9-11-12-13-2013 Colorado - Cousins and Aspen

We arrived in Palisades, CO, about noon and had a great time with Sharon’s cousin, Fern Spaulding and her daughter, Leslie.  It had been quite some time since their last visit so it took a lot of catching up.  In fact, we had so much fun (and good burgers and spice cake with fresh peaches!!) that we spent the night in the driveway and headed out the next morning.  Many of you may have heard Colorado was getting pounded with heavy rains in the eastern part of the state so we decided to drag our feet a little so the rain would move on.

 

Cake & peaches for breakfast!!  Yum!!

These flowers were from seeds from our grandmother's house.

Laughing is such fun!!

Sharon, Fern & Leslie

Our next stop would be Aspen. We've always been big John Denver fans, particularly Bob, and there is a sanctuary dedicated to him. We decided to take the long way to Aspen on counsel from cousin, Leslie.  You have to go over Independence Pass either going to or coming from Aspen. The pass is over 12,000 ft. She advised us to not take the RV over the pass because the road is very narrow.

 Now Bob didn't really take that too well and thought he could do it.  To take the long way would be another 50 miles and going over that Pass seemed to be the quicker way to get to the other side of the mountain.  There is a restriction of a max length of 35 ft per vehicle going over the pass.  Now we are 33 ft long so we have 2 ft to spare. We could unhook the car and both drive over the pass. Of course, Bob would take the lead and Sharon could follow.  The video would be spectacular as Bob and the RV plunge over the edge.  I’m sure Utube would love it.  We can do this--but we did not.

After some convincing and a few slaps alongside the head, Bob came to his senses (it must have been the thin air) and decided to take the long way. We found an RV site about 7 miles from Buena Vista where another of Sharon’s cousins lives and we would visit the next day.

By taking the long way, we drove on the Million Dollar Highway.  We had seen it from Amtrak last summer.

We had a quick lunch and headed up the Pass to Aspen.  Bob was still convinced that he could have gotten the RV over the Pass.  The first several miles on the highway were a piece of cake. After that, it was like a piece of spaghetti very narrow, windy and in some cases straight up and straighter down.  We reached the Pass and walked out to the point to check out what the world looked like at that elevation.  As we were admiring the view, we heard what seemed like race cars coming up the road.  Sure enough, there were about 30 Ferraris headed to Aspen.  There were several events planned in Aspen on the weekend and the Ferrari’s were part of them.  They stopped at the Pass for photo opts.  Timing is everything.  Can you image Bob blocking the highway with the RV, or better yet, backing down the highway so those Ferraris could get to Aspen?  Now if you own a Ferrari you got lots of money to spare, so pushing that RV over the edge would easily have been agreed upon.

See the Ferraris headed up the mountain?

It had been so quiet when I took the earlier picture of Bob.

He's a dork, but he's my dork!

We made it to Aspen in our humble little Equinox after stopping several times to admire the scenery and to thank God that we did not take the RV over the Pass.

Even though it had rained going over the Pass, the blue skies and sun came out when we got to Aspen, and we thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon.  Sharon’s dad had helped build the original ski-T-lifts back in the 40’s so it had a special place in our hearts.  Cousin Fern had talked about when Dad lived with them while he was on the crew so those stories were fun to hear.

We spent some time at the John Denver Sanctuary, had a glass of wine at one of the local fancy restaurants and viewed the beautiful settings.  For those of you that have not been to Aspen lately, it’s a very high end kind of place.  It’s like going to Rodeo Dr. in Palm Springs, where the rich and famous come to relax and play.

Many of his songs/poems were engraved on stones.

So peaceful, thinking about the good times.

We made it back over the Pass and to Buena Vista in time to have dinner at one of the local Mexican restaurants and settled in for the evening.

Aren't the Aspens beautiful?

In the morning we stopped by Sharon’s cousins Barb & Ron Little,  and had a good visit and lunch.  Her cousin is renowned for her apple pies.  The day before we arrived in Buena Vista they had published an article in the local paper about her cousin’s delicious pies.  So when we arrived at the local café, it was like we were eating with a celebrity, everyone wanted to visit with her and get that secret recipe, nobody got that recipe- not even us.

Bear poop in their yard!! And they've had as many as 23 deer as well!!

After our visit we decided the situation in the Denver area (Sharon has a brother and another cousin with families she wanted to visit) was too risky for us to get in the mix so we headed for Santa Fe, NM. When her brother said, don’t come here, keep heading south, we knew that’s what we needed to do.  After checking the weather we felt we could make it to Santa Fe without getting caught in the flash flooding that was occurring throughout the area.  We arrived about sunset, found a place to park the RV and settled in for the evening.  We decided to stay in Santa Fe and extra day to let the rains move on. To the east of Santa Fe there were heavy rains and several cars had been washed off the highway. 

I love the way Santa Fe decorates their overpasses and retaining walls.