Mesa Verde National Park Redux

We visited Mesa Verde for the first time ever last June which is criminal considering we've lived in Colorado for over 25 years, and it appears I never wrote about it back then.  I do remember it was hot and crowded and we were tired from Too Much Driving and also some biking at Phil's World.  But in February?  You pretty much have the joint to yourself.  Unfortunately Spruce House which is the largest most intact of the cave dwellings and the one you can usually go right up to, was closed due to a rock slide.  You can get kinda close, just not right up to the dwelling.

Spruce House in February

And some close-up shots from June last year

SO much nicer in February without the teeming hordes.  We drove through more of the park this time and took our time, reading the display signs, even went to the museum.

This one was my favorite, Square Tower House

So amazing how both the original inhabitants and the modern day folk who restored it accessed the area by climbing down on carved out hand and toe holds and ropes and ladders.

Some zoomed in views of other dwellings, much farther away than they look

And a wider shot to show the scale and context of the village.

It's hard to get a sense of scale for these Kivas and pit rooms.

To give an idea if you look in the rectangular depression in the photo above you can see a little dark blob.  Zoomed in it's this poor little guy.

Kinda spooky to find him there.

Another pit room

They even had multi-story cave dwellings

And Border Collies??!!  Showing no interest in a turkey??!!

View from the visitor center parking lot

Such a magical place.  Can't believe the BLM is allowing drilling and fracking right next to this place.  On our public lands.  And charging the oil companies a pittance.  Criminal.  The BLM folks in charge right now ought to be in jail for fraud and corruption, not managing our public lands.

Canyons of the Ancients

This place was so amazing and I'd only heard of it a month ago when I was talking to a local about trails.  And only a half hour drive from Cortez.

T-shirt weather in February!

The trail allows hiking, dogs, mountain bikes and unfortunately drilling.  Site of the McElmo Dome which holds asstons of CO2 which apparently is a valuable commodity to the oil and gas industry.  Who knew?  Supposedly Kinder Morgan, the company doing the drilling, has scaled back a significant amount of their operations due to the tanking of the oil and gas industry at the moment.  And no fracking has occured in all of Montezuma County between 2013-2015 and only one well in 2012.  But that could all change.  I'm anxious to see how this turns out and of course it will impact whether we move to the area or not.  Anyway, we couldn't see or hear any impacts from the drilling, if any was even going on.

The trail was beautiful.  My only regret is that we only went a mile or two up, had to leave Lola in the car because it was too steep for her and didn't want to leave her for too long.

The red and white rock formations reminded me of Sedona.

Maybe a cave dwelling?

So much awesomeness.  Can't wait to go back when I can explore a bit further.  Tough traveling with the dogs though, especially when Lola can go very far.  But the area is huge and if we move here there will be plenty to explore.

It's Where You Live

The weekend before last Jonny and I took an unplanned last minute trip down to the Southwest part of the state to check out Dolores, Cortez and Mancos.  I'd been down a month ago but this was his first time and my first chance to see the area in greater detail.  When I went down with my friend last month we only spent a half day in the area because our trip got cut short by an incoming snowstorm.  This time we had 2 full days.

We had the dogs with us which limited our choices of places to stay but I found a cool little 'Casita' in Mancos on VRBO for a reasonable price.  It turned out to be awesome, everything was brand new, we were only the third group of people to stay there.  We had a beautiful view of Mesa Verde National Park from our deck.

Was so awesome waking up to that every morning.  The Casita was on 10 acres so it was very peaceful and private.  There was a main house and a little bit of issue having to navigate the owners' dogs at first but it worked out fine in the end.  We even had a friendly cat come visit us at night.  I miss having a cat but it's too hard to keep the dogs from snacking out of a litter box and that grosses me out to no end.  And OMG the stars at night!!!  So spectacular.

