Life is a journey, not always happy or sad but always interesting. Join me as we travel the winding road via this blog, on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/mabryatpinnacol), and on Instagram (@davidmabry).
The calendar says its only late August, but the kids are all back in their sometimes air conditioned schools, the Labor Day Holiday weekend is upon us, and the stores are already sporting their Halloween merchandise so I guess Summer must be coming to a close. Only sixty or so days until the big BOO Spectacular when my neck of the prairie can see its first snow yet the temps across the country are still setting record highs and yesterday when I was out mowing the lawn (who's seasonal awareness isn't great) it felt downright hot. Only mad dogs, Englishmen, and idiots like me are out in 96 degree heat but my grass keeps growing so I keep mowing.
We were just up in the central Colorado mountains near Leadville and nighttime temps are creeping down into the 30's though I haven't seen any film of ice yet on the dogs outside water bowl. Three weeks ago we spent 10 days in South Fork, Colorado which is where Texans and Oklahomans flock to beat their sizzling summer heat. Not sure how that worked out this year as sizzling is still the adjective of choice for the temps we experienced while there. South Fork is closer to Santa Fe, New Mexico than Denver so for front rangers like my wife and I its quite the jaunt to get to explore a part of our home State that we don't often visit. What a real treat it was to see some new country and hear some new accents, y'all. And despite Colorado's ongoing love/hate relationship with Texas its citizenry overall appears to be rather nice and well, just friendly. Which makes sense I guess since the Texas State motto is Friendship. And for you Trivia lovers out there here's something new to add to your trivia collection: Texas adopted Friendship as the State Motto in 1930 and according to Ms. Google was most likely chosen because the name of Texas or Tejas was the Spanish pronunciation of the local Indian tribe's word 'teyshas' meaning friends or allies. And lest I leave out our good friends from the Sooner State, Oklahoma's Motto is "Labor Omnia Vincit": 'Steady work overcame all things'. I guess if I had my druthers, in this season of political sensitivity, I'd lean toward Friendship but to each State their own.
Some of the original rail bikes...
While in South Fork, when we weren't brushing up on trivia, we did try some new things that we had not done before. One of these was Railbiking which puts you in modern, lightweight aluminum rail vehicles that you can then easily pedal down the tracks of abandoned rail lines. The company we railbiked with, Revolution Rail Co., operates railbiking opportunities in several States. Railbiking was not only truly easy to do but it was a heckuva lot of fun. While new to my better half and I, railbiking has been around since almost as long as there have been,,, well you know, railroads. Those original railbikes looked much like... well you know, a regular bicycle, but with special attachments to fit on rails, They look a little sketchy if you ask me, nothing like the comfortable, and did I mention easy?, conveyance we rode in South Fork. The railbike tour was at our own pace and each person can pedal at whatever speed they desire. Heck, you can even stop pedaling entirely and let your fellow pedalers do all the work. Not that that's what I did. Not at all. You can see what our railbiking adventure looked like here:South Fork offers lots of outdoor recreation to sample. We went paddleboarding on Big Meadows reservoir, did some regular mountain biking, and spent a relaxing day up the road in Creede, Colorado. In Creede we drove the famous (infamous?) Bachelor Loop, a historic 17 mile drive through the mining district above the town. Beware: the East part of the drive features a steep (very, very steep) four-wheel drive road not really suitable for regular cars. I of course didn't know that at the time I was coming
Creede's Bachelor Loop
down this (very, very) steep road having done the loop in a clockwise direction and I was glad to be in a 4WD pickup. Lets just say, if its pouring rain and the dirt roads start getting a little slick, you won't be going up or down this particular section, at least not by choice. Its a beautiful drive though and we eventually made it safely back into town so perhaps it was worth the white knuckles.
Creede's main street features eclectic shops and restaurants and is only about a half-hour drive from South Fork. From Creede you can continue west over Slumgullion Pass (11,530 ft.) to Lake City and beyond but that's worth a whole trip in itself.
Given the hot temps while we were there, we spent as much time on the water as possible. Our railbiking outing offered a bike and raft combo package so we also were able to raft the placid (given that it was late July) waters of the Rio Grande river. In Spring and early Summer I'm sure the water flows a lot faster and offers some whitewater thrills but our trip was one of the last for the season due to falling water levels. Still, a nice float down a beautiful river beats a good day at work so who were we to argue? Here's a sampling of our Rio Grande experience...
