MAY 2005 - Visit to Dave and Carol Ann in Cedaredge Colorado

With a reasonably early start, we arrived in Cedaredge.  The surroundings are beautiful, with lots of open ground and a stream running through there back yard.  Going for a walk, we saw lots of deer.  They are well feed by all of the flowers in nearby gardens!

A walk around town included the Pioneer Town Museum with it's wooden silos.  There are lots of little shops and an old apple packing plant that has been converted to an artist's co-op and show room for local talent.  And you probably can't read the blue sign on the building, but the name of the store is "DECOR UNLIMITED".

We took several day trips to the surrounding area.  The town of Ridgeway is the home of the Ridgeway Railroad Museum.  This is where they have rides on the old "Galloping Goose" - looks like an old school bus converted to run on tracks.  The mail truck is another example of these conversions.  These vehicles ran at a time when railroads were steam engine powered and the company could not afford to buy or run those locomotives, so they converted existing vehicles to run on the rails.

Leaving Ridgeway and heading south toward Ouray we got to travel a beautiful road.

Ouray was a prosperous mining town that has now become a pleasant upscale tourist town.  We hiked up to Box Canyon Falls - a falls cutting its way through a tall canyon (couldn't get a good picture).  A lunch with some locally brewed beer, and exploring the architectures of the old town.

Cedaredge where Carol Ann and Dave live is at the base of Grand Mesa.  We took a drive along the top of Grand Mesa and looked down toward "home".  At a ski resort lodge, the snow was still high enough that there was a path dug to one door, and the rest was just roof showing.  It's this snow melting that feed the stream running through their back yard.

Grand Junction is the railroad city.  While it still has lots of rail traffic, and you can catch Amtrack, they don't have much of a station operating.  Their old station looks like it is being prepared to be restored.  There is building materials piled around, but no signs of anything yet started.  The stained glass window is over the main door on the track side of the building.

The town of Delta is a combination industrial and artist community.  There are sculpures along the street near the arts and crafts shops.  Lots of folks have trains, but how many have a Nickel Buffalo - especially one that is full scale.  The sculpute entitled "End of the Road" is impressive just from the fact that someone was able to put those twists into the axles.

Telluride is another former mining town that has become a trendy ski resort.  It prospered because it had a rail line into town to export the ore.  The rails are now gone, but the old train station is now a restaurant.  There were lots of young adults around town.  So Dave and I looked at the prices of houses - extreme.  So we asked a real estate agent what all of these young folks did that allowed them to afford to live in Telluride.  His answer was that they had rich parents.  You too can have an empty nest by buying your kids homes in Telluride!

And then it was time to head home - but, of course, not directly.  Going through southern Utah, we visited Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Capital Reef National Park.  These are all north of Bryce and Zion.

I've seen many pictures of the arches, but you don't really appreciate the immensity until you are standing in and on them.  No, that's not us in the photo bottom right, but it gives you a better scale when you see those folks in the photo.

In Capital Reef National Park, there was a stop along a winding stream and a boarkwalk along a cliff wall.  From that boardwalk, you could view many hundred feet of petroglyphs.  There was no information as to whether this was a single story or a series over a long period of time.  Sure looks like space helmets with antennae to me.

Then it was up over one more high plateau, and back to Las Vegas.  Remember, this is mid-May and there is still snow as we look in the direction of Bryce Canyon.

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