Making my slow way to Aspen

Saturday (Aug 20)

I think I’m glad it’s the weekend, because traffic past my parking space is bad enough as it is. The Cracker Barrel in OKC was quieter.

Oh, they just hung out some banners at Heritage Hall (where my bath/shower is). Tonight is some kind of Elk Hunters Association banquet, which explains all the traffic, I guess.

Other than that it is very peaceful here. I spend some quality time with my maps at a picnic table in the park planning my next four weeks(!) Yes, that’s how much longer I’ll be at this if I stick to my plan.

A short 20 minute drive gets me to Delicious Orchards, a place I remember fondly from a previous trip. Wifi was broke this time, but the food was still excellent, as was the overall vibe. It was pretty hopping on a Saturday afternoon. Lots of families, and at least three different groups of women getting together for hard cider tastings :)  Apparently that’s a specialty of the place. They would get all their sampler glasses lined up and have a pretty good time.

Note for next time: They allow camping for $10. If you’re self-contained, as I am, you can park in the orchard which sounds pretty rad to me.

I’m glad I re-read the story at the link above, so I would be ready to enjoy the oddness that is the town of Somerset. There is a sign posted at both ends of town saying: “Coal Mining Town Since 1896″, and sure enough it is a perfect ringer for any dirt-poor Appalachian coal town clinging to the hill between the road and the creek. Doesn’t look like any other town in Colorado that I’ve ever seen.

I am liking my quiet spot very much. I was so tempted to drive on another 20 miles to see what the other possibilities were, but for sure they would’ve been $15 or so and much busier, so I think I’m happy here. At least three more spots have filled since I got here, so I am even happier to nailed down one of the nicer spots.

I explored out the back of my site. There’s a creek but the path is too steep – doable, but I don’t feel like doing it. Then explored out front … too soon, the sun is too bright and in my face. When “home” and ate dinner, after which I went back to a very nice sunset looking back towards Paonia Valley. A cloudless day, so not nearly as epic as I have documented the last few days, bit the best sunset I was gonna get tonight.

Sunday – Tuesday

Wow, slept till 9:30!  That sure didn’t happen with all the busy-ness at the fairgrounds yesterday. I think I needed it.

,,, and then the bikers came! As it turned out, not a problem, kinda cool in fact. Alluva sudden a whole swarm of Harleys pulls into the adjacent campsite. They turn off their engines and start yakking away. Later comes a pickup with a dude with a tripod camera who takes a group portrait. It’s some kind of pre-arranged Sunday morning thing. I hear “Let Joe take the lead when we get to Glenwood (Springs) because he knows where the restaurant is.” They’re going to have themselves a nice Sunday.

I take one final hammock break, watching the aspen leaves quake in the gentle breeze, listening to the Harley dorks talk Harley stuff, then it’s off on my big day of rejoining polite society. On the way out I roll down my window so the Harley guys and I can exchange insincere hearty hellos – societal requirements duly met, I’m outta here, the campground is now their’s.

As mentioned above I drove through here in the opposite direction five years ago. After cresting McClure Pass and coasting down the hill I join the road from Marble, past Redstone, to Carbondale, where I have a lot memories … if only I could remember them. My mom had a good friend from her Long Beach days (where I was born), who retired to run a motel in Redstone. We visited them a few times on our epic western driving tours.

Somewhere in here the Harley guys passed me on their way to lunch in Glenwood Springs. I recognized an orange bike.

I had coffee at a real nice place in Carbondale, but already I’m getting swept up in the social whirl. As soon as I got close enough to Carbondale to have connectivity my phone “blows up”. Peggy has been trying every possible coordinate of mine to find out what’s up. Of course since I had no bars, every pathway failed until I got connectivity and they all succeeded at once! So, my treasured coffee quiet time is truncated so I can head on to Aspen to catch up with Peggy and Donna at Peggy’s condo. We hang for a while, I eat healthy for a change, then I drive them to the Aspen Summer Concert Series.

While they are at their refined pursuits I head out to Difficult Campground to claim my reservation and check out my campsite while it is still daylight. Clearly the way approach to Aspen is from the north on the main highway, because the highway out of town to the south is a narrow winding affair. I am going to see a lot of these curves for the next two or three days. The mile or so of narrow, extremely pot-holed bumpy from the highway to the campground is really bad.

Then back down the bumpy winding roads to pick up the ladies after the concert. A ticket is in the neighborhood of $85, so I didn’t feel left out!

