Breckenridge, Day 3

Today was a driving tour. I have only ever been up here in the winter, when we spend most of our time either skiing or trying to get ski boots off or on, so I didn't really know the lay of the land around these parts. Since we will probably go fishing the next two days, we took today to cruise around to the south a little bit:


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Our route first took us up over Hoosier Pass, elevation 11,542 feet. The view from the road over the top was impressive - enormous mountains all around, in every direction. We cruised on down the other side, first through Alma (which claims to be the highest incorporated town in North America, although Wikipedia feels otherwise), and then continued on to a wide spot in the road called Hartsel. Hartsel is located in South Park, which is one of the high mountain plains that you find yourself in the middle of sometimes up here. (This is not what the show was named for, Dad assures me.)



The high plains are strange, because they are so huge, but they don't really seem like it. Mountains which it looks like you could walk to in 20 minutes are actually 25 miles away! Something that has always fascinated me about those wide open spaces is the way you can see the clouds (when there are clouds) moving across the ground as well as across the sky. That is cool stuff. And I could see it today.

From Hartsel we turned southwest toward Buena Vista, or as people around here call it, Byoo-na Vista. Once we got there, we turned north again, passing the Collegiate Peaks on the left - Princeton, Yale, and Harvard. The Collegiate Peaks are part of the Sawatch Range, which in turn are part of the Rockies. I don't really understand all these divisions, and according to T, they're pretty arbitrary anyway.



Our goal for the whole day was to end up in Copper Mountain by 3:00, which we did. In fact, we were there about an hour early, which worked out well, because we hadn't had lunch yet. This weekend in Copper was Guitar Town, which included a performance this afternoon by slide guitar legend Sonny Landreth. We camped out near the back of the crowd (since we were late arrivals), but still had a pretty good view - it was a small crowd. He played for a little over an hour, and there was certainly some screamin' guitar. And in case you needed visual stimulation as well as auditory, all that was required was a glance at some of the odd characters in the crowd. Oh, and there was olfactory stimulation as well - the kids next to us were smoking dope for the first 20 minutes of his set.



We got home probably around 5, and had a lazy afternoon of reading and drinking beer on the balcony. Dinner was delicious - we made a salad. Spring greens, blueberries, raspberries, avocado, and last night's leftover venison, topped with a golden balsamic vinaigrette with honey, made by yours truly.

Time for bed - we have an early morning tomorrow. I hear there are fish in the waters around here, but instead we've decided to drive 75 minutes away to go hunting for them instead.