Hanging out in the Casita

Mancos, Dolores and Cortez are about 15-20 minutes from each other and form a triangle of sorts around a rural piece of land, some of it flat, some of it hilly.  I had my eye on a 35 acre piece of land with a 'cabin' and the 2 parcels of 35 acres on either side for sale as a whole if you want.  Imagine having 100 acres all to yourself!  And for significantly cheaper than I can sell my Boulder shack.  But the drive to get there had a short but steep hill on a dirt road and some twisty bits.  Just a 10-15 minute drive from the main highway and mostly not too bad but still not something we want to have to do on a daily basis, especially in winter.  Plus the ugly power lines at the boundary of the property.  Lots of other possibilities in the area though.  And while driving around the dirt roads I spotted this:

And there was a sign up at the fairgrounds saying there was an agility trial that weekend put on by Vision Agility.  Some internet searching reveals that this is a commercial operation but unfortunately for me it's NADAC style/distance handling.  Not my cup of tea.  But nice to know there are fellow agility enthusiasts in them thar hills.

We checked out some houses that were for sale to get an idea of what we could afford and there were plenty of options, the biggest issue being the size of the places.  So huge.  Like this:

And 7 acres of land with water rights.  Plus super nice on the inside.  But sheesh, so big, 2400 square feet.  The thought of heating such a monstrosity and taking care of it is overwhelming, our current house is about 1100 square feet.  But so tempting with views like this:

And only 10 minutes from the grocery store, 20 minutes from trails at Boggy Draw, 6 minutes to Phil's World which is an amazing mountain bike mecca of awesomeness.  All easy driving.  Plus a pond on the property for dog swimming and a reservoir just down the road.

Boggy Draw

I know, what am I still doing here in Boulder?  The woman I traveled with last month went back to Durango with her husband 2 weeks ago and came home with a house.  Jonny and I joked that we had to resist the temptation to do the same.  But we need to work out the financials of how we'll survive there first and it seems real estate prices are continuing to rise here in Boulder and fall over there so it makes sense to wait things out a bit. 

And there are concerns - oil and drilling/fracking in the area and water rights are my main concerns.  I talked to a friend who lives near Durango and she stressed the importance of hiring a real estate lawyer who's also an expert in water and mineral rights.  There's a downturn in oil at the moment (which is probably why real estate prices are falling over there) and a contraction in oil operations for now but who knows what the future holds and the BLM is trying to open up almost all our public land to drilling/fracking and this includes areas next to Mesa Verde National Park and Phil's World.  So there are concerns and I want to see how these issues play out in the next year.

Abandoned Sinclair station on Hwy 160 between Mesa Verde and Mancos. 

On the other hand, Weld County which is next to Boulder County has by far the most amount of fracking and drilling in the whole state and Boulder has its own brown cloud so whatever is going on over there is probably not nearly as bad as here.

I've got a bunch more photos from Mesa Verde and Canyon of the Ancients but I'll do another post for those.

FRAT USDAA Castle Rock

Rockin' it at Castle Rock.

Been ages since I've written about an agility trial.  This one was super fun - great courses (mostly), great weather, great people.  Mostly I'm happy to even be able to go because March is our snowiest month and this trial often gets snowed out for me because while it's only just over an hour's drive, I have to drive through all of Boulder, all of Denver and then the green belt to Castle Rock.  Didn't enter Team this year because the Denver rush hour traffic both ways on Friday was atrocious.  I love Team but not that much.  Though I heard this year was not so bad.

We started off Saturday with Masters Jumpers and ended Sunday with Biathlon Jumpers (ie Fancy Jumpers).  I put them back to back on video with Sunday's run first and it's funny to see the difference between first run of the trial and last run.  He was Crazypants for the first run, knocked 2 bars and had me worried that he's getting too old but looking at the video I think he was simply overexcited.  I was early in the run order and didn't get enough warm-up plus someone from way down in the running order in Championship (we were in Performance) was at the warm-up jump for reasons I can't possibly fathom.  In hindsight I should have booted her out but at the time I couldn't be bothered.

Masters Jumpers

Biathlon Jumpers

Biathlon and Masters Jumpers



Was pleased with both runs, Biathlon Jumpers being my favorite of the whole trial.  So many people got taken out by the off course tunnel entrance at #6 and that's a particularly difficult challenge for Strummer but I got his attention early and he listened beautifully.  To be fair, the jump was a double for Championship and only a single for Performance so he wasn't in as much extension but still, my timing was good and I made it up the opening line no problem.  Had a weave pole bobble but I've given up stressing about his weave poles.  I support him best as I can and he does what he does and I'm o.k. with it.  But I was so pleased with how well we both did on such a technical course, felt so smooth and connected.  Especially since it was last class of the day and we were both mentally tired.

