CRUISING AROUND DENVER

The days slip by far too quickly and I can't believe that our visit to Denver is almost over. It's been such a happy time and it's going to be hard to leave the family here - we leave tomorrow for London.

We've been to the Denver Museum to birdwatch in the dioramas - a new experience for us, walked around Barr Lake to see the Bald Eagle and chicks, had dinner parties meeting some of David & Maeve's friends and eaten the most delicious food. Maeve is a marvellous cook and so we've been spoilt rotten. We've seen where she hangs out - plays golf and walks with her friends and seen the way out Denver Art Gallery designed by Libeskind.

Maeve in her front courtyard

David, Maeve, Conal, Louise & Gilly

qt Red Robin - the best hamburger joint.

HOME TO DENVER - COMPLETING THE CIRCLE

The typography changed rapidly and now we were introduced to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rising above a vast arid dusty plain - such a contrast to the lush valleys. We saw the sand dunes at the foot of the mountains formed by the prevailing west winds on the way to Crestone a small town renown for its  for its tolerance where Buddhists live side by side with a Carmelite monastery and the houses are built in between the scrubby bushy trees. We were fascinated by the people having lunch in the restaurant. And then then long drive back to Denver, past the Rio Grande River.

Vast arid St Louis plain with the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the background

On this trip we saw: 43 of the 54 peaks over 14,000 feet, 4 major rivers and drove 1,500 miles (2,000 kms) completing the circular route. We drove up high passes so high that we felt as if we were flying, dipping down into crevices carved by fast flowing rivers flanked by awesome rock faces. We've seen sights that have delighted us, eaten steaks that we didn't think possible to finish, laughed and chatted and caught up on missing years. David and Maeve have shown us the places that they love and David's knowledge and the way he has organised the trip and their generosity has made this a week we'll always remember.

SAN JUAN SKYWAY

Switzerland in the USA - We left Cortez to drive through the most spectacular Alpine scenery close to the New Mexican border. Bright green valleys with lime green aspen and the peaks ever-present. Up the Lizard pass lined with snowdrifts and fast flowing river snaking below us. David knows the names of all the mountain peaks and the passes some as high as 11,000 feet above sea level.

 

Fields and aspens

We have developed a routine where we stop off for coffee and this time we stopped at a little ski resort called Telluride nestling in the crook of the valley. Its a delightful little town and this is where Christine Binckley and Tom Cruise hang out. David spotted a bookshop with a coffee shop - say no more. My kinda bookshop with the best coffee we have had in the States so far, but then the coffee Downunder is hard to beat. It was a beautiful day so we popped into a deli to buy lunch and had our picnic in a field with the snow-capped peaks as our back-drop. We drove through the Dallas Divide and the Red Mountain pass through a town called Ouray stopping off at Silverton, a town that's straight out of a Western movie. This is Butch Cassidy country. The hotel's heavy mahogany bar even had a bullet hole in it - it didn't take much to imagine the people who must have lived in the town and frequented the hotel. This is a mining town and there are lots of abandoned silver and gold mine shafts in the mountains. Coal is still being mined in the area but I suspect that the town depends heavily on the tourist trade.

  

Silverton

More spectacular passes took us to Durango where we spent the night in an upmarket hotel on the banks of the Animus River. Durango is another mining town although now the vandium and uranium mines are closed. We had a lovely evening walking along the river and then went to a little French place for dinner where the size of the helping of coq au vin defeated us.  

In front of our hotel in Durango

MESA VERDE - CANYONS OF THE ANCIENTS

Spruce Tree House

We drove from Moab back into Colorado to a museum near Dolores to look at an exhibition of artefacts found in the area - pottery, basket ware and a kiva (a dug-out house) from the Anasazi Indian tribe who lived in the area. On to Cortez from where we went to the Mesa Verde an area on top of a plateau where the ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) lived about 1,400 years ago. It's fascinating place - they kept improving their homes until they built sophisticated dwellings in areas in the canyons.

There are a number of dwellings like this one and where the overhang provided protection.

Gorge in the Mesa Verde

We were lucky to dodge the rain storms to shelter under the overhang when there was a downpour - including hail. The Anasazi only lived here for 100 years before disappearing and no one is quite certain what happened - other than there was a prolonged severe drought. They made beautiful baskets, pottery and jewellery, planted maize, beans and bartered with their neighbours. A sophisticated economy - this all before the Europeans arrived.

