Dressy Bessy

A few weeks ago I got the chance to bring my camera to a concert by local band Dressy Bessy. It's rare to have a show I feel like I can bring my expensive camera too, so I was really excited about the chance to shoot a concert. I took over a two hundred photos, of those, here are a few of the best.

Manitou Dwellings

After Seven Falls and a very tardy lunch, we swung by the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. While the ruins themselves aren't as impressive as the complex around Mesa Verde, the privately owned Manitou Dwellings let visitors actually enter the buildings



This made for a much more hands on, and enjoyable, excursion. Getting to explore the buildings was very fun and most fascinating. Entire families would live in single rooms that made my old Japanese apartments look spacious by comparison.



I had a lot of fun in this room, kicking up the dust and trying to photograph the light spilling in the combination door/ window.



The cliff dwellings were a most worthy stop, a lot of fun for a history buff like me, and of course they offered a great spot to shoot photos, including one of my trademark panoramas.

Seven Falls

A couple of weeks ago Jen and I headed to Colorado Springs to kick around for the day. The Springs really is a great little day trip from Denver, with a lot of museums, historical sights, and plenty of natural beauty.



One of the tourist traps there that neither of us had ever visited was Seven Falls, named for the seven water falls that descend the canyon. While there was an air of exploitation around the place (3 gift shops!) the area was undeniably beautiful, and the hike up the stairs to the top of the falls was exciting.



While I don't know that I would ever go twice, I was really happy to get Seven Falls marked off on my list of "Things to See in Colorado." We had a really fun morning there, and had a great time wandering about and shooting photos, which is a fairly typical weekend around here.

Scrambling

A few weeks ago Matt invited Jen and I up to his family cabin for the weekend. We had a great time hanging out, burning things, and scrambling on the large rock formations nearby.



The cabin itself is located near Deckers, south-west of Denver, in a little valley full of family vacation cabins.



On a ridge above the road there are several large granite formations that make for excellent scrambling. While I'm far from the most daring person around heights, I had some fun showing up Matt and Jen, who were both a bit more cautions than I was.



Though Matt DID decide to do a bit of free climbing up a sheer rock face.



As always, the view from the top was worth it. I never get tired of looking down on a vista from a high point, no matter where I am.

I waited five years for this?

I read a lot. I reckon I finish around 50 books a year across a wide variety of genres, but one of my favorite is the 'adventure' book. You know, books that read sort of like Raiders of the Lost Ark, with lots of cliff hangers and general feats of daring.

With reading habits like these, it was inevitable that I would encounter Dan Brown. The first of his books that I read was Angels and Demons and I loved it. It had a propulsive, thrilling plot, an interesting premise, and was in general a fun romp through Rome.

I read The Da Vinci Code too, along with all the rest of the world, but enjoyed it less. While it was still a page turner, there was a lot more speechifying, and it felt a bit like the author had an ax to grind.

Which brings us to today, and The Lost Symbol. I was on the hold list for this book since before I quit at the library and moved to Japan, so it's been a long time in coming. The good news is that Brown can still write short, fast moving chapters that keep you constantly reading to find out what happens next. Sadly, that is pretty much the only good news. I often had the feeling that rather than reading a thriller I was attending the lecture of a rather stuffy professor. If our hero Robert Langdon isn't lecturing about symbols to one of the other characters, then one of them is lecturing him to 'open his mind.'

The book also mirrors some of the other defects of The Da Vinci Code, including a laughably insane antagonist, and a real let down of a climax. I understand that for books like this that flirt with the supernatural and yet take place in the 'real' world it can be hard to write a fitting ending. The finish we are presented with in The Lost Symbol is ludicrous. The final reveal of the villains plot is so un-epic and nonsensical that I felt more than a bit robbed.

I do have more of a problem with Mr. Brown than this derivative follow up to The Most Popular Book Ever. He has inspired a huge copycat following. Every other author of adventure/ thriller novels has been trying to hit it Da Vinci Code big for years, and so now much of the genre is taken over with novels about religion, science, codes and all of the other tropes that propelled The Da Vinci Code to the huge sales numbers that it enjoyed.

