GroupWBench

Back in August we took a week off and enjoyed a vacation. Rather than going sailing somewhere that might have fallen into the path of a hurricane, we decided to take a break from the sizzling summer heat of South Texas, so we went to Colorado and Wyoming. We figured we could do some hiking, whitewater rafting, see the big eclipse, and just have some fun.

For some reason, I had decided that only a handful of people would have any interest in seeing the solar eclipse and we didn't try to make any reservations until a week or so before the event. It turned out that everyone was headed to the path of the eclipse. There were no rooms at the inn, campground, hut, yurt, igloo, hotel, motel, or backyard within a hundred miles of the eclipse path. We thought it over and decided to just head that way and play it by ear. If it came down to it, we could just park the car and crash somewhere the night before.

The drive up was really nice. We drove through a huge forest of monster sized windmills near Big Spring. There are a lot of bird choppers up and running out there. I guess there is enough wind out that way to justify the expense of building miles and miles of them. There is some really nice countryside from Raton to Pueblo that we enjoyed. It was nice to feel the temperature drop off as we got up there. We spent a night in Denver. As we headed that way, we decided that Casper was going to be over run with eclipse watchers and decided to pick a really small place in eastern Wyoming that might not be such a popular destination. We decided that Torington, Wyoming would be out of the way enough that we could sneak in and back out without running into too many crowds.

Driving up the day before the eclipse, we stopped in Cheyenne for a bite of lunch and managed to drive by the house that my mom grew up in. I was surprised to see that I remembered the neighborhood pretty well. The house looked smaller than my memories of it from when I visited my grandparents there. It also looked like someone had started a remodeling job and then walked off. The place was kind of a sad sight.

The drive from Cheyenne to Torrington the afternoon before the eclipse was pretty nice. There was very little traffic on the road and we congratulated ourselves for outsmarting the masses. When we got into town, Ivy spotted a sign for a site that had port-a-johns and parking with good views for the eclipse. Now we knew we'd outsmarted the world. We drove up there and found a bald hill top with great visibility all around. The place was empty. We parked and eventually the rancher that owned the place came by and said they hadn't really thought anyone would be there the night before, but we were welcome to stay – for a one time good price. We paid and car camped that evening. It was pretty comfortable, actually.

The next morning we started seeing cars show up in the field near us. By the time the eclipse came through, there were sixty or so cars full of people hanging there with us. The event itself was pretty neat. When we were in the totality, we could see out far enough in the distance all around that there was light just over the horizon. The experience was really beautiful to watch. Once the show was over, we packed up, ran into town for a bite of lunch, and then discovered the only thing we had outsmarted was ourselves. It turned out that people had trickled into the eclipse zone over a couple of days so there wasn't a lot of crowding on the roads. Everyone in the world left at the same time. What took us a little over an hour to get from Cheyenne to Torington the day before turned into an eight hour marathon of stop and go driving. And once we got to Cheyenne, we still had to drive to Ft. Collins. Normally, that would take just under an hour. We were lucky on that last leg, it only took an hour and a half or so. That was not a fun drive.

We took a day and ran from Ft Collins up to Vedauwoo, Wyoming for a little hike. The place is a remarkably beautiful pile of pink granite. I'd been there once before on a climbing trip. We spent the afternoon hiking around and enjoying the sights. We are now thinking about taking a climbing trip there next summer.

The next day we had a great visit with our friend Kris. She and I worked together at a couple of places back in the far past. She has gone on climbing trips and vacations with us a few times. She moved to Denver a couple of years back. The visit was really nice. It was good to catch up with Kris. Plus, Ivy got to experience the freak show that downtown Denver has become. Colorado and Texas both should have put up "Closed to Californian Freaks and Weirdos" signs a decade ago. The density of man-bun wearing hipster wannabes was really more than I could take.

We escaped Denver and ran down for a couple of days in Colorado Springs. There, I overcame my discomfort with horses long enough for Ivy and I to take a trail ride up in the mountains outside of town. The countryside was beautiful, Ivy really enjoyed the ride, and I survived without being thrown into cactus or having the horse take off through the woods ignoring me. Those were my previous equestrian exposures. Ivy tells me that spending the whole ride ready to bail off the horse probably made it less comfortable for me. I don't know about that. I felt that if I could choose to jump off at any point, then when the horse decided to do me in, I could have a measure of control over the situation.

We took a morning trip to Garden of the Gods and watched some climbers there. Watching the climbing there and at Vedauwoo gave me the climbing bug again. Once Ivy has healed up her "Frankenfoot" (Post to come on that) we will try to head back to the rocks some. From there we went out to the other side of Canyon City and spent an afternoon whitewater rafting. It was a little cloudy and rainy, but we were fortunate to have nice people share the raft with us and the trip went well. We got to see other people fall out of their boats, but didn't have to take a swim ourselves. I did discover my new white cargo shorts become quite transparent when they get wet. That made things a bit interesting when we finished up.

Rather than spending another day or two hiking in Colorado, we decided to cut things a bit short and head back home. The word was that hurricane Irma was going to head inland and cause some problems in the San Antonio area. We scooted home, stopping to load up on 'just-in-case' water in Lubbock. We got a bit of rain, but the worst of things ended up staying on the coast.

I'll post a few pictures from the trip tomorrow.