ARCHES AND CANYONS

Conal walking down Manhattan

We seem to have four seasons every hour - we soon left the verdant valley and mountain area and after a pass we drove through Karoo-like countryside where the hills and mountains are known are mesas and buttes. Wide open spaces with bright green strips close to the river crossing the border into Utah to Moab, one of the top adventure towns. Now this is cowboy country but Harley Davidsons have replaced cowboys and we've never seen so many winnebagos and camper vans. Moab is a nondescript town - wide streets with lots of restaurants. Fortunately David booked in a B&B called the Castle Valley Inn in a beautiful area close to the Colorado River run by a South African woman and her husband. It was a perfect place to spend two nights - Jeanette and Jason proved to be warm friendly hosts. They met in San Antonio in Texas and I wondered whether Frank and Kate know them. A lovely couple who looked after us well. This is a fascinating area and a dream place for geologists. We drove through the Arches National Park where the rock formations are sculptural and the red sandstone rocks have eroded to form arches.

Delicate Arch

The vegetation is also interesting - the dunes are covered with a krypto biotic layer consisting of fungi, bacteria and moss that binds the soil together and is of course very sensitive and if broken takes decades to repair. The giant wall faces of the canyon are marked by desert varnish - they think that this might be a mixture of a fine manganese/iron layer trapped by bacteria from the dust and air. This is truly a mind blowing place to visit.

Canyon-land

We spent the afternoon exploring the canyons not far away - where the Colorado and Green Rivers have carved deep canyons into the sandstone. We drove to Dead Horse Point -this is where the movie Thelma and Louise was shot and where they drove over the cliff for their last hurrah. You can see the road in the picture below.

Thelma & Louise's take off

The eroded canyons expose up to 9 layers of different types of sediment - and the scale of it is quite mind boggling. The vegetation is also fascinating - stunted juniper, pinyon pine and cedar trees many hundreds of years old.  This has been an awesome experience and we are continually saying wow and every day have our minds filled with wonderful images to replay. 

Next stop - Mesa Verde ----

CROSSING THE ROCKIES DIVIDE - DENVER TO THE UTAH BORDER

We woke this morning with the exciting news that Steve and Sarah's little girl was born at just after 4 am. A 23 hour labour --- so Stella Catherine has at last made her appearance. Wonderful news.

Did I say we were tracing summer?

 

Brrrr-----

We left Denver this morning stopping off in the quaint mining town of Georgetown for coffee with snow drifting down. Past Vail and all the ski resorts through snow drifts with the fir tree branches heavily laden and the roofs of houses covered in snow - this in May? It's a great surprise and exquisite. Then through the Glenwood Canyon tracking the fast flowing Colorado River winding deeply through the gorge, where the rocks are layered and stacked like lego and the aspens new lime coloured leaves contrast with the red stones of the mountains. We had a pub lunch in Glenwood at a hotel where Teddy Roosevelt stayed and it is claimed that this is where the teddy originated. Apparently he went out bear hunting and was disappointed that he was unsuccessful so the hotel made him a bear out of material - his young daughter named the bear Teddy.

Home of the teddybears 

Conal cunningly disguised as a true blue Ozzie watching the passing scene in Aspen.

The temperature ranged between 32F - over 60F!
It was too cold to walk up to Doc Holliday's grave but we drove to just below the cemetery on a little kopje - and on through the beautiful valley to a monastery called St Benedict's a peaceful secluded retreat nestling in a wide valley with the backdrop of snow covered mountains. David has been there on a number of occasions.  It is a spiritual place where Thomas Keating wrote and taught and was well known for the Centering Prayer. The monks originally belonged to the order where silence is practised and there are rooms for meditation and accommodation built of stone that blends into the surroundings where people can come for a retreat  - it was a difficult place to leave.
We got to Aspen for tea and can understand why this is the most exclusive ski resort in the States - the town has lovely old buildings and the shops - well Dior, Prada -  says it all. The people walking through the streets all look as if they could be in movies. The ski lift starts right in the village & if one lost control one could easily land up crashing into Dior!

We arrived at our hotel - Redstone Inn - an old Victorian building in a tiny village originally built in 1902 by John Osgood who made his fortune from mining coal in the valley nearby. The road where one turns off to the hotel is lined with the coke kilns. It's been a perfect day driving through the most spectacular scenery.

DENVER - THE MILE HIGH CITY

Dinner at Gilly's apartment

We only just made our flight to Denver and have spent the past few days just hanging out and resting. The weather hasn't been great - overcast & raining. Yesterday we spent the morning in Boulder - it's grown into quite a large town since my first visit. We wandered down a very pretty tree-lined boulevard window shopping and went into the most fantastic homewares store where the sheer volume of beautiful stuff had me gasping. Piles of exquisite French jacquard table clothes with napkins to match and every conceivable thing one could possibly want.

Our next stop - Utah and Louis L'Amour country..... real cowboy territory.