South Fork, Colorado is a gateway town to other areas to explore. Drive just outside of town to the south and you'll climb Wolf Creek Pass which I've biked over several times thanks to now-gone events like Ride the Rockies. Once over the Pass you'll arrive in Pagosa Springs where you'll find, among other things, one of the southwest's great Frozen Yogurt shops, PS Froyos. On yet another 100 degree day it really hit the spot.
Having spent time in Pagosa Springs before we were looking for the road less traveled and found it further south out of town when we came upon Chimney Rocks National Monument. CRNP features the ancient homes and buildings of the Ancestral Puebloans who were associated with the folks living 100 miles south in Chaco Canyon. 1,000 years ago people built homes and Kivas, grew crops and raised families in this area. The half-mile walk to the top brings you not only to where you'll see the ruins but also spectacular views all around. On the afternoon we were there we had the ruins, and the well-informed interpretative guide, all to ourselves. The road less traveled doesn't get much less crowded than that. See some of Chimney Rock and our other excursions around South Fork here:
I know this blog has morphed into something longer than intended and for that I apologize. I hope your Summer has been as chock full of things seen and done as ours has. If not, there's still time. According to the calendar Fall doesn't begin until September 23rd so there's time to get out there and enjoy that still sizzling heat. Hot dogs anyone?
How's your summer going? In my neck of the woods (actually a piece of the prairie) a three letter word about covers it - H O T. We're expecting record breaking temps in the low 100's for the next couple of days which I know is nothing compared to what some folks are dealing with. They say "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" and they can certainly keep their 115+ temps to themselves. And that's nothing compared to Death Valley just a couple of miles to the west where they've been seeing temps in the 120's. There was some speculation as to whether Death Valley's Furnace Creek would break 130 degrees but so far that doesn't seem to have happened and as I write this its only a balmy 116 degrees according to the National Weather Service device at the Furnace Creek Visitors Center. News reports say that visitors (many from Europe apparently) are flocking to the area specifically to experience what a Heat Dome (who comes up with this jargon?) can deliver.
If you Google the hottest temp ever recorded on planet Earth you'll find that on July 10, 1913 it reached 134.1 degrees (56.7Celcius for our European friends) at the Furnace Creek Ranch which presumably had an accurate thermometer for measuring such things since the Death Valley Visitors Center wasn't opened until 1960. Interestingly the site I referenced for the past several day's temps in Furnace Creek makes a distinction between 'Hot' and 'Extremely Hot' somewhere between 110 and 114 degrees with 110 only being 'Hot'. I'll leave such nuances to those folks standing outside the Visitors Center today thinking to themselves "Hmmm, I'm feeling extremely hot at the moment..." before hopefully ducking back inside the air-conditioned comfort of the aforementioned Visitors Center.
Me, I'm just stupid. This morning I was up at the crack-o-dawn to go for a ride before it got too hot (is too hot just 'hot' or is it 'extremely hot'?). As they say, stupid is as stupid does and by the time I got home the mercury was already North of a hundred and not done rising as it was still well before noon. Some cultures have this thing called a siesta and I'm thinking of adopting that custom. Either that or I'm moving to Dawson City in the Yukon where its a chilly 68 degrees. BRRRRR.
I've been to Alaska twice now and one of my favorite pictures about Fairbanks is the one showing University of Alaska students posing in swimsuits in front of the campus temperature sign when its 49 degrees..................below zero. Does that qualify as 'Cold' or 'Extremely Cold'? Is that a 'Cold Dome'? If I was one of these six intrepid souls I'd want to head South and get a pic next to the Furnace Creek Visitors Center temp sign (if they even have such a thing) reading 130 degrees plus. A whopping (that's another technical term I borrowed from the National Weather Service) 179 degree difference. Stick that on Tik Tok and smoke it.
Back in late April/early May my better half ( who has enough sense to get out of the sun when its still only 'Warm') and I ventured to Arizona and California with the express intention of escaping the Winter cold (though we never saw 49 below... darn). We were in the Phoenix area where it was already in the high 90's before foolishly continuing on to Palm Springs, California where, yup, it was already triple-digit temps. We then spent some time on the coast where they were having a cool and wet Spring with temps in the 50's. You can join us on some of that excursion in the video below.
