Born Too Early

We were born too early for this town.  Or decades too late.  Last week we drove to Telluride, a mining town turned tourist destination not too far from Ridgway State Park.  The town today hosts skiiers, avid mountain bikers and young families.  And dogs, lots to dogs.  We were there on a Saturday and walking down the sidewalk could be hazardous, dodging young children, bikes and dogs.  We thought it would be better to visit during the week, rather than on the weekend before Labor Day.

We were born long after the heyday of silver mining in Telluride.  Mining began here in 1880 and since then 350 miles of tunnels have been dug through the mountains, enough to reach from San Francisco to Los Angeles.  Billions of dollars of silver, gold, copper, lead and zinc have been taken from these mountains and mining continues today.

The drive to Telluride provides spectacular views of the Colorado Rockies.  This is one of the reasons we came to Colorado every summer.

Many of the old buildings in town have been restored and repurposed.  This is the New Sheridan Hotel, now housing a restaurant.  I have a phone app called History Here and as we approached Telluride, I received a text telling me the New Sheridan Hotel was 5 miles away.  At first I thought it meant a new hotel, but no.

This is the San Miguel County Courthouse.  Very impressive.

Hanging baskets are seen in most mountain tourist towns.  These are especially lush.

Telluride is nestled in a narrow mountain valley and the ski area provides a backdrop on one side of town.  Talk about ski in and ski out from your hotel.

We often see a left turn lane in the center of a two-way road.  But in this town, flower containers black the end of each block’s yellow-striped center lane.  In the next block you can see one of those signs that read “your speed is…..”  These lanes also allow 10-minute parking by permit only.  I imagine shop owners get those permits so they can bring in merchandise.  UPS and FedEx may also use them.  Much better than double-parking for deliveries.

There is another cute mountain town nearby, Ouray.  If we go there it will be mid-week, not Saturday or Sunday.

Arizona has an amazing number of bird species throughout the year. It is located on a major bird flyway and is far enough south to attract birds from Central and South America. One of my favorite birds is the Gambel's Quail, which lives here year round. This year a pair of these birds had babies near the dog run down the street from our spot in the resort. We had to go see them.

We don't have a dog, but many of our neighbors do. That is how we learned about the babies.

We spotted seven baby birds, as well as two adults. Whenever a human approached the space at the rear of the dog area, one of the parents would begin talking to the babies. They seemed to understand there was danger, but didn't really know what to do. They would run back and forth along the cinder block wall at the rear. Finally, one of the parents gathered them all and hid them under its wings.

These photos were taken with a cell phone, so they aren't good, but you can get an idea of what we saw.

When we walked one of the neighbors called out, "Hey, where is your dog?" "What dog?" we said. "We only are interested in birds!"

Recent Days

There have been a number of images from the last couple to weeks that stand out from the hum-drum of our days.

One of the advantages of having friends here in the Phoenix area is the fresh oranges they give out. He told us they needed a little more time in the sun, so we haven't tasted them yet.

I had my annual mammogram at the Banner MD Anderson facility. We were interested to see this RV park, right next to the hospital. I imagine it provides a safe and inexpensive place for people who are having cancer treatments to park their RV. Really a thoughtful idea.

I doubt I need the hospital's services, other than for a mammogram. My doctor thinks they do the best job of any facility in the Valley.

A large saguaro has been planted here in our resort. The supports must help it get established. But John thought the supports made it look like it was on crutches.

We saw this truck, filled with batteries, parked in front of house in the resort. The company supplies golf cart owners with new batteries and takes away their old ones.

We did get out for some fun. We walked around the Gilbert Water Ranch. The ponds provide third-state treatment for waste water and bring in lots of water birds. Just look at all these ducks.

Today, we went to the Mesa Swap Meet. The place can get very crowded, but there was a real advantage to going early on this cold morning. (Our low temperature this morning was 39 degrees! Brrr. At least for snowbirds. It is really cold up north in Colorado.) Look at these nearly empty aisles.

One last picture--a dog being carried around the swap meet.

Swap Meet or Flea Market?

Flea market, swap meet. Are they the same thing? I always thought so. I thought they were like garage or yard sales on steroids. But after spending several winters in Texas and Arizona, I have decided that swap meets are just a large setting for shopping mall kiosk sales, small commercial spaces for new and/or popular items. This week we attended a flea market that truly was like garage and yard sales. Where do you think we are?



That's right. Wisconsin, home of the cheeseheads, Green Bay Packers fans. And we weren't in a dusty field or open building. We were in a forest.



What is big in Wisconsin? Fishing. These are antique trolling motors.



Lots of fishing poles. And most of them don't look like fly rods.



There were even fishing pool covers.



Look at these fishing lures.



You would only find birch bark baskets in the north woods.



There were lots of old and antique snow shoes and skis.



Old wooden boxes



Fun signs





Beautiful flower arrangements



The usual cute dogs



Of course, there were some commercial booths--or people whose collections have gotten out of control.



After sauntering along for an hour or two in the flea market, we escaped the crowds and walked a couple of miles on a beautiful hike/bike trail in St. Germain.

