July has been a whirlwind. Mostly good stuff, with a small amount of COVID in it (mild illness, on a whim took a test and tested positive, but a few days later tested negative again).
I played the whole season with the Gateway Festival Orchestra this year, and it was a lot. It was fun to play so much orchestral music, but man I did not want to wake up on some of the Saturday mornings for rehearsal, haha. I also had some other random gigs: weddings and concerts, including some viola stuff.
I taught a bunch of students, and I have four more days of summer teaching left. I enjoyed having some students for just the summer, and I have set up my fall schedule, mostly.
And we did a few things with friends, though we also had to cancel some things. The most picturesque thing was going to see the Chihuly Exhibition at the Botanical Gardens.
We sadly attended a goodbye party for two friends, Michael and Heather, who are moving a few hours away. It was a wonderful party, but a sad occasion, though we are very happy for them!
We didn’t accomplish as much at the old house as we originally thought we would, but we have done a bunch of stuff at the new house. One thing we’ve been waiting on is putting stuff on the walls, but we did a little more of that this month too.
I read a ton of books this month. Highlights included Demon Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver, Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld and Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson.
I’ve got a lot to do this morning too, so I’ll leave you with that picture of Muriel and Miles sharing a hammock.
I got up early this morning and went for a little run in the rain. It was probably better than running in the hot sun, but I get nervous about slipping so I didn’t go as fast as I might have otherwise. (Which isn’t very fast). I’m working on run/walk intervals and focusing on my form.
I start PT (as the cool kids say) on my knee next week. This excellent for-profit health care system we have meant that I had to wait three weeks for an appointment, totally logical right, that’s capitalism, for ya. Also I have no idea what it will cost, since again, that’s capitalism. But my doctor said that I should be fine running, and what better time to re-enter the world of running than when you have a knee injury? (This is a joke, but it seems to be working okay anyway.)
July has been fun but busy lately. I had a busy weekend of gigs, and I adored it. I go back and forth so much, do I want more work, do I want less work, but the truth is that I feel great satisfaction from completing things when life is busy and I enjoy performing, and this past weekend had a lot of both. I enjoyed my downtime and my free weekends during the pandemic, but I’ve been feeling more personal satisfaction from keeping my calendar a bit busier. I’ve also done a little more viola lately which has been a fun add-on activity, and I’m enjoying things right now where they are!
This week I’ve been working at a composer’s camp as part of a piano trio: the students are writing pieces for piano trio and we play them for them and give suggestions and advice. Tomorrow (wow, tomorrow is Friday already) we play a concert of all the pieces for the students and their parents. It’s been a really fun week! We also have our third Gateway Festival Orchestra concert this weekend–I’ve been playing Principal second this summer and enjoying that, and otherwise, the weekend is not so full of work. I am okay with that as I need a little recovery time from the past few weeks.
I’m off now to do another trio session at the composer’s camp. I have a full afternoon of teaching after that: teaching this summer has been good overall, and it’s fun to have a different schedule each week as some students are on vacation or have this or that camp. I enjoy the variety, which is probably why I have thrived so much as a freelancer!
Welcome to another recap of our trip in the beginning of the summer. Today is my brother’s birthday, so I will dedicate this post to him. Happy Birthday, Jesse!
I wanted to see the Royal Gorge Bridge, and despite some advice to the contrary, it made the most sense to spend the night in Canon City and see the Bridge first thing in the morning. After seeing Crested Butte and Ouray it was a bit of a disappointment arriving in Canon City. (Sorry, Canon City people!)
We stayed at an inexpensive roadside motel with great reviews, which I would say were overblown. It was fine, but I wish we might have shelled out a little more money, or perhaps just camped along the highway somewhere. Oh well! Not all itinerary options will be perfect.
The neon sign was pretty cool though.
Anyway, we had dinner in the downtown area at a place called World’s End Brewery, and then watched a silly TV show starring Arnold Schwarnegger on the computer.
Day 13: We woke up and found a coffee shop called Cafe Belay, which was terrific: delicious coffee, awesome breakfast burritos, and a fun vibe. We loved the coffee shop and it raised our opinion of Canon City and put us in really good moods.
