The Wonder Tower

Roadside kitsch.  LOVE IT!

Yesterday my dad, my nephew Mitchell, and I, headed out to Genoa, Colorado for a day trip to “The Wonder Tower”.  It was soooo much better than I even imagined it would be!  There is a maze of dusty rooms filled to the gills with all kinds of strange and wonderful collections.  The tower is a series of themed rooms (the red room, the yellow room, the big room, etc.) which houses a number of creaky worn out wind-y staircases and ladders that lead to a lookout platform way up at the top.  You can see the air above six states, supposedly.

From the minute I saw it from the freeway I knew I was in for a treat!

If you like weird collections and oddities, and especially if you like to take pictures….this place is the place for you!

Maybe I’ll see you there!

…

Trail Canyon Trail

A redunant name for a beautiful hiking trail in the foothills of Los Angeles.  “A place so beautiful, they named it twice”.  I went back “home” to the L.A. area for the Easter weekend.  Phil and the kids and I headed out on Monday morning to find the trailhead.  The trail we were seeking leads to a waterfall, as all of the hikes I go on with them do.  This waterfall was along the Gold Creek.

The book we were using as our guide was published in the 80′s, so sometimes the directions are hit or miss.  This one was a HIT!  The only “glitch” was that the sign we were looking for which would lead to the trailhead was missing on the way.  When we turned around to look from the other direction, there it was, and once we found it the directions were spot on.

We hiked in about 2 1/2 miles up (and 2 1/2 miles back, which is good, it’s always good to hike out as far as you’ve hiked in!) on a well maintained trail which completely lacked any evidence of human presence…no trash, no graffiti, no dog poop….barely even shoeprints in the softer areas.

We forded the stream a number of the times on the way there, but didn’t even get our feet wet.  I was a bit worried to be hiking since I jacked my right knee up back in December, but it held up nicely.  I was very careful about foot placement and avoiding any pivoting on it.  I tell you this just to show that the hike, though not totally easy, was doable even for the gimp in the group.  (So you could do it, too!)  The hike took us through lush green woods along paths liberally decorated with itty bitty wildflowers.  This purple beauty measured less than an inch across.  Didn’t even see the teensy weensy red bugs crawling around until I uploaded my pictures!

And it took us through more poison oak than any of us had ever seen in our lives!  Phil and at least a couple of his kids are really prone to getting horrific rashes from it and warnings rang out frequently about avoiding touching it!  (And upon arriving home, all clothes were stripped and washed, and showers were taken, it was that bad!)  I haven’t heard if any of them broke out or not, but Richard was already sporting some nasty rashes from his LAST excursion into the wilderness.

Back to the hike.  We came around one bend and found ourselves in a manzanita forest.  Manzanita is a bush that is found in the chaparrel biome.  Manzanita is spanish for “little apple”, I guess because the seeds look alot like little apples.  The trunk and branches are a deep rosey red, and they are smooooooooth and satiny.  Any way, these were huge TREES!  Never seen anything like it.  Phil shows how tall the bushes usually are.  The trunks were so thick you couldn’t get your arms around them.

The trail led us to something I can only describe as a CLIFF.  Rocks jutting out high over a small canyon.  Richard loves to rock climb.  I am afraid of heights.  He decided to pick his way down to the canyon.  I wanted to take a picture of him doing it, but couldn’t get close enough to the edge to do that, so I took a picture of him disappearing through a crack in the CLIFF.  Bye Richard.  I hope I see you again!

He took the short way down, we took the long way down, and we met back up at the bottom.

The last bit of the hike was a little steep and the dirt a bit loose, but when when we rounded the last corner before the waterfall, we entered a little bitty paradise!  The cataract measured about 50 feet tall and tumbled into a small, clear pool.

There was a large sycamore tree at the edge of the pool which had a high green and lacy canopy.  The canopy provided shade and showed off a brilliant blue sky above it.  Off came shoes and socks!  The bottom of the pool was firm and sandy/pebbly.  But boy oh, the water was cold!  Of course I orchestrated one of my famous foot pictures, but I couldn’t stand being in the water for more than a minute or so.

My feet are wimpy because they have spent all winter in shoes (and I just got a pedicure further removing any protective toughened skin!).  But Jonathan’s feet suffered no such wimpiness.  This kid was swimming in that cold water!

Head to toe wet.  Brrrrr.

We played and laughed for a time and decided this would be a great place for a picnic.  Plenty of large flat rocks to serve as a picnic table. I don’t know if we got lucky that day having the place to ourselves, or if it is a little visited place.  I wonder if we went back in the summer for that picnic if there would be a horde of people vying for the best seats on the rocks!

