The trip to Colorado
Aug. 5th, 2003 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoRather than list off every detail of every day, I've chosen instead to recount only the more interesting or memorable events of the trip. That isn't to say that the mountain roads on the way to Estes Park weren't nice, or that it wasn't cool to chat with my old friend Tom, or anything like that. The hummingbird that flew into the store in Estes Park, the bakery run by relatives of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kaiwoklaw, and the cool spiny pod plants of doom in Red Rocks Park were all nifty. It's just that there's only so much you can read about someone else's vacation without starting to yawn and wonder why you're supposed to care.
The Flight to Colorado
Our flight departed at 8:00 AM. Between travel time to Manchester Airport and leaving time for airport security, this meant leaving at the house before 6:00 AM. As I'm not a morning person, getting up at 4:30 was a bit tricky. Anyway, we made great time to the airport, and security took only a matter of minutes to check my shoes for explosives and determine that the change in my pockets couldn't be used as an effective weapon, so we had almost an hour to kill before the plane left. It was nice to have a pause the frenzied rushing around for a while.
I don't like flying. I'm nervous about the idea of climbing into a box that will carry me 37,000 feet in the air at tremendous speed, partially because I'm a bit afraid of heights. When I went to Colorado 3 years ago, I remember not particularly enjoying flying, but that it wasn't as bad as I'd feared it would be. I was able to actually enjoy looking down at the lightning flashes in the thunderstorm clouds as we passed over them on the way home. I was hoping that this flight wouldn't be as bad as I feared, either.
Wrong - I must have gotten worse. I worried a lot more pretty much the whole time. These feelings were not improved by the fact that it was raining and overcast when we took off, and that our plane was tiny. The noise of the landing gear retracting was an alarmingly loud bang, and I could really feel the all of the turbulence that we encountered. Ascending and descending altitude sucked, too. Finally, we hit pretty hard and bounced a lot when we landed.
Our connecting flight was much better. The plane was bigger, quieter, and was much less jarring when it landed. Of course, we almost didn't make it to our connecting flight. We had over an hour between flights, so we thought nothing of getting some food in between. Either it took longer in line for food than we thought, or we took too long to eat, but we were still wandering unhurried across the airport towards our gate when we heard our plane's final boarding call. The airport had some of those escalator-like horizontal walkway things, and we sort of jogged across those for maximum speed, until we came to one with a clog of people in front of it. I just ran along beside it, hoping that it would be faster than waiting to get on. We weren't actually the last people to get on the plane, but I still felt a bit embarrassed about the whole thing.
Once we settled in a bit, we went out to get groceries, and then went out to eat. Soon after, it was time to sleep, since we were tired from travelling and rushing around all day.
Day 3 - Predator Day
I have sort of mixed feelings about zoos. On the one hand, it seems cruel to snatch an animal from its natural habitat and force it into a tiny enclosure in a zoo. On the other hand, I think that a lot of the animals in American zoos these days were born in captivity, and it's not as if they would survive if they were released into captivity. The Denver Zoo had much larger and better crafted habitats for the animals than I remember seeing in my youth at zoos, so that also made me feel a little better. I know that they are still far smaller than the range an animal would have in the wild, but it's better than being in box barely large enough for the animal to turn around.
Anyway, I really wanted to see the Komodo Dragons at the Denver Zoo. I wanted to see them when I was out that way 3 years ago, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. I've regretted that this whole time, so we went the zoo the first chance we got on this trip. The dragons were a bit smaller than I expected, but still quite nifty. There were even some young ones, who were much more active than their parents. Many of the other animals were nifty as well, including the wolves and tigers.
The female tiger, Katarina if I recall correctly, had month-old kittens, so she did a lot of pacing back and forth between a visible enclosure and the private area containing her young. This was neat for two reasons. First, it meant that I got to see her walking around. Lots of times animals just sort of sit there and stare balefully at you, and I can't blame them. I certainly don't expect them to get up and dance for me when I appear, though it seemed that others at the zoo did not share this outlook. Anyway, I was happy that I got to see her walking around. The second reason this was nifty was that the zoo staff had an excuse to put up extra barricades to keep people from banging on the glass and pissing off the tiger. We saw some disgusting displays of disrespect by visitors for the animals when we were at the zoo, and I was happy to see measures being taken to shield the tiger from some of them.
I saw 4 of the wolves in the zoo's pack. I'm not sure how many there are total. One of them came just about as close to us as was possible, and even stood still for a moment after doing so. I don't know if that picture will come out or not, but I have high hopes. Luckily, the only people watching the wolves with us at the time were other quiet, respectful adults. Screaming kids probably would have chased the wolf away prematurely.
