The air starts to get warmer. You wake up at five in the morning and can already feel the promise of a hot day ahead. Just the barest tinge of the nighttime coolness filters through your open window and fluttering curtains.
It is summer.
Colorado is wonderful in the summer. It is hot, but not humid. There are hundreds of adventures just waiting for you to choose them. Mountains and lakes and trails and shows.
Driving back toward Denver along I-70 — a road that slices clear through the state west-to-east and in reverse — I read the following message on one of those electronic traffic signs: “ROCKS ON THE ROAD…MM 56-57…PROCEED WITH CAUTION”
I temporarily considered giving up right on the spot and living out the rest of my days in the back of the Prius, bartering for food and other supplies with the rock sculptures I would imagine up just as soon as I settled onto the side of the road.
But then I reasoned the odds that a rock of I-70 would take out our exhaust system twice in one year were slim. Really slim. Microscopic. And we had already made it all the way to Grand Junction with two bikes strapped to the rear of the vehicle without mishap. So time to be an adventurer, rocks be damned.
Where would we be without these 10-on-10 posts, friends? Well, we’d be a vacant blog, that’s what. All boarded up with a No Trespassing sign plastered to the entrance. Yikes!
Autumn is always an introspective season for me. Spring is often considered the time to clear out the cobwebs and start fresh. But I think Autumn inspires that feeling in me. Something about reaching the last few months of the year, makes me look back and consider what I have (or have not) accomplished. It makes me think more concretely about what direction to take next. What move might be ahead. All the changing colors around me, the shedding of the old to hibernate in the cold and spring forth anew, inspires a bit of personal change as well. It’s beautiful.
So for this month’s 10-on-10, I give you one last look at the autumn we had this year. It was a warm and lingering one. Really quite perfect. Full of brilliant colors and corn mazes and more warmth. I hope you enjoy this last look. Because as you read, we in Colorado are beginning winter, finally. Snow and cold and flurries and freezing are ahead. Here we go!
But before all that… take a look at these fellow 10-on-10ers and see what they’ve been up to this fine October. Give them a clink of your hot chocolate mug and settle in for the winter.
There are people in this world who hear of a 100-mile endurance race (ahem, 100.5-miles — it’s that last half mile that will really get you), and decide that they are the kind of person who can conquer that 100-mile, up-mountains-down-mountains-through-freezing-creeks-and-bug-clouds-on-gravel-and-dirt-and-roadways, endurance race, and come out the other side triumphant.
I am not one of those people. But we met several of them two weekends ago in the San Juan Mountains while Dan covered the Hardrock 100. I tagged along for the ride. But though I wasn’t on the clock, I did have a few different cameras at hand. I took some photos. These aren’t just running photos. In fact, most of them aren’t running photos. We were in the beautiful San Juan Mountains, a part of Colorado I hadn’t spent much time in previously. Little mountain towns, nature abounding all over the place. These are those photos. Those are these photos. Those are both awkward sentences.
So…to the photos!
Yeah, we brought the white turtle all over the mountains, not to mention the most killer, two-foot tall speed bumps I’ve ever seen. And she survived! Like a warrior, our little Prius. No really.
Them bugs were diabolical.
I wanted to steal adopt, this fellow. Mountain dogs are the best dogs.
Colorado has my heart like no other place ever will.
This past weekend, DP and I drove around a chunk of the southwestern part of the state as he covered the Hardrock 100 Endurance Run. I have way more to say on the subject. But to get an idea about what exactly an “endurance run” is, click on that link and read Dan’s story. He did a fine job of writing about the event (a 48-hour event for some — I mean, what?!).
But, I will save all that for another post later this week. For now, I have these few photos that I shot while on the road over the past few days.
Colorado. You make my heart sing. Keep on doing what you’re doing.