Time to put our shoes back on and go.

A hidden place which seemed to have been created, at least for that day, just for us!

For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills…Deuteronomy 8:7 (NIV)

Some of the best times of my life are spent exploring God’s creation with my big brother and his kids.

…

22 X 2

It’s an odd favorite number, but it’s mine.  Been mine for a looooong time, but not as long as it’s been Hollister’s favorite number, in that Hollister was “established” in 1922. 

I have a bunch of original “22″ pictures, but they are all still stuck on my old computer with most of my picture files.  So I borrowed one!

Today was my 44th birthday!  (More technically, it’s the 22nd anniversary of my 22nd birthday!)  It was a great day from start to finish!

My little bro (Low, in from out of town) and nephew Mitchell drove up to the mountains to spend the day.  To the spectacular ski resort of Breckenridge to be precise.  Our goal?  Find snow to play in and take pictures.  We succeeded at both of those, and also I got to see Sarah from my Zambia 2006 team!!!  She was also in from out of town working as a nanny of sorts for a family who were there for the holidays.  I was so excited to see her (our visit lasted about 20 minutes!) that I forgot to take a picture!  BUT I do have some pictures of playing in the snow!

 

We found a baseball field that was, at least until we got to it, untouched!  It was about 18 inches deep in fluffy white snow.  Low took a few flying leaps into it, and he also tossed Mitchell into it a few times.  I of course had to take one of my world famous (hahahahaha) foot pictures which was actually more of a leg picture!

During our drive up to the slopes my car hit a paricularly slick spot in the road.  I couldn’t get past it and I had to break out my chains for the very first time since moving to Colorado!  And on a beautiful warm and sunny day of all times!  My sweet brother Low slapped them on my tires and we made it the last 100 feet up the hill!

Back at home we met up with family and friends for a great Mexican dinner with my favorite cake for dessert (chocolate chocolate chip with powdered sugar) and presents!  One of my best birthdays ever.  Only I ate too much, and now I think I should go to bed and sleep off too much fun and too much food!  Thanks to everyone who helped make this a most memorable birthday!

Happy Birthday to me!

…

Happy Birthday, Julie!

Today is my cousin Julie’s birthday.  A few days ago we decided, should the weather permit, that we’d drive up to the summit of Pikes Peak.  Until recently I didn’t even know that there was a road up to the summit, but there is!  It’s called the Pikes Peak Highway.  Parts of it are a little hairy, but we made it to the top without incident.  This was my second time up to the summit.  Last time it was winter and we took the cog railroad up.  Very cool!  Next time up, I hike!

Click HERE to read about my last trip up to the summit and see a wicked cute picture of my nephew!  And HERE to see another picture of my niece, Alaska, from the same trip.

Here Julie and I are.  Taking the requisite touristy picture in front of the summit sign.

From “down there”, those little red rocks in the middle of the right side of this photo are massive monoliths at the Garden of the Gods!  On a clear day, you CAN see forever!

Weird looking railroad tracks, huh?  These are for the cog railway that goes from Manitou Springs to the summit.

And of course, a foot picture.  We are facing west.  More of the Rockies off in the distance, and two lakes!

We had planned on stopping at one of the rest areas/picnic areas/scenic overlooks to have a picnic lunch, but time was not our friend and so we ate in the car while driving back down the mountain in the lowest gear my car had to offer.  It’s such a steep drive that there’s even a mandatory brake check on the way down, and if your brakes are hot, you are off the road until they cool off!  Never seen that before!  AND on the way back down we actually got snowed on!  It was a perfectly clear, bright, and beautiful day, and out of nowhere, snow!  That’s why they warn you that the weather is unpredictable up there.  Unpredictable, indeed!

Happy Birthday, Julie!  For sure we’ll do this one again!  On foot next time!

And under the category of “ask, they can only say no” goes this one!  I told the ranger at the tollroad that Julie was only 12 and that it was her birthday, and could we get her in for the child’s fare…

And he did it!  Ask.  They can only say no! 

…

Why Not Start With a Famous Foot Picture?

I have drafts on about a dozen posts about my summer.  I’m still trying to figure out how to get back to blogging.  I thought maybe I could kick start my creativity by posting one of my “famous” foot pictures!

We were wrapping up our summer with a “debrief” in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  While out souvenir shopping with my group, I came across this manhole cover (most of the sewer accesses we saw did not have covers and did not have any sort of warning that there was no cover- an American lawyer’s DREAM!) and dragged my group over and forced them to take part in my picture!  They think I’m weird…what else is new? 

