer Pass. 

From Lake City we journeyed over Slumgullion Pass (which is paved and features gloriously smooth asphalt) to South Fork Colorado which is swiftly turning into one of my favorite Colorado destinations (Shhhhhhhh! Don’t tell anyone). We were there last year to do some ‘rail biking’ but had also gotten in some great biking, hiking, kayaking and paddle boarding and sightseeing. Not a lot of Front Rangers make the jaunt to South Fork and you might be excused if you think its a suburb of Dallas (a great opportunity to practice your Texican…) but everyone was really nice, really relaxed, and just really glad to be there. This trip we ventured to the little town of La Garita which is so small it doesn’t even qualify for a U.S. Census population count. What it lacks in population it makes up for in the form of one of the most photogenic churches at which I have ever aimed a lens. La Garita is also adjacent to Penitente Canyon which features camping, hiking, and rock climbing as attractions. 

We also took a day trip to the town of Creede which claims a year-round population of 281 souls but swells to upwards of 5,000 come high summer. Thankfully we were there when nowhere close to 5,000 folks were in town. We availed ourselves of the opportunity to take in a show at the Creede Repertory Theatre and the very strong cast did play to a full house while putting on a wonderful performance.

Thanks if you’re still with me as I wasn’t planning on writing this long of a blog but this was a fun trip and as long as you don’t tell anyone else where you’re going I’d highly encourage you to visit this less traveled (less traveled being a relative term…) part of the State I call home and which to this day I’m still getting to know.

Aaaah, Fall…

The calendar says it’s October but across much of the country you’d think it was still mid-summer. My better half and I actually went kayaking at our local reservoir a couple of days ago and it was just darned hot, even out on the water. Normally folks would be hauling their boats out of the water and waxing up their skis in anticipation of cooler temps and white flakes lazily falling from the sky but this year… not so much.

The news says it’s in part due to abnormally warm ocean temperatures near China and Japan that’s pushing the jet stream northward and allowing abnormally warm temperatures to rein across much of the United (?… maybe we need to change that name like someone did with the Gulf of America) States. I know the snow and cold will ultimately make their presence known, but for now having summer extend well into autumn is okay with me. 

Up in the Colorado hills it’s been a fantastic fall foliage season, perhaps the best I have ever seen. That is, if you could actually get up there to witness it. In Colorado one mountain town closed the exits from the interstate due to the hordes of folks descending on the town in their annual pilgrimage to see Populus Tremuloides (the quaking aspen) go from its summer green to its fall yellow. And this year there was also a lot of gold, red, and orange as well. A year or so ago my better half and I had spent a considerable sum on a fall foliage cruise up the Atlantic seaboard from Boston to the Canadian maritimes and while I know the fall colors back east are amazing on that trip at least the colors we saw paled in comparison to what our local aspens put on display this year. 

It’s getting to the point that if you try to get to the Colorado High Country on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday it may not be worth your bother. What’s normally an hour and a half to two hour jaunt can easily turn into a five or six hour ordeal - one way. But not to worry… its only anticipated that our state will grow by another 1.72 million people by 2050. I’m fortunate enough to be retired so I have the luxury (and luxury it has truly become) of being able to head to the hills during the middle of the week when mid-week traffic on I-70 is only as bad as weekend traffic was five or ten years ago. But I digress.

Once you made it above 8,000 feet, traffic notwithstanding, you were treated to some amazingly vibrant colors. I spent my time around Twin Lakes, Leadville, and Estes Park (went to Estes because of the government shutdown thinking the crowds would be smaller and they…. were!). Here’s some of what I saw:

Of course all those vibrantly beautiful leaves must fall and much of my time over the next couple of weeks will be spent dutifully raking and bagging said leaves so that my trash company can do me the honor of hauling them away one trashcan-full at a time. Not quite sure where to put the rest of our household trash, but that’s a topic for another day. For those of you who were fortunate, and brave enough to get into the hills to see this year's changing colors… congratulations! You were among the few and the proud and your efforts are to be applauded. And for those unlucky enough to have been caught up in the traffic nightmare that I-70 routinely becomes, my condolences and please don’t read this while driving on the mountain highway… well on second thought, go ahead… you’re not going anywhere anyhow.

All aboard the good ship…

 One of the videos featured in my last blog showcased the fine art of burro racing at 10,000 feet. The town of Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the United States. Being a mountain town lends itself to having a lot of outdoor activities available nearby. In the winter there’s skiing at Ski Cooper, snowshoeing at Turquoise Lake and in town come spring there’s the fun but not for feint of heart sport (?) of Skijoring which I also featured in one of my earlier blogs. Summers are no slouch either with incredible biking, hiking, fishing, camping, kayaking and as mentioned before the fine pastime of getting your Ass (burro) up the nearby pass (Mosquito). In short I and Sophie, my infinitely better half, have spent quite a bit of time in the area surrounding Leadville and still haven’t quite gotten our fill of this uniquely Colorado town.

About 18 miles south of Leadville there’s a couple of Lakes, two in fact, aptly given the moniker Twin Lakes. Lying as they do at the eastern start of Independence Pass the lakes are ooo’ed and aaw’ed over by plenty of tourists making what to some is a white-knuckle drive over to Leadville’s poorer cousin (?!) Aspen. In recent years Twin Lakes has also been discovered as a fine place for paddle boarding at least when the winds aren’t howling (as they frequently do especially in the afternoons) and for those willing to freeze their private bits off should they fall into the cold (mild understatement) water.