Next we drove the Skyline Drive, which was actually pretty terrifying and worth doing if you have somebody who is okay driving on sccary roads. It was on our way out of town and we thought it was worth doing. There was a part where you could see dinosaur footprints. It’s insane to try to think about being somewhere where dinosaurs actually walked!
These are dinosaur footprints, the bumpy parts, apparently!Skyline Drive. It’s one way, and we had parked and walked up a little trail to get more view.
Next we headed to the Royal Gorge Bridge. Despite knowing it was a big tourist trap, we definitely enjoyed our stay. We beat the crowds by 1) getting there early and 2) being early in the season. You pay an entrance fee to get up close, and that gets you the gondola ride as well. You can also pay extra for other activites like rock climbing and zip lining, but we thought we had spent enough.
The Royal Gorge Bridge, an engineering marvel!
We got there right before the gondolas opened, and realized we should probably take the gondola across first, and then walk back, since there weren’t any crowds yet.
Inside the gondola!
The gondola ride was great–it was super fun to ride across and look down. My fear of heights usually doesn’t extend to mechanical things, as I have more faith in them than my own ability not to trip and fall.
You get off the gondola on the other side, and you could ride back, but we wanted to walk, so we headed down the hill to the other side of the bridge. They make you walk by some other paid attractions, just in case you change your mind too. We stopped in to see the movie, which was interesting, except it had a character that was really geared towards kids and was super annoying, so I would rate it as a mixed thing, and would have preferred just to learn more about the bridge and gorge without the weird kid part.
What a lovely view!The gondolas passing in the air
When you walk across the bridge you get some amazing views.
Around the middle of the bridge!The bridge is lined with flags from all of the states. This is Missouri’s.
Anyway, we had a little ice cream snack on the other side of the bridge and then decided to head out. Our next stop was Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. As usual, the drive there was beautiful!
I didn’t know too much about Florissant Fossil Beds except that it was close to where we were going, and it looked worth doing. We started with a picnic lunch, and then headed into the Visitor’s Center to watch a movie and look at the museum. In a nutshell, there are a lot of fossils there as well as petrified tree stumps.
The Big Stump, great name!
We took a path named The Petrified Forest Loop to see various stumps, including the largest one, aptly named The Big Stump.
Selfie in front of the Big StumpThe Big Stump from a distance, it was the real highlight!
Anyway, we walked around the path, but a storm looked like it was headed our way, so we thought we might should move on. (What is my grammar here?) We headed over by car to see the Hornbeck Homestead, in a nearby but different part of the park as well.
The Hornbeck HomesteadThis little fellow was wandering around
Our home for the next two nights would be a campsite at Mueller State Park, so we headed there next to set up, hoping that the rain would hold off. It did, enough for us to set up, but then it rained, and poured.
Our campsite
Our site was gorgeous. It would have had a view of Pikes Peak except for the cloud cover, and it honestly might have been the best site in the entire park. But it was raining, and all our plans involved the outdoors, so decided to head to a nearby brewery for a drink and maybe food.
We initially thought the rain was letting up, and as we drove out of the campground we saw a double rainbow, and immediately pulled over to take photos.
It was amazing to see!
The rain continued however, and we had a nice dinner at Paradox Brewery Company. We returned to the campsite before it got too dark, and it did finally stop raining long enough for us to get a little fire going.
Mueller State Park was at about 9600 feet of elevation, and it was cold. In retrospect we should have brought our mummy bags, but we didn’t. It was a chilly night of sleep!
Day 14: The next morning we had a reservation to drive up Pikes Peak. It was damp and cold in the morning and we decided to skip cooking at the campsite and get a coffee on the way instead. We had to throw away some trash at a trashcan with a chain to move to keep it bear safe, and the chain was covered in ice, so that tells you how cold it was. We stopped at a coffee shop, Righteous Grounds Coffee Roasters and got some coffees plus some scones right from the oven. I had been joking on our walk in that I was hungry and didn’t care what we ate, and Louie had said he was just going to ask for two human rations for breakfast. But then they pulled out the freshly baked scones and we figured that sounded pretty good!
Anyway, we got to Pikes Peak but they told us that the peak wasn’t open due to the weather (blizzard conditions up top!). They led us to believe that it might open later, and we figured we might as well drive up as far as we could, so we did.