 

Wait until I start showing you some of the souvenirs I brought home!

The cover says “MUNICIPALITE ADDIS ABEBA”.  I like this one.

The goat wandering by on the street also thought I was weird…

…

Emerald Pool

I made an unexpected trip to So Cal this past week as I wanted to attend the funeral of a friend.  It was a sad reason for a visit.  But the service was a lovely tribute to a wonderful man.  Lots of tears.  Lots of laughter.  I’m so glad I was able to be there.

As usual, I stayed at my big brother’s house.  We did some fun things while I was there.  One of those things was this!

Phil, his kids and I, went on a hike.  We went to the Santa Paula Creek area of Ojai in search of a waterfall.  My brother has this book of California waterfalls.  It’s most cool.  It lists the waterfalls and gives directions on how to get to them.  This was one his family had not yet gone to.  The book promised a 3 miles in/3 miles out hike with the holy grail being a series of “punch bowl” pools connected by small waterfalls leading to a 30 foot waterfall at the end.  The hiking instructions would have lead us to a campsite overlooking the pool which fed the larger cataract.

Somewhere along the way we got off the trail and ended up hiking the river’s path.  I came across this lovely little creature in a dry part of the river bed.  It measured about a half an inch across!

 

While this diversion provided what promised to be a “direct hit” on our target, it also entailed multiple rock crossings of the river, some ankle twistings and one occasion where we had to work our way along a rock wall using toe and foot holds which nearly had me at my tolerance for the heights and falling “thing” I have!  But with the patient help of my brother, and the occasional hand holding by my nephew, Richard, I persevered.

I like this picture soooo much.  I call it “Album Cover – No Band”.

We hiked and hiked and hiked.  It was getting late.  We found what we believed to be the punch bowls, but no big fall.  We thought we’d probably passed it when we ended up off the trail.  We took a moment to rest and drink water before starting back out of the canyon.  But Richard (who LOVES to rock climb) ventured farther up and in and came back with the news that he’d found the fall.  “Is it too scary, or can Aunt Lou make it?”  The answer was “Yes, she can.”.  So, me included, we decided to continue to climb our way in.  Very worth it!  The directions would have had us over looking the fall, but since we came up by way of the river, we were instead at the bottom where it filled a large deep pool.  We were so glad that we’d ended up off the path.  The algae on the rocks at the bottom of this crystal clear twenty foot deep pool lent the most gorgeous emerald color to the water.

The pool was surrounded by rock walls and a small rocky “beach”.  Evidence abounded that many had gone before us.  There was the sad bit of trash, a towel that looked like it hadn’t been there long, a few charcoally spots where fires had been built, and of course, graffiti.  And you know what?  I wasn’t much bothered by the graffiti.

Today’s graffiti are tomorrow’s “prehistoric” cave drawings…

A good time and place for one of my “foot pictures”!

It took us about a third of the time to hike back out.  Why is that?  Just wondering.

All in all, a wonderful smallish adventure.  We were all tired and sore at the end (and for the whole next day!).  Especially Avie.  We’d barely started the hike and she was complaining that “it’s a terrible time to be a kid”.  She’s growing, and her legs are sore.  But she stuck it out.  Barely.  Had that hike been a tenth of a mile longer, one of us would have been carrying her!

Two days later we got to see Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh.  But that’s another post!

…

My New Favorite Foot Picture

Every once in awhile, one of my foot pictures jumps out at me.  This is one of those pictures.  I just love it.  I love the colors, the composition, the textures, and the shadows.  AND it was associated with a really fun trip!   

Left to right this is my sister Liz, my sister Whitney, Liz’ best friend Rhonda, and me.  Clearly  we are in Ensenada.  Mexico.  This was our port of call on our Royal Carribean Cruise there in September…a trip taken to celebrate Liz’ 40th birthday.

…

The Dragonfly

It was quite possibly the largest dragonfly I’ve ever seen. 

My niece Avalon and I were back to a location I’d been to twice already in search of a geocache that had me completely stumped.  I brought Avie there while we were out looking for a handful of other caches because I needed a fresh pair of eyes.  Fresh eyes didn’t help.  The search did bring me to a wonderful location that I’d wanted to explore but never had despite having lived just two miles from it for fifteen years.  An old railroad bridge.

We took the opportunity to take a foot picture by an old railroad spike.  Avalon is wearing her pink plastic lawn flamingo slip-on Vans (a tribute to her mother).

