Bad Shoes, Hippies and Bears

A few years ago, I ran into an old friend in Florence while standing in the queue at a local service station.  It had been quite a pleasant surprise and we made plans to connect for breakfast on this particular journey.  There was not much time for anything else on this round, so we enjoyed the little we had with some good food at Fat Joe's Cafe and generally catching up on the enterprise of one another and his forging new acquaintance with our host.

We spent the rest of the morning stumbling about various efforts. An attempt to locate an old stagecoach hotel met with failure, lacking proper clearance on the vehicle we commanded. Hoping to defray that cost, we set out on foot to traverse the last mile. Unfortunately, the slacker shoes that had been well-suited to breakfast were not built for that sort of adventuring, so we abandoned the task for a future visit. Wandering back into town, we paused for a moment to capture Historic Florence High School, which was surprisingly not yet included in my ever-growing map of schoolhouses in Google Earth.

Back at the ranch again, the last effort of the morning, now afternoon, turned towards mapping. Our host had created a map for some young explorers and wanted a little feedback towards suitability.  We pondered the situation over a little axe throwing, ultimately deciding that it a very good fit for evaluating the young apprentices.  The real test will come when they apply themselves to considering the map.  

The day was fading quickly though, and as much as we hated to leave again, we needed to reach basecamp before the sun fell too far down.  It was notched up in a canyon between two massive peaks and evening would come much sooner than anywhere else.  Saying our goodbyes, looking forward to connecting again later in the week, we followed the sage advice of our host and filled our reserves prior to departure.  The cost had already exceeded the original payment price at home by $0.60 per gallon.  Our host promised it would double that in the northern end of the Arkansas River valley.

While it was not a long drive, we still had 160 km to cover that would take a couple of hours or more, depending upon the number of distractions.  Breaking into the river valley flatlands at Salida, we discovered a new favorite station through  KWUZ-FM, Hippie Radio, which would keep us entertained with blast-after-blast from the past for the next handful of days.

It took very little for Mt Princeton to appear looming in the windshield under skies that had only begun to clutter with afternoon clouds.  It was an ominous sign that things would very likely be rather unpleasant the following day, as forecasts had predicted.  We clung to optimism though, hoping the weather-guessing guys would be as inaccurate as they usually were.

Our new host greeted our landing at the cabin and introduced us to our home for the next few days.  It seems we had missed the real fun though.  The proprietor shared with us a photo from the property camera showing a black bear that had come knocking the night before, looking to offer his own personal greeting.  It was all the coercion needed for us to ensure anything that even resembled a crumb of food was properly evacuated from our vehicle.  We even went so far as to store all food items inside the refrigerator, regardless of whether they needed to be or not.

The sun was fading quickly, and satisfied with the level of precautions taken with provisions, I ambled a short piece down the road to look in on Love Meadow.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a small herd of deer indulging themselves in a late evening snack.  A few glanced up, though generally they paid no attention to my arrival or departure.  The scene instilled a certain calm, and with deep twilight setting in, I returned to spend the remainder of the evening with my comrade in the quiet solitude of slumber that only a mountainside cabin can offer.

Colorado Road Trip Part 3 of 9