 Steeplechase Round 1

Steeplechase Round 2

Steeplechase Rounds 1 and 2



Somehow I managed to fall during the opening sequence of Round 1.  Not sure what happened, my feet got tangled up or something.  Ended up with some road rash and impressive bruises and swelling on my shin and a cut on my hand but not hurt really.  And I got up and finished the course and still qualified for Finals though far down in the rankings due to lost time.  We redeemed ourselves with a second place finish in Finals.  More lost time due to popping out of weave poles but otherwise a nice fast run.  I bought some smoked marrow bones with our winnings so Lola will get a treat as well.  Plus I a bag of turkey hearts in the workers' raffle and bought a bag of duck feet.  Yes my life has taken a strange turn.


Grand Prix

Master Standard (Saturday)

 Grand Prix and Masters Standard (first video is Grand Prix, not Standard)



Nice runs with little faults here and there.  Of course he finally gets his dogwalk and misses other things.  The missed A-frame in Grand Prix was a handling error, I was too far behind and this impacted the weaves as well.  But otherwise a nice run, fun course.

Masters was another nice run but again with the weave poles and this left me a bit out of position for jump #17 where I ended up flat footed after a front cross after the weaves and ended up with (I think) a refusal at Jump #18.  Should have kept him on my left but didn't plan on being behind.  Got his dogwalk again, yay for that.  Thankfully we had no problem with the chute.  Much ugliness of photos of this on my Facebook this morning from other teams.

I didn't get video of Masters Challenge Standard but this was also a course of much chute ugliness, partly due to course design.  A front cross between Jumps #5 and #6 was challenging unless you could leave your dog on the teeter and many dogs came off the teeter sideways.  Then there was the risk of the A-frame/tunnel off course.  And if you didn't time it right the dog would go into the chute at too much of an angle leading to them getting tangled which quite a few dog did.  The trouble with a rear cross is that you also risked a bad angle or the same A-frame/tunnel off course if you shaped the line too much.  Plus calling the dog while in the chute also led to tangling.  I chose a rear and didn't bother to call his name, just let him come out turning the wrong way and let him turn on the flat before Jump #7.  Wasn't pretty but it was much better than risking a tangle in the chute.  However I had to go too close to #7 to manage his confusion and while I was able to pull off a front cross between #7 and #8 I was a bit behind and had to call him off #10 a little too hard/early and ended up with the off course tunnel entrance at #9 since I was too far behind.  It was close though, wish I had video of it.  Lots of people ended up with faults/off courses in this area.  I also ended up with a wrong course at #18, again with the weave poles.  Was surprised to see such a course design from this judge, I normally love her courses and I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before.  Watching from the stands I almost decided to pull from this class but decided to just let him go straight in the chute and turn him on the flat and accepting whatever happened after that.  Otherwise a very fun course.  We got through #13-#17 and I was pleased for that.

Overall I had a great time, was fun to chat with people I haven't seen in a while and watch the other runs.   Lots of great handling out there and some awesome performances from some of the baby dogs.  Training has come so far these days, it was amazing seeing some of those baby dogs knocking it out of the park.

Joder Ranch Open Space

Finally made it out to Joder Ranch to check out the new open space.  There's only a 2 mile stretch of road/trail open at the moment but I can see trails heading off here and there and they look good from what I can see of them.  Which ones Boulder will open up to bikes, if any, remains to be seen.  The interim trail is open to bikes though and I've got a good loop planned, mix of road and trails, for when my neck and knee finally get better.  I'd say they're at about 80% healed at the moment but I've been doing hardly anything in order to let them rest and heal.  Kind of hard to sit still this past week with temps. in the 60's and 70's and trails finally drying up and opening again.  Hopefully the weather will hold out and we can get in another trip to Cortez/Dolores before we get slammed with the spring snow storms.

The trail is nice because it's only a 7 minute drive from my house but it's not much until they open up the other trails and who knows when that will be.  Boulder moves at a glacial pace when it comes to Open Space.  But I can't complain about more Open Space.  Anything to spread out the hordes of Too Many People.