We failed in our search for the cache.  On our way back to the car I spotted this dragonfly about six feet up the trunk of some kind of eucalyptus tree.  In vain I attempted to capture him on my digital camera.  I sure wished I’d had my trusty 35 mm Canon EOS Elan with me.  I tried regular settings, macro settings, standing back and zooming in.  I tried it from all kinds of angles and approaches, but I could not get a good picture.  The best one, this one, was taken from about eight feet back, zoomed in, and with a flash.  Avalon was convinced that this big guy (probably five inch wing span) was dead.  She poked at him a few times with a long stick, and declared “Yup.  He’s dead.”  Just then he took off!  He’d had enough of her.  It scared us both a bit.  A bug that big flying around makes a heck of a lot of noise.  (And I instinctively opened my mouth to keep him from sewing it shut!

Look at those gorgeous colors and patterns on him.  I’m so disappointed that I couldn’t get a better shot, but I am pleased that you can see the veining in the gossamer of his wings.

We found four other caches in short order that day.  One of them posing as a reflector on a phone pole was a work of geocache art! 

…

Straight-Razor Shave

My Dad is out visiting my sister and me in Colorado.  Well, he was.  I took him to the airport this morning.  He stopped here for a few days after going to Atlanta to watch Richard and the Beach Bots compete in the FIRST competition this past week.  Anyhow, yesterday he decided he wanted to get a professional shave, and preferred a straight-razor shave.  We Yahoo-yellow-paged to find a place and found a barber shop in very south Colorado Springs.  We both assumed that since it was a barbershop they’d do the shave thing.  Well, Art (at Rico’s) said, “Nope.  Most barbers stopped shaving a long time ago.”  “BUT,” he said, “there’s a shop not too far north and just up the street that might still do it.”  He gave us directions….”just west of Nevada, before I-25, across from “The Red Top” restaurant”…he said there’s a barber who works out of his house.  We headed back north, and found the restaurant, and down the street a ways I saw the sign! 

Don’t have to go in to know that we’ve found exactly the place we’re looking for!  And what a curious place it was.  We were met at the door by a handful of small, barky, scruffy, cream and beige and tan dogs; all different breeds and mixes.  The walls were covered with license plates, buttons, bottles of hot sauce, and all manner of memorabilia!  What a curious and interesting place!  There were only two seats inside.  The barber, Paul Hansen, had just finished a haircut and he showed my dad to a wonderful old barber chair and reclined him back.  There was a lady there cutting a man’s hair in the other chair.  The patron, as it turns out, was getting his first short haircut in years.  While there another man came who had very long hair and informed Paul that he was ready to get his hair cut short.  Only not that day.  He was just coming to visit for a bit!  It was THAT kind of place.

You can’t see how cute my dad is in this picture, but he is…really cute!

There are hundreds and hundreds (maybe thousands?) of license plates all over the walls. 

 

There are four states missing:

Do you have a license plate from any of these states?  If you do, and you want to donate it to a very cool old barbershop, drop me a note (see the ‘contact me’ tab up at the top of my blog).  I’d sure love to help him complete his collection!

Here’s Paul, the barber, standing by this great 100 year-old barber chair in which my father was reclined for his shave.  Paul and his shop have been written about in the newspapers.  They’re sort of local legends.  Behind him you can see some of the memorabilia he’s put on display. 

Of course, Paul, my dad, and I HAD to do a foot picture (okay, yes, I made them do it).  This was taken on the foot support of the very cool 100 year-old barber chair.

And finally, while out driving with my pops, Pikes Peak looked amazing, so I shot a picture through my windshield while driving.  Breathtaking, really.

And that was my short afternoon out with my pops!  His computer has been down for some time and he hasn’t read my blog for awhile.  I put in a lot of pictures in this post for him.  For when he finally gets all caught up…

Thanks for visiting, Dad.  Sure enjoyed having you here.  Come again very soon.  You’ll probably needing another really great shave soon! 

…

Micro(ad) Trip

This past Sunday my cousin and I went on a very short road trip.  The day was GORGEOUS, and we wanted to be in it.  She had her two sons with her, so we decided to do some geocaching up in Woodland Park.  Since I do this without a GPS, I am reliant on maps (street maps and satellite maps) and whatever clues I can glean from the cache information provided on geocaching.com.  The satellite maps couldn’t be zoomed in and were useless for all the caches I was looking at.  So I decided we’d try anyway with just a street map (there’s a teardrop pointer which puts you in the general vicinity) and the cache info.  We found the first one we looked for.  A micro cache which was about 1″ x 1 1/2″ by 1/4″ thick.  It was very clever.  But that was the only one we found.  The next two were a complete bust so we decided to come back to Woodland Park when I get a GPS! 

