Thanksgiving

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! How about you?

I'm tempted to subject you to the standard list of "Things I Am Thankful For" (which would include, of course, my gratitude for my editor friends who know better than to correct me when I end a sentence with a preposition). But it's been done before, and you can probably guess everything I'd put on that list. I mean, who isn't thankful for chocolate covered cinnamon bears, the artistry of Jerome "Curley" Howard, and Weird Al Yankovic? And my time is short this morning, so I'll just throw out a quick synopsis of my Thanksgiving weekend, and save the emoting about Quality of Life for another day.

My original intent was to hit the road a couple of hours before dawn on Thursday, but I failed to plan adequately. I was awake plenty early, but by the time I finished packing enough spare socks and underwear, filling the car with oil/antifreeze, pumping up the tires, digging my sleeping bag out of my Fibber McGee closet, and duct-taping a mesh screen over my dryer exhaust vent to keep the birds from nesting in there...the sun was already peeking over the horizon. Fortunately, it was Thanksgiving Day, and 99.9% of the world had no plans to be on the highways with me. Traffic was not an issue.

I also brought along a box of old cassette tapes, with the intention of deciding which ones I should discard, and which ones should be digitized so I could still rock out to the tunes after I've traded in my car for a model that doesn't have a tape player. This fit in well with my semi-nostalgic mood as I headed toward places I had been before and had enjoyed greatly.

My first stop was the town of Maysville, Colorado. When I was a kid, our family would take a two-week vacation every year when Boeing had their summer shutdown and my dad could get away. We found a place called the Wagon Wheel Guest Ranch in Maysville, and spent several of our best family vacations there before my mom died. I have very fond memories of those trips, and thought I'd drop by the place to see if it was still there.

It was, and it looked great. I'll share some photos and additional memories in a later post. It wasn't quite as isolated as I remembered, but it's possible that some of the surrounding structures hadn't been there back when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the place was closed for the winter, so I didn't linger. My next scheduled stop was the Monarch Crest gift shop.

Driving up Monarch Pass brought up other memories, too. I passed by the place Tanner's mom and I stayed on our honeymoon. It was a time-share resort that had just opened, and we got the "free weekend stay" deal when we agreed to sit through their timeshare pitch. It was a recreation-oriented lodge, and our plan was to play tennis and racquetball, and then spend hours sipping champagne in the luxurious hot tub. It didn't quite work out that way: I crashed my motorcycle a week before the wedding, and was still a hobbling bloody mess during the honeymoon. I could barely walk, much less play racquetball...and my oozing wounds were not remotely suitable for hot tub immersion. Sadly, sitting through the timeshare pitch was probably the highlight of our stay there.

OK, I'm running out of time. This travelogue is going to have to be a multi-parter. I'll tell you about Monarch Crest, running at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, my daring ascent of Tenderfoot Mountain, and my peaceful turkey lunch at Elkhorn Ranch.

For now, I'll leave you with a couple of photos. This one is me at one of the viewpoints I visited during my run along the rim of the Black Canyon.



This is an inexpertly stitched multi-shot panorama of the lovely town of Salida, Colorado. (Click to embiggen.)



Enjoy your leftovers, and have a great day!