Luckily, I have come up with the The Lost Symbol drinking game. Take a shot every time Langdon lectures somebody, every time somebody tells him to be less skeptical, every time you read the words "ancient mysteries" and every time you successfully guessed a plot twist. If this was a two hour movie, the amount of shots consumed as a result of playing this game may well prove fatal, but with a few days to read the book, you should be safe.

The last stop

On our way into Denver from Taos, we decided to make one final stop at the Garden of the Gods. We needed to stretch our legs a bit, and this seemed a good spot to do so. The Garden is certainly one of the most beautiful areas in Colorado, and the fact that it is free to enter makes it even better. We did notice though that despite the literally dozens of signs proclaiming that the rocks should not be climbed or scrambled on without permission, there were plenty of people and kids clambering all over the place. I was a bit annoyed because while the light was perfect, I had a gaggle of kids in one of my shots, and as soon as they had descended out of the frame of my camera, a cloud passed over the sun and stole my light!



While our trip was only four days, it was packed full of great places and adventures and was a fantastic way for both Liz and I to say farewell to Colorado, even if my departure has now been delayed.

Taos

Last winter the Denver Art Museum hosted a special exhibit of Ernest L Blumenschein's paintings. Blumenschein was best known for his life in Taos, and for his founding of the Taos Society of Artists. Much of his work drew on his love of the Southwest, and after seeing the exhibition I was very eager to go see Taos for myself.



Arriving in Taos I was struck by how the reality of the town and my expectations clashed. I was expecting a much larger and more vertical town than I got, perhaps a place about the size of Durango. Actually Taos is fairly small, though for it's size it is a pretty spralling town. Very few of the buildings rise above a story, and almost all of them, even McDonalds, are built in Southwestern Adobe style.



A major item on our agenda for Taos was to get some Mexican food, and we found the perfect place for it, a delightful open patio restaurant a few blocks away from the main plaza. The food was amazing, and the "Tequila Wine" Margarita's were a delicious compliment to the meal.



In the southern side of town there is the San Francisco De Asis Church, and we felt that we should check it out, though by the time we arrived it had closed for the night, even though the sun had not yet set.



Artists say that the light in Taos is different, and I must agree. There was much more color in the light than I notice in Denver. While I don't know what the cause of the percevied difference is, I do know that I went crazy taking photographs of the sunset that evening.



For me breakfast the next morning was a plate of heuvos rancheros with a firey New Mexico red chili. From that excellent beginning we went to Kit Carson's house. The exterior was interesting, but the gift shop inside kind of turned us off, so we walked form there to the Blumenschein House instead. This was one of the best museum's of it's sort I've been to. The house itself was very cool in its design, and when I had finished I felt that I had learned something. The whole family were artist's, and the house had displays of both Blumenschein's work, and his Wife's and Daughter's paintings and illustrations as well.



Despite the massive breakfast I ate, when we sat down to lunch I suddenly found myself hungry again, and tucked into a plate of Tacos that were par for the course. That is to say they were utterly fantastic. Then it was time for the long drive back in to Denver.

Moving out without moving in

I spent the last few days finally moving out of my apartment. My lease wasn't up until September 30th, but they found somebody to rent the place to, which saves me a significant amount of money. I've left my apartment, and am currently 'living' in my parents basement. Its so nice to have such a support system, and I think Fritz (the dog) likes having somebody around during the day to scratch his ears and take him for walks. All that said, I do hope to get everything sorted out, and soon. Limbo is no fun, and classes started this week, so the longer everything takes, the more behind I will be.

The Rio Grande

As we approached Taos we came upon the Rio Grande Gorge, and the large steel bridge over it. Ironically, we initially stopped in the area because there was a rest stop, and it was only after we parked that I noticed the canyon right next door.



The source of the Rio Grande is in Colorado, and it flows from there south through New Mexico eventually forming part of the natural border between Texas and Mexico. For much of the river's path through Colorado and New Mexico it follows the Rio Grande rift, and area where the North American plate has stretched and thinned.



Indeed, the dark rocks of the Rio Grande Gorge are volcanic flows that resulted from the rift. Luckily for those of us living in the Southwest now, mysteriously the rifting stopped, and the area is fairly geologically quite now. For a view at what Taos and the area would be like if the area was still pulling apart, look at other rift zones like Iceland or Africa's Great Rift Valley.



