"Skiing" in Loveland, Colorado

Thumper said it: “If you French-fry when you should pizza, you’re gonna have a bad time.” The result of disobeying? See above.

I was optimistic about skiing. I’ve always wanted to find some physical activity that I take to like a natural, so whenever I try something new, I hope that I may finally find my niche. Unfortunately, I did not take to the slopes like a snowbunny; in fact, I had only just strapped on the boots and clomped awkwardly across the parking lot dragging my rented equipment when my enthusiasm began to fade. (Seriously, how come I can run in four-inch heels but I can’t even walk in a ski-boot???) And once I clipped my feet onto the skies and began a futile though undoubtedly hilarious effort to “walk,” it faded a little more. And then as I was carried up the mountain in the lift watching skiers whooshing stylishly below me, I began to contemplate my own mortality. I am convinced that I will die in a car accident because of a haunting dream I once had, but I began to challenge even that conviction as Glenn pointed out in a misguided effort to excite me the runs we’d be skiing down; they looked awfully steep, and even if I were to die in a car accident someday, there was nothing that said I couldn’t be horribly maimed in a skiing accident in the meantime.

I hated getting off the lift - I really enjoyed the lift - and upon alighting, I promptly fell over, more on purpose than on accident. I had hoped that the steepness of the slopes was the result of a visual illusion caused by the sun glinting off the snow or something stupid like that, but it wasn’t. I managed to get down the mountain by skiing back and forth in a zigzagging course that ran practically parallel to the slope. Whenever I gained too much speed, I would hurl myself to the ground by way of stopping. Glenn commented on my mad “getting up” skills. That’s right. The part of skiing I took naturally to was getting up after I’d fallen - sounds about right.

Three times I did the same run, before they shut the place down. By the third run, I was going a lot quicker - Glenn said I was doing well for my first time - and I could connect my slow zig-zags pretty readily without having to stop and adjust my direction.

North Table Mountain & Castlewood Canyon, Colorado

Another multi-trip weekend. Glenn and I hiked to the summit of North Table Mountain on Sunday; we watched the rock climbers on the way up, which made Glenn sad and me itchy to try it myself. I’m really not a very good climber, but on the ground, I’m an expert. On top of the plateau, we cut through a field to reach the moderately large pile of rocks that is the summit (highest point in this picture).

I scared a bunch of deer as I leapt up the summit/rockpile; you can see one by my left ear.

On Monday we hiked Castlewood Canyon, a virtual playground of large rocks to jump on top of, which I could and did spend hours doing.

After we’d passed the cliffs, we both made a huge route-finding oversight and failed to see the footbridge where the path turned, so we walked along the river for a while longer. No matter - honestly, I don’t even consider it hiking anymore unless I get lost and waste a lot of time trying to relocate the trail. The day ended in another night-hike, as we had to do the final couple of miles with our headlamps on.

I finally got to try “stemming.” Glenn taught me this word for what I’d previously referred to as “spider-climbing,” after the Ninja Warrior obstacle, for when you climb up a crevice by pushing your legs out against both sides for leverage. I definitely want to go back and spend some more time climbing around, but I felt bad for Glenn having to wait around while I goofed off.

Since most of my hiking experience has occurred above treeline, coming down to 5000-7000 miles above sea level is like being a Kryptonian on Earth. I can run around for hours without breaking a sweat, I can walk for miles without getting winded, I get x-ray vision, etc. It’s awesome!!

Cross-country skiing, Colorado

I’m not exactly a paragon of grace normally, and strapping long pieces of wood to my feet could do nothing but exacerbate that, but I was still expecting my first cross-country ski trip to go better than it did. Ah, Alana of the past - so optimistic, so unaware. I wish I could go back in time and warn you.

The flat part was all right, except when it was icy, but I was ready to give it up after I spent literally twenty minutes floundering on a barely-there slope while Glenn waited patiently at the top. I resorted to my old standby motivator – if a man who is fifteen years my senior and weighs twice as much as me can do it, then, dammit, so can I. Glenn now has a bunch of cripplingly embarrassing photographs and videos if he ever needs to blackmail me for some reason.

After I was up the hill, I became more comfortable on the skis and I was able to move along at a slothlike pace without falling, for the most part. The trick, I think, is to really put a lot of weight on your heel with each step, so you don’t fall backward. Also, the annoyance of trudging gracelessly up hills and over flat stretches of the trail was lessened somewhat by the brief but exhilarating downhill slides, although I still haven’t got the stopping thing down yet; my current technique involves plowing into handy snowdrifts.

