Momilies

I know it is spring when my to-do list is longer than my weekend.  That being said, I’m WAY behind on blogging.  It’s already been six weeks since I was in San Diego!  I had so much fun there, despite the fact that I was there for work.  Attending a conference is great.  You meet up with colleagues from around the country, you sit in on really informative presentations and discussions, and come away with a lot of great stuff.  And there is a loooooong break for lunch, and then we are done before five, so every single second I could be outside, I was!  Even on the first couple of days when it was rainy.  This is southern California.  Outside is a requirement!

I walked my feet off for at least 45 minutes every day.  Doesn’t sound like much, but I was moving…if you stand still, the buskers are all over you trying to get you to buy their stuff.  the funniest ones, to me, were the pedi-cabs.  They were determined that this fat girl shouldn’t be walking.  Nay…I was walking!

I took a ton of pictures, of course.  I have learned to enjoy these trips.  Yes, I learn a lot and sit in on sessions from beginning to end, but lunch time and evening?  My time!  I did manage to make it to the beach on the final day, as things were wrapped up early.  There is no such thing as a bad day on the beach.  And I came back with a nice tan on my arms and legs.  Bonus!

Storms and rain came and went the day I landed and the next day.  Between those storms, there were spectacular skies.

This trip meant I got to stay at a Hyatt.  Unless I win the lottery, a Hyatt is not on my list of places I can afford.  It was a bit like staying at the Grand Budapest Hotel from the movie…many layers of personnel to make sure everything was perfect.  There were the men outside opening car doors on cabs and valet parking the cars, then inside were the bellhops, and the concierges, and the front desk staff.  Many times I encountered security guards roaming the hallways – wearing dark suits and looking like any other businessman.  The lobby is spectacular and my camera was not good enough to get a picture of it all.

The hotel is 34 stories high and no matter what room you stay in, you have a view of the bay and Coronado Island.

I could walk out of the hotel and across a parking lot, through Seaport Village, and to the edge of the bay.  Standing and staring out at the water was something I could have done all day long. 

And don’t even get me started on the sunsets.

Panorama of the Bay and one of the seaside restaurants on stilts.

San Diego is like a giant botanical garden, in may ways.  Plants that I can only grow indoors are planted outdoors as shrubbery, or just around a sign. 

Cyclamin – also called the “Sweetheart Plant”

Mother-in-Law Tongue

This plant looks vicious, but the thorns are actually very soft and not sharp at all.

Strange trees.  They don’t look like they have enough leaves to keep living, but they ran the whole length of the bay and looked perfectly healthy.

Hedges growing along a restaurant on the bay.

The Convention Center was just a block away.  I walked past it several times on my lunchtime jaunts.

Fishing boats in the bay.  If I was up early, and I usually was, I’d see them coming back in from having fished all night.  There was a fish market right across from the hotel.

Busker demonstrating kites in the little park on the bay.

One afternoon at the end of the sessions, I high-tailed it to the Midway Museum and did the tour.  Very spooky to be below decks, yet informative overall.  The ship is massive.

The San Diego Naval Station was directly across the bay from the hotel.  Ships of all sizes came and went on a regular basis day and night.

It is always breezy on the bay, so sailboats abounded.

Small stingray in the water.  I had heard that there were a lot of them, but this is the only one I saw.  There were sea lions, as well, and I saw several, but they move very fast and I was never able to get a picture.  Someone reported seeing dolphins in the bay, as well, but I never saw any.

San Diego is full of artwork.  This traveling exhibit, called Sound of Silence, was within walking distance of the hotel.

Lots of interesting boats in the bay.  The Star of India (I thought it was a pirate ship but I was mistaken!)

A submarine…not anywhere near the naval base…

California is in a drought, although it was plenty wet when I was there.  Most buildings had rain barrels of one sort or another.  Oddly, it is illegal to have rain barrels in the state of Colorado.  Note the wet pavement around the rain barrel.  It had rained the night before.

My first SWAG from the conference – google headphones!

There was plenty of delicious food – that I didn’t have to pay for.  That’s a nice perk about business travel!

