Into the Hills

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We had a fun few days starting our journey north from Albuquerque up through Colorado and into South Dakota. We added Bethany’s dad, Lewis, to our company and I got a chance to see Simon Schwartz, which was a tremendous joy as he and I haven’t see each other since I was last in Denver - New Year’s 2004-2005 - and were very due to catch up and hang out. This is also where I really learned the Zwicks’ love of hot springs.

Friday, June 13th:
Up and ready to go this morning, Bethany and I said out goodbyes to Josh and Berkeley, unfortunately Joanna had already had to leave for work, and drove off to the airport to pick up Lewis. While we were waiting, Bethany got a call from her friend Jessikah. Jessikah and her boyfriend, Ben, got engaged a few days ago and have set a date - 5 months from now!! - which Bethany and I both agreed was completely insane. I’m sure they’ll pull it off, but it’s crazy. So after a few loops of the pick-up/drop-off area, we grabbed Lewis and took off for his one requisite stop in town: the Pueblo Indian Cultural Center. This was a necessary stop because of breakfast; they have fantastic fry-bread and the eggs were pretty good, too.
After breakfast, the three of us drove on up to Santa Fe. Like Bandelier, I had never been to Santa Fe, despite living in Albuquerque for an entire summer. It’s a very cute little town, with the cathedral and basilica to St Francis; it also has a very neat little Old Townish district around a square. Extremely touristy, though. I definitely got the feeling that if I was traveling like I did in Europe, I would have taken the train in, found some things to occupy myself for a few hours and then been completely bored and want to move on to somewhere more exciting. Nice place to stop by and see, though. It was the start of the local crafts festival, so there was a little music playing in the middle of the square and the vendors were starting to set up. Lots of jewelry and little, overpriced trinkets for sale. We also went and checked out the basilica, which is a lovely building with and absolutely gorgeous baptismal font. The builders also managed to mold the traditional Spanish style of church-building into the local atmosphere, while still incorporating a rose window.
Our next stop was Taos, another hour or so north of Santa Fe, to go see the pueblo. Both Bethany and Lewis were convinced that since I had seen Bandelier - the start of the story - I needed to see the near-poverty state of Taos - the current chapter in the story. I had been to Window Rock in the Navajo reservation, so I have seen how depressing the current state of affairs can be. The local Indians charge a bit for admission and more for photos, so we went up the gate a took a look over. Certainly depressing, but apparently, it is even worse than when my traveling companions were there a few years ago.
After making ourselves a quick lunch, we headed further north to Westcliffe, Colorado. Here, one of Lewis’s coworkers, M.K., has a vacation home that is rarely used. She and her husband built it about a year and a half ago and had yet to be used by any guests (M.K. seemed happier than us that it was being used). On the way, we stopped by Bishop’s Castle, a very cool, very odd “castle” built by a local eccentric named Bishop. He builds onto the place when he gets some more donations from passer-bys. The guy is a bit of an anti-government nut that distrusts all authority, and has the big signs and writings to prove it. It is a very cool structure that really does look like a castle with crenellations and a dragon’s head atop it.
Finally, we approached M.K.’s house in Westcliffe. It is way outside of even that little town on a dirt road that winds and climbs and falls, which was a lot of fun to drive in the dark. We made ourselves dinner and were ready for bed.

Saturday, June 14th:
Well, the most impressive thing of the house is the tremendous view out over the valley to the mountains to the west. So we ate a light breakfast on the porch, repacked the car and headed off towards Denver.
Our first stop was Salida. A tiny little town notable primarily for its hot springs-fed town swimming pool. For a few bucks, you could take a dip in some very comfortable water, and so we jumped in and relaxed in the water for a while.
We then headed off towards Aurora, where M.K. lived when she wasn’t on the job in South Carolina. The town is just to the south east of Denver, so it gave us a good place to stop for the time being while I connected with Simon, as he and I were set to see each other tonight and I was staying at his place. We met M.K. at her place and got a chance to check our emails and recharge. Eventually, it was figured out with Simon and us there at M.K.’s that I’d meet up with him at his buddy’s place downtown after we ate dinner in Aurora. Bethany decided she would stay there with her dad in Aurora. We ate over at a Chicago-style pizza place that wasn’t bad but not actually deep-dish, which is a bit confusing, and then M.K. dropped me off in Denver just outside of the apartment building where Simon’s buddy was having a coming-home BBQ.
I got to Simon’s buddy’s place, which is a very nice building right on the 16th Street Mall, an outdoor pedestrian mall right through the heart of downtown, and went up to the party. Very cool bunch of people all around my age. The one who was throwing the party had just come back from about 6 months traveling in South America and Southeast Asia. He and I had a fun little talk about traveling and things to do and see. The best part, of course, was getting to see Simon. The guy really hasn’t changed at all…still the same old Simon, gregarious and fun, almost larger than life. We hung around there laughing and joking and just generally screwing around until late when we went around the corner and hit some of the clubs. I had a few beers and eventually we made it to a place where we sat on the crowded roof deck. Here, the group of us saw a very drunk woman in a wedding dress that had been cut roughly with scissors. I invited her over to tell her tale, and it turns out that she was to be married today, and this was her (now former) fiancé’s mother’s wedding dress (it was pretty hideous), but had decided that she didn’t want to marry this guy. So, she ran off with her bridesmaids and decided to get trashed and fish for congratulation and adulation from those of us out tonight. After that little encounter, we ended up going downstairs when a few more friends of Simon’s friends joined us and we hit the dance floor until about 1 am, when we headed back to Simon’s place.

Sunday, June 15th:
Bethany and Lewis were at Simon’s about 9:00ish and I said goodbye to Simon and jumped in the car. He wasn’t in the best of conditions this morning, so declined to come out and say hello when the Zwicks showed up.
We got on the road and took off for Steamboat Springs, which is only about a 3 hour drive, so we got in fairly early. We drove up and down the only real road in town with the intent to go find a place to get the oil changed in the car; it being Sunday, nothing was open and we decided to try again in the morning. Next was a quick bite for lunch in a local park, which sat in the shadow of a hill used for tubing in the winter and next to a little river (which was running very high) that had some great rapids. We even saw a few goups rafting down the river, one of the guys even had on a Viking helmet...we thought that was pretty cool.
After lunch, we checked into the hotel. Lewis got it with his hotel points and it was the most impressive room I think I had ever seen. It had 2 full bathrooms and 2 real rooms with a total of 3 queen beds. Bethany and I took the single room. I think the place was designed for a group 10 college students in the winter who wanted to ski and spend as little on hotel per person as possible. Great place for just the 3 of us. We soon made our way on over to the real reason we came into town...the public hot springs pools. This is a great public facility, with a relatively low entry fee. The place was, understandably for a Sunday, packed with lots of people; some were locals, some were visitors, some were old and some young, but everyone was having a great time. They had pools of varying temps, from a few small hot tubs to some temperate lap pools, they even had a pair of water slides. Bethany and I had great fun on these. Eventually, we were too waterlogged and sunburnt to keep going, so we headed back to the hotel.
Lewis scrounged up some cooking utensils from the front desk, and we found a grill that the construction guys had left in the parking lot. So we ate some grilled steak, watched the Celtics-Lakers game (this was game 5, so the Lakers won) and hit the sack.

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