Fort Collins, day one
G'day all!
You get a travelogue cos I have waaay too many pics to show you and not enough stuff to talk about here. Like do you need to know that I've spent half of today trying to work out which washed fleeces were stuffed into jiffy bags without labelling them? No, I thought not.
As always, Nathan fell on his feet at LAX. He saw a lady admiring my finger knitting, so he invited her and then her husband to sit with us. We had a lovely chat - me with her, he with him, for almost a couple of hours. Having a Nathan around facilitates meeting people. He's just that sort of chap.
The flight from LAX was interesting - the poor lady with the window seat had to put up with both of us trying to look out her window. She was a little embarrassed cos she could not name the sights from the plane even though she lived in Denver and had flown that leg lots.
As it turns out, we pretty much have seen the Grand Canyon now. We saw Lake Mead and lots of bad lands all round the area - lots of canyons and cutaways. I reckon it will look more impressive at ground level (or below ground level - it is after all a canyon...).
We saw snow on the Rockies - lots of snow! I think I saw a ski resort at one point - the snow appeared to be in very artificial looking "channels." I know snow is not exciting for most North Americans but for us it is very exciting :-)
From our hotel window we could see Horsetooth Rock - it is the teensy little bump on top of the hill in the pic here. Horsetooth Rock is a local landmark. I have the feeling that if you went and stood by it, it would look somewhat larger ;-)
Our host in FC wanted to show us the Great Outdoors. Gosh you guys there have a lot of it! We do too, but we live in a big sprawling city, not a sprawling town, and it is not quite as readily available.
We drove up to umm, erp, a local park right by Horsetooth Reservoir. We had a lovely walk - Nathan and S raced ahead a lot cos S is very fit and he and Nathan were chatting as I took many photos and dawdled. Plus I'm not used to the altitude - I huffed and puffed up every hill and we climbed up a fair way, about 300m, which I would laugh at here but when you are as high up as most of the alpine area in your home place, it does make a difference.
I'll let you admire the photos. Some look like watercolours as the day was hazy in the morning. The clouds broke up later in the afternoon.
Those pines that show up in nearly every picture? I was musing upon them and decided that they must be ponderosa pines, like in Bonanza, that ancient American tv show that I grew up watching. Yep, they are! Gosh I am clever. ;-) I have no idea where that little bit of knowledge came from - out on the ponderosa. We saw what I called a gentian - no idea if it is cos the flora of the Rockies is not my specialty. Yet.
We were told to watch out for mountain lions. DH was not sure if he was supposed to be watching out for real lions or some native version. He didn't know that they are pumas or cougars, which he does know about. (Wikipedia says a cougar is also known as panther, catamount, painter, American lion, Mexican lion, Florida panther, silver lion, red lion, red panther, red tiger, brown tiger, deer tiger, ghost cat, mountain screamer, Indian devil, sneak cat, king cat, and painted cat) (Can I just say it would be nice if people could decide whether the animal is silver, red, brown or some other colour? Maybe local vairants are different colours). Apparently they smell like uber-uber cats so it is pretty obvious when one is about - even our pathetic human noses can detect them. I did see just one big paw-print from some animal that always has its claws extended - probably a dog.
(Nathan's new boss is not really a faceless minion of Satan, well not that we know of ;-). He does have a perfectly good face - but since we don't have permission to put his face online, I've blurred it out. Looks really freaky in the bigger pic...)
I really must pull my finger out and take pics of the spoils from the yarn crawl on the second day we were there. And take pics of my knitted items, done there or on the way back or finished here. After all, I can't do a travelogue without souvenirs!
anon!
You get a travelogue cos I have waaay too many pics to show you and not enough stuff to talk about here. Like do you need to know that I've spent half of today trying to work out which washed fleeces were stuffed into jiffy bags without labelling them? No, I thought not.
As always, Nathan fell on his feet at LAX. He saw a lady admiring my finger knitting, so he invited her and then her husband to sit with us. We had a lovely chat - me with her, he with him, for almost a couple of hours. Having a Nathan around facilitates meeting people. He's just that sort of chap.