It was a nice drive with some lovely views, but we got to the end of where they had the road blocked and yup, we couldn’t pass further. We could see up higher that the snow was blowing quite a lot. Yes, snow, and yes, we were wearing coats by this point.
The road went over that ridge ahead of us and you can see the snow blowing around.
Disappointed, we drove back down. We headed towards Colorado Springs and the Garden of the Gods next. What a different landscape!
The traffic was crazy, so we decided to pull over and park and set off on foot. You can just drive through Garden of the Gods and see a lot, but you would be in bumper to bumper traffic, which wasn’t super appealing. We did a loop trail I found on All Trails, which covered the Palmer, Buckskin-Charley, Niobrara and Bretag Trails. It was about 4 miles, fairly flat, and was a great way to see Garden of the Gods!
I’m pretty sure the biggest mountain there is Pikes Peak.
After our hike, we were hungry again (the scones didn’t have a huge amount of lasting power) so we looked for a nice restaurant in nearby Manitou Springs. I found a cool looking vegetarian place called Adam’s Mountain Cafe, and we really enjoyed our meal there! The rest of Manitou Springs, not as much. We parked and walked around downtown (my knee was hurting me a bit by this point from all the hiking) and it was overcrowded and very tourist trap like. The springs were cool, but we just didn’t love the place, and after a bit decided to get out as it just wasn’t making us happy.
Louie drinking water from a spring
It starting raining on our way back and we decided to just go to Paradox Brewing Company again for dinner: pizza and beer this time. It had been really busy at Paradox the night before but this night was totally different, less busy, very chill, and we loved it again. Louie decided to buy a Paradox T-Shirt to commemorate our times there.
We were able to make a fire again at our campsite, and the nice thing about the campsite was that the gravel bottom of it kept the tent nice and dry, but sadly still absolutely freezing. We brought more clothes into the tent and did our best to stay warm that night, but it was still a chilly night!
Day 15: It was raining in the morning a bit, but the rain let up finally and we decided we’d better pack up the tent while we could! It was funny: under the tent was completely dry (tiny gravel ground cover for the win) but the tent was damp: of COURSE the last place we camp was raining so we had to pack everything up wet. Oh well, we had had good luck with the weather before Mueller and at least the scenery was beautiful.
We decided we couldn’t leave without doing a hike, so we went for a hike! It was a little rainy seeming, but it let up pretty quickly and we had a nice hike through the woods. We took a loop sort of trail from Revenuer’s Ridge to the Lost Pond, and felt at the end that we had accomplished something and gotten a good look at Mueller State Park.
We would love to return there to camp again and go to Paradox Brewery, and maybe try Pikes Peak again! Oh, and we stayed in site #42, but don’t tell everybody, it IS the best site! (Near pit toilets though, not real bathrooms, but there are bathrooms a short drive or long walk away. and the pits were well maintained, probably because so many neighbors had RV’s.)
That’s where I will leave you. Next we will head to Breckenridge and Frisco for the day and one night, and then to Vail for Louie’s conference.
I realized my last trip recap was published without a title…oops! It seems like maybe my program could have reminded me of that, like when you try to send an email in gmail without a subject. Anyway, it’s fixed now, and I may even get a few more recaps written soon: there are probably 2 or 3 posts left and I’ve at least figured out what pictures to show you.
Mostly I just take pictures here, of Miles and sometimes Muriel (you’ll see her later in the post.)
But let’s catch up in the present, shall we? I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July (for readers from the US, that is, otherwise I hope you had a wonderful Tuesday.) I had one full week of regular work, and did some fun things as well. One of my students gave me tickets to see Ben Folds (so generous!) as they couldn’t use them, so Louie and I took advantage of our new proximity to the Metrolink (our light rail) and took it downtown to see the concert.
Ben Folds with his band. The cellist and guitarist on the left are a band called Tall Heights and they sang the first set alone–I really liked them as well.
Other social activities included having dinner with a friend who is moving, having dinner with Louie’s parents, and visiting with friends who had just moved and getting to see their new house.
Miles always has plenty to say
I also played a concert at a retirement community after some MAJOR storms–we got some crazy winds around here and a lot of trees got knocked down. Luckily we didn’t have any real damage ourselves, but some people in the city were killed by falling trees, so it was a good reminder of how dangerous these storms are.
