Monday, July 04, 2011

Rocky Mountain High

We're in Colorado.  Going to be here a month.  I've modified our playlist to start out with some John Denver songs to celebrate the occasion.  Followed by Ray Charles's America the Beautiful. Here's a picture of the upper Rio Grande valley west of Creede - Rocky Mountain High.  We're here for the Fourth of July weekend with our Allegro motor home club - eight rigs.


Let me back up a bit. On June 27, nephew Sterling Raines flew out to visit us for 10 days. In Albq, we did the Tramway thing, then loaded Tuzigoot and departed Thursday, the 30th


 From Santa Fe north to beyond the CO border, the air was very smoky – the Los Alamos fire. We took Uncle Sam for July 4 site decoration (in place of the pink flamingos and Japanese lanterns with which we usually decorate our RV site) and he also copiloted the Explorer for us.


Friday, Sterling and I took off to find the headwaters of the Rio Grande, or at least get close.  Here are some pix:




The road got narrower and rougher and then went underwater (this is about an hour and a half from Creede), which is where we turned around.Here I'm standing by, not the headwaters, but maybe the neckwaters of the Rio Grande.



You probably have to get up above timberline to be at the point at which enough melting snow trickles together to form the Rio Grande officially.

After turning around we stopped at a scenic creekside for lunch.

Back towards Creede, we hiked up Miner’s Creek until that trail terminated in the Creek.  This was about a two-hour round trip, so after all this exploring we felt justified in stopping at the ice cream Shoppe in Creede.

 Friday evening our group had a lovely dinner at a restaurant right on the Rio Grande bank.

Saturday, Sterling and I went river-rafting.  Was a good trip with great scenery and enough rapids to be interesting.  Then, that night we, the Allegro group, attended How to Succeed at Business Without Really Trying put on by the Creede Repertory Theatre.  A rousing production.  Incidentally, earlier in the day Sterling and I toured the underground mining museum tour and found out, among other things, that Creede was named for the prospector who found silver, quite by accident, here.   

Sunday we hiked up to a point overlooking Creede.



Still smoky skies, somewhat.  Good to read today, though, that Los Alamos residents were able to return to their homes and that there had been some rain in the area.

Enough for now.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Rob, Susie, Sterling

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you are having a great time with Sterling!

Karen