canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Colorado Travelog #42
Aspen, CO - Saturday, 9 Jul 2022, 1:30pm

On the way up to Crater Lake at the foot of the Maroon Bells I wrote a bunch about flowers (see previous blog). One thing I didn't write about is the altitude. We are high up! Maroon Lake, where we started hiking, is at just over 9,500' elevation. In getting here to Crater Lake we are now above 10,000'.

Maroon Bells at Crater Lake (Jul 2022)

Probably being out here at 5,000' ~ 9,000' elevation for the past week has helped with acclimation. Still, it was a bit of huffing and puffing to get up here. That's part of why we stopped and looked at flowers so much. 😅 But now we're right at the foot of the 14,000'+ Maroon Peak.

Waterfalls at Maroon Bells (Jul 2022)

You might notice on the right flank of Maroon Peak there's a waterfall. While many who'd made the climb up to Crater Lake today were content to splash around in the lake a bit and head back downhill, we continued onward to see if we could find a better view of the falls.

Aaaand... what's better than a view of the falls, but a view of two falls? 🤣

Waterfalls at Maroon Bells (Jul 2022)

Yes, there's a second waterfall to the left of the first one we saw. The one of the left has a much larger single drop, a tall, fine spray of water that drifts back and forth in the breeze. It's in a crevice, though, so it's only visible to folks who hike up this way.

Maroon Bells at Crater Lake (Jul 2022)

Alas, now it's time for our hike back downhill, too. We're getting into the afternoon, it's still 1.5 miles downhill, then we have to wait for a bus to Aspen, then we have a few hundred miles of driving still to do! 😨

But for now.... In beauty I walk.

canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Colorado Travelog #41
Aspen, CO - Saturday, 9 Jul 2022, 12:30pm

As we arrived at Maroon Lake after a 20-25 minute bus ride from Aspen the driver informed us that there were guided tours available at 10:30am. We're rarely the "Let's go with a tour group!" type of travelers, preferring to explore on our own without being crowded by people complaining about the weather, the sunshine, and the lack of proximity to Starbucks, McDonald's, and flush toilets. We at least asked, though, what the tours would entail. When we found out that they would be small size, no greater than 10 people including the guide, and would be led by a naturalist, we were interested. When we saw that nobody else was interested, we got really interested. 🤣

Well, by the time the ranger got moving, the group had grown to 6 plus her, but that was a fine group size. At least everyone was prepared for the hike and in good enough physical shape to do it, plus interested in learning while we walked.

Flowers in the Maroon Bells (Jul 2022)

Our guide's forte was flowers. That wasn't exactly what we expected. One of the other guides said it would be about geology. Our guide obliquely said that geology was his specialty. But that's okay; I know more about geology than flowers, so I'm good to learn!

Unfortunately, though, I'm not great at remember things about flowers. Like, I can barely remember their names. That fushcia one above? No idea was it is. Ditto this lilac colored one next.

Flowers in the Maroon Bells (Jul 2022)

There was one new-to-me flower I remember the name of. It's the orange sneeze-bag, or something like that. Yes, I totally remember that one because its name is amusing. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of it. It was off the path, where I'd need my telephoto lens to get a good picture of it, and it was in deep shade.

Columbine (Jul 2022)

This flower (above) I know the name of only because Hawk told me while I was preparing to publish this blog. It's a columbine. It's the state flower of Colorado!

Columbine (Jul 2022)

Since columbine is the state flower I'll include two photos of them here. This second columbine picture (above) shows the color variation in the species. This one has more clearly differentiated purple and white leaves, while the first one has a fainter purple color.

Our little tour group was a fun group to walk with. Two of the members were older than us, an Indian couple who live on a Caribbean island and have traveled the world. It was fun comparing notes with them about some of the places we've both visited and getting tips on places we've yet to see. The other couple were younger but also world-wise. "The US is the 6th country I've lived in," one noted. All in all this was quite pleasantly the opposite of what too many of the few group tours we've joined have been like.

Nearing Crater Lake at the foot of the Maroon Bells (Jul 2022)

The cadence of our group's chit-chat changed when we broke out of the forest onto the moraine below Crater Lake. Here we could see the Maroon Bells clearly again, and everyone focused on getting there.

Oh, wait, there was one more flower we talked about.

Ooh, I know this one! It's a dandelion. (Jul 2022)

"Wow, I haven't seen a dandelion in a long time!" I exclaimed.

"OMG, what a beautiful flower!" one of the group said. "I've never seen one before. What did you call it?"

OMG, you really haven't seen a dandelion before? I thought to myself. In the eastern US they grow as weeds. My parents had hundreds of them in their yard every summer until my dad started paying a lawn service to take care of them.


canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Colorado Travelog #40
Aspen, CO - Saturday, 9 Jul 2022, 10:30am

This morning we got up early, packed our bags and loaded the truck, checked out from our hotel in Glenwood Springs, and drove an hour south to Aspen. It's part of an audible we called a few days ago to realize an aspiration of mine since 1990, thirty-two years ago, to visit the place in this picture:

lkmarron.gif, an image I first downloaded in 1990! (Jul 2022)

Just getting to Aspen wasn't the end of the story. From there we had to park and ride a bus 25 minutes up to the lake. Bus tickets are limited; Saturday was the only day this trip I was able to find 2 seats at a reasonable time, which meant extending our trip from Saturday to Sunday in addition to rebooking a few nights of hotels. But we did all that, and now.....