The most recent week then: my sister Carrie visited, and we did a variety of activities. We had dinner at Olio and Mission Taco (separate visits), went to the Whitaker Music Festival concert at the Botanical Gardens, the Kemper Art Museum, and spent the 4th at two different parties with friends, both with pools.
The guest room is ready for more visitors!
I’ve been working on getting things done this summer. I’ve been doing more planning on paper (I have been inspired by a podcast I started listening to called The Best Laid Plans) and have really felt like I’ve been staying on top of my to-do- list and getting things done. I do enjoy taking my weeks and figuring out how to work things out within them, though with the caveat that it is a lot easier in the summer when my actual teaching hours are lower and my overall workload is more manageable.
Though, that brings us back to my evergreen problem of, how to work less while still bringing in the income I would like and feeling job satisfaction. I don’t see many freelance/teaching musicians who do this as a good example, so it’s a tricky thing to figure out. I will be setting up my fall schedule at the end of July, and I suspect the answer for that is, no more new students for the fall, even though I will likely get a dozen queries. For gigs, I’ve been doing some things lately I really enjoy, and I want to have room in my schedule for them. I also enjoy the weird thing of looking at my calendar empty and then gradually seeing it fill up with activities, concerts, gigs, etc. I do enjoy some days off, but I also enjoy seeing colleagues at jobs and playing fun concerts, so it is a constant game of give and take. When I do too much of any one thing I tend to wish I were doing something else.
Muriel, I promised I would share a picture! She loves jumping up on this wall.
Real talk: I do have a tendency to feel overly jealous of things I see other people doing, and some of my overscheduling is caused by a bit of FOMO though. I remind myself that nobody can play everything, and that I have had many wonderful opportunities and PLENTY of work, and I have a lovely old home which I love, and Louie and the cats, and that’s plenty to have. But I am not immune to the jealously factor, especially when so many people I went to college with or know are traveling the world playing music, or getting to sub with amazing orchestras, or who knows what. But it’s all relative, and I really try to focus on what I have in my life: for instance, I still haven’t even managed to finish telling you about my last vacation since it was so long! And I have too many students, and I am getting to play viola on a chamber music concert this week and playing four straight weekends of orchestra music with the Gateway Festival Orchestra. So, really, I am sure people are jealous of me, and I in return am jealous of them, and then we should all say, hmm, that probably cancels out, but that’s far easier said than done.
Other real talk: I think I mentioned that I slipped on the mud in May and hurt my knee? It had healed somewhat but was still bothering me so I went to the doctor last week. It looks like I sprained or strained my MCL, on the inside of the knee. It will likely heal up just fine but I am going to be doing some physical therapy, which unfortunately won’t start until later in the month. I did have the go ahead to continue running, which I have been trying to get back into, so I was glad to know that was okay to do. Hopefully the PT will get things back to normal over time!
I’m off to do some errands around the house, as one does: laundry, and probably more laundry. Oh, and for local readers, tonight is the first Gateway Festival Orchestra Concert, and the weather looks great!
This is the continuation of a trip Louie and I took in May/June through New Mexico and Colorado. My goal for the trip was to visit some places we had never been, or some places we had never been together.
When we left off we were leaving the South Rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Now, there are two things I loved about this trip: 1) none of the drives between places were very long and 2) all of the drives were absolutely gorgeous and stunning and awe inspiring.
From the Black Canyon we headed to Gunnison first (yesterday I misspoke and said Gunnison when I meant Montrose: I have corrected that, but I’m clarifying in case you read yesterday) through the National Curecanti Recreation Area. As expected and enjoyed, this was a delightful drive. We did have to sit through some construction, probably about 30 minutes waiting for a one way road to go our way, but it was fine and we continuing listening to a podcast about Shackleton and his adventures in Antarctica. It is important to note that anytime we experienced the slightest amount of hardship such as cold, tiredness, etc, we compared it to Shackleton, exclaiming that we knew exactly how he felt! In any case, we continued on our route.
At the Visitor’s Center in Black Canyon I had picked up a hiking brochure and chosen a short hike along our route called the Neversink Trail in order to get out of the car a bit and also explore this part of the country. It was only about a 1.5 mile hike, so it seemed perfect to stretch our legs.
