Small-Town Colorado

One final night of celebration brought my Colorado trip to a close. Around supper time, we headed down to Florissant for the weekly meeting of the Grange - an organization originally started as a gathering of ranchers and farmers in the area. Now they meet as a social activity and to perform community service. Think of it as a sort of rotary club. The meeting was held in the old town schoolhouse, now converted into a community center. The building next to the main room was the "teacherage" where the teacher used to live (think parsonage, but for a teacher). 

Among the attendees were:

- A man who went to the original schoolhouse as a young boy and stayed in the area his whole life.

- A woman whose pies are so good that people started fighting over the pieces in line, so now there is an advance sign-up sheet and she personally hands her pieces out to the correct people. What the fee is to get on that list, I have no idea.

- An older couple both dressed in plaid and two-stepping to almost every song, reported to be "living together," ahem. Having both had long and happy marriages with their respective spouses who have now passed away, they are enjoying each other's company in this latter part of life.

- The old "dirtbike guy" who chewed my younger brother's ear off with story after story of his younger glory days, tearing it up around the Colorado mountains.

- My sister's father-in-law who proclaimed upon arriving (in a true country drawl), "y'all go in and mingle now until they ring the dinner bell, and then you dance!"

The line for food - gotta get there early to get the good stuff!

Line dancing to some good music.

One final story about Colorado - I wanted to share this with a view from Pikes Peak, but the train to the top was booked solid so I missed that opportunity. Katharine Lee Bates was an English professor in the 1890's, and she was a visiting professor at Colorado College in the summer of 1893. She herself visited the top of Pikes Peak (via prairie wagon and mule ride), and the view moved her to pen the words to what eventually became "America the Beautiful." What I love about her story is that she was a confident, single woman who never married. That life decision often clashed with the expectations of society, but when a colleague described "free-flying spinsters" as "fringe on the garment of life," her response was, "I always thought the fringe had the best of it. I don't think I mind not being woven in." (Schwarz, "Yellow Clover," 65). That sounds like a lady I would have loved to meet!

With that, I'm signing off on Colorado with a final picture from back in Austin with my Colorado coffee mug. Until the next adventure!

Enjoying coffee from my newest addition to my travel mug collection.

Garden of the Gods and Books!!

Colorado Springs has several areas of particularly stunning terrain, one of which is the Garden of the Gods. The rock formations here are beautiful and awe-inspiring, especially when you realize they have formed through tumultuous geological changes over loooong periods of time. A short rainstorm hit us halfway through, so dark and looming clouds made for a dramatic picture.

Garden of the Gods with rain clouds in the background

My Mom and me at the Garden of the Gods. We did not intentionally coordinate the shirts, but I do realize they highlight how similar we look!

Also in the Garden of the Gods is the Balanced Rock - a 700-ton rock that has eroded away faster on the bottom than on the top, leaving it perched on only a small point of contact. The rock used to be privately owned in the late 1800's, and the owner would take visitors' photos in front of the rock for 25 cents a piece. When personal cameras became more popular (in the early 1900's - who the heck had personal cameras then?!), he built a fence around the rock and charged to get in. Later, the government bought him out and returned the rock to free public access.

Balanced Rock, with lots of happy picture takers!

Unfortunately, our rental car broke down in the parking lot at the Balanced Rock, so the second car in our family caravan shuttled us to town while we waited for a new car to arrive. We hung out at The Bookman - an adorable used bookstore with it's own cat! Every bookstore needs a cat, right?! We left with no less than an entire box full of books, including several classics (Mutiny on the HMS Bounty, anyone?), a biography of Abigail Adams (I've been reading a biography of John Adams, and his wife was just about as active as he was), and the Reader's Digest USA Travel Guide (for my future travels, of course)!

The Bookman bookstore in Colorado Springs - their mascot cat was very sociable.

Can't beat the views and the homemade ice cream

My sister's parents-in-law outdid themselves tonight! We feasted on baked potatoes and fresh steaks off the grill from their personally-owned herd of cattle, finishing off with homemade Butterfinger ice cream. Hoo boy, put a scoop right there in my bowl! 

After dinner, we drove out to Wilkerson Pass to see dusk fall. The views were absolutely gorgeous. To the west was the South Park area with the snow-capped Collegiate Peaks in the distance (Mt. Yale, Mt. Columbia, Mt. Harvard, and Mt. Princeton). To the east was the majestic Pikes Peak - the most famous mountain in the area. I understood how the early pioneers felt stirred to reach the summit, but not enough to join them on foot. Perhaps tomorrow I'll just take the train to the top...

Trying unsuccessfully to get a good panoramic shot of the west area off Wilkerson Pass.

Pikes Peak standing majestically to the east of Wilkerson Pass.

Gold Mine in Cripple Creek and Victor

Today the family took a jag down the road to tour an active gold mine that spans the area between the towns of Victor and Cripple Creek. The mountain was first mined in the late 1890s with underground mines, where miners brought out 1-3 oz. of gold per ton of rock. At one point in 1914, miners found an underground geode that was so rich in gold that they recovered 4000 oz per ton! This find is still known around the world as the famous Cresson vug. Now, the mine is a huge open pit operation that recovers 0.02 oz. of gold per ton of rock, but it's still enough to keep the mine going. 

The deepest mine in the early 1900s went down 3500 feet, and the current surface mining operations are roughly only 1500 feet down. So, the pit walls are full of holes where the old mining shafts were uncovered, and every new blast has to be careful not to dangerously collapse the remaining tunnels underneath. I loved seeing this example of the new, bustling operations interfacing with 100-year-old history. Here are pictures of the quaint town of Victor along with high-level views of the mine pits.