Then there was the beach.  I took the ferry over to Coronado Island, then took the bus to the other side of the island to the beach below the Coronado Hotel.

You can’t see it well in this picture, but the sand in the sun and under the water looks like gold flakes. 

Waves on the beach.  The water was cool but not impossible and people were out in it.

Of course I had my toes in the water.  Who wouldn’t?  I was searching madly for shells, and I did find a few, but only found one sand dollar.  When I was there three years ago, I found so many sand dollars I could barely bring them back.

The Hotel del Coronado is one of the oldest hotels in the country.  It has a very long history and is one of those places that when you step into it, you feel the history, and know you are WAY out of your league with your middle class job and your worn out flip flops.  It was a perfect sunny day with no clouds, and the Coronado shined like a jewel.  Someday, I do want to stay there, just to say that I did it.  How elegant it would be!

Hotel del Coronado from the beach. 

Spring arrived about a week ago.  Here in Colorado, that usually means 8 more weeks of winter.

This year, however, we have had a very mild winter.  There has been plenty of snow in the mountains, so we will not have a problem with water supply.  But because there has been less moisture than usual here at lower elevations, fire danger may be worse this summer.  We’re hoping not.

But the fact is, not too many of us are complaining about the 70-degree weekends.  As I sit and write this at 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, it is 78 degrees, with bright sunshine and a few small clouds.  The humidity is around 12%.  It is absolutely spectacular.  And it’s been like this most weekends since early January.  While the east coast has been slammed with snow, ice, and brutal temperatures, we’ve been resisting the urge to get the swamp cooler uncovered and running.

When we have a warm spring, after a warm winter, I have to wonder how hot we will get this summer.  It probably won’t be any different than it has been in the past.  One of the great joys of living here is the amazing summer weather.  Yes, it gets warm.  But not really hot.  I don’t miss the lack of air conditioning in my car, for the most part, and as soon as the sun starts settling lower in the sky, it is quite comfortable being outside.  I haven’t found a time of year yet that I don’t enjoy being outside.

Of course, it took me longer to get to the writing of this post, so the pictures I’m putting in here are from two weeks ago.  We are much further along in the greening of things than the pictures show.  Trees are starting to leaf out, or at least get that orange/green look about their branches, the neighbor’s daffodils have bloomed, and everything I show below is twice as big as it was when I took the picture.  Looking forward to gardening season, but I’m resisting the effort to do more than put something in the cold frame and start the seeds in peat pots inside.  I know better.  Our average last snow is late April, and our average last frost is Mother’s Day.  I should be able to plant potatoes within the next week or two, but everything else will need to wait.  And that’s okay.  As long as I have a few pretty things to look at in the meantime, I’m fine.

My indoor plants think its spring.  Or something.  The geraniums are the ones I pulled up from the outside planter last fall, and have never stopped blooming this winter.  And the Christmas cactus is a rescue from last summer that I thought was going to die.  This is its first bloom for me – absolutely gorgeous!

The Snow-On-The-Mountain I transplanted from the townhouse to the current house last year is already coming up and looking great.  The lilies are also coming up nicely.

The dianthus that are supposed to be annuals but are always perennials for me are coming up as well.  They will be early bloomers and bloom heavily all summer long until a hard freeze in the fall.

Spring brings incredible views of storm clouds.  We have the most wonderful clouds here.

I even have some volunteer lettuce coming up in the veggie garden next to the back door.  Not enough for a salad…yet!

This is also the time of year when avocados become stupid-cheap at the local stores.  This is not an unusual price, and sometimes we see them as low as $4 for a dollar.

This is a wonderful time of year to be alive.  And I am reminded of that every time I step outside.

…I had a friend.  We met at an event, hit it off, and were fast friends almost from the first moment.  She was vivacious, attractive, and so much fun to be around.  We seemed to have a lot of things in common, and there were a lot of laughs.  Our friendship was intense.  It was intense because of the kind of person she was, because of her high energy, and because of her deep neediness.  I fulfilled something for her, and she fulfilled something for me.  After all, that’s what most friendships are – a joint effort, a coming together of likes and opposites, to create a somewhat fractured whole.

And I loved her.  I loved our friendship.  I loved all the trouble we got into, the laughs we had, the fun we found ourselves committing.  Our energy was infections, and soon a small group of us were fast friends.  We had plans.  We had things we were going to do.

And then she got married.  The marriage wasn’t really the problem.  In fact, as far as I know, she’s still married and everything is fine.  It’s been five years since we were friends, and nearly that long since I thought much about her.  But I know that with a friendship like ours, there were bound to be sparks, and there was bound to be an explosion, or an implosion.  Which was, in the end, how it ended.  There was too much fire.  Too much flame. Too much intensity.

And we might still be friends if I had not chosen to walk away.  It was cowardly, in a way, but it was also a way to save myself.  You see, you learn a lot about how a friend is by watching how she treats her other friends.  Leading up to her marriage, there was the usual stress.  I was making her dress, from some very expensive fabric she had picked up, and a pattern she had picked out.  I was up to the challenge.  But my friend, she was worried.  She wanted it perfect.  She wanted it exact. She wanted it to look just like she had dreamed it should look.  I understood all of that.  I accepted the challenge.

But as the day drew nearer, I watched how she treated her friends.  And how she treated her friends was shocking.  A friend she had proclaimed her “best, oldest, dearest friend, like a sister to me” had come from out of town to help put together the wedding.  My friend had spent weeks finding exactly the right dishware, which included a set cut glass lunchette plates with punch cups.  Two days before the wedding, the “oldest, dearest friend” accidentally broke two of the plates.  I watched as my friend tore this woman to shreds, tossing her out of the house and ending their friendship on the spot.  I was delivering the dress, which was finished, when I witnessed this.  I know that at the time I stood up for the old friend, as the breakage was purely an accident.  But my friend would have none of it.  There was cursing, throwing of things, and more breakage as her temper got away from her.

It wasn’t long afterward that I broke off the friendship.  Watching her treat her “oldest, dearest friend” with such contempt was shocking.  At what point would I do something to make her angry, and receive the same treatment?

You can learn a lot about people by watching how they treat their friends.  I was watching.  And I chose to walk away.

You might wonder why I even bring this up, after all these years.  But it’s because I see cut glass lunchette plates with punch cups at every thrift store I ever go in.  I cannot look at them without remembering my one-time friend.  I miss the intensity, the fun, the laughs, and the closeness.  It hurts that I got to witness her behaving so badly, and that I couldn’t help her friend.  I wonder if they even speak today, or maintain a friendship.  I know I wouldn’t have come back after that.  But I think about her, and I wonder about the friendship we had, and I miss those good times.

It’s been a stressful few weeks at work, since the semester has started.  There is also home-based stress as I get used to having Klown back home after his long Christmas gig.  And there is stress from the edits of my novel, which have deadlines.  I’m also trying to write the second novel, and prepare for the marketing and promotion of the first one when it comes out.

So, I needed to recharge.  For me, a recharge means I get myself uphill into the mountains.  I’d had a couple of false starts the previous weekend, as it just wasn’t going to work out for me to run away.  But yesterday, I ran away.  I left before dawn, and got to Estes Park to see the sunrise over the mountains.  The sunshine was short-lived, though, as there was thick cloud cover.  But as I usually say, a bad day in the mountains is better than a good day anywhere else.

I had breakfast at the Egg and I, and worked a bit on my edits, then headed into Rocky Mountain National Park.  The weather was not warm, or still.  In fact, I estimate winds were around 50 mph, and greater in gusts.  But none of that mattered to me.  I was dressed appropriately, and the fresh air and high altitude suit me just fine.

I drove to Sprague Lake, one of my favorite spots.  In the summer this area is green and inviting.  The lake teems with fish, and it is not unusual to see elk walking through the shallow water.  In winter, it is frozen over.  You can walk across it. You can also fish in it, apparently.

Ice fishermen getting down to business on Sprague Lake.

I know, it looks cold.  That’s because it IS cold.  I did find some water that wasn’t frozen over.  This is the creek that feeds the lake.

The wind made it difficult, but I walked around the lake, a short, 1-mile trek.  The only thing cold was my cheeks, which managed to turn a nice bright red from the sting of the snow in the screaming wind.  Otherwise, I was fine.  The snow was blowing so hard, though, that snow was being pushed over the mountains, and swirling down the road, complete with “snow devils.”  It was pretty amazing.  The roads were relatively clear, but still icy.

I took the obligatory selfie in front of the Mummy Range.  My hair is in braids because of the wind.  No leaving it loose yesterday!  Note the snow blowing over the peaks behind me.

This is video I took of the strong winds.  Amazing stuff.

Of course it’s not time.  It is January, and while we just had an exceedingly pretty day in the 50’s with sunshine, and will have another one tomorrow, I am not fooled.  Spring is still quite a ways off.  But with the holidays now passed, and a cold, boring January stretching out in front of me, I can’t help but dream about what I will plant this year.

It doesn’t help that I got my first seed catalogs in the mail this week.

So now I’m ogling multicolored carrots, blue potatoes, buttercrunch lettuce, and a new squash called a “cupcake.”  Not to make it worse or anything, but my first issue of my new subscription to Mother Earth News came a couple of weeks ago.  These things are like salt in the wound, you know?  I even went by my garden plot today.  There is ice and snow everywhere, but I tiptoed my way through it, wearing my shorts and tennis shoes, just to see if everything was as I left it.  It’s not like anything would have changed, of course.  But I had to look anyway.

But I’ve been keeping busy anyway.  I’ve finished the first round of the editor’s requested edits on my novel, which you can read more about on my writing blog.  I’ve been working on a few craft projects, like making boot socks for my daughter, and crocheting a few things, reading, playing with the cats, and working.  Spring will be here soon enough, and I’ll be buried.  This is my slow time, my waiting time.  My do-nothing time.  My time to sleep.  Just like my garden.

I did snag a pretty good deal on blackberries at the local grocery.  I don’t know where these come from this time of year, when my world is frozen, but I’m not complaining.  I tossed four pints of them into a pot with some sugar and water and boiled them down for syrup.  Froze 4 half-pints of syrup and kept one out to use on pancakes and ice cream.  The house smelled amazing while I cooked the syrup.  And pouring the syrup into jars reminded me that I need to buy a canner before summer.  I want to be able to can most things, instead of relying completely on the freezer.

And today, I picked up about 300 pounds of rabbit manure.  The raised bed I built last fall and filled with leaves and kitchen waste has not cooked at all over the winter.  I did stomp on it a bit today and it does pack down some, but there is a long way to go before it is ready for me to plant in it.  What I don’t have with that bed is the luxury of time.  I could buy some soil to fill it, which I may still have to do, but getting a big supply of rabbit poo is going to help tremendously.  I hauled it home in my little car (it was in big yard waste bags) and spread it over the leaves and kitchen waste.  I’ll water it tomorrow and poke it around a bit.  I should get another 300 pounds in a few weeks, which I will spread on my other little garden.  Whatever is left from that will go in the raised bed.  If we get some warm days with sun, and then some snow or rain, and some more sun, I may get that bed ready to go after all.

This stuff is liquid gold for a gardener.  Rabbit poo is well-composted, as rabbits are good digesters.  Adding soil to the top of this and mixing it all together should bring me a bed that is ready to grow yummy things for us this summer.

I’m still debating on whether I want to get two plots at the community garden this year.  I made it through last year by borrowing a third of someone else’s plot so I could grow my pumpkins.  I hate to spend for a whole second plot for pumpkins and corn, but then again, I would love to have had more of both last year.  I’m still on the fence, and I guess I have about another month to make a decision.  Even with the raised bed at the house, I don’t know if I’ll have enough to grow all that I want to grow.

But that’s what this cold time of year is for.  Time for me to plan and decide what I am going to grow, and how much room it will take.  Spring is only 62 days away.  Not that Spring means anything here.  There will be no planting until late April (cold-weather things) and most of the things won’t go in until late May.  Last year we had snow two weeks after Mother’s Day.  Such a long time away!

Two years ago today, I broke my leg at the end of a long hike in the mountains.  It was such a shock, that even now, I look back and don’t quite believe it happened.  But so much is wrapped up around the memories of those first few days that I don’t remember much else about the time.  I spent New Year’s in the hospital.  There was no Jambalaya for dinner that day, and as far as I can remember, I slept through most of that day after getting home.

Today, I walk as if nothing happened.  Sometimes the ankle aches, especially if there is a storm system coming in, and if I twist it without thinking, it reminds me that I shouldn’t do that.  I remember thinking at the time that there was no way they’d be able to put that mess back together.  Modern medicine is pretty miraculous.  Most people looking at my ankle don’t even know there is something wrong with it and that it is full of metal.  If you look close, there’s still that wrinkly scar where the giant blister was, and the tib bone end is twice as big as the left one.  But you have to be looking closely to see either of those things.

As I approach another year of “AB” (After Break) I continue to be thankful that they could put me back together, and that other than some stiffness and occasional achiness, I should have no trouble with it.  That being said, it’s time to look at resolutions for 2015.

1. As I have a book contract and am currently in the editing phase, I need to come with and start working on a new idea for a second novel.  This needs to start feeling firm by the first of February.

2. More reading.  I have five books on my nightstand alone.  Last year was light on reading.  Need to up my game a little bit.

3. Work harder on my health.  My last two yearly blood works have come in high on the potential diabetes scale.  This is concerning.  I didn’t ride my bike nearly as often this year as I have in the past.  Time to get that game back on, and to make sure I make my Zumba sessions twice a week.  I also need to get into a nutrition class through my insurance, and start on a preventive treatment to keep me from taking that next step right into diabetes.

4. Get back to blogging.  I was doing well, posting at least once a week.  I’ve fallen off that bandwagon, too.  The more I write, the more I’m inspired to write.  It’s a vicious, but helpful, cycle.

Let’s see how I do!

When I was younger, I got sick nearly every Christmas.  I’d have some sort of cold or flu or upper respiratory thing, and Christmas Day was a miserable affair for me.  I had weak lungs, still do.  And every few years, that upper respiratory thing would end up being pneumonia.  In fact, I don’t believe there’s a single time in my life that I have not had pneumonia within weeks of having the flu.  When I was 40 and pregnant with Tater, I got pneumonia three days before Christmas.  I was coughing and hacking and miserable.  Years before, I got the flu on Christmas day, and pneumonia by New Year’s Day, and my kids were small and I was newly divorced.

Many of my Christmases were punctuated with a severe respiratory infection.

But once I passed 40, for some reason all that ugliness practically stopped.  Instead of a cold or flu hitting me five or six times a year, I wouldn’t have any in a 12 month period.  After a while, I would go years.  I felt powerful!  I had obviously been granted some sort of immunity!  My inhaler got to go in a drawer and hardly saw the light of day.  I didn’t buy Puffs by the pallet anymore.  Even when everyone else in the house got sick, I was fine.  Oh happy day!  I got flu shots, got a pneumonia shot, and lived an invincible life.  Well, sort of invincible.  I had shoulder surgery, two knee surgeries, a hysterectomy, and carpal tunnel surgery within a six year span.  And two years ago, I broke my leg in a spectacularly simple fall in the mountains.  But I didn’t get the flu!

Until last week, that is.  Despite my flu shot in October, I ended up with the flu.  Felt like I’d run a marathon and climbed a mountain.  I hurt so bad I took the heavy duty painkillers to sleep, and took two days off work.  By the weekend, the flu symptoms were mostly gone, but I had developed a lovely, unproductive, hacking cough.  By Monday night I knew – I had contracted the dreaded pneumonia again.  Just like clockwork, during the holidays, following a bout of the flu.

The doctor was skeptical, and said my lungs sounded fine, but that due to my history, I had “won a trip to the xray.”  Then she congratulated me on pneumonia number 15.  That is how many times I’ve had it in my life.  I thought I was done at 14.  So, here it is Christmas and I’m on heavy antibiotics and  steroid breathing treatments.  I did catch it early, and while I have some fatigue, my body responded quickly to the medication and I feel pretty good, all things considered.  But I could sure do without this happening at the holidays!

Merry Christmas!

These weeks after we go back to Standard Time, the weeks between the first of November and the Yule season, carry a unique magic for me.  While my morning commute is bright and sunny, with the mountains lit in the colors of the sunrise, my evening commute has me driving in early twilight, when everything turns blue and grey and a certain silence falls over everything.

We have had a long, warm, sunny autumn.  The snow that usually comes the third week of October never materialized.  We were still using fans in the windows, changing into shorts by mid-morning, and getting sunburns while being outdoors.  It would cool at night into the 50’s, but days in the 70’s, even the 80’s, were not unusual.  We were headed into the second week of November before the “S”-word entered our forecast.

Monday dawned mostly clear, with a few high, thin clouds.  The sunrise was spectacular, and when I left for work the nearest mountains were bathed in pinks and purples.  Up high, though, where the white peaks usually stand out against the rosy sky, there was a thick ridge of blue-grey, the mountain-tops obscured.  It was 65 degrees, and climbing.  How could there be snow in the forecast?

By 11 a.m., clouds had taken over, the temperature had dropped 20 degrees, and we saw the first snowflakes.  I let my office at noon to run a few errands, and it was snowing in earnest by then, with the temperature already below freezing.  The afternoon proceeded with heavy flurries, and dropping temperatures.

My commute home had me in the blue twilight, with a dusting of snow covering everything.  It was a first glimpse of what was to come.  Winter had arrived, spreading its desolate, lonely blanket over everything.  I like this time of year.  I like when winter comes, whether it sneaks in with a quick, heavy overnight snowfall that shines like diamonds in the morning sun, or whether it comes in as a screaming upslope storm.  Our flurries of Monday turned into an upslope storm.  Two days later, we have five inches of powder on the ground, and bitter cold temperatures.  It is hard to believe I was wearing shorts on Sunday, or that I still had windows open in the house when I got out of bed on Monday morning.

Winter, to me, is a time to recuperate from a long, busy summer.  It is a time to slow down, and to enjoy the warmer, cozier things of life.  A time to enjoy cookies fresh from the oven, hot soups simmered on the stove, warm fleece pullovers, sleeping under a layer of blankets, enjoying the crisp bite of the air on your bare cheeks when you go outside.  There is a beauty to all seasons, even winter.  If we had no winter, we would not appreciate summer.  Without winter, our plants would not grow in the spring.  Without winter, my state would have a lot less tax revenue from tourists on the ski slopes.

I hear lots of complaining this time of year.  “I’m not ready,” or “no!” or “not here!” or “I hate snow!”  These same people will be complaining next summer when it is “too hot.”  You have choices – you don’t have to live in a place that has snow, if you don’t want to.  Just like I don’t have to live in a place that has too much heat.

I embrace winter.  I embrace that lonely, desolate time.  I embrace the dark nights, the season of quiet and solitude.  I will wonder for a week or two about what I should do with my abundant amounts of free time, but I will fill it, the way I always fill free time.  I will crochet a little more, read a little more, rest a little more, get ready for a busy season of eating and presents and parties.  I will embrace the winter, as I do the spring, and as I do the summer, and the fall.

It is a magical world I live in.  Part of that magic is the variety of the seasons.  I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Farmers and gardeners have a saying: “There’s always next year.”  There’s next year to plant differently, water differently, fertilize differently, arrange differently, etc.  There’s always next year.

I hear Klown say, after he fails to create or complete our annual front yard Halloween display, “next year I will_____.”  I hear other people make the same sort of statements.  I make them as well, at times.

Having my mom visit, however, reminds me that at some point, there won’t be a “next year.”  Eventually, we run out of years.  Or maybe we have plenty of years, but no health or mobility to enjoy them.

