Springtime in The Rockies

Check out how cool our Saturday was: it was my first night staying over at JC's and waking up with the kids, and despite my initial hesitation, they were completely unfazed by it. Coffee, eggs, english muffins, lots of butter and that new bacon I am getting delivered to my house by Black Canyon Foods. We then loaded up the Volvo and headed out to forage for wild asparagus in the farmlands and ditches in between Norwood and Redvale. We were having moderate success when Calvin, our new local hero, pulled up beside me on his tractor, to which I leapt upon the sideboard as he drove, and invited us all to gather as much asparagus as we liked on his property, seeing as he was going to spray later that day--just so long as we close the gate behind us and oh, if we see his wife? whom he hasn't yet seen that day? just make sure we tell her that Calvin said it was ok to pick on their farm. Here are a few photos of our adventures for the first of our three missions that day:
















That stalk that Cella is beside is super tall, growing up out of the ground. Nuts, huh?

From there, we stashed out booty and drove on to Paradox Valley, so named because the valley runs perpendicular to the Dolores River, which bisects it instead of running the length of it like most valleys--click here to read about this area. Parking up the Dolores River a bit, we hiked out to a huge rock overhanging the stream to see if we could see Western river otters at play, but the best we could find were some tracks in the mud:

It was pretty toasty out, so after we cooled our feet in the river and skipped rocks across its lazy muddy surface, we trooped back out and sat on the Bedrock Store porch, where the kids and I ate ice cream sandwiches and dad sucked down a 40-ounce Corona. The photo in the header up top shows how old and cool the store is. Actually has an outhouse for its restrooms.

And from there, we started back towards the San Juan Mountains, our still snowy home, but stopped and explored some pretty vast petroglyphs that were left by nomadic Puebloans, hundreds of years ago who used the valley for winter game hunting. It's hard to see some of the images but I will include a few photos to show the scale of their works:

The only disappointment of the day was the return home with the expectation of feasting at Fat Alley on barbecue and fried okra, only to find them closed, but we grilled some stuff on the front porch and all of us spent the next 10 to 11 hours slumbering with the sound of the San Miguel and its green and brown snowmelt waters gurgling across the valley.

Here is the link to all the photos from today, as well as the two desert adventure weekends JC and I have spent this off-season, Canyonlands and Cedar Mesa.