Month: August 2019

3 Lakes

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The guy I’m dating skis at least once a month.  He asked me to go skiing with him in August.  It was also his birthday.  I have no desire to ski in August, but I wanted to celebrate his birthday with him.  So, the plan was for him and another friend to ski Skyscraper Glacier and I would hike up and down with them.

The hike up was a little rough for me, but only for a little while.  The top of Skyscraper Glacier is at about 12,000 feet so I was huffing and puffing a bit.  I can’t quite imagine doing it with skis attached to my pack.  There were quite a few cool looking rocks along the way.  As often happens, I did end up with a pocket full of rocks by the end of the morning.  It was beautiful being up at what appears to be the top of the world, especially since it was a Wednesday and working was the other option.

After they left me to ski, I headed around the glacier to pick a path down the steep slope and them meet them at the bottom.  I met a really nice marmot on my path.  He stood up on his hind legs and watched me.  We had a little conversation, but it was a pretty one-way conversation.  I spoke and he listened.  I was off any trails that existed at this point and chose a path down the steep slope.  It was steep enough that I had to make switchbacks every few feet.  I thought I might fall many times, but I didn’t.  But the views were great.  I could see three different lakes at the same time – Lakes Betty, Bob and King.  There was also this great boulder field below me.  I got to the boulder field and wow the boulders were huge.  It took quite a long time to get through the boulders as I was on both hands and knees crawling over them for a lot of it.

I finally got through the boulders and was able to take some pictures of them skiing.  The hike out was so beautiful.  There were wildflowers, the lakes and even a small waterfall.  How beautiful the continental divide is.

20190821_09415020190821_09422520190821_09495820190821_10185920190821_10495120190821_10500220190821_10535120190821_105747

20190821_11100420190821_11121620190821_11145120190821_11300020190821_12072220190821_122158

C Lazy U

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

A while back I had been talking to a friend that works at a ranch called C Lazy U.  It is a guest ranch.  I’m not quite sure what people do at a guest ranch.  I assume they ride horses and eat fancy dinners, but I’m not quite sure.  My friend was telling me I should come out to the ranch sometime and watch the horses run out to pasture.  During the day, the ranch’s horses are in a corral or being ridden.  In the late afternoon they take them out to a pasture for the evening.  They let the horsed run through the ranch to get to the pasture.  I want to see a bunch of horses running.

One day we get a search and rescue call to C Lazy U.  The rescue went so quickly and smoothly that they had guy in the ambulance before I was needed.  We just happened to be finished right before the running of the horses.  We hung out at the corral for a little bit to kill some time.  There were 50 or 60 horses hanging out not doing much.  We met Petey, the donkey that hangs out with the horses.

Then they opened the corral gates and the horses followed one cowboy on a horse and ran down the street through the ranch.  They went from milling around kind of bored horses to happy trotting horses.  You could almost hear them saying “yay, this is my favorite part of the day – we get to go hang out in the pasture now”.  Where I thought I saw 50 or 60 horses in the corral, it seemed to be hundreds now.  They kept running by and then more and then more.  The sound was so loud I’m not sure we could have talked to each other.  Somewhere in the middle, Petey trotted by too.  He really thinks he’s just one of the horses.  I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this many horses in one place.  What a fun end to the day.  Still not sure what people do at guest ranches.

20190814_16521420190814_16561520190814_16562120190814_170043

Belly Flop

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, Uncategorized1 Comment

I was in Golden and had lunch with a friend.  We had some time after lunch and walked down toward the river.  As we were approaching the river we heard a lot of cheering and yelling coming from the river.  It seemed like odd timing since it was the middle of the week.  I knew there were ball fields nearby, but it didn’t make sense that there would be a ball game in the middle of the day in the middle of the week.  As we got to the river, we saw a crowd of men standing in the river in one of the eddies.  They were hooting and hollering as they took turns doing belly flops into the river above the small rapid and then swimming to the group of men.  There seemed to be no end to the line of men waiting to belly flop.  There seemed to be no end to the fun they were having.  I cannot say what prompted the belly flop competition or where the men came from.  After we were done with our walk, they were gone as if it never happened.

20190813_111009_Burst01

 

Front Yard

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

My front yard is ugly.  The people who owned the house before me did nothing with it.  It has an aspen tree and the rest of the yard is covered in old sun bleached wood chips.  I haven’t had the time or money to do anything about it.  This spring when the snow finally melted (June) I had some packets of flower seeds that I found in a box when I moved.  I threw them around the yard haphazardly.  Nothing grew.  Now my yard has an aspen tree, ugly wood chips, 5,000 aspen babies and a ton of weeds.  But, among the weeds are a couple red flowers.  I can see them from my desk so I have left them.  It’s about 4 flowers, but since I thought nothing would come up, I am quite delighted with them!

Flattops

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I went backpacking in the Flattops Wilderness.  We took a day off work so we could get an early start and not have to `deal with the crowds of people.  We planned to take a trail that was recommended to me when I called the ranger station to get ideas.  I prepared meals ahead of time and packed up all my camping gear.

The trip started off with a cow traffic jam as we were driving to the Flattops.  I think this road may see more cow traffic than road traffic.  We got to the wilderness area and found a car camping spot for the night.  We would head out on the trail the next morning.

Little did I know we would not have to worry about crowds of people.  Either the area is far enough away from Denver or just not a popular spot.  Or the mosquitos killed all the other people.  I haven’t seen that many mosquitos in one place since I left Florida.  We had to re-apply mosquito repellant every few hours and even then, they never went away.

There were signs at the trail head that sheep farmers were grazing their sheep and we might encounter sheep.  It warned not to approach the sheep especially since the sheep dog might not like that as it is protecting the sheep.  About an hour or so onto the trail we heard a weird sound.  We weren’t sure what it was.  We came across a big field of rocks and the sound got louder.  Pretty soon we realized the sound was the sheep.  The rocks moved as they were not rocks at all, but sheep.  As we came closer, they became very interested in us.  Some of the sheep stopped what they were doing to come toward us and check us out.  So much for not approaching the sheep.  The warnings said nothing about the fact that the sheep would most likely approach us.  It was a wonderful little break from the hiking to watch the sheep watching us.  We never saw a dog, though.

We came upon a lake with some good camping spots nearby so we decided to set up camp there for two nights and we would day hike the next day from there.  We started a fire as soon as we had set up camp in hopes that the smoke would chase away the mosquitos.  It really didn’t.  We explored a nearby basin and decided to climb to the top of the basin the next day.

The wild flowers were blooming like crazy.  The only other time I had been to the Flattops, I had experienced wildflowers, the volume and brightness I had never seen before.  I counted the number of different flowers I saw on the way up.  I lost count somewhere around 50 different types of flowers.  Mother Nature is the best artist I know.

The day hike to the top of the basin the next day was great.  The hike out on the last day wasn’t too bad either.  We heard the sheep again, but didn’t really see them.  Despite the mosquitos, it was a beautiful weekend and we only saw 4 other people the whole weekend.  I’d highly recommend some hiking in the Flattops Wilderness.