We saw several people with sketchpads at the zoo, and it sort of made me wish that I brought mine with me. But then I realized that it would have meant missing a lot of the other animals if I had sat in one place long enough to sketch one. I didn't have much luck with my sketching attempts while I was in Colorado anyway, so it's probably no big loss.
Day 6 - The Most Dangerous Mountain in the World
We wanted a couple of days to ourselves, so we rented a car and zipped off to Colorado Springs. I wanted to make sure that I went to something in the area that I hadn't seen last time, so we drove through North Cheyenne Canon National Park. It was very pretty, including lots of nice rocks, trees, and those cool exposed root systems that you seen on steep inclines that suffer a lot of erosion. Indeed, there was one part of the hillside that had a wide channel a couple feet deep gouged out of it by rain, and a couple of huge trees that had fallen over after the soil flowed out from under them. The trees that were still hanging on were a powerful example of the tenacity of life, while the rest of the scene was testimony to the unrelenting power of nature. At least, that's how I saw it. I climbed up another one of these eroded hillsides to try to get a picture of a particular rock formation from a better angle. The climb seemed manageable enough on the way up. I kept going just a bit further to try to get a better view, until I was ridiculously far from the road, and very high up. I worried a bit about what was going to happen to me if I ran into a mountain lion, rattlesnake, or other indigenous wildlife we'd been warned about. My position was visible from the road, but only if someone happened to look that far off the usual path. Eventually I decided that I should really get back to the road. The way down, of course, was a bit trickier than the way up. The only surface I could put my hands on to steady myself were the edges of the gully, which were made up of loose, very sharp gravel. It's probably a miracle that I didn't twist an ankle, cut up my hands, or get myself killed by cranky wildlife.
Later on in the park, we came across the sign marking the start of the trail that would take us up Mount Cutler, a trail which had been suggested to us by someone in the visitor's center as a nice, scenic walk. With the top at a mere 8000 ft elevation, this would put us only 400 ft higher than we were already, and the trail was only 1.1 miles to the top. That doesn't sound perilous at all, right? Well, when you're as out of shape as I am, you're at much higher elevation than normal, and you're walking up hill the whole way, it feels like a heck of a lot more than 1.1 miles. Also, I refer to this part of the trip as our hike up The Most Dangerous Mountain in the World. It isn't, of course. Other mountains have sub-zero temperatures, avalanches of ice, angry mountain goats, or wise old masters of martial arts who don't want to be disturbed. However, the trail up Mount Cutler does have a trail that for nearly its entire length is about 2 to 3 feet wide, with an almost certainly lethal drop on one side. Some parts of the trail have been reinforced with planks of wood and such to keep them from eroding away when it rains. However, there are places in the trail where the soil is starting to flow under these planks, leaving one uncertain how stable the trail really is. Then there was the memorable part of the trail where the path narrows to only 2 feet and consists entirely of a piece of solid rock angled slightly towards a drop of a couple hundred feet. Now, I'm slightly afraid of heights, so I was appalled by this sort of thing. Never before have I spent so much time a couple of footsteps from certain death.
The view from the top (an much of the rest of the trail) was very impressive, and the trail featured several trees whose trunks did not actually touch the ground, but which instead appeared to be standing on top of their roots. One memorable tree in particular was poised on top of several long, twisty roots, and had a small knot near its base that looked sort of like an eye. We proclaimed this to be the Cthulhu Tree, and then resumed trying to get off the crazy mountain before we fell to our deaths or keeled over from exhaustion. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad we went, and it was fun. I just didn't feel like doing anything like it again any time soon.
After escaping from the Trail of Doom, we drove to the end of the road in the park to see the cute little waterfall. Though very tired, I assumed that the stairs near the falls either led to other nifty waterfalls, or the source of the falls, or something else equally wonderful. So I climbed the stairs. Several times I considered giving up, since my knees seemed like they might give up whether I wanted to or not, but I was pushed forward by that stupid feeling that is "Well, I've gone this far, I may as well go to the end." By the time I hit the top of the trail is was starting to rain lightly, and I discovered that you don't actually get to go to the source of the water - the trail stops before that point. As a consolation prize, you get a nice view of the surrounding area, which of course wouldn't photograph well because it was overcast and raining. Shaking my fist at the builders of this tortuous, traitorous stairway, I began the painful climb back down. It was well and truly raining by the time I reached the bottom, and I was considering sawing off my legs so they would stop causing me pain. Not the best end to an otherwise very nice day.