What makes up for a mostly failed afternoon of geocaching???  Ice cream, of course.  So we went back down the mountain and headed for a specialty ice cream store in Colorado Springs called “Michelle’s“.  We got our treats and headed across the street to a nice little park called Acacia Park.  Acacia Park is the place where the mentally ill, homeless, and out of control teenage populations like to hang out.  Even so, it’s still a nice little park And young families, and other people eating ice cream like to go there as well even though it’s still pretty chilly.  There is a pretty little fountain made of ceramic mosaic there.  It’s called the Uncle Wilbur, but I don’t know why.  I decided to take some pictures.  I was sitting on a low wall about 30 feet from the fountain and took these with super close up zoom.

Imbedded into the low wall which surrounded this fountain (and upon which I sat) were these gorgeous ceramic tiles.  I only took close-ups.  The tiles were a little less than a foot square.  I think I’ll probably go back and take more pictures one of these days.  I need to get a full tile shot.

While we were enjoying our ice cream, there was a young man who kept walking around the fountain.  He caught my attention for a number of reasons.  The most intriguing one was the presence of what appeared to be an ankle bracelet that someone under house arrest might wear.  The other was the heels that had been cut out of the dress shoes he was wearing.  As a deeply avocational people watcher, I know what I think his story might be, but what would YOU think if you saw this man?

And, of course, on our way back to the car, we had to take one last foot picture, one of my usual variety! 

So, that was our day!   

…

It’s Roadtrip Time Again!

Today turned out to be a great day to hit the road, which is just what my cousin, Julie, and I did.  She’s a great roadtrip partner.  She likes to be out and do, well, whatever!

We only had today this time, and she had to be home by 5:00, so we decided to make our trip a fairly close one.  We headed out this morning to go to Canon City.  We thought we’d do a little geocaching, and whatever else struck our fancy.  On the way to Canon City, we came upon the turnoff for the city of Florence.  The last time I went through the area I passed the turnoff.  This time, I wanted to see if we could find the SuperMax prison.  We did.  This is as close as we could get.  And as you can see, we couldn’t see much.  But I’ve never been that close to such a concentration of evil.  And all around me, out where it’s free, was clear blue sky and majestic mountains. 

Just a short way down the road and we were in Canon City.   I had printed up a handful of geocaches to look for while we were there.  We found four out of the four we decided to look for.  Here’s Julie.  This cache was called “Grab the Brass Ring”.

 

The last cache we decided to find took us to a bend in the road, and that road led to the Royal Gorge and the world’s highest suspension bridge.  We decided to go up there, too.

 

Had to do a feets picture!

On the way home we stopped at a crummy place called the “Country Kitchen” for a late lunch/early dinner.  Awesome food.  All in all, a very good day, and a very good road trip.  Stay tuned!  We’re already planning our next one.

Click the following links to see more pictures of the last time I was in Canon City and at the Royal Gorge:

Locomotive Ride, Open Bed Train Car, Suspension Bridge Cables, and Penitentiary.

..

Blah Blah Blog Is Turning Thirty! (Thousand!!)

Wow.  Sometime today my visitor counter will turn over to 30,000.  That’s so amazing!  Thank you all for helping to make my blog be so much fun and such a fulfilling endeavor for me.

Here’s a picture that’s completely unrelated, but it’s time to introduce the world to a “habit” (of sorts, perhaps it’s better described as a compulsion) of mine.  Just about everywhere I go, I take a “Foot Picture”.  The point of a foot picture?  Welllllll, it all started a couple of decades ago.  I was at Disneyland with about 30 of my best friends (ha!) and we wanted to take a picture of all of us together.  We couldn’t find someone (must have been a slow day) who’d take our picture, so, since I wanted to be in the picture, too, I had everyone stick their foot into a circle and I took the picture of all us, from the knees down, myself included.  Ever since then, I take one of these pretty much wherever I go.  I try to find an interesting background for the picture, perhaps even one that gives an idea as to where the picture was taken.  Like I took one of me and friends on a sewer cover in Cuba that said “Havana” on it.  How cool is that?  This little picture was taken at Helen Hunt Falls in Colorado Springs this past August when my family visted after I returned from Africa:

(Feets at Helen Hunt Falls, originally uploaded by Blah Blah Blog)

From left to right that is Richard, me, Avalon, Jonathan, Mitchell, and Whitney