Heading Out for Coffee

Last week went to lunch with one of John's friends from his high school days, Dave, and his wife, Alice. Wednesday we drove to their winter home in Apache Junction and went for a hike in the Superstition Mountains from the Peralta Trail Head. Because of the recent rains, the desert is very green.



We headed up the Lost Dutchman Trail toward Coffee Flats, a trail we had not been on before. What a great hike! According to the map, we went a little over 5 miles round trip. It isn't a difficult hike, but there are some ups and downs. And the scenery was great. There were saguaros everywhere, as well as interesting rock formations.







Dave brought along they chocolate lab, Obi. She loved the water where we had to cross a couple of streams.



We found a nice flat rock for our lunch-time picnic.



John is much more a cat person than a dog person, but he found a new friend in Obi. She is such a sweet--and very well behaved--dog. John even asked if she could come home with us for the night.



We are supposed to have really nice weather for a while. We really need to take some more hikes.

Alaska -- Day 50

Today we tried Fairbank's most popular tourist attraction, the Riverboat Discovery. She is the third in a line of Binkley family riverboats named Discovery. We were on Discovery III.



When everybody says, "you must do this," we often wonder. But, since our Toursaver book has a buy one-get one free coupon, we gave it a try. The coupon book cost $100. A ticket on the boat cost $54.95. That means we have recouped $55 of our $100. So it was worth it. And the trip today was worth it. First off, we watched a float plane take off from the river. In the background, you see Discovery I, Binkley's first sternwheeler.



Then he made a great landing.



The three-hour tour took us down the Chena (pronounced Cheena) River to where it meets the Tanana River. Discovery III is a flat-bottomed boat that only needs 39" of water. Today the Chena was beautiful and smooth.



We stopped beside the sled dog kennels of Susan Butcher, who won the Iditarod Dog Sled Race four times, quite an accomplishment for a woman in a man's sport. Sled dog racing is Alaska's most important and/or popular sport. Susan died in 2006 from leukemia, but her husband, Dave Monson, still raises dogs there. John and I didn't think we would be interested in sled dogs. But we saw month-old puppies learning to trust their handlers and a team of dogs so eager to pull that they leaped and jumped when they heard Dave's voice. It was amazing to see how much they wanted to run. They pulled him, riding on a motor-less ATV. Total weight over 600 pounds. In a race, the sled and driver weigh much less than that, maybe 205 pounds. In this photo, handlers are getting the dogs ready to pull.



Here you see the dogs right before Dave released the ATV and took the brake off. Boy did they move out!



The water in the Tanana River is fed by glaciers. When it mixes with the water of Chena, you see the fine silt the glacier scours off the ground "bloom" out as the two rivers mix. It is really pretty amazing.



This is another picture of the Chena, looking back upstream, away from the Tanana.



We were able to get off the boat for an hour-long stop at Chena Village, a re-creation of an original Chena Athabascan Indian Village of the early 1900s. It is similar to those that the first Binkley steamboat captain, Charlie, and others would have seen during the gold rush in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

We saw a fish wheel, which helped the Athabascans take lots of salmon from the river without a fishing pole. It turns with the river current, scooping up salmon during the annual runs upriver.



This is Hanna, a native Eskimo-Athabascan (I think) who is a college student in Fairbanks and works both on the Discovery III and as an interpreter at Chena Village. She is explaining how they would fillet the salmon, then hang them here till they stop dripping fluids. You see drip-dry salmon fillets.



Here you can see how they fillet is sliced through to the skin, exposing more of the flesh to the smoke.



The next stage was to smoke the salmon over alder fires to preserve it. The first run of the summer is Chum salmon, which they consider an inferior fish. It is dried and used mainly for dog food. Given the great number of sled dogs in Alaska, this is an important use of fish.

After learning some western ways from the Russian explorers who came to Alaska before the gold rush, the natives started moving to fish camps in the summer to harvest the salmon. Previously, they had lived a nomadic lifestyle. They used birch-bark canoes like this one to travel.



Here you can see inside a tent at the fish camp, with pine boughs on the ground and a mosquito net over the sleeping area.



We also learned about the importance of animal hides and fur in the life of the Eskimos and other natives. Nothing was wasted. The flesh was eaten, the fur and hide used for clothing and shelter. Even the antlers were sliced and used as buttons. Tails are used for decoration. Look at this beautiful parka. I think it is called a sun parka because of the halo of fur around the woman's face when the hood is up. They used linx fur (I think) around the face because it has an oily surface that prevents the wearer's breath from making frost on the hood.



They keep some reindeer at Chena Village. Did you know that caribou are called reindeer when they are domesticated? If you look closely, you can see the front reindeer has a very smooth coat. The others in the picture are still shedding their winter coat and look kind of ratty.



I'm not sure if it is because the long winters here encourage the residents to enjoy what grows in the summer, or because the many hours of sunlight each day, but we see hanging flower baskets and pots of flowers everywhere. Here is a basket on the landing where we boarded Discovery III.