Day 7 - Nostalgia and Cacti
I saw The Garden of the Gods 3 years ago, but it's both nifty and free, so we went again this time. Besides, it rained on us last time towards the end, and I hoped to get some pictures of things in that part of the park with better light. I was partially thwarted by some maniac climbing one of the formations, which I suppose is legal in that part of the park, but still irritating. I wanted a picture of the rock formation, not the rock formation with some guy I don't know and his climbing gear on it. Oh, well.
After the garden, it was on to Manitou Springs to hunt for food. After acquiring food we were supposed to zip over to the Van Briggle Pottery to take the factory tour. You see, many of my childhood vacations included factory tours, and I thought it would be fun and nostalgic to go on one. Alas, we lost track of time, and by the time we made it to the pottery we were too late for the tour. Now, I should mention that the tour is listed as self-guided, and the last one departs at 4:15, and we got there at 4:19. I was a bit disappointed in them that they wouldn't let us hurry through the early parts to catch up or something. As it is, we worked our way backwards through the open hallway at the end, so I still got to see some of the place, but we didn't get to see the whole tour.
After that we decided to head back to the shopping area in Manitou Springs, since we had rushed out of there to get to the pottery. One place I really wanted to go back to was Manitou Cactus. We parked just across the street from it when we first arrived, and I was excited to see an establishment devoted entirely to cacti. We browsed there when we first arrived, but I wanted to go back and see if I could find a cactus small enough to take home with me. I finally decided on a little one of a variety I've never seen before (q'iaq'ia). We also visited an arcade full of very, very old arcade games. Like Asteroids. I played Dig-Dug for what's probably the first time in over 15 years. The bizarre thing is that among all of the extremely old games there were also a couple of machines that were only about 10 years old, and a Dance Dance Revolution machine.
Day 9 - Apocalypse Now?
The plane ride home. Our flight departed at 6:40, and the Denver airport was going to be a longer drive, so I got up at 2:45 AM. I was very, very tired during this flight. I was also nervous, because I'm always nervous about flying. However, something on this flight added whole new dimensions of stress to the experience. It was the person sitting next to me on the plane. It's not that he looked particularly distressing or anything. He didn't say anything strange to me, or anything like that. No, the thing that made me nervous was that while we were on the plane he sat quietly in his seat HIGHLIGHTING PASSAGES IN THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS. I don't know if he was a religious scholar or an apocalypse nut, but I was extraordinarily relieved to land safely and then leave him behind when we got on our connecting flight. In exchange I got a nice man from Montana who was visiting his son in New Hampshire. Much, much better.
kaiwoklaw, and the cool spiny pod plants of doom in Red Rocks Park were all nifty. It's just that there's only so much you can read about someone else's vacation without starting to yawn and wonder why you're supposed to care. The Flight to Colorado
Our flight departed at 8:00 AM. Between travel time to Manchester Airport and leaving time for airport security, this meant leaving at the house before 6:00 AM. As I'm not a morning person, getting up at 4:30 was a bit tricky. Anyway, we made great time to the airport, and security took only a matter of minutes to check my shoes for explosives and determine that the change in my pockets couldn't be used as an effective weapon, so we had almost an hour to kill before the plane left. It was nice to have a pause the frenzied rushing around for a while.
I don't like flying. I'm nervous about the idea of climbing into a box that will carry me 37,000 feet in the air at tremendous speed, partially because I'm a bit afraid of heights. When I went to Colorado 3 years ago, I remember not particularly enjoying flying, but that it wasn't as bad as I'd feared it would be. I was able to actually enjoy looking down at the lightning flashes in the thunderstorm clouds as we passed over them on the way home. I was hoping that this flight wouldn't be as bad as I feared, either.
Wrong - I must have gotten worse. I worried a lot more pretty much the whole time. These feelings were not improved by the fact that it was raining and overcast when we took off, and that our plane was tiny. The noise of the landing gear retracting was an alarmingly loud bang, and I could really feel the all of the turbulence that we encountered. Ascending and descending altitude sucked, too. Finally, we hit pretty hard and bounced a lot when we landed.
Our connecting flight was much better. The plane was bigger, quieter, and was much less jarring when it landed. Of course, we almost didn't make it to our connecting flight. We had over an hour between flights, so we thought nothing of getting some food in between. Either it took longer in line for food than we thought, or we took too long to eat, but we were still wandering unhurried across the airport towards our gate when we heard our plane's final boarding call. The airport had some of those escalator-like horizontal walkway things, and we sort of jogged across those for maximum speed, until we came to one with a clog of people in front of it. I just ran along beside it, hoping that it would be faster than waiting to get on. We weren't actually the last people to get on the plane, but I still felt a bit embarrassed about the whole thing.