And in that vein I saw an alarming article in the local paper about a proposed development about a mile or so from my house.  In short a couple bought 500 acres of land on the cheap because at present it can't be annexed to the city of Boulder and is restricted to very limited development.  Then hired a lawyer to pull some shenanigans to get the land annexed.  Even worse they're trying to pass off this development scam as providing 'affordable' housing that Boulder desperately needs.  Which is like those people who try to pass off their crazy lunging untrained dogs in Target as 'Service Dogs'.  If they manage to pull this scam off it'll create a huge bottleneck at the north entrance to town.  Don't think there's much we the public can do about it, once the sleezy lawyers get involved it's out of our hands.  I'm guessing it'll be years before they're able to break ground but it seems inevitable that with the huge amounts of money to be made on development that every last little square will get paved over, even if it's land that was never meant to be developed.  Where there's a will and some money there's a lawyer willing and able to help the rich get richer.

Breeding for Stupid

I was at an agility trial this past weekend and got to talking with an agility friend about Anatolian Shepherds.  She's interested in them because she's recently adopted one (or a mix of one?) and I'm interested in livestock guarding dogs in general because maybe one day I'll have goats and chickens and who knows what all else and I'll need somebody to guard them.  Anyway she was hiking and ran into a man who had a pair of what looked like Anatolian Shepherds but were built with much more athleticism, not nearly as stocky.  She asked him about the dogs and sure enough they were Anatolian Shepherds but not from American lines.  'Pffffbt, Amercians, they breed for stupid,'  he explained.  And I had to laugh because we do.  At least when it comes to AKC lines.  There are some working breeds and lines of working breeds that have not been infected by the AKC and rosette-itis, but they're hard to find and not what the general public gravitates towards.  Because most people don't need a true working dog that can do this:



Instead they are transfixed by this:



Which makes the proponents of the working border collie throw up in their mouth a little.  O.k., a lot.  Actually probably down the hall in the bathroom heaving up breakfast, lunch, dinner and yesterday's dinner.  And lunch and breakfast.  I don't need a working border collie and probably won't ever have enough livestock that I will but still I get it, I get their anger and their nausea and why they put up a huge fight against the AKC registering border collies.  Donald McCaig has a book called 'The Dog Wars:  How the Border Collie Battled the American Kennel Club'.  This is perhaps the first book I've been unable to get from the Boulder Library and their inter-library system.  I put in a materials request for it, we'll see if they buy it or can get it from an out of system library.  I've put off reading it for years mostly because I'm sure it'll only aggravate me but the conversation with my friend re-ignited my interest.

And even though I'll likely never need a true working border collie I also don't want this:

I mean seriously, who does this?  On purpose?  For a stupid rosette and some money and an ego boost.  If only the breeders had to come back in their next lives as the dogs they bred and had to live in their deformed, diseased bodies.  But in the real world what's someone like me supposed to do?  I wonder about this as I contemplate my next dog.  Is there anyone out there breeding for health, longevity, good temperament, and a healthy athletic build?  I don't even care about breed, I just want a nice, confident, healthy, athletic DOG.  And even if someone wanted to breed such a dog, have too many dogs, purebred or mixes of purebreds, been compromised by all the 'Breeding for Stupid'?  And if the answer is 'yes', how do we fix it or can we even fix it?  Almost certainly my next dog will come from rescue but even if I wanted to go with a breeder I wouldn't know where to turn.  I know a couple of people looking for pet dogs and they're in the same boat.  All I can tell them is to avoid the lines with AKC conformation champions in them and maybe check out the shelter.

I suppose it's the bane of humanity being such a visual species, looks are so important to us.  But it's unfair to betray a whole species for our fancy.  I wish we could get over it and stop all the Breeding for Stupid.

Working hard or hardly working?

Snowtastic

I think I've had more snow adventures in the past week and half than I have in the past 3 years.  I suppose it's due more to happenstance than anything, ie I've had various friends up for various adventures in the snow.

First was a little trip up to Eldora (about 40 minutes drive up into the high country) for some snow shoeing at Jenny Creek Trail.  I ended up hiking in Yax Trax because the trail was compacted enough that snowshoes were overkill.  Though I did end up post holing up to my knee when I wasn't paying attention and stepped into the uncompacted powder at the side of the trail.

