Walks and Wanderings

Thank goodness for scheduled events in the park, or I might never get to see anything around here.  Ok, not quite that bad, but we did go to a really neat 2.5 hr guided walk yesterday, and another is in the plans for tomorrow.  Woohoo!

Yesterday's walk was called "Sisters of Courage" and I'd love to do my usual thing and make fun of it all, and complain about my escorts, but truth is, it was a really fascinating story about a family that just couldn't seem to catch a decent break.  It was at a time when the government was giving away free land, if you did certain things (built a house in the first year, improved the land etc).  If you continuously lived on and improved it for five years, you could apply to acquire the deed to the land.  So this family did that somewhere in Missouri or something, and then they wanted to move west but their five years weren't up, so instead they sent their two adult daughters west to claim some land.  Together these daughters claimed the maximum they could (just over 300 acres) and built up a dairy farm there.  Long story... (it had to fill 2 hours of course), when Rocky Mountain National Park was established in 1915, these sisters found themselves surrounded by national park, and refused to sell.  Their land did not become part of the park until 1955. 

Our tour guide for this was very passionate about the story, sharing photos and excerpts from diaries as we walked through part of what used to be these sisters land.  It shouldn't have been much of a surprise, when we got far enough along in the story, to find out he was related in some way to these ladies.  He pushed for this particular presentation to be a part of the park 20 years ago.  Originally it was presented by park Rangers, but now he volunteers to present it himself once a week.  He has been telling people this incredible story every summer for 12 years now.  Pretty cool.

Once we finished there, we checked out a couple of small town shops nearby, and then finally returned to our little apartment in the sky.  I haven't explained much about our accommodations yet, but we are in a set of apartment-like buildings at the bottom of a ski hill, with ski lifts on either side of us. In the picture, its the set of white & grey buildings in the middle left.

Today was what Robin called a puttering day.  What a curious word.  If it means doing nothing for the first half of the day, and then wandering around shops for a few hours before returning home and doing more nothing, then I guess it fits perfect.

It wasn't all bad though.  We went somewhere new, and I'm always up for something new!  We drove to a very touristy town called Winter Park (which didn't look very wintery, nor very parky, but whatever... I don't name these places).  There we wandered around very touristy-like shops, bought a few things for people back home (still don't understand this process, but I'm getting used to it now), and then drove back to Granby.  The highlight for me was seated upon a great horse, but it didn't seem to go anywhere, so I got bored fast.

We were back home by 6, eating supper and packing backpacks for an early start tomorrow.  Something about leaving by 7:30 am to get to another guided tour in the park.  I'm excited, but I'll believe it when I see it!

Whatever!