I gave up in the end, when it started getting dark. I couldn’t see the definition in the snow, so I was falling right and left over invisible bumps and valleys and getting really frustrated with the entire thing. Glenn, who had long since made it back to the car, walked back and showed me how to take off my skis and I limped, humiliated and defeated, back to his truck.

I’ll try it again; I really hate hiking, but that doesn’t stop me from doing it. I’m not the kind of person who hikes for hiking’s sake, or who strolls around enjoying views, but I like the sense of accomplishment I get from summiting a mountain. Maybe if I set up some sort of goal for myself next time, I would feel less like giving up when things get tough.

Chicago Lakes Trail, Colorado

No mountains this weekend – the route was the Chicago Lakes Trail; we walked from Echo Lake to the upper Chicago Lake, and camped out in between. I got to break in the new gear I got for my birthday – a new backpack, courtesy of Glenn, and some new clothes – including toasty warm long underwear – from my parents. My birthday is this Saturday!

We got off to such a slow start on Saturday that we didn’t even start hiking until the evening. I think night-hiking is something everybody should do at least once in their lives. Your eyes play some pretty incredible tricks on you in the dark; I would step down preparing for a drop of a foot or more and find that the ground was level with where I was standing, or I would edge perilously along a slope only to realize with a probing foot that the “slope” was just flat ground.

We hiked for as long as we could without turning our headlamps on, but we had to give in when we got deeper in the forest. Our original intention was to hike to Chicago Lake and stay the night there, but Glenn was concerned about finding a good camp site when we were closer to the mountains, so we made camp on the edge of the Mount Evans Wilderness. Good thing, too, because camping near the lake would have been freezing!

I didn’t sleep well, but that was because of my own habitual sleeplessness rather than anything to do with sleeping outdoors. I’m getting better at this hardy-outdoorswoman thing. The next day we made it to the upper Chicago Lake, where it was so cold and windy, I forgot to take a picture. Oh well. Here are the pics I did get:

I’m finally noticing an improvement in my athleticism; all that walking up and down mountains is really starting to make a difference. I can hike faster and longer and use less energy, and those horrible uphill slopes are just gentle walks now. Vinson, here I come, ha ha.

Mount Sniktau, Colorado

I’d considered taking Cameron to Mount Sniktau (13, 234 feet) for his first big hike, instead of to Bierstadt; Sniktau is easier than Bierstadt, and quite a bit shorter (only 3.4 miles round-trip). However, in the end, I figured he’d prefer to climb a relatively popular fourteener than some little-heard-of thirteener. Good thing - if Mount Sniktau had been my first hike, I would have never hiked again.

I overslept this morning, by five hours; instead of getting up at five, I turned off my alarm and slept until ten. But the weather report was good and the sky was clear, so I thought I might as well give it a try. I got to Loveland Pass (11,990 feet) around noon and immediately set off in the wrong direction.

An hour later, I was back at Loveland Pass and this time, I actually used the map and took the right trail. Hiking up Mount Sniktau is a pain; it’s just a straight shot up the mountain, no switchbacks or anything. Despite my false start, it’s very clear where you’re supposed to go, and there are even some stupid cairns sitting next to the trail, which is wide enough for like eight people to walk side-by-side. I obviously didn’t need the map much after the initial direction-correction, so I put it in my boot to keep my heel from getting rubbed raw.

It took me an hour and forty minutes to get up, and only a half-hour to get down - I think that’s my speed record. In conclusion, Sniktau is a dull unappealing uphill slog that should only be attempted by masochists, and I’m glad to have it out of the way.

Mount Bierstadt and the Sawtooth, Colorado

I love autumn. All my cutest clothing is for autumn, my birthday and my favorite holiday (Halloween) are both in autumn, and the colors of the changing leaves bring out the Ansel Adams in even the grinchiest of photographers.

I took Cameron up his first fourteener today, Mount Bierstadt. Actually, at its largest, my group was supposed to be Cameron, Wendy, Jo, and me, but Jo was in Fort Collins for the night and Wendy lost her nerve, so it was just the two of us. For me, Bierstadt was a means to an end, as I really wanted to climb the Sawtooth ridge, and the easiest way to cross the Sawtooth is from Bierstadt. Map scavenger that I am, I could only find a topo for the Bierstadt-Sawtooth-Evans route, but we skipped the Evans part and just continued along the cliff north of the Sawtooth and down the gully.