At Maroon Lake with the Maroon Bells in the background (Jul 2022)

Boom! 💥

canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
Colorado Travelog #23
Ridgway, CO - Tuesday, 5 Jul 2022, 11pm

So. Earlier today I told Hawk about my bucket list item from 30+ years ago to visit Maroon Lake in Colorado, suggesting we plan another trip like this one to see it... and she said, basically, "Why not now?" Since that moment we've been reworking our plans for this trip to get there.

I started changing hotel reservations plans from my mobile phone while parked on the side of a street. I made more reservations and changes from my computer at a restaurant. And I've spend another few hours online after getting back to our vacation condo this evening completing the plans. Here's how we'll spend the rest of the week:

  • Tomorrow (Wednesday) we'll hike in Telluride then drive north to Montrose to stay for the night. This is more-or-less our original plan for tomorrow, though while things were up in the air I canceled our hotel stay for tomorrow night and later rebooked it. It's a points stay, and the price went up from 23k points to 24k.

  • Thursday we'll visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. That's also within the parameters of our original plan (we allowed some flexibility on whether to hike there or Great Sand Dunes) though instead of driving to Alamosa, near Great Sand Dunes, we'll drive back to Glenwood Springs for the night.

  • Friday we'll hike Hanging Lake in Glenwood Canyon. Yes, I got a hiking reservation for it! Friday night we'll stay through in Glenwood Springs. Hawk got us 2 nights at the Marriott Residence Inn with a cert and points.

  • Saturday we'll visit Maroon Lake above the ski resort town of Aspen. Maroon Lake also has a permit-based system, and Saturday morning is what I could get a slot for. It's about an hour drive from Glenwood Springs to Aspen. We're not staying in Aspen because hotels are, like, $500/night on up there.

  • We'll do more than just visit Maroon Lake; we'll hike from Maroon Lake up to Crater Lake, a round trip of about 4 miles at high elevation. Saturday evening we'll drive back to Denver and crash at a hotel near the airport. Hawk booked that on points, too.

  • We'll fly home Sunday morning. That's different from our previous plan of flying home Saturday evening. Yay, no change fees. But boo, paying higher prices for last-minute fares. It cost about $180 more to book Sunday at the last moment, but it's worth it to make this all possible.


Also a tradeoff is that we will not visit Great Sand Dunes National Park or Garden of the Gods on this trip. But since we've visited both before— and have been to GotG, like, three times— that's okay. Swapping in a trip to Maroon Lake is worth it.

canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
Colorado Travelog #21
Ouray, CO - Tuesday, 5 Jul 2022, 5:50pm

As we wrapped up our hike at Box Canyon Falls a few minutes ago I asked Hawk to remind me how we planned this trip. "A few years ago we were looking up waterfall hikes in Colorado, saw a cluster of them in Telluride, and decided to go," she said. Indeed, we built a trip around the kernel of spending a few days in Telluride. But visiting Telluride isn't the only thing in Colorado that's been on our list. There's a place that's been on my list for more than 30 years. 😨

I got on the Internet for the first time in 1990. Yeah, I know, a long time ago! One of the fun things to do back then was scour public ftp sites for cool digital pictures to display. There was no Google back then; Google wasn't founded until 1998. Even Yahoo didn't start until 1994. Early internauts exchanged lists of site addresses in text mediums like Usenet News groups and then visited them one-by-one, browsing through their file subdirectories, to see what they had.

This is where a lot of wise-asses would say, "I bet it was porn!" And they would be wrong. Porn online wasn't a big thing back then. (Why? Frankly, because it was several years before a scalable e-commerce mechanism was constructed to profit from it.)

Here was one of the first pictures I downloaded online in 1990:

lkmarron.gif, an image I first downloaded in 1990! (Jul 2022)

I was entranced by the beautiful mountain scenery. I made it my desktop background image for a while. At the time I'd only ever been on the east coast of the US (and an evening in Canada) so I'd never seen a sight like that in person. I knew I wanted to visit such places some day. But where was it?

The photo was identifiable only by its filename, lkmarron.gif. "Lake Marron", I thought. I searched various times over the years for Lake Marron but could never find it.

It turns out the file was misnamed. The scene pictured in it is Maroon Lake. Its name in 8.3 format should've been maroonlk.gif or lkmaroon.gif, not lkmarron.gif. That could've saved me years of wondering. But eventually search engines got good enough to show near matches, and I found the place I was looking for. Then I forgot about it.

I forgot about it until today, that is. And that's why I prompted Hawk to recall how we planned this trip. "Lake Maroon, which I've wanted to see for more than 30 years, is near Aspen," I explained. "What do you think about planning a trip to Aspen next year, or maybe later this year."

"Why don't we see if we can go this week?" Hawk responded.

[sound of needle scratch]

As I was literally driving on a city street at that moment I pulled over to a parking space, dug my computer out of a bag in the back seat (I'm glad I brought it with me today!), and started checking if we can still change our plans. We can!

Get ready, we're about to call a massive audible.

Update: It took a few hours of wrangling to line up all the reservations, but we did it. We're now rebooked to visit Maroon Lake on Saturday!

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