Which is why it’s important to take advantage of the opportunities we have to do things.  To do new things.  To do old things differently.  To do, not to just be.  To spend time thinking, not filling our thinking space with non-thought.  That television show, that video game. those things that take no thought and create an inactive stasis for your mind and body, should not exist on your daily to-do list.

Do you have dreams? I do.  I have dreams that I work toward every day.  I have a gift, something to give, even if it is just to myself, but I need to be using it.  Opportunities abound for me to follow my dreams.  If I don’t achieve them, let it not be because I didn’t try, or created my own obstacles.

Excuses for lack of success, for lack of follow through, are just that: excuses.  You have no one to blame but yourself.  Waiting until you are thinner, healthier, have more time don’t get you to your goals or your dreams.  It is easy to say that the time isn’t right, but the reality is, the time is always right.

I don’t want to put my faith in “next year.”  I want to take each opportunity, each moment, and make it important.  I want to do, not just be.  I don’t regret my busy life.  I don’t regret rushing through the laundry, or dishes, or dinner, or yard work, so I can go do.  I want to spend time in the mountains, I want to spend time writing, I want to spend time with my friends, I want to take the opportunity to enjoy music and art and the outdoors.  I will never be thin enough, young enough, fit enough, rich enough.  Waiting for those things to happen is a waste of precious time.  The years are not going to forgive me.  Time continues to march on.

I don’t have to do something incredible and famous to be successful.  Being successful is all about following your dreams, and doing instead of being.

So, what are you doing with yourself today?  What goal are you working on?  How are you caring for yourself?  How are you building the future you want yourself to have?

Are you be-er?  Or a do-er?

Nestled in the San Isabel National Forest, this gem was something Mom and I came upon by accident while on our way to Bishop Castle.  We were tooling along Hwy 165, west of Pueblo, looking at the Aspen in full color, when there it was – a sign for Lake Isabel.  It was not on our itinerary, but I braked hard and we turned in.  Through the trees we could see water. We didn’t need any other reason than that to stop in.

The road into Lake Isabel.

We paid our $3 to enter (it is run by the USDA), and drove until we found a shady spot to park.  The are was heavily wooded, and we weren’t sure what we’d end up seeing, but we parked, leashed up Sophie, and headed in.  Lake Isabel was a major surprise, in a thousand ways.  But the first was this:

Dedicated in 1986.  Once home, I tried to look up information on Lake Isabel, but the information is limited.  The lake is man-made, and there is a resort on the western edge of it.  There are also apparently cabins you can rent from the Forest Service, as well.  We walked the trails into the park, our goal being to get to the water, which we could see through the trees.  There were picnic tables tucked under trees, against rocks, and all in accessible locations.  There were bridges across the creek (it might have been a river) that fed the lake.  Everything was lush, quiet, and completely inviting.  When we finally made our way to the lake, the woods opened up onto a beautiful scene of water and mountains.

We walked partway around the lake, then back up through the picnic grounds.  Every trail we walked was accessible, and while we were alone (it was a Friday in October, after all), I could imagine the place being well-used in the warmer months.  I could have spent my entire day there! As it was, we spent well over an hour there, just wandering around.  You could see the resort/cabins up the hill from the lake.  I may look into a short summer vacation here at some point, or maybe schedule a nice writing retreat for myself.  It was that kind of place.

Fully accessible path.  This one was paved, but not all of them were.  But all were flat, wide, and well-maintained.

One of the bridges.  This one was relatively new, still smelling of creosote and stain.

The creek that ran through the center of the picnic area.

The woods in the sunlight were just gorgeous.  It was very peaceful.

There were rocks, too.  Reminded me a bit of Elephant Rock State Park in Missouri.

A peaceful walk through the woods.

There was a beautiful meadow, too.

Sun through the trees.

A cabin in the woods.  Boarded up, and was probably a restroom at one time. 

Creek where it meets the lake.

Fishermen on the lake.

Aspen in full fall glory.

Yes, the sky really IS that blue here!