My first WorldCon, etc., #7

This is the second-to-last post, honest.

On Sunday afternoon, M and I checked out of the hotel and headed to Golden, Colorado (a suburb of Denver) and the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum (http://www.rmqm.org/), which was well worth seeking out. They had two very different exhibits. The first one was of antique and not-antique Amish quilts. All hand-quilted, all dropdead gorgeous. The second one was a one-woman display by a quilter named Barbara Barr, and her work, including applique, standard piecing, and paper piecing, was spectacular. I loved her color choices, among many other things. No photography allowed, alas.

Then we headed up towards Rocky Mountain National Park (on SR 93 and SR 36), and spent the night in Estes Park, in a motel, I was informed by M after the fact, that had apparently not vacuumed under the beds in the near or distant past [wry g]. The next morning, after obtaining breakfast pastry and picnic makings, we headed up Trail Ridge Road. The scenery from Trail Ridge Road (the country’s highest continuous paved road, topping out at over 12,000 feet) has to be experienced to be believed. So does the scariness of it when you’re driving. I’d been on it before, as a kid and in my twenties, but always as a passenger. This road is to the road up to Sunrise at Mt. Rainier as the Puyallup Fair rollercoaster is to, oh, say, the Beast at King’s Island in Cincinnati. Technically they’re both steep, winding roads with dropoffs into infinity, the same way the Fair rollercoaster and the Beast are both rollercoasters. Otherwise, there is no comparison.

We saw mountains. We saw wildflowers (including elephantella and Old Man of the Mountains). M saw a pika. I saw a marmot. We saw snowfields. And we completely lost our breath after only a few steps up at the top. It was a not-to-be-missed day. Topped off by a nice little quilt shop in Estes Park [g].

At the end of it we drove back to Denver (via US 36 and I-25 and E-470) and found a room for the night near the airport. And the last of the story is in the next post.

( photos again )

My first WorldCon, etc., #8 and last

The next morning, I dropped M off at the Denver airport, and headed west on I-70 towards home. Again, I’ve been over the Front Range of the Rockies on I-70, although the last time was in 1975, and I was a passenger. It’s an entirely different experience when one is driving. Up over 11,000 feet, steep grades, winding turns, semis around every corner. I hadn’t realized that the Eisenhower Tunnel over the Continental Divide had only been a year old the first time I’d ridden through it in 1974. After the tunnel seven percent downgrades were common, down past Vail and Copper Mountain and Breckenridge ski areas to the redrock country of western Colorado. I tried, unsuccessfully, to find lunch in Glenwood Springs. I stopped at a fruit stand in the orchard country just east of Grand Junction and bought pears. I got gas in Fruita, Colorado, and drove on across into Utah, arriving in what I thought was that night’s destination of Green River at only four in the afternoon, so I kept going, turning northwest on US 6, which cuts off the point of a triangle, another 60 miles to Price, Utah, where I spent the night.

The next morning I headed further along US 6 to just south of Salt Lake City, where I picked up I-15 north into Idaho. Unfortunately, I caught both the tail end of rush hour and a lot of construction traffic in SLC, but I got through it relatively unscathed. I-15 between the northern edge of the SLC conurbation and the Idaho border is some of the most desolate high desert I’ve driven across in a long time. But not long after I merged from I-15 to I-84 westbound in southern Idaho, what should appear like a mirage right at lunchtime but a Carl’s Jr. [g]. After refueling, I headed west across Idaho, reaching Boise, my putative goal for the night, about the middle of the afternoon. So I kept going. I crossed the Oregon border (and went back to Pacific time) an hour later, and decided I could make it to Baker City, Oregon, 60 miles further on. So I did, arriving there tired but satisfied that I had less than 400 miles to go to get home.

The last day was familiar ground. Up I-84 into Washington to I-90 just past Yakima where you can see the “back side” of Mt. Rainier from the freeway, over Snoqualmie Pass, down SR 18, SR 167, and SR 512 home.

And when I got here the cats were still alive and well, the house hadn’t burned down, and my garden hadn’t dried up and blown away (all of which I’d had nightmares about the last two nights on the road, worse than I’d ever had before – I nightmared at least twice that the catsitter hadn’t shown up at all and that the cats had died of starvation). Now I’m home, unable to sit without being sat on, and actually, I think I’m glad.

It was a wonderful trip while it lasted, though.

( the last photos )