We have reservations at a pricey Japanese restaurant downtown. I guess I can leave off the adjective “pricey”, going forward just assume it if I am talking about a place in Aspen. Food was nice enough, but man I can’t sustain too much of this. Then back to Peggy’s condo for more catching up. Around 10:30 I head back Difficult Campground.

No complaints about the campground, my site is level and has some shade, I can hear the creek burbling behind it. All is good except that I see to be surrounded by people with yappy little dogs. Oh well, I won’t be around much.

Monday

Awaken at ten or so, and take the bumpy drive back to town. No phone reception at Difficult Campground, so at the edge of town I stop to check in.

First stop is the local Apple Store. It is not an official Apple Store, with a row of hipster geniuses in the back, but it clearly is the place where the local richies come to be told how to operate their devices. The”genius” is a short-sleeved dress shirt pocket-protector kind of guy who I think is also the owner.

The bad news is that he did nothing to fix my problem. I asked about buying a new Magsafe Power Adapter, but he sells them at list price – $99. The good news is that somehow the laying on of his unsympathetic hands fixed the problem! I have never had the charging issue since! Weird.

Then back to the condo where we all head out on a hike. I think the ladies are generally in better shape than me, and for sure they are more aggressive, focussed walkers. I want to dawdle and stare, they want to work those pounds off. Anyway, I get dehydrated and overheated, and they leave me on a bench while they walk ahead another half mile or so. On the way back i leave them to cut across town. It’s shorter and downtown is more interesting to me than retracing our steps along the creek.

Both Peggy and Donna are excellent cooks – the big meals they collaborated on back in the grad student days are still legendary to me. They decided to push the limits of the little condo kitchen to make a spectacular meal for tonight. The highlight was a side dish – a cold veggie wonder that featured peaches and yellow beets tomatoes and mozarella – woo!

Then I make my careful way back to Difficult Campground. By now it’s like 10:30 and wouldn’t you know it, a couple of young-ish women are squatting at my campsite. I had left my chair and my tablecloth on the picnic table to signal occupancy, in case the registration on the post wasn’t enough. They had neatly folded my stuff and set it aside, but still had the chutzpah to claim that they thought the big “8/22” on clipped to the post meant that the site was open for 8/22, not that it was taken on 8/22. Whatever, they were very nice and left quietly and quickly, so no big deal.

Tuesday

When I get phone reception I find that I am to meet them at the Art Museum. It was fun. The art was kind of meh, but it was still a nice way to pass a little time. Then we split up to do our various things. I went in quest of an affordable lunch, finally found it in the form a designer burrito place in the basement of one of the shopping areas. It was quite busy at lunch, the hired help has to eat somewhere.

On the way home I ended up at the pot store! Colorado does not allow beer, wine and liquor to be sold in supermarkets (for some reason…). They can sell near beer, but nobody wants that. So it’s pretty much standard that within 20 yards of every City Market there will be a liquor store. The new Colorado thing is that within 20 yards of both of those will be a pot store!  Just to walk in the store I had to show an id, but after that it was smooth sailing. I expected some further rigamarole about not crossing state lines etc, but no, just pick a flavor and a quantity, hand over the ole credit card and boom! you have pot! Very, very strong pot. No smokie today, save it for a nice, safe campground.

Turns out I am not the only one who is a little hungover from the spectacular meal. Last night we kicked off the fun with a nice champagne, then a Chardonnay, then a very nice Cabernet. It all went down real easy, but when you do the math, that comes out to a bottle of wine for each of us, which is more than we’re used to.

We hung around at the ole condo most of the afternoon. Not another hike, thank you. I’ve decided I don’t really enjoy using the campground as just a bedroom so I will sleep on the streets of Aspen tonight.

It’s a rainy afternoon. They are going to the Symphony again, so about 7 we head out and I drop them off again. Back to the condo for an hour or so, then pick them 10-ish. Evidently the Pittsburg Orchestra is playing and they are very good, so I decide to back early to park and listen outside the tent for a while. In the event, the nice lady let me come into the tent to hang out in the back along with the students. I’m glad she did, because it was raining pretty hard. I don’t know much about classical music, but the ending of this Bruckner thing they were playing was pretty dramatic.

Thence to another really nice meal. The place had the feel of a Spanish restaurant, but the menu was just fancy American.

Jose, the nice man who runs Peggy’s condo building had hooked me up with a perfect spot in their parking lot, but when we got back after dinner that spot was taken, so I just settled in on the street. I was directly in front of her place, so I even got wifi! The spot slanted pretty steeply towards the gutter, so I did my trick of sleeping backwards so my feet were downhill (towards the front), and slept quite well!