Walking along the Gunnison River
However, after walking for about 5 or 10 minutes, the trail was flooded out, so we had to turn back. Oh well!
We thought, oh we can pass that, and then we looked into the distance and realized it was just totally flooded out.
So, we hit the road again. It should be mentioned that we passed some cool places and several campgrounds that would be worth visiting by me or someone else.
Anyway, next we got to the town of Gunnison. It looked pretty cute and we were hungry, so we parked, and wandered over to a place called the Sherpa Cafe for some indian food. It was really tasty! After that it was only about a 30 minute drive up to Crested Butte. Again, this was an absolutely gorgeous drive.
We were only staying in Crested Butte for one night–it was a later addition to my itinerary, and in retrospect I wish we had stayed there longer and skipped the next part but I really did want to see the Royal Gorge Bridge (another day, I’ll tell you later). We checked into the Old Town Inn and got settled and then headed out again.
We thought we would drive around a bit and get our bearings and then find a short hike. We ended up driving up a wonderful gravel road called Gothic Road for several miles and enjoying the amazing views.
Finally we got to a little town, with signs about scientists.
We saw a little visitor’s center and popped in and talked with a friendly woman about the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory and all the things they do there, studying the Rocky Mountains all summer long! It was really cool to learn about. Shortly past there the road ended (for now) as it was too snowy, so we walked up a ways and then decided to head back down to town.
I’d found a nice trail on All Trails called the Woods Walk so we went to do that next. It was a beautiful hike through some aspen forests and then above a river. It ended with a place that was fairly muddy/a bit flooded, so we decided at that point we had gone far enough and turned back.
We really loved Crested Butte. We were very early in the summer season, so a lot of the hikes were still closed, but we enjoyed just walking around, and we enjoyed how NOT crowded it was. I’m sure that changes later!
We got back and cleaned up for dinner and walked into the downtown area–our hotel was on the outskirts of the downtown, so very convenient. We decided to get dinner at a cool looking Mexican place called Bonez. I would highly recommend it! We shared the “stoplight salsa” which had red, yellow (pineapple habanera) and green salsa, and I had mushroom enchiladas and both were absolutely delicious.
After dinner we went and got into the hotel’s hot tub for a bit before going to bed. The hotel was perfectly nice and quiet, and I would recommend it.
The next morning I had found a hike on All Trails that was open, so we checked out and headed there. It was called the Upper Upper Loop on All Trails, and parking was extremely limited–the lot was full at first, so we drove around a bit deciding what to do, and then finally checked back again and there was a space, so we headed out on the hike.
It was a lovely hike, with views of Mount Crested Butte and the town of Crested Butte, along with lots of birds, wildflowers, and chipmunks. We saw quite a few mountain bikers, and several other people hiking.
We decided to turn back after 1.5 or so miles, not because it wasn’t nice, but because we had gotten a later start than planned. We enjoyed hiking back and then decided to do one more short hike in a slightly different area of Crested Butte. All Trails called it the East River Hike, and it was about 3 miles round trip as well.
We made it most of the way before turning back due to some mud. I should say that I was being extra cautious about mud after slipping in it at home before the trip and hurting my knee! My knee was mostly holding up okay: it hurt most after sitting for awhile and trying to stand, so getting out of the car a lot to walk actually seemed to help the most.
The storm clouds looked to be rolling in on this hike and we did pull on our rain gear at one point. It started raining more right at the end and we ran the rest of the way to the car!
After that, we got into the car and headed south. Our next stop was Canon City to see the Royal Gorge, and I’d booked a hotel overnight again.
It was another amazing drive. We went over Monarch Pass near Salida. We got out to take a few pictures and it was freezing!
There was some sort of gondola, which wasn’t running at the time, but may be now.
And then we drove through the Bighorn Canyon ( I swear there are several Bighorn Canyons in the country though) and saw some amazing places to camp (jealous, in retrospect, but also we HAVE camped along a highway before and it can be hard to sleep even in a beautiful setting with truck noises).
Anyway, that’s where I leave you for today. Crested Butte was gorgeous and the downtown was adorable. The ski area looked like all ski areas do, nothing special in my opinion, though if you are a skier you might love it. In any case, I highly recommend visiting!