The haul trucks were HUGE!!! They can haul 240 tons of ore and rock, and the mine processes 74,000 tons of rock every day during 24 hr. continuous operations. We got to take pictures next to a retired truck - look at the size of that thing! The tour guide explained the different kinds of rocks at the mine, one of which is fluorite (see pictured). The fluorite at this mine is a pretty purple color, and it indicates to miners that gold-containing sylvanite (metallic mineral with silver, gold, and tellurium) is close by! I got to take a few pieces of the fluorite home, since they have no monetary value.

Next on the tour was the processing operations. As a chemical engineer, this was the most fascinating part of the tour for me. The gold-containing ore is dumped into a crusher, then coated with lime to help with the next step of the process: leaching. The ore is spread in layers in a leach pit, where it is irrigated through with very low concentrations of sodium cyanide in water. The sodium cyanide leaches the gold and silver out of the rocks very slowly over time. After lots of other steps, the gold and silver is smelted together into a cone-shaped ingot and then sent to an external refinery for final purification. Definitely not the "panning for gold" method of the early days! That only gets you so far, then chemical engineering lends a hand. I got a picture with the crusher conveyor belt and the leach pit behind me.

Final stop of the day was the unbelievably cute Costello Street Coffee House! Their dark drip coffee was fantastic, and the dining room felt exactly like a place I would want to come back and enjoy a cup of tea with a scone. Wouldn't you agree?

Lake George, CO

I've made it up to what my mother calls "God's country," and most of the family is here! Beautiful home in a beautiful mountain range, and homemade comfort food to boot. What more can a woman ask for? The kitchen comes with a radiant warming coil underneath the cabinets to keep the food warm, because up at these altitudes the food cools off more quickly than most. I'll have to look into why that is and report back.

Tomorrow, the plan is to visit a working gold mine and hike around bit. Looking forward to seeing more of this gorgeous area!

Touch and go in Austin

I am on my way to Colorado after a busy two days in Austin! I spent Saturday afternoon working in the lab (gotta keep the research rolling), and then it was date night with Jeremy: dinner at Barley Swine and ballet under the stars! Barley Swine has small, shareable plates, so we got to try chilled peach soup, deviled crab with zucchini (pictured), nee potatoes with peanut ranch sauce, gordita (pictured), and lamb leg with mango salsa. Chocolate bar sandwich with candied honeycomb for dessert, and we were satisfied!

The ballet was rained out right after we took our picture. We left while the crew was still valiantly trying to salvage the stage, but with the rain still coming down, there's only so much a squeegee can do! Better luck next time, ballerinas!

A bit of Vegas history

Today was my last day in Vegas. I decided to forgo most of the conference in favor of exploring more casinos and museums, and I'm glad that I did. I discovered my second favorite hotel in the Strip: New York New York! The indoor "streets" looked just like Brooklyn, complete with a guy scarfing his breakfast on a quiet side street. However, the best part was the Hershey store!! I loved the wall with Kisses dispensers, and I would have mixed a bag up if I wasn't afraid everything would melt in the > 100 degree heat.

New York New York hotel from the outside and inside (top), and the wall of Kisses (bottom)!

I continued walking down the Strip to reach the Luxor hotel, passing by the Excalibur along the way. The Luxor is Egyptian themed, and I think it's one of the most interesting to look at from the outside. The Excalibur felt very childish to me - more like Disney world than a hotel that takes itself seriously. But, then again, Camelot and fighting knights have never been my thing.

Luxor and Excalibur hotels

The Bodies exhibit came highly recommended, but honestly I was disappointed because I think it's only about half as large as the sister display in Georgia. The exhibit teaches about the human body by showing all the different systems in both component and full-body form. I was most intrigued by the nervous system. I am amazed at the ability of the human brain to control not only physical movement, but also emotions and imagination. Electrical impulses sent from the brain can travel up to 270 mph through your body - breathtaking from an engineering perspective.

My last stop of the day was The Mob Museum. As a side note, the museum is close to Fremont Street, which is known for having a huge lights display that runs the length of 4 city blocks - see picture below. I figured that it would be fun to explore a subject I know absolutely nothing about, and the museum did an excellent job of giving me a basic understanding. I had no idea there was such a web of organized crime across the US, and that it still continues today. I mean, I KNEW, but I didn't KNOW know... 

The museum is housed in the old Las Vegas courtroom and post office, and part of the tour is to watch a video about the 1950's Senate hearings (led by Senator Kefauver) while sitting in the ACTUAL ROOM they conducted the Vegas hearings in. Another cool artifact is the brick wall from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Early in the Mob's history, George "Bugs" Moran and Al Capone were leaders of competing gangs in Chicago. On Valentine's Day in 1929, seven of Bugs Moran's men were tricked into an ambush by Al Capone's gang. I got a picture in front of the actual bricks that they were lined up and gunned down against - the bullet holes are still there, as the bricks were saved when the building was torn down and put back together to stand in this museum.

Me in front of the massacre wall (top) - in hindsight, I should have looked more scared instead of smiling, but I didn't think about it at the time. Me ready to go into the Bodies exhibit (bottom left), and the view from Fremont street (bottom right).

I'm currently sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home, and I feel as though I left no stone unturned in Vegas! My trip here has been thoroughly enjoyable, although my one constant frustration was that the hotels don't mark their exits well enough. I know they want you to stay and spend more money, but seriously people, I'd be scared for my life in a fire.

Until next time, Las Vegas!