Wanderung 3

Rocky Mountain Ramble

May - July 2003

June 26th - Garden oof the Gods, Colorado

During the night we had repeated thunderstorms that shook the tent a lot, which kept us both awake. At one time the rain (or sleet) came down so hard that Bob thought “That’s noisy!” and Monika thought “I wonder whether the tent will collapse?” Apparently we also had sleet because when we arose around 5:30 we found a puddle of ice pellets along the side of the tent—obviously it was cold enough that these pellets didn’t even melt! We had planned a “cold cereal” breakfast but changed our minds and headed off to the “Hungry Bear” café in Woodland Park that Monika had spotted the day before. She had noticed that the parking lot was full of cars with Colorado license plates, and being patronized by local folk is often, altho not always, a sign of decent food.

That rule of thumb turned out to be correct in this case—we had a big, great-tasting breakfast that combined a large ham and cheese omelet with two large pancakes. I was happy to get a solid breakfast because we were scheduled to walk for 2 hours in the Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, and we wouldn’t have our free lunch at the convention until 12:00. So I drove once again down the mountain to Colorado Springs, but on this morning the low-lying clouds and occasional rain dramatically changed the appearance of the scenery.

The rain also changed the appearance of the rock formations that comprise the Garden of the Gods—according to one local resident it made the reds deeper in hue than they normally were. Our walk started on the edge of the park and wound into the central area past a Trading Post where they gave us free bottles of chilled water, which I thought was a very hospitable gesture. We were really impressed along the way with how the rock formations gave a different impression from different angles. The sky had cleared to partly cloudy, and the formations also looked quite different in sunlight versus shaded conditions. To see these changes, though, I really think you have to walk thru the park—driving is just too fast to see and appreciate subtle changes in appearance.

The highest point we reached was a small parking lot with two formations named “Steamboat” and “Balance Rock”. The Steamboat rock did look something like the bow section of an ocean liner, but I saw that the balancing of Balance Rock was being helped along by some concrete in strategic places. Nevertheless they were a deep reddish hue and really quite pretty.

From these formations we turned and worked our way back to the finish point, and along the way Monika started giving her own names to the formations. She called one “Flying Pigs” and another “Mother and Child”, and I suppose those are as good names as any others—if we were being historically accurate we should really ask the Utes who lived in the region originally what their names for the formations were. I expect we’d have problems even pronouncing those names correctly!

After the walk we drove on to the convention hotel and listened to two presentations, which the convention organizers called “workshops” but I would call seminars. The first workshop was on the basics of GPS and gave good information but didn’t have any visual aids or demonstrations of the techniques, which I thought would be useful for a neophyte crowd. The second seminar was on dressing for outdoor activities and we learned of advances in breathable and wicking fabrics for each layer of clothing. We have tried some of this stuff and have been happy with the effects—it really seems to work pretty much as advertised. For instance, I have wicking tee shirts that really do help me cope with heavy perspiration on long uphill marches.

We got in line for our free lunch at noon, and I was amazed that they distributed between 500 and 1000 box lunches in an orderly fashion in about 10-12 minutes. We sat and chatted with an economics professor from North Carolina and a couple from Lincoln, Nebraska during the meal, so the time passed quickly. We skipped out of the afternoon meeting because it was mostly a business session and instead we went to pot, that is, we visited a pottery located in a curious semi-circular building we had seen along Highway 24.

I guessed before we went in that it might be an old railroad roundhouse, and that turned out to be correct. The Van Briggle Pottery was founded by, you guessed it, the Van Briggles around 1900. This old railroad roundhouse was just the most recent location for the business, which had obviously also changed owners over the decades. We took the free tour where they demonstrated throwing a pot on a kick wheel and the use of molds and slip for casting certain pieces. In some ways the tour reminded us of a scaled-down version of the porcelain process we had seen demonstrated in Meissen, Germany (see Wanderung 2). The most noticeable difference was the lack of over-glaze painting that gave many of the porcelain pieces their wonderful variety of colors—these pieces were all monochromatic except for some flat tiles.

The tour ended, as all tours apparently must, in the gift shop where many nice pieces were displayed. However, it seemed to us that the pieces were all copies or derivatives of the original turn-of-the-century Van Briggle designs and glazings. From one perspective, this is a consistent preservation of an artistic tradition, but from a different perspective it represents a stagnation of creativity—we tended more toward the latter view. In any event, none of the pieces said “Buy Me!”, so we thanked the guide and drove back to camp.

We tried to take a nap, but it was difficult because altho the air was cold the sunlight was extremely strong at 10,000 feet. When the sun was shining the inside of the tent was very bright, stuffy, and too hot to sleep. But it was only intermittently sunny and when the sun went behind a cloud we were quickly chilled to the bone. Alternating between too hot and too cold does not make for a restful nap—I managed to sleep some but Monika didn’t. But that evening we had a quiet meal and a nice campfire for relaxation before turning in for the night and thank goodness we both slept well for a change.

Copyright 2004 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

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