Glenwood Springs

On the Road Again...


A just received an email from Allan bringing me up to date on his activities. It was so interesting I want to share it with everyone...

Toni: I just pulled up your blog and got caught with your wonderful dialog and photo's.  Super job! I am having dinner with Manfred and Ione tomorrow night and will make sure they see it too.  Manfred is making wild-game spagetti and I am bringing some canned sardines from Norway for appetizers.  We come up with some crazy foods and drinks.

Goose hunting started Sept. 1 so I have been arising dark-thirty each day.  Success has been hit and miss, mostly miss.  But a buddy and I had a great morning yesterday, getting our limit of 4 geese each in the first 45 minutes.  Then it was a couple hours of goose-cleaning which is less fun.  I boil the giblets for Julie and I take out the breast meat and legs.  Then 8 packages go in the freezer from the 4 10# birds.
All osprey are now flying but several at a time can usually be seen loafing on the nests.  "Dad" osprey still brings an occasional fish to the nest for the young birds, but "tough love" is kicking in and the young soon will learn to catch fish or else go hungry.
A fellow from Steamboat called me after reading newspaper articles and wants to place two osprey nests on his land near that town.  I drove over yesterday to "consult" on the project.  Looks like it will be a go.
Summer continues here, hot and dry.
Hope your travels are going well.
Allan

  

Leaving Craig and Allan and friends I headed due south through Meeker then turned east at Rifle.

I had planned to visit Aspen on this trip but before I could get there I received a phone call from my brother-in-law, Jim, to come to Drake, Co. It seemed there was some unusual annual mountain yacht club event (?) coming up and Jim knew I would want to be there.  The timing was suddenly tighter than I wanted but I had a feeling this was an event not to be missed.


  I spent a night in Glenwood Springs and indulged in the Vapor Caves--an institution in Glenwood that dates back long before white men discovered it.

When my husband and I lived in Colorado in the 60's we would often come here to sit for an hour in the caves and work up a good sweat,

then get a massage administered by a very large Swedish masseuse with an old world accent and arms like Arnold Swartzeneggers.  I tried to take pictures in the cave but the steam was so thick the pictures were just a blur.  But the solarium looks the same down to the fake fountain and the rubber tree plants--it was nice to see that some things haven't changed in 45 years.

Glenwood Canyon was as beautiful as I remembered and much faster now with the divided highway. 

I remembered a somewhat treacherous two-lane road that hugged the canyon walls as it followed the serpentine river.  There were often terrible auto accidents in the canyon and when trucks were involved it meant a closed road for hours.

The road through the canyon is now so smooth and fast there was barely time to get pictures.  

  
There are also very few places to pull over and get out so I had to resort to taking these photos through my bug-flecked windshield.

This stretch of road is truly one of the most scenic of the U.S. highways.

And--I think I prefer the slower two-lane road.