We began from Guanella Pass, which, by the way, is closed off from the north at Clear Creek due to rockslides, so if you’re headed to Bierstadt, you need to approach from Grant south of it on 285. I could never find exact mileage on the hike, but the Bierstadt-Sawtooth-Evans route is 10.25 miles roundtrip, so I’m guessing… eight? (Believe it or not, I did do my homework on this - checked the weather, printed out maps, read route descriptions, etc.)

As usual, the dull trudge up to Bierstadt was miserable - a bland Class 1 hike up a beaten path filled with other hikers. We were on the wrong side of the mountain when the sun rose, so it took a few extra hours in the morning for it to get high enough to hit us, and in the meantime, we were freezing cold even though we were each wearing five layers.

We talked about the things we wished were on the summit to keep ourselves motivated; Cameron was hoping for a Starbucks that employed only Australian strippers, I just wanted sex and cake. It took us close to four hours to reach the top of Bierstadt (I had wanted to get up in two); we summitted far behind schedule, around ten. No stripper-manned cake factories with attached Starbucks to be seen.

Cameron likes this photo because he says it looks like I’m scouting. I like it because it’s the perfect album cover for the Christian rock band Cameron and I need to start now that we have the perfect album cover.

At the rate we were going, I would not have considered doing the Sawtooth had the weather been anything less than perfect, but it was - there was not a cloud in the sky. The Sawtooth is a fun scramble - not too difficult as long as heights don’t bother you, but strenuous. I kept making the mistake of not losing enough height and/or regaining too much between the “teeth” so Cameron had to follow me down and up some steep routes, but we managed, even though I had to learn to ignore him repeating, “I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you,” as he climbed down behind me. Somehow, he was still impressed with my skills as a guide.

Here’s the thing about mountains - the distances can be deceptive. To look at this picture - or indeed, to look at the real thing - you wouldn’t guess that the peak on the left is very far away; it just looks like a gravel slope. But in actuality, every single one of those “pebbles” is a rock that’s at least the size of a person.

Cameron is as friendly and outgoing as I am awkward and aloof, so we met a lot of people on this hike, as Cameron can strike up a conversation with anyone; as such, we became a little invested in each of them, and I hope the woman we did the final stretch of the Sawtooth with who said she was going on to Evans before hiking back to Guanella Pass at two in the afternoon (!!!!) is all right, as I hope the man who was too nervous to attempt that final bit and turned back to return to Bierstadt via the Sawtooth made it okay. A note to prospective Sawtooth hikers: The slope at the end is *not* as steep as it looks - DO NOT turn back!

Just north of the Sawtooth, we met up with a couple, an ex-Navy SEAL and his wife, who had hiked to Mt. Evans from Guanella Pass and were wandering lost above the cliffs north of the Sawtooth. I guess that I seemed competent because suddenly my little group of two became four, and I was nominated guide. I didn’t think the trail was difficult to find (it was a beaten path with cairns and everything), but no one but me spotted it until we were right on it. Glenn would have laughed to see me dispensing mountain wisdom like I knew what the hell I was talking about (“On these loose gravel slopes, walk with your heels and make sure to slide with the gravel…”). Cameron had a good time talking to the wife (she offered him a job! That’s the kind of charismatic Cameron is - random people will offer to pay him after talking to him for ten minutes) while I concentrated on taking my charges down the least challenging route possible. As Cameron put it afterward, “Oh my god, you just guided a Navy SEAL down a mountain!”

We’d heard some ugly things at the summit of Bierstadt from grim-looking Sawtooth veterans about the route back from the bottom of the gully to the parking lot - swampy, muddy, hard-to-find trail, long, bushy - and every single one of them were correct. We thought we were basically done when we finally reached flat ground after navigating the shifting gravel of the gully - we’ll just power back to the parking lot and be done in less than an hour, we proclaimed optimistically - but we quickly lost the path and found ourselves wandering among the scratching claws of the willows for a couple more hours. It got so warm, we started stripping down, but then the bushes would rip us apart. The choice was between heat or pain - I chose heat, Cameron chose pain.

