Garden of the Gods - Colorado Springs

Deb and I had a Saturday morning free, so we decided to day trip to Colorado Springs (70 miles South of Denver) to have a nice breakfast and visit to the Garden of the Gods. 

The outstanding geologic features of the park are the ancient sedimentary beds of deep-red, pink, and white sandstones, conglomerates, and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but have now been tilted vertically and faulted by the immense mountain building forces caused by the uplift of the Rocky Mountains and Pikes Peak. Erosion and glaciation of the rock, created the present rock formations. Evidence of past ages; ancient seas, eroded remains of ancestral mountain ranges, sandy beaches and great sand dune fields can be seen in the rocks.

The rock formations that form Garden of the Gods are also prevalent in the ridges and hogbacks around Roxborough Park where we be living, and a little farther North at the famous concert venue, Red Rocks Amphitheater. 

Here's a picture of Pike's Peak, one of the Colorado "Fourteeners" and a place that Deb and I would like to visit soon. There's a tie to Roxborough Park here too, since Roxborough Park backs on the Pike National Forest. 

First Snowy Trip to DIA

We learned a few things about going to the airport this morning. We are on our way to Rochester, NY to visit with Kelli, Jake, Claire and Evan this week and next week the Milner and McNeil families join us for Thanksgiving celebrations.

Our plane was scheduled to get off the ground this morning at 6:00 AM. Deb convinced me that getting up at 3:30 AM and leaving by 4:00 AM would be just fine. DIA (Denver International Airport) is about 25 miles East of downtown Denver, and without traffic, it takes about 35 minutes or so to get to the departures area.

Up at 3:30, brush my teeth, comb my hair, do a couple of other last minute adjustments, pick up the packed bags at the front door, elevator down to the parking lot and lo and behold, there’s 3” of new snow on my car! WTF?? (In Colorado, that means “What the Frack?” because of the current controversy over fracking to get at oil and natural gas deosits.) I’m from CA. Do you think I was smart enough to by a snow sweeper offer or an ice scraper or something else to clean the windows off with? Nooooooooo. Seems last time I scraped ice off my windshield was at Shaver Lake in the Sierras and I used my credit card.

So, standing there freezing my thumbs in 21 degree cold, scraping the ice and snow off with bare hands, wishing I had 5 gallons of steaming hot water ……

Finally off to the airport at 4:15. Now we have around 30 miles to go to long term parking, parking, shuttle to airport, checking bags, security to go through, trolley to take to the C gate area, and boarding to go through to get airborne.  I-70 East is snow covered, there are blinking lights of the snow plows everywhere, the car aren’t actually driving in any particular lane because the lines aren’t visible, and my windshield gets dirtier and harder to see out of with each swipe of the wiper blades.

Flight’s at 6:00 AM. We are right on time! As they shut the door in the boarding area, we make eye contact with the SWA rep who checks the boarding passes. He’s shaking his head, but opens the door to the gangway so we could board.

And, the flight is full – to capacity. There are two center aisle seats left. Deb gets the one up front; I get the one next to a contestant on “The Biggest Loser!”

So goes our first experience with DIA.  Hope I can remember where we parked the car.

Update on the Home Construction (or lack thereof)!

Since last we talked about the house, we've made a few changes. Some of the changes were driven by the Roxborough Park Design Review Committee and some we chose to make.

This is the perspective view looking at the house as if you were coming up the driveway. The biggest change we've made recently is to take off the third garage which we had intended to use for storage of our trailer.

Several things drove that decision. The rental for storage place for the trailer is half as expensive here as it was in Alameda. We negotiated a longer term contract with the storage location that gets us a free month each year, so the price dropped even further. Another consideration is the road configuration in Roxborough Park. While the main road is large, the side roads and cul-de-sac roads are narrow and turn at right angles. I measured some of the turns, and found that it would be near impossible to get the trailer into the driveway! I'd really be mad if I built a house with three garages and then couldn't get the trailer into one of them!

Deleting the garage simplified the drainage and excavation plan ($$), reduced the amount of concrete to be poured ($$), eliminated the need for 70 feet of retaining wall ($$$$), shortened the length of the steel I beam roof supports ($$$), etc. All in all, probably a pretty good decision.

But, I didn't go softly! Deb and I decided to trade the reduction in garage size plus the elimination of a soaking tub in the master bathroom for a built in wet sauna in the bathroom! Sounds to me like a great trade!








The sauna is accessed through a glass door in the shower of the Master Bathroom. The shower is tile with glass door to the bathroom. We're really looking forward to saunaing (sp?) in the winter after a hard day of snowshoeing or cross country skiing!










The other change was forced on us by the Roxborough Foundation Design Review Committee. Our lot, and the one directly to the East of us, have zero lot lines (meaning there's no setback). The original intention of the developer was to have a shared driveway between the two houses. The land to the East of us was built out with no driveway, and when we placed our house on our lot, there was only 5 feet to the property line and another 10 feet to the neighbor's front porch. The East wall of our house is about 20 feet high, and relatively unbroken - few windows and not many architectural details.

RFDRC thought that arrangement might overwhelm the neighbors, so they asked that we move the house 5 feet West and 3 feet North on the lot. Of course, that meant we had to re-compute all of the drainage and erosion control measures for the lot - an expensive process - and ask for a variance from Douglas County to build outside of our setbacks for the lot. That's maybe not very interesting to you, but in a nutshell, that cost $2,000 and two weeks time delay. But, it's done now and we expect to have  final approval by Thursday this week.

So that's where we are. Next steps are to finalize approval through RFDRC and Douglas County, get an firm quote on construction costs for the house, submit for building permits, and dig dirt. Hopefully we'll see the dirt fly in six weeks or so.

Cheers!

Eating Our Way Through Denver

We're beginning to eat our way through Denver. Last night we went with friends to True Food Kitchen in Cherry Creek. This is one of Dr. Anthony Weil's restaurants and specializes in following the anti-inflammatory food pyramid. From that description, you'd think the food would be bland and relatively uninteresting, but not the case. I had three sea bass tacos with beans and they were delicious.

I was tempted to compare the food at True Food Kitchen with Alice Water's food at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, but there's no real comparison. The food at True Food Kitchen is cut-as-you-go meaning everything is prepared from garden fresh produce and the prep table is right in the middle of the restaurant. I'd go there again but I'd order something else just to get a variety.

Sunday morning we walked to Cherry Creek to have breakfast at The Eggshell. Cherry Creek is a very busy area of Denver, rather upscale, and one of the larger malls. Around the mall are lots of smaller boutique stores. Deb and I walked from the condo to Cherry Creek - about 1.8 miles or so one way - to have breakfast at a place friends recommended.

Perhaps we didn't catch the Eggshell on one of its better days. The servers seemed overwhelmed, and the Denver Omelette that Deb and I shared was unimaginative. It consisted of scrambled eggs with a little ham, some green pepper chunks covered with two round slices (pre-sliced no less!) of cheddar cheese. It was bland and not at all interesting. The Texas Toast was good, as were the chunks of potatoes (home fries?). All-in-all, I'd probably go there again, but if it looks busy when we arrive, I'll move on.

Cheers!

Green Mountain Open Space

From time-to-time I'll use the is space to make notes on hikes we've particularly enjoyed.

Green Mountain Open Space is approximately 10 miles West of downtown Denver. There are a great many trails to the top where one can get a great view of downtown Denver. The route shown in black in this graphic is the trail I chose. Called Rooney Valley Trail, the route winds along the lower portion of the open space and then heads uphill (!) through Rooney Valley.

Most people choose one of the more travelled routes (shown in red). The route I chose took me about 2 hours from parking lot to top and back. 

HI!

Another beautiful, sunny day on tap for today. Supposed to be around 60 degrees. But, there's a storm coming in soon and we're probably going to see snow on Saturday and Sunday. Not enough though for us to get out the snowshoes.

Kitties go to the vet for the first time today. We have to board them while we travel to Rochester for Thanksgiving, so they have to have shots to keep from getting sick from other animals. Thankfully, the car carrier we have will work great to transport them to the vet and back.

Deb's birthday is coming up, so I thought I'd take her out to dinner. We chose Le Central, a small French restaurant close by on 8th street. It's been voted the best French restaurant in Denver for since 2008. Deb likes patty de froi gras; hopefully they'll have it on the menu.








Deb took some cute shots of Simon and Milana while on her trip back to the Bay Area. Simon is himself - smiling and happy. He very seldom is out-of-sorts and enjoys most everything he does!

Milana didn't feel good. She got over her blues pretty quickly and she's back to being herself and looking forward to flying to Rochester for Thanksgiving!

Update on What's Happening

Since last we spoke, we've settled into Denver pretty well. We purchased a condominium in the Capitol Hill Area very near downtown. It's a smallish two-bedroom on the 6th floor with a good view to the west of Denver and the foothills. We completely cleaned the unit, replaced the microwave and the garbage disposal, repainted crown moulding and baseboard, and painted all the walls in new colors. We've put up pictures and the TV works, most of the stuff we hauled directly to Denver has is here and we're pretty comfortable. The bulk of our goods are in storage in Antioch awaiting the start and completion of the new house.

The Denver area is pretty interesting. Not a big town population-wise (630,000), Denver metro area is very spread out and has about 2.6 million people in it. So if we are willing to do some searching and a little traveling, we can find what we need. When we move to Roxborough Park we'll be closest to the suburb of Denver called Littleton so we're locating services in that area so we'll be close when we move.

I'd like to tell you all about the hiking trails in this area, but there are so many of them that we haven't even scratched the surface! I hiked Green Mountain the other day; it's a trail to a peak of about 6900 feet located West of downtown about 10 miles. Beautiful place and a challenging hike for me. I'm not used to the altitude and I've sort of slacked off a strict training regimen like I had in the past (but I'm back in the swing of exercising each day).

Our good friends Sue and Anthony have invited us a hike this coming weekend to something called "Devil's Head" (!). It's south of Roxborough Park and the trail leads to the only active forest fire lookout in Colorado. The trail goes up 950 feet in 1.4 miles to a resting area where you gather the strength to go up 143 stairs to the lookout! We may not get to go this Sunday - it's going to snow and the lookout tower is a magnet for lightning strikes.

One of the strangest things I've experienced here is the weather. I remember being in Portland, OR and having the temperature go down to the mid-40s and being so cold and uncomfortable that I wanted to stay inside all the time. And, we've been in Burlington, VT with the same sort of temperatures and the same kind of discomfort. But here, if the sun's out, you may be wearing only a T-shirt when the temperature is 45 degrees! I'm guessing that the low humidity, the high altitude and the cloudless skies contribute to the comfort. We're looking forward to what we think is a more traditional winter - snow and lower temps, skiing, etc. We bought snowshoes so we could go out onto Arrowhead Golf Course in Roxborough Park. (Not my pic - I'll put in ours when the snow comes!)

So much for today. Now that we've begun to get settled, I'll hopefully do this more often.

Phil