Day 9: We left Ouray and headed to Montrose. Our first stop was at a laundromat to do laundry, very exciting but necessary. I have decided that it makes sense to do laundry about 1 time per week traveling, and that laundromats really are pretty quick and don’t take much time. We were out in an hour or so, very fast! Then to Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
We had site A27 reserved for two nights, so that was our first stop, to get our bearings and go ahead and set up the tent. Getting the tent and stuff out of the car frees up some space for other things, so it’s kind of nice when we can. After setting up the tent and checking out the pit toilets (which were, honestly, the best pit toilets I have ever used: clean, with a deodorizing spray that spritzed automatically fairly often.)
Very pretty campsite!
First we went to drive down to the East Portal. It’s a beautiful drive down to the river, fairly steep and windy.
There’s a campground at the bottom, which Louie had stayed at in a previous visit, but it doesn’t take reservations so I wasn’t sure. It turned out that we could have grabbed a site, but we were also happy with our current site. We walked along the Gunnison River (which is what carved out the canyon) and even saw a snake!
We may not have seen many other animals on this trip but there was no shortage of snakes.
We had a quick lunch along the river at a picnic ground and then went back to the top of the Canyon to do more sightseeing.
It’s hard to really show the scope of the Black Canyon in pictures: it’s called the Black Canyon because it is deep and narrow, and the other side is pretty close, so the sun doesn’t shine into it very much. We did the whole, drive along the road and pop out at all the stops and walk along the walks, marvel at everything, and take a million pictures of approximately the same view. It was great fun, and Louie even got into taking bird pictures which meant all of this took even more time.
Around 6:30 pm we hadn’t quite seen everything, (that is, all the stops) but we decided to head back and make dinner: we had two nights here which meant there was plenty of time the next day.
We enjoyed a lovely fire, as it got fairly chilly as the sun set.
The campground was lovely, except for we could hear one campsite playing music loudly and talking until late at night, past quiet hours. This annoys me, especially the music playing: I think there should be no music allowed in the National Park campgrounds because it scares away wildlife!
In the morning we heard rustling around our campsite(finally the people were quiet, ha) and I assumed it was a nearby camper, but it was actually a small group of deer poking around.
Perhaps not the best deer picture, but you can get the idea.
We headed out on a loop hike from the campground to the visitor’s center and back, on the Rim Rock Trail, the Oak Flat Loop Trail and the Uplands Trail. Some parts were a little scary, as it goes down below the edge a bit and then back up, but overall it was just a nice hike, with a bit of sun by the end. (You can basically climb into the canyon, but you can’t really hike into it, and there are very limited permits to go into the canyon, which I had no desire for anyway, but the Oak Flat Trail dips over the edge a little bit.
We were back at the campground so we had lunch, relaxed a bit, and saw some more deer walking around. Well, likely the same deer.
Anyway, then we refilled our waters and headed out to “finish” the South Rim. We had a few more stops and the last one had a little hike to Lookout Point. It was beautiful: we saw a super cool lizard and some wild turkeys in addition to amazing scenery.
I loved these craggly trees.That’s some farmland that borders the park, with an amazing set of mountains behind it.This lizard just sat there letting us take his photo. He was even more colorful than he appears in this photo. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
The second night we had another, closer, set of annoyingly loud music playing campers, who continued partying past quiet hours. The camp host was not nearby and I think they just didn’t seem to care that the campground was so loud. It was unfortunate, because the setting was absolutely gorgeous and most people were quiet and respectful, normal national park campers, with just a few rude groups which can ruin the whole vibe. I wish people would find a different place to party and that the campground hosts/rangers had made sure quiet hours were observed. It gets light around 5:30 am so it’s nice to get some sleep while it’s dark!
Anyway, the next morning we headed out towards our next stop, Crested Butte. I’ll leave things there, and I hope I can get the next installment out more quickly than this one!
One more thing to add: we visited the South Rim of the Black Canyon, You can visit the North Rim as well, but it takes several hours to drive from one to the other: there is no easy way around. So while we could have done that we decided to save it for another trip. It is less busy, supposedly, though we were surprised how busy the South Rim was: everybody said it was not crowded and that hardly anybody went there! I suppose it was Memorial Day Weekend and that probably contributed to the noise and slight busy-ness.