Once we settled in a bit, we went out to get groceries, and then went out to eat. Soon after, it was time to sleep, since we were tired from travelling and rushing around all day.
Day 3 - Predator Day
I have sort of mixed feelings about zoos. On the one hand, it seems cruel to snatch an animal from its natural habitat and force it into a tiny enclosure in a zoo. On the other hand, I think that a lot of the animals in American zoos these days were born in captivity, and it's not as if they would survive if they were released into captivity. The Denver Zoo had much larger and better crafted habitats for the animals than I remember seeing in my youth at zoos, so that also made me feel a little better. I know that they are still far smaller than the range an animal would have in the wild, but it's better than being in box barely large enough for the animal to turn around.
Anyway, I really wanted to see the Komodo Dragons at the Denver Zoo. I wanted to see them when I was out that way 3 years ago, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. I've regretted that this whole time, so we went the zoo the first chance we got on this trip. The dragons were a bit smaller than I expected, but still quite nifty. There were even some young ones, who were much more active than their parents. Many of the other animals were nifty as well, including the wolves and tigers.
The female tiger, Katarina if I recall correctly, had month-old kittens, so she did a lot of pacing back and forth between a visible enclosure and the private area containing her young. This was neat for two reasons. First, it meant that I got to see her walking around. Lots of times animals just sort of sit there and stare balefully at you, and I can't blame them. I certainly don't expect them to get up and dance for me when I appear, though it seemed that others at the zoo did not share this outlook. Anyway, I was happy that I got to see her walking around. The second reason this was nifty was that the zoo staff had an excuse to put up extra barricades to keep people from banging on the glass and pissing off the tiger. We saw some disgusting displays of disrespect by visitors for the animals when we were at the zoo, and I was happy to see measures being taken to shield the tiger from some of them.
I saw 4 of the wolves in the zoo's pack. I'm not sure how many there are total. One of them came just about as close to us as was possible, and even stood still for a moment after doing so. I don't know if that picture will come out or not, but I have high hopes. Luckily, the only people watching the wolves with us at the time were other quiet, respectful adults. Screaming kids probably would have chased the wolf away prematurely.
We saw several people with sketchpads at the zoo, and it sort of made me wish that I brought mine with me. But then I realized that it would have meant missing a lot of the other animals if I had sat in one place long enough to sketch one. I didn't have much luck with my sketching attempts while I was in Colorado anyway, so it's probably no big loss.
Day 6 - The Most Dangerous Mountain in the World
We wanted a couple of days to ourselves, so we rented a car and zipped off to Colorado Springs. I wanted to make sure that I went to something in the area that I hadn't seen last time, so we drove through North Cheyenne Canon National Park. It was very pretty, including lots of nice rocks, trees, and those cool exposed root systems that you seen on steep inclines that suffer a lot of erosion. Indeed, there was one part of the hillside that had a wide channel a couple feet deep gouged out of it by rain, and a couple of huge trees that had fallen over after the soil flowed out from under them. The trees that were still hanging on were a powerful example of the tenacity of life, while the rest of the scene was testimony to the unrelenting power of nature. At least, that's how I saw it. I climbed up another one of these eroded hillsides to try to get a picture of a particular rock formation from a better angle. The climb seemed manageable enough on the way up. I kept going just a bit further to try to get a better view, until I was ridiculously far from the road, and very high up. I worried a bit about what was going to happen to me if I ran into a mountain lion, rattlesnake, or other indigenous wildlife we'd been warned about. My position was visible from the road, but only if someone happened to look that far off the usual path. Eventually I decided that I should really get back to the road. The way down, of course, was a bit trickier than the way up. The only surface I could put my hands on to steady myself were the edges of the gully, which were made up of loose, very sharp gravel. It's probably a miracle that I didn't twist an ankle, cut up my hands, or get myself killed by cranky wildlife.
Later on in the park, we came across the sign marking the start of the trail that would take us up Mount Cutler, a trail which had been suggested to us by someone in the visitor's center as a nice, scenic walk. With the top at a mere 8000 ft elevation, this would put us only 400 ft higher than we were already, and the trail was only 1.1 miles to the top. That doesn't sound perilous at all, right? Well, when you're as out of shape as I am, you're at much higher elevation than normal, and you're walking up hill the whole way, it feels like a heck of a lot more than 1.1 miles. Also, I refer to this part of the trip as our hike up The Most Dangerous Mountain in the World. It isn't, of course. Other mountains have sub-zero temperatures, avalanches of ice, angry mountain goats, or wise old masters of martial arts who don't want to be disturbed. However, the trail up Mount Cutler does have a trail that for nearly its entire length is about 2 to 3 feet wide, with an almost certainly lethal drop on one side. Some parts of the trail have been reinforced with planks of wood and such to keep them from eroding away when it rains. However, there are places in the trail where the soil is starting to flow under these planks, leaving one uncertain how stable the trail really is. Then there was the memorable part of the trail where the path narrows to only 2 feet and consists entirely of a piece of solid rock angled slightly towards a drop of a couple hundred feet. Now, I'm slightly afraid of heights, so I was appalled by this sort of thing. Never before have I spent so much time a couple of footsteps from certain death.
