This is the road that rises up our side of the ridge then turns sharply at the top then drops down the same way on the other side where it connects at the bottom to a road that links I-70 to Morrison in view of stunning Red Rocks Park. This was our way home. We had to explore it. Repeatedly. There is a trail on top of the ridge that provides a commanding view. We traipsed that trail back and forth for no other reason than it is glorious.
This morning, July 4th there are only a few people. The road is closed off to motorists, too bad, it is a wonderful little connecting road. Perfect for sport cars. Now it is for bicyclists and for hikers. This early, this holiday, the very few people I encounter all choose to speak. Even blowing past on a bicycle, "Helloooooooooo" in doppler.
"Hi!"
I noticed last night and today the clothing on children is blinking. Their shoes blink when they walk. This morning a girl between her parents approached on the road toward the dinosaur footprints wearing a glittery blouse that was blinking.
Instead of hello, "You're blinking. Are you a robot?"
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, how droll, her parents thought that was hilarious.
Later, "Nice of your dog to take you two for a walk." *Teutonic accent* Ya, Ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja, I'm a regular comedian up here. These people are all light-hearted and easily entertained.
A bicyclist stops to chat about anything. His first time up here. He didn't even know there are dinosaur footprints showing right there on the hill. How's that for a bicycling surprise?
There is a sign that says "watch out for rattlesnakes, if you see one, tell the authorities." I have never seen a rattlesnake anywhere in Colorado and I went out looking for them all day in Daniel's Park where they live. But if you say so, then it is so.
I want to be cross with things taken over, with a favorite road blocked off, for signs being put up telling us what natural things not to do, but I cannot. The few people I see today are having too good a time, are all collectively way out of character being so overtly friendly. Contrary to bicyclist stereotype. They're enjoying the place too much for me to be cross. They're all getting as much out of the place as we ever did back then and now and they're being organized about it. I cannot complain even though I do want to.
Signs, signs, everywhere signs, blocking out the scenery breaking my mind, do this, don't do that, can't you read the si-high-nnnns?
Why no, I cannot. Is that English or what? Can you fingerspell your instructions into my palm?
Actually, I like your information. Your information is, how do you say, informative.
The top of the ridge where it turns sharply and flips over and down the other side opposite just like this and facing Red Rocks Amphitheater. Portions of this side of the ridge are scraped bare, the other side is lush, as Colorado goes.
On this side of the ridge, looking down the road I just walked, Green Mountain, I always view with feelings of remorse. This is the one-time hang gliding training hill, the opposite side more active than this side and now all covered with homes over there.
They tuk r hillz. If they only knew that where their Weber grill is on their deck is the spot where we had our first glorious hang glider landings. Where we came out of our own skin rejoicing our raw flight. And then, you're bicycling where we hiked and climbed and played, where dinosaurs once scrounged around looking for food, like recycling and repurposing Earth and I am okay with that.
They tuk r hillz. If they only knew that where their Weber grill is on their deck is the spot where we had our first glorious hang glider landings. Where we came out of our own skin rejoicing our raw flight. And then, you're bicycling where we hiked and climbed and played, where dinosaurs once scrounged around looking for food, like recycling and repurposing Earth and I am okay with that.
One can imagine dinosaurs roaming this valley. But they would have been swimming. This is the edge of the ancient sea that covered Colorado.
None of this was here when we goofed around this ridge, after goofing around Red Rocks park, as boys. A layer slid off from blasting for Alameda Parkway exposing the footprints underneath the shale that we were checking and sorting and splitting and pulling away from its layer. Piles of flat grey shard so thick and so loose you could ski it. Now largely stripped away and carried off exposing lower strata, where the footprints are. This is where I was sitting looking through shards for trilobites and fern or other plant impressions, but never did find any. That continuous disappointment put me off archaeology at an early age.
These structures were built to defy photography, it can be their sole purpose. I guess it elevates viewers so they don't have to go crawling around.
That's it for the footprints.
Yeah, good luck with that no climbing rule. A pile of rocks like this veritably screams "Climb me!" I'm a boy, I can't read.
It says, "Please, I beg you, scramble up me."
Come on. Who can resist that? It must be climbed.
They say, the scientists do, these patterns are formed by organic sea foam, algae that microbes consume. I would have guessed gigantic trilobites, the thing I was looking for in smaller form back then as a teen. The type of things you see in museum shops. I wanted to find that and never did find anything. Not one single thing.
All these layers to pry apart looking for leaf impressions or smaller sea life, but nothing.
Just look at that. It's begging you to get in there and look for things between layers like it's trying to give them to you.