While on the bridge I was thinking less of geology and more of just how far down the river was. I timed the drop and it was 17 seconds to the river below, a very long fall indeed.



I actually encountered a few photographic issues while shooting the gorge. The first was simply that I didn't a wide enough lens to capture both the shadow of the bridge and the full length of the view, so I shot another vertical panorama, such as you see below. Another issue that I didn't notice until I got home was that every single one of the photos I took was horribly overexposed, unusable. Thankfully, some post processing in Lightroom saved the day.

Chama, New Mexico

After an overnight in Durango we headed towards Taos, and Liz's first trip to New Mexico. En route I actually took a wrong turn and ended up in Chama. Chama is one end of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad. Both the Cumbres and Toltec and the Silverton and Durango narrow gauge railroads are leftovers of the Denver and Rio Grande Western spur line that went from Antonito all the way to Silverton and it's famous mines.



While I had been unimpressed at the level of access within Mesa Verde, I was very impressed with the Chama yard. They had a variety of volunteers in the area restoring train cars, organizing tools and whatever else needed doing, and any of whom was happy to answer questions. The only area that was off limits was the engine house, where they were performing repairs. Other than that the whole yard was open. Imagine, an organization that trusts that people won't break things, hurt themselves or otherwise won't make a fuss.



I had a fantastic time wandering about the yard, poking my head into rail cars and just generally have a good time. My poor sister soon was soon wondering if I had been kidnapped by the trains, but I was just exploring down a side spur.



Pretty soon that was it for Chama, and we were back on the road towards Taos. While it was a wrong turn, I think that all together it was a right turn, even if it cost us over an hour of me poking about the trains!

Pause Button

I had planned to depart for Europe on the 22nd, but the lack of a visa delayed me. I pushed the flight back to a tentative Sept 15th. However, today I got back my passport with a form letter stating that my request for a Swedish Residence Permit had been denyed. I can appeal the decision within the next three weeks, and I may well do that. It is certainly a disapointment, however I am not as surprised as I might have been. For some reason, the past few weeks I have felt like something like this would happen, and that I would NOT be going to Lund to study. I can't say why I felt that way, just that I did. Of course now the big question is What's Next? For that, I have no answer as yet.

Stay tuned.

Cliff Palace

While our legs felt rather rubbery after our hike, soon we had to head back to the overlook for our tour of the Cliff Palace. While waiting for the ranger, I heard a fair number of people griping about how they didn't know you needed tickets to actually go down to the ruin, so I felt better knowing that I was in good company with my own previous ignorance.



The group was about a hundred people, and we made our way past the ranger who was collecting tickets and down the stairs. The Anasazi didn't have anything so easy as a steel staircase to travel between the mesa top and their homes, rather they used precarious hand and toe trails that were cut into the rocks. While I didn't discover this on the tour, which was of dubious educational value, I found later in our Geology of Colorado book just where all of the cliff side caves in this area came from. Water seeps very easily through the upper layers of sandstone that make up the mesa, but when it hits the less permeable layers of shale, it flows to the side, creating springs along the sides of the mesa. The shale is also much weaker rock than the sandstone, so the springs easily erode it way, and the departure of the lower layer of rock has predictable effects on the upper layers, causing cracks and collapses that form the caves that the Anasazi moved into.



The opportunity to see the Cliff Palace close up was amazing, and the extra $3 per person is hardly a hardship, but I must say that the overall experience was less than optimal. The ranger selected a pair of younger travelers, and used them as his conduit of information. He would ask them speculative questions about daily life in Mesa Verde, and then go over the answer with the group. It was a very slow process, often punctuated by Umms and Hmmms from the two assistants. While I did learn that Pinon nuts are an excellent source of calories, I didn't learn much about where the Anasazi came from, why they built their cliff houses or where they went. These are all subjects that I find much more interesting than the nutritional value of nuts.



While the educational value of the tour itself was minimal, the experience of being down in the palace was totally worth it. I would have preferred more freedom to explore, but I can certainly understand why they would place such stringent limits on the amount of tourists and where they are allowed to go.