The view from the top (an much of the rest of the trail) was very impressive, and the trail featured several trees whose trunks did not actually touch the ground, but which instead appeared to be standing on top of their roots. One memorable tree in particular was poised on top of several long, twisty roots, and had a small knot near its base that looked sort of like an eye. We proclaimed this to be the Cthulhu Tree, and then resumed trying to get off the crazy mountain before we fell to our deaths or keeled over from exhaustion. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad we went, and it was fun. I just didn't feel like doing anything like it again any time soon.
After escaping from the Trail of Doom, we drove to the end of the road in the park to see the cute little waterfall. Though very tired, I assumed that the stairs near the falls either led to other nifty waterfalls, or the source of the falls, or something else equally wonderful. So I climbed the stairs. Several times I considered giving up, since my knees seemed like they might give up whether I wanted to or not, but I was pushed forward by that stupid feeling that is "Well, I've gone this far, I may as well go to the end." By the time I hit the top of the trail is was starting to rain lightly, and I discovered that you don't actually get to go to the source of the water - the trail stops before that point. As a consolation prize, you get a nice view of the surrounding area, which of course wouldn't photograph well because it was overcast and raining. Shaking my fist at the builders of this tortuous, traitorous stairway, I began the painful climb back down. It was well and truly raining by the time I reached the bottom, and I was considering sawing off my legs so they would stop causing me pain. Not the best end to an otherwise very nice day.
Day 7 - Nostalgia and Cacti
I saw The Garden of the Gods 3 years ago, but it's both nifty and free, so we went again this time. Besides, it rained on us last time towards the end, and I hoped to get some pictures of things in that part of the park with better light. I was partially thwarted by some maniac climbing one of the formations, which I suppose is legal in that part of the park, but still irritating. I wanted a picture of the rock formation, not the rock formation with some guy I don't know and his climbing gear on it. Oh, well.
After the garden, it was on to Manitou Springs to hunt for food. After acquiring food we were supposed to zip over to the Van Briggle Pottery to take the factory tour. You see, many of my childhood vacations included factory tours, and I thought it would be fun and nostalgic to go on one. Alas, we lost track of time, and by the time we made it to the pottery we were too late for the tour. Now, I should mention that the tour is listed as self-guided, and the last one departs at 4:15, and we got there at 4:19. I was a bit disappointed in them that they wouldn't let us hurry through the early parts to catch up or something. As it is, we worked our way backwards through the open hallway at the end, so I still got to see some of the place, but we didn't get to see the whole tour.
After that we decided to head back to the shopping area in Manitou Springs, since we had rushed out of there to get to the pottery. One place I really wanted to go back to was Manitou Cactus. We parked just across the street from it when we first arrived, and I was excited to see an establishment devoted entirely to cacti. We browsed there when we first arrived, but I wanted to go back and see if I could find a cactus small enough to take home with me. I finally decided on a little one of a variety I've never seen before (q'iaq'ia). We also visited an arcade full of very, very old arcade games. Like Asteroids. I played Dig-Dug for what's probably the first time in over 15 years. The bizarre thing is that among all of the extremely old games there were also a couple of machines that were only about 10 years old, and a Dance Dance Revolution machine.
Day 9 - Apocalypse Now?
The plane ride home. Our flight departed at 6:40, and the Denver airport was going to be a longer drive, so I got up at 2:45 AM. I was very, very tired during this flight. I was also nervous, because I'm always nervous about flying. However, something on this flight added whole new dimensions of stress to the experience. It was the person sitting next to me on the plane. It's not that he looked particularly distressing or anything. He didn't say anything strange to me, or anything like that. No, the thing that made me nervous was that while we were on the plane he sat quietly in his seat HIGHLIGHTING PASSAGES IN THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS. I don't know if he was a religious scholar or an apocalypse nut, but I was extraordinarily relieved to land safely and then leave him behind when we got on our connecting flight. In exchange I got a nice man from Montana who was visiting his son in New Hampshire. Much, much better.