Stop! I gotta get out and look at those shards. Oh wait. Can't do that anymore. Don't you touch our erosion shards. No collecting allowed!
17 comments:
Slimy Beach.
I'll bet it was if the dinos were there.
Great post Chip. Those last two Photos remind me of abstract paintings
It's the 4th of July in the dry West, and Chip's post put me in mind of another story of another 4th of July, long ago in an even drier part of the West.
First, go visit one of our Western insects:
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/absurd-creature-of-the-week-tarantula-hawk/
If you click on the link, you will find a very interesting article on the World's Most Awful Wasp, the "Tarantula Hawk."
Consider for a moment what that name might mean, and I will proceed.
I earlier wrote an anti-gun screed on Facebook. That's okay, because I live in Massachusetts, and I'm about to tell you this story about this insect and a 7.65 mm Sauer automatic pistol. This may not serve as a firearm Temperance lecture, but you may take it as you will.
When I was a mere tyke, and my father a new California Highway Patrolman, he was assigned for one summer—1953, I believe—to the desert hellhole of Twenty-Nine Palms. My Mother, Father, and I all lived for six weeks in a motel on what passed for the "outskirts" of Twenty-Nine Palms. That meant the door opened directly onto an expanse of bare desert, with little in the way of life, save scrub brush, cactus, coyotes, rattlesnakes, tortoises, scorpions, tarantulas, and, of course, tarantula hawks.
I was warned about rattlesnakes and scorpions. There was, however, no preparation for tarantula hawks. If you read the article, you will see an alarming picture of a wasp about the size of a humming bird.
Yes, that's it.
So, early on the 4th of July, there was an enormous buzzing at our screen door. My father took one look, blanched a bit, and said, "Stay back. I'm going to handle this!"
He got the small automatic pistol he sometimes carried for personal protection. He unlatched the screen door, efficiently kicked it open, and, "BLAM! BLAM!"--at least one copper-jacketed piece of lead travelling at 1000 feet per second met a formidable ancient life form, reducing it to fragments of black exoskeleton and bits of wing, drifting down through the blue powder smoke to the concrete slab of a porch.
No one took exception to my father having dispatched an insect with such seeming excess. They mostly just thought it was firecrackers
And everyone knew tarantula hawks, and wouldn't have minded anyway.
ADDED: 1953, which I am unfortunately old enough to remember, was a different world. And, being so old, I've always been dissatisfied politically, because there's never been another President Eisenhower.
Tracks of one kind and another, left behind, pondered and celebrated by those with an eye for seeing on and under the surface. Thanks ChipA, once again, for a post that invites the imagination along for a ride, a climb and a search for something more.
Is the dark color of the tracks natural, or was it added to make them more visible?
TT - I've never felt badly for tarantulas until now. Yikes. There's a war going on.
this caught my attention: "One survey found that in 400 battles, only a single wasp perished.
Survey?
Chip - great photos. I've never been there.
Mumps - yeah -I'd like to know the answer to that questions as well. They look like stamps.
When I saw them a couple years ago (fenced off but you could still drive by, and no structure) they appeared painted. But today close up they appeared natural. I think natural.
They also have facilities. They're hosting a holiday bbq and thing to watch fireworks. It sounds really good, actually. I noticed on their web site they also have tour rides. I don't know how it works. Cut off by the city or whatever for cyclists and nearby ranch profits however they can. I was pleased there is no admission to the place, just park and walk up to it. I was expecting toll roads and the whole bit. I was prepared to be bitter but people were so nice, and they are protecting it. But then, think of what else is under there if they did more nearby blasting and caused more slides. More stuff could show.
They pulled fascinating things out of the ground at Red Rocks and installed them into the floors underground. You wouldn't even know anything is happening underneath the seat but there is, and it's fascinating. That's what Don Defless (sp) did. He was chief architect for that. His firm was.
And I marvel, how it is that he shows such tremendous great taste and impressive sense of conservatism in protecting what came before him, the FDR plan that produced the Red Rocks that we love, recognizing what is valuable there (its singular beauty), what is worth keeping (its authenticity), what is worth displaying (its fossils) all that so splendidly and unobtrusively without ruining any element of what is there, only enhancing it, (the top deck and the back yard of the place), and do this in all areas of his life, not just the Red Rocks project I'm familiar, but then when it comes to any political subject he goes flappy bat-shit insane rolling out every butt-rapingly wrong liberal trope that was ever completely debunked. And there goes your conversation straight to Retardlandia where he abides politically. It's infuriating. We avoid each other.
That's interesting. So I take it you have been under red rocks, Chip?
Secret rock star chambers?
Yes.