We’ve been canoeing and more recently paddle boarding (and freezing those aforementioned private bits) for years now but one thing that we had never done was avail ourselves of the opportunity to take the guided boat tour of the lakes. So a couple of weeks ago having fulfilled our quota of biking, hiking, fishing, camping, kayaking, canoeing, and paddle boarding we thought “Hey! Let’s take the Twin Lakes Boat Tour!” So we did. The tour is a 2 to 3 hour excursion (depending on the whims of the weather and captain) that starts on the upper west lake and then meanders through the narrow channel into the larger east lake with a stop at the historic Interlaken Resort on the southern shore. Sure, there’s a 2 mile path that you can use to hike or bike in to the old resort but for a change sitting on a comfy boat seat instead of a bike saddle wasn’t half bad either. And given that the day we took the tour it was in the mid-high 80’s (which used to be considered pretty warm for the Colorado High Country) it was nice not to have to contemplate the additional 2 mile hike or bike back out to the car.

The boat only accommodates 7 or 8 people and the tour website says there’s a required minimum of four for the tour to go. On our tour there were  seven of us plus the captain who’s also a pretty good tour guide full of facts, figures, and local knowledge that makes the 2 to 3 hour tour fly by. Of course I had my handy camera at the ready and here’s the requisite video of our nautical inland cruise:

One of the things that is perhaps better appreciated from the water than on the trail is the scope of the wildfire that went through portions of the southern shore in June of 2024. I was in the area during the fire and, yes, did shoot a video (available here) about that as well. Fortunately the Interlaken Resort was saved through the determined efforts of firefighters but from the boat we could clearly see how close the flames came to destroying this historic landmark. 

Tours run from June through September and more info is available at twinlakesboattours.com. That gives you another 6 weeks to hop on board, hopefully on a day as calm and beautiful as the one we had. And depending on ole’ Mother Nature if leaf peeping season is early this year the late September trips could be spectacular as the mountains to the west light up with their golden Fall display. So as we’ve heard more than one cruise director say “Don’t delay! Book today!”. Alright, so a cruise director I’m not, but still we’d recommend this trip whether your from out of state or just a local who hasn’t yet found the time to partake of this one-of-a-kind tour…

Busy, busy, busy…

 I know some folks have a tough time transitioning to retirement. We have friends who last only a couple of weeks or months before they return to some type of employment because they don’t quite know what to do with all their newfound free time.

I, for one, haven’t had that problem. While I thoroughly enjoyed most aspects of my career I knew that while I was working I never had enough free time to pursue all the other things I was passionate about. From travel to honing my guitar skills (or lack thereof!) to catching up on my reading, and of course the ever present honey-do list which never seems to get any shorter, I still find myself with not enough time to do all the things I love to do.

Travel is something my wife and I have always enjoyed but while working, yet even with the very generous PTO (paid time off) allowance my employer gave employees we found ourselves wanting more time to see the things of interest to us. Now the only limitation is our travel BUDGET which, alas, never seems to have enough on hand to fund all the wonderful trips my wife dreams up. Plus, post-COVID a lot of us retirees are playing catch up on our travel aspirations and hey, as if you didn’t know, it’s still a big, beautiful world out there. 

We are fortunate to live in Colorado so we don’t even need to travel very far to scratch our travel itch. This summer we’ve been lucky enough to share our State with some out-of-State friends and family and even after living in the State for more than 50 years I’m still amazed at what I haven’t yet seen or experienced in this wonderful place we call home. 

Of course Colorado is bounded on all sides by other beautiful States and we started our summer revisiting one of our favorite places - Grand Teton country in northwest Wyoming. There too I find myself seeking out places and things still unexplored and I tried to capture some of those in the following video:

The area around Jackson Hole didn’t disappoint though candidly it seems slightly more empty and lonely now that it was devoid of its most famous citizen - Bear 399. Sadly she was struck and killed by a vehicle late last year and perhaps in mourning her loss we didn’t see a single bear during our three week visit.

Last Fall we had been lucky enough to take a Fall foliage cruise from Boston to Quebec City and while in Quebec my wife had the chance to reconnect with one of her cousins that she hadn’t seen since she was a youngster. Val had been nice enough to spend a day and a half being our personal tour guide  as she showed us the nooks and crannies of that special city. To reciprocate we invited Val and her partner Nat to visit us in Colorado. Due to the political upheaval and anger of Canadians suddenly being the target of our President’s ire they were reluctant to head south of the border but we managed to assuage their concerns by assuring them that Coloradans are a friendly bunch and that they would be warmly welcomed and that in fact turned out to be the case. Val and Nat spent 3 weeks traversing almost every corner of our State and we got to share in some of their exploration. One thing neither my wife or I had done in all our years here was to take the Royal Gorge Train and we had a wonderful day and weather riding the rails and gazing a thousand feet upward at the Royal Gorge Bridge which we have visited several times. If you’re into trains and heck, even if you’re not, you’ll enjoy this unique trip along the Arkansas river. Here’s a quick video of that day trip from Denver:

And just to get caught up, just last weekend we headed up to one of my favorite small towns, Leadville, to see another event I had never been to. Part of Leadville’s annual Boom Days Celebration is a burro race and I’ve got to admit I fell in love with these adorable asses. And, oh, they can run, at least when they’re so inclined but their sometimes balky behavior just makes them all the more endearing.So yes, I got out my camera and here’s some of what I saw:

Perhaps you can now understand while I’m perpetually running out of time. As I always tell my wife, the grass can get mowed manana. In the meantime I’ve got burros to watch get their ass up the pass. What could be better?

Myths of Maui Luau Dancer

During a recent trip to Maui I attended a Hawaiian Luau. This young lady, at least for me, stole the show...