I still can’t figure out where we went wrong. The path forked numerous times, but we kept taking the fork to higher ground to avoid the marshy ponds; however, the whole area turned out to be swampy and muddy. Poor Cameron and his new shoes (and thank god for my waterproof boots - I’d regretted wearing the hot heavy things on the Sawtooth, but they really came in handy on the way back). We attempted to backtrack and find the original path, but finally a stonefaced Cameron just started crunching straight through the willow plants in the direction of the parking lot, come what may (he was already really muddy and wet anyway, I guess). I noted the direction of the lot on my compass, in case we lost line of sight (we never did) and just followed behind him, hoping that he was just joking when he said that he’d hated me before.

The shins of a Bierstadt survivor.

It was fun taking someone’s fourteener v-card; it was like reliving my first big hike. Cameron was very excited about a stream crossing and other little things I’ve since become inured to (because I’m a jaded grizzly woman with my seven mountains har har har). Cameron and I have been friends since third grade (14 years!), and we crack each other whenever we’re together, so even when things were looking dire, we were still laughing and joking the whole time. But boy were we happy to get back to the car!

Frankly, the entire trip was awful. Just unrelentingly awful. The worst part was the hike up to Bierstadt, except for the Sawtooth and the hike back. And now that it’s over, my face hurts, my nose is bright red, and my legs don’t bend anymore. But I loved it!

ETA:

Roadtrip: Wyoming and Utah

Glenn and I did Utah this weekend. I’ve been wanting to put together a road trip to Utah for a while, since IKEA is notorious for its sky-high shipping costs (must be shipped direct from Sweden), and Draper, Utah is the closest physical location until Colorado gets its own. However, much as I love IKEA, it hardly seemed like a good reason to make the eight-hour drive to Utah – until Glenn told me about the Via Ferrata in Ogden.

Via Ferrata is a type of climbing route that is outfitted with metal rungs so that even normal people like me can climb a mountain (although some are more elaborate – Glenn says the one in West Virginia has a suspension bridge). They were first installed in Europe during WWII so armies were able to move large numbers of soldiers without mountaineering experience over the Alps. Since then, Via Ferratas have taken off in popularity over there, but there are only three in the US. I love climbing, but my skill level does not rate my enthusiasm, so Via Ferrata sounded perfect for me. Two reasons to make that drive to Utah finally spurred me to make plans.

I left work at four, hoping that we would be able to get an early start and beat rush hour traffic, but everyone else in the world had the same idea, so Glenn and I decided to wait a few hours until traffic died down, and we really got started around six or seven. He drove; I promptly fell asleep. When I awoke, we were at a rest stop underneath the Lincoln Memorial, which holds the dubious honor of being the creepiest monument I’ve ever seen.

It’s just Zombie Lincoln’s disembodied head atop a forty-foot wall. That’s it.

A great deal of wishful thinking on our part had us in Utah late Friday night, but we ended up spending the night at a rest stop in Wyoming. However, it was a blessing in disguise, as, freed of time constraints – we were already behind schedule anyway - we had an awesome time bumming around Wyoming on Saturday. We visited Fossil Butte National Monument and were so inspired by what we saw there, we visited Warfield Fossil Quarry, where we were given chisels and hammers and loosed on piles of slate in this former lake. I was not a very prolific fossil miner, especially after I dropped a rock on my finger, but the four fossils I did find were lovely - four pretty little fish, you can see all the little bones and everything. We also visited Kemmerer, Wyoming, home of the first J.C. Penney’s.

On our way up to the quarry, we had a close encounter with some cows grazing in a pasture. I’ve never been up close and personal with a cow, so Glenn was very patient while I tramped around trying to touch one. Every time it seemed like I was getting really close, they’d slowly turn and lumber away. I thought the way they looked right at me was so funny.

When my mother saw this picture, she laughed and said, “That’s my Kiki!” Incidentally, we have this inside joke in my family about cows and my mom, who grew up in the Bronx and summered at the family farm in Puerto Rico. She has a cousin who took advantage of my mother’s urban upbringing and filled her head with all sorts of lies about farm life, one of which was that cows only lie down when they’re dead. She lived for forty years believing him, until we moved to Colorado. During one of our family vacations, she spotted a whole herd of cows lying down in a pasture on the side of the road and exclaimed, “Look at all those dead cows! There must be some sort of sickness going around!” My father has never let her live it down.

I burned eight stand-up comedy CDs for the trip - Patton Oswalt, David Cross, and Dave Attell - but Glenn’s CD player couldