Vacation Journal

It has rained some almost every day for the last 8 days.  We stay clear of 4-wheel drive roads when they are wet.  We took a walk each day and a bike road most days.  On Sunday after church we went to Montrose to eat and shop.  I spent most of the day sitting under my awning working Sudoku puzzles, reading, and watching birds get peanuts.

Monday we went to a parade in Ridgway.  It was about what you would expect for a city of 1,000 holding a parade in conjunction with their Labor Day weekend rodeo – mostly horses.  There was a group of five girls learning how to use batons.  One flatbed truck had six girls tap dancing.  The last thing in the parade was two fire trucks with large nozzles mounted on top.  The firemen on the two trucks were having a water fight with each other.  The net result was a lot of wet parade watchers.  We saw it coming and got far enough away to stay dry.  We went to the town square park after the parade to watch some of the entertainment, including the family singers that had sung in our church service on Sunday.  They were from Longmont, Colorado.  We didn’t stay for the whole thing because it started raining.  Incidentally, the town square was the location where the hanging scene took place in the movie True Grit.  They have a dozen or more huge cottonwood trees in the park.  You can see them in the movie.

Tuesday, we just stayed around the trailer relaxing and watching birds in between walks and bike rides.

Wednesday we took our bikes to Ridgway to ride on their paved bike trail that follows the Uncompahgre River.  It’s a very nice path.  It crossed the river on an old iron railroad bridge.  It goes for several miles.  We rode for about 45 minutes.  Then we went back and relaxed at the RV.

Thursday we went to Telluride.  We rode the three free gondola rides that are used to get you between Telluride and Mountain Village.  We also rode the free shuttle that takes you all over Telluride.  They offer all these free rides for environmental purposes and to cut back on traffic in a town (Telluride) that has almost no room for cars.  We ate lunch at an interesting restaurant in Mountain Village near the gondola station.  We went to a presentation on Black Swifts (birds) at the Telluride Library.  The library was awesome.  It had two wireless internet networks plus about 20 PCs to use for internet.  It covered three levels.  The large brick building was only a few years old.  Anyway the Black Swift presentation was given by a full-time employee of the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory.  We were supposed to go to a local waterfall after the presentation (and after supper) to see some Black Swifts, but it was raining hard so the field trip got canceled.  We will try to catch the swifts in Box Canyon here in Ouray. 

I finally succeeded in working one of the most difficult Sudoku puzzles in the book I bought (featuring puzzles from the New York Times).  There are four levels of puzzles in the book.  I have now worked at least one puzzle at each level.  The hardest one took me five hours to work yesterday.  If you haven’t worked a Sudoku puzzle, search for them on the internet.  There are a couple websites that have them.  I see a guy working them regularly at the Ouray Library.  The easy ones only take about 10 minutes.