Wearing parkas and stocking caps is not what we went to California for but there you have it. Still the crowds were friendly, the traffic was at a standstill (30 mile traffic jam stop and go (mainly stop) leaving Palm Springs as the Coachella Music and Arts Festival disgorged its attendees back to La La Land, and the ocean was still mesmerizing as it's waves cascaded on the San Diego beaches which were closed to water contact while we were there thanks to a massive (another technical term) sewage leak.
What say we head back to the desert, this time to Lake Havasu where the lovely ladies in their bikinis could still enjoy actually getting wet in the cold but clean waters of the Colorado River. We were there during an event called Desert Storm which is a celebration of all things bikini with performance boat racing and expo thrown in. We're talking speeds approaching 200 mph (I'm talking about the boats not the bikinis) so it was really something to see. Being humble folks of a more human-powered ilk we felt somewhat out of place and our Colorado license plates apparently (?) pegged us as Biden lovers (?) in what turned out to be very much a Trump stronghold with no tolerance for those not having yet drunk the Kool Aid. So it was fare thee well to the good folks of Havasu as we watched them fade from sight in the rear view mirror (figuratively and literally) as we made our way North through Vegas (ahead of the soon-to-make-an-appearance blistering temperatures) and into the cooler and more welcoming climes of St. George, Utah.
St. George, if you've never been, is a beautiful, though no longer small (having been discovered by Californians as a relatively affordable place to retire) community adjacent to Zion National Park. Already crowded though it was still early season, we avoided the National Park where the tourists thronged and spent our time exploring some of Utah's State Parks which are equally beautiful but generally less busy. The Road That Beckons is often best when it's the Road Less Traveled and we found that to be the case in Utah.
From St. George we continued North on I-15 and then East on I-70 where we spent several unplanned days in the little town of Richfield, Utah. What was supposed to be a one-night stopover turned into a three day visit as we fell in love with this wonderful town. Don't tell anyone, but if I was looking for a truly idyllic community to retire to, Richfield might top the list. It checks the list in terms of true affordability, a walkable downtown along with just a couple of big-box stores (Home Depot and Walmart), good restaurants, a College, and lots of recreational amenities nearby. Oh, and the high temps in the summer top out on average in the 80's and low 90's. Maybe I don't have to move to the Yukon after all.
Too soon it was time to head for home and what greeted us as we crossed back into Colorado? May.... snow showers. Welcome home.
My local Regal Theatre has come up with a clever gimmick to get patrons into theatre seats on perhaps their slowest night of the week, Monday. Once or twice a month they offer a Mystery Movie Night where for just $5 a person you can see a new release with the only catch being that you don't know what you'll be watching until the credits start to roll. A friend clued us into this and we've now seen two excellent flicks: Ordinary Angels starring Hilary Swank and One Life with Anthony Hopkins. If you're looking for something a tad more substantial than Kung Fu Panda 4 then I'd highly recommend them,
Ordinary Angels is a true story based on the book by Sharon Stevens Evans about ordinary people rising up to save the life of a sick child. One Life is also about helping children but in a completely different context and the main character, Nicholas Winton, was actually featured on 60 Minutes several years ago so I was vaguely familiar with the story when the movie started but the story is so compelling that the ending still elicited strong emotions. Here too the movie is based on a book written by Mr. Winton's wife Barbara. I only mention the books as the old adage says that 'the book is better than the movie' and if that holds true I can't wait to read both.
I did experience something completely new at last night's mystery showing of One Life that I hope is a one-off and not indicative of what is to become a new norm. There were probably thirty or so folks in Theatre #3 along with my wife, our friend and myself. As the previews started to show someone in the theatre thought it would be appropriate to light a joint and share the pungent aroma with the rest of us. I have seen patrons vape during theatre shows (not to mention a certain Colorado congresswoman caught in the act on camera) but had not had the pleasure of partaking secondhand in the ganja goodness in such a setting. I guess going forward they'll have to add the prohibition of smoking pot in movie theatres to the already present restrictions on cell phone usage. Either that or the lobby concession stand can start selling dispensary offerings along with their peanuts and popcorn. Regardless, the in-theatre experience for me is still a treat and to see two such outstanding movies for only $5 is a deal too good to pass up!
I can't wait until the next Mystery Movie and best of all during the month of March Regal Theatres is offering one every week. Hopefully see you there and if you have to light up please do so outside or in the lobby. I know you'll be hungry...