The back platform is extended and much goes on behind the seats now. Much activity up there. Also on top is a brick structure the shape of a tube. You'd walk right past it. It has a door on the back side of it. You enter the brick tube and choose elevator or circular stairway down. There are beautiful restrooms, a gift shop and well-appointed restaurant with exceedingly friendly staff underneath. The hallway floor displays fossils pulled out during excavation. It is a wonderful family-oriented place to visit.
Their gift-place separate from that is enhanced too.
I was surprised how easy it was to get to. 470 is new and that throws me off. Lots of new streets, and old ones cut off. Google Earth offered a complex way to get to it. I noticed I could go straight down Alameda and hug Green Mountain around its base and boom I'm there. Very easy and fast. No highway at all. Alameda clears up to no traffic at all past Sheridan. That whole western area of the Federal Center and Green Mtn was zoom right through this morning.
cool. I don't recall a gift shop. A restaurant? Is that for the public too?
Last concert at RR for me was Neil Young but that was many years ago. I think GWB was presnit.
Chrissy Hynde opened and she rocked. You don't show up late for her, she arrives on stage on time and rocks out. Running late we walked up the hill to the amphitheater listening to her surreal sounds bouncing off the rocks. I enjoyed that more than Neil Young. He was boring.
Hey look a web cam.
Almost time for fireworks. Want to crash instead.
This reminds me of the time (1995 ish) when I, and a then-boyfriend, investigated the mysterious spaceship house. It all began after he re-counted a previous trip to the house. A sneaky sneak-in. I interrupted. “what what what?!? you must take me. I gotta see this!”
It’s the Charles Deaton space-ship house in Genesee. Seen from I-70. (and also makes a cameo in the movie "sleeper".)
The house is not really in the movie, other than a few shots of the outside. The inside of the real spaceship house remained unfinished for decades. In 1995 it was still unfinished.
So we picked a warm night and we parked at the bottom of the hill, and in the dark, we hiked straight up through the woods past “trespassers will be shot” signs. A bit un-nerving as we were totally trespassing. It was dark, freaky & no trail, but totally worth it. Once at the top of the hill, we crawled on our bellies through a small broken window, braving spiders and what not, and got in.
The house was in an unfinished time-warp. totally abandoned and in horrible condition.
It was thrilling to stand on the edge and see the views in all directions. The city view was sensational. It was odd and eerie, though, to wander this vacant semi-famous house. I’d describe the stairwell as a lung with a beautiful seamless metal railing that wound and twisted all the way up the interior stem of the house.
The stem of the house was a surprise. The exterior wall of the stem consisted of narrow panels of glass and concrete, repeating over and over in narrow vertical slices. I think I recall 2 or 3 levels under the main house in the stem.
All the would-be bedrooms are in the stem. The main upper portion of the house is a giant “C”. Empty, except for someone’s lame attempt at space-planning. A few metal studs were erected in a futile attempt to add squares and rectangles to all the curves. Nothing in this house is square. Nothing. A crappy old stainless steel sink sat on the floor and wept. No cabinets. Nothing. Many broken windows, a few boarded up. The front door was a curved rounded key-hole opening that dropped off over a 15-20 foot drop to the open arm of the empty sky. (don't step off!) Oh the possibilities. (I see in the photos they fixed that and filled it in)
Check it out!
The back of the C-shell-shaped house is a really thick wall, & the architect placed a single baseball sized round window through it. (which was broken) Weird wild stuff.
Everytime I drive by, I say to anyone who cares –“I snuck into that house and it was glorious even in its dilapidated unfinished state.” Whatever. Right?
Happy 4th - time for another round of firewerx.
April, yes. Open to public.
A surprisingly large number of tables, more than I expected down there. The back wall is glass opening to large patio the full length of the place and the entire back of the park. It looks like a beautiful venue for reception. It is a fine place. Downstairs, reasonably priced lunches in a very nice atmosphere.
Above food vendors are invited with their carts, so not that many people use the restaurant. And they're not schmucky vendors up there either. What I noticed up top was somewhat upscale. Pita this and that, I forget what, not hotdogs. Dance groups were practicing up there, martial arts classes were doing things. The whole plaza invites new activity. What I saw was fun.
Of course no climbing around anywhere and going up to the cave above as with did with my Alsatian (g.s.) is out of the question, you'd be busted faster than that *snap*. Still, people do climb around the outcroppings even though they're not allowed.
"Personally, I’ve always thought it looked like a giant smiling clam... the Cheshire Cat smile of architecture."
&
The orgasmatron was missing.
I had no idea there is a restaurant up there. No clue.
Where have I been?
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