Exploring

You are currently browsing the archive for the Exploring category.

A Friday look at Sunday’s long walk downtown, a most excellent 8.5 miles round trip, which actually tuckered out Ms. Juni B. It is possible! We stumbled upon the jackpot of coins shortly after leaving home, with me gasping at our good luck. I never did count it, but would wager a guess of just over a dollar.

It also got me thinking about this town and how we really hit the jackpot moving to Colorado Springs. We can walk downtown and to Palmer Park, ride our bikes everywhere, and get to see Pike’s Peak, America’s Mountain, almost every day. The city is diverse in people and in thought and has some pretty snazzy architecture, too. On one city block there’s cool modern and mid century buildings a hop, skip, and a jump from century old mansions with gorgeous cast iron fences and lovely light fixtures. As well as sun, sun, and more sun, snow, and some of the cleanest air in the country. The people are friendly, though kinda loony once they get behind the wheel, truth be told – I wouldn’t mind seeing a Portland Standoff from time to time. Indeed. There’s wonderful coffee (the Wild Goose being our favorite, maybe partly cuz the bathrooms have Star Trek posters!) and food from everywhere – our latest favorite a deeelicious bhan mi joint. Finally, just enough Colleen style quirk to make me smile – that cat’s eye marble? It’s embedded and catching the light of the morning sun in a neighborhood fence. Sweet.

Tags:

Red Rock Canyon Park is a fifteen minute drive. We really do live in paradise!

Tags: ,

Happy Friday!

Tags: ,

Misty

A lovely Portland morning, me and Juni B. up and roaming, every sound hushed under the weight of the mist. Every scent heightened, the new leaves, the dry flaxen grass, the unfortunate rabbit killed under the tree of the top photo, forefoot and tail and fluff in the underbrush and Juniper whimpering to please investigate. Never have I felt more observed by the animals, seen and unseen, wing beats and calls, rustles and thumps. Crows, jays, towhees, and coyote, perhaps?

Today is a big day for us. After thirteen years to to-ing and fro-ing in a Mini Cooper, from one side of the country to the other, we are reuniting with our first love. A Subaru. The toll of a low clearance vehicle, scrape, scrape, scrape, and what now seems like an impossibly small space having finally, oddly, gotten to us. Our 50’s era garage is just wide enough and plenty long for what, in comparison, will be akin to driving a school bus.

Like most of what I have left behind in this life, I will not miss it. We had our good times and our stellar fuel economy (goodbye 42 MPG on the highway!) and fun zips around winding bending roads, but it’s time to move forward. It’s time for adventures on bumpy back roads without worry (or at least far less) of getting stuck. It’s time for car camping with our favorite canine, lying flat as a pancake in the back. It’s time for having more than one human passenger, save that of a child. It’s time for car loads of plants and other miscellany that need not be carefully balanced and protruding, clown-like, out the front windows of the car. Oh boy, oh boy, it is time.

Let’s go!

 

Backpacking

So maybe this IS turning into a doggy blog. Seriously. Look at her, like she was posing in her new backpack, but really only eager to go, go, go. When we adopted Ms. Juni B., we told the rescue we wanted a medium to low energy dog, because, though it may not seem so right now, we want our life to be about other wonderfulness, too. And she was low energy, at first, utterly pooped after a thirty minute gambit through the neighborhood. But now, this little whippersnapper gets an hour-plus every morning and 20-45 minutes every afternoon, like it ain’t no thang, smiling and skipping and hopping along.

This beautiful hike, some 6.5 miles in length, a good quarter of it up hill, did not so much as slow dear Juniper down, even while sporting her adorable backpack loaded with water, pop-up bowls and kibble. The girl is a machine! And so we are also becoming them. My gams are gonna be glorious, I tell you!

And it was wonderful, with our first pulsatilla sprout spotted springing near Bear Creek, the scent of evergreens in bright sunshine, froth of nascent leaves dotting trees and shrubs, all tiny promises of new worlds amongst last year’s leaves. Happy Spring!

Tags:

« Older entries § Newer entries »