The flight from LAX was interesting - the poor lady with the window seat had to put up with both of us trying to look out her window. She was a little embarrassed cos she could not name the sights from the plane even though she lived in Denver and had flown that leg lots.
As it turns out, we pretty much have seen the Grand Canyon now. We saw Lake Mead and lots of bad lands all round the area - lots of canyons and cutaways. I reckon it will look more impressive at ground level (or below ground level - it is after all a canyon...).
We saw snow on the Rockies - lots of snow! I think I saw a ski resort at one point - the snow appeared to be in very artificial looking "channels." I know snow is not exciting for most North Americans but for us it is very exciting :-)
From our hotel window we could see Horsetooth Rock - it is the teensy little bump on top of the hill in the pic here. Horsetooth Rock is a local landmark. I have the feeling that if you went and stood by it, it would look somewhat larger ;-)
Our host in FC wanted to show us the Great Outdoors. Gosh you guys there have a lot of it! We do too, but we live in a big sprawling city, not a sprawling town, and it is not quite as readily available.
We drove up to umm, erp, a local park right by Horsetooth Reservoir. We had a lovely walk - Nathan and S raced ahead a lot cos S is very fit and he and Nathan were chatting as I took many photos and dawdled. Plus I'm not used to the altitude - I huffed and puffed up every hill and we climbed up a fair way, about 300m, which I would laugh at here but when you are as high up as most of the alpine area in your home place, it does make a difference.
I'll let you admire the photos. Some look like watercolours as the day was hazy in the morning. The clouds broke up later in the afternoon.
Those pines that show up in nearly every picture? I was musing upon them and decided that they must be ponderosa pines, like in Bonanza, that ancient American tv show that I grew up watching. Yep, they are! Gosh I am clever. ;-) I have no idea where that little bit of knowledge came from - out on the ponderosa. We saw what I called a gentian - no idea if it is cos the flora of the Rockies is not my specialty. Yet.
We were told to watch out for mountain lions. DH was not sure if he was supposed to be watching out for real lions or some native version. He didn't know that they are pumas or cougars, which he does know about. (Wikipedia says a cougar is also known as panther, catamount, painter, American lion, Mexican lion, Florida panther, silver lion, red lion, red panther, red tiger, brown tiger, deer tiger, ghost cat, mountain screamer, Indian devil, sneak cat, king cat, and painted cat) (Can I just say it would be nice if people could decide whether the animal is silver, red, brown or some other colour? Maybe local vairants are different colours). Apparently they smell like uber-uber cats so it is pretty obvious when one is about - even our pathetic human noses can detect them. I did see just one big paw-print from some animal that always has its claws extended - probably a dog.
(Nathan's new boss is not really a faceless minion of Satan, well not that we know of ;-). He does have a perfectly good face - but since we don't have permission to put his face online, I've blurred it out. Looks really freaky in the bigger pic...)
I really must pull my finger out and take pics of the spoils from the yarn crawl on the second day we were there. And take pics of my knitted items, done there or on the way back or finished here. After all, I can't do a travelogue without souvenirs!
anon!
Yes, your photos are lovely and amazing but I was totally distracted by having to hum the Bonanza theme the entire time!! Dum de de dum de de dum de de dum de Bonanza!!! etc
ReplyDeleteGorgeous pictures! I love the Front Range of Colorado. You might've seen a coyote print. :) They're numerous.
ReplyDeleteif the print was as big as your hand, it may well have been a cougar print. sometimes they leave claw marks as well. and cougars really are brown, tan, silver, and red. depends on where you're at. and would you believe we've had cougar sitings here in the CITY?!?!? the environmental people think it's because their habitat is getting awfully crowded out west, so they've migrated (or at least a few have). they've actually caught one or two! scary!
ReplyDeletei love pics of the mountains, as long as i don't have to deal with the snow that goes with them, lol.
Ah such beutiful takes on such familiar sights! :-)
ReplyDeleteBeautiful pictures! I've been to Denver but I've never been outside of the city in Colorado.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the travelogue. I've never been to USA so for me it was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to seeing the 'souvenirs'.