A few days later was a trip to Devils Thumb which is a nordic ski area about 2 hours away, just past Winter Park.  I ended up skiing for 2 1/4 hours at around 8700' elevation.  This amounted to a measly 6.1 miles and I could barely move afterwards.  Have only skied once so far this winter on a nearly flat course in North Boulder Park for 45 minutes.  But we'd driven all that way and were having such fun, what's a few days of being sore?  It was a beautiful day, low 20's but sunny and didn't feel cold at all.  Snow was a bit icy for me in places but mostly not a problem.

Devil's Thumb Ski Area

The drive over Berthoud Pass

A spectacular day overall, seized up hamstrings notwithstanding.


Then a couple days later I left for a whirlwind tour of Durango/Cortez/Dolores.  It's an area that I'm interested in possibly moving to so we spent the time mostly driving through potential neighborhoods though we did make time for a short 1 hour fat biking adventure.  It was only a 3 day trip cut short by an approaching snowstorm (10"-20" predicted for Cortez area) though 3 days of driving is plenty for me (7 1/2 hours of driving to get to Cortez).

We spent the first night in Durango where they were having some 80's themed winter festival.  I so wish I hadn't been so tired because I would have loved to attend the 80's Drag Strip competition.  We saw some of the contestants in the street while looking for a place for dinner but I didn't know what it was about until the next day.  Plus being so tired, I was in my jammies before the competition even started.

Downtown Durango

Last summer Jonny and I made a trip to Pagosa Springs and Durango and our impression of Durango was that it was crowded, built-up and expensive and my impression this time around wasn't much different.  Though to be fair the festival may have lured more people than normal to town but it seemed most folks were there to ski Purgatory, a resort about 30 mins. or so from Durango.  Still it was interesting to check out some different areas and confirm that this probably won't be our final destination.

Next it was on to Dolores, a place I've never been.  The main attraction here is a trail system called Boggy Draw as well as a huge reservoir that allows for open water swimming in summer.  We rented fat bikes in Cortez and checked out the groomed fat bike trails in Boggy Draw.

So Much Fun

There were a couple deer legs along the trail but I didn't see any kitties.

I've got some Go Pro video footage but that'll have to wait for another day.  Still need to process it.  I'm also going to put together a video of the area from my dashboard camera.  Sometime.  Eventually.

Dolores is a small, unassuming little town.  The Boggy Draw trails are at the top of the cliffs, about 3 miles drive from town.

It's about 10 minutes or so from Cortez which is larger and has pretty much everything we need including public indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a groovy bike store and a farmer's market in the summer.  Horses, goats, chickens, donkeys, is it too late to start a hobby farm in your 50's?  And of course a dog agility field of my very own.

There's a lot of affordable housing between Dolores and Cortez.  We could easily afford 5-10 acres if not more.

The best part though is the access to so many awesome areas within an hour or two including Lizard Head Wilderness area and Telluride and a bunch of places in Utah and even Durango is just 50-60 minutes away.  I ran into a guy in the parking lot who was also finishing up his fat bike ride and it turned out he was a member of the cycling group that grooms the trail as well as a lifelong resident of Dolores.  He told me about so many biking and skiing trails.  SO many.  We could easily spend the rest of our lives exploring.  And the San Juans!  They are spectacular.  If I had to choose a favorite Colorado mountain range it would be the San Juans.

The view from the outskirts of Cortez.  Mesa Verde National Park is behind those cliffs.

On our drive home we stopped in Mancos, a little artist-ey sort of town about 10 minutes from Cortez.  Probably too small for us and too far from trails but a neat little place to visit and not totally off our list yet.  And they had some kind of organic food grocery store that looked promising.

Outside the coffee shop in Mancos

Sunrise in Mancos

Overall a lot of good info. gleaned from a short little trip.  The guy from Dolores put my mind at ease about a lot of questions I had about water, fracking, trails, etc.  Of course we'll need a few more trips out there but it was good to see these places in winter.  Will be interesting to see them again in summer but so far I'm feeling encouraged.

Then yesterday was yet another skiing adventure.  We had 15"-16" of snow in North Boulder and after an asston of shoveling I treated myself to 1 1/2 hours at North Boulder Park.  Where there were Too Many People and I was longing for the serenity of Boggy Draw.

But again, not complaining.  Was happy to be able to ski less than 10 minutes from my house.  All the shoveling and skiing jacked up my neck though.  Feels better today but had to skip swimming at masters.  Hopefully will be better for Friday's masters workout.  Plus it would be nice if I could turn my head to the left.