Castlewood Hike

 Today was a beautiful fall day, with nothing on the calendar, so we decided to spend some time hiking at Castlewood. We hiked a new trail for us today, the East Canyon Trail. It heads east (surprise!), under the “bridge to nowhere”* into a preservation area where dogs are not allowed, visitors are instructed to stay strictly on the trail, and it’s closed completely from November through April (to give the wildlife a “vacation” from humans). 

It was beautiful, as Castlewood always is, and the trail was different than others we’ve hiked there… going through several different types of environments as we hiked. We walked across huge sheets of rock,  wound through forested areas, and hiked across a large expanse of prairie. The canyon walls are dotted with caves and overhangs that provided shelter to the Paleo, and later, Ute Native Americans. Fortunately there were trail markers all along the route…without those markers we never would have found our way around the loop and back. The entire loop is somewhere between 4 and 5 miles and the kids did really well. It’s probably our longest hike so far, and they both managed without any trouble. 

I took a ton of photos, here are a few…

Trail markers…

Some of the cairns seemed to defy gravity…

And a few were huge!

M’s hand coming through a hollow tree…

R cooling her feet in Cherry Creek…

And a few more just because they are so pretty.   

* Here’s the story of the “The Bridge to Nowhere”: 

By the 1930s, the new Colorado Highway 83 (Parker Road) had been paved from Denver to Franktown. Just south of Franktown was the road builders’ biggest obstacle: the 232-foot-wide Wildcat Canyon. (The canyon was renamed Castlewood Canyon in the 1920s). A graceful, arched bridge was designed and built to span the canyon – one of only six such bridges in Colorado at the time. It seemed clear sailing for the road to be completed to Colorado Springs. But plans changed. State engineers were told to abandon further work on the road. The pavement of Highway 83 came to an abrupt end at the north end of the sparkling new bridge, leading to the nickname, “The Bridge to Nowhere”.

First snow

The weather is changing fast…

And while I’m not sad to see the end of the garden (which never did recover from a midsummer hail storm!) I wouldn’t mind a bit more fall weather before winter sets in.

This is supposed to be a quick snow with warmer days tomorrow and over the weekend, so I can’t complain. And the snow softly falling to the ground is so beautiful, I could watch it all day. 

Autumn

 First fire of the season…

Piper approves. 

October Birthdays

 We celebrated K and R’s birthdays yesterday with a family get together here at the house. After months and months of not being able to get together in person, inside, I appreciate so much the ability to be together, inside, without masks, eating and enjoying each other’s company. 

This is part of our group text from before we got together…

Two years ago, who’d have thought we’d be testing ourselves for a potentially deadly virus before getting together for a simple meal? 😢

It felt so good to get together though, and I insisted on a picture of all of us of course… (all of us except granddaughter #1 who is away at school…and sorely missed!)

We’re kind of a motley crew! 

And here’s another one of our favorite newly engaged couple! 🥰

 I found this in a book I’m reading and want to remember it…

“There is…something marvelously reassuring about the room, a warmth even in the gloom. The unfinished pine of the walls and ceiling has mellowed, over the years, to a rich honey color, as if stained by the warmth of the people who built it into a shelter…”

~from Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

Dearfield

 We made another trip out to Dearfield today. 

We’ve visited several times over the past year or so but have never been when there has been an “event”… 

I have to say it’s MUCH better to visit when this tiny historic settlement is filled with people, music, and life. 

Dearfield was the largest Black homesteading settlement in Colorado, and during its heyday in the late 1910’s it was a thriving farming community with a several hundred residents. Sadly, a combination of the Great Depression and the dry Dust Bowl years doomed the community. It is now a ghost town… 

But today it was alive! There was a great little band set up on the porch of the old Dearfield Lodge, and all the buildings were open so we could wander around inside and get a sense of what things might have been like back then. 

Across from the Dearfield Lodge there had been a dance hall, which is gone now, but I could imagine how 100 years ago, right where we were standing, there had also been music and dancing and people laughing and babies playing just as there were today. 

The (trumpy ) congressman from that district spoke and seemed to compare Dearfield to Amache, a Japanese internment camp in SE Colorado, and I was offended. Dearfield was built on hopes and dreams, on strength and courage and the desire to create a better world… and through no fault of its inhabitants, it didn’t survive. Amache was built on racism, loss, and fear. 

But once the congressman was gone, it was a lovely afternoon with good conversation, good music and a lot of history. 

On the way home R kept saying this had been her “best day ever”. 

October 1 sunrise

 The sunrise this morning was stop-me-in-my-tracks stunning…

I had a nice pasture walk this morning too…

 I surprised a good sized group of deer grazing on the hill at the back of the pasture, and admired how everything is putting on new fall colors of every different variation of gold, orange, and red. And, for some reason, the whole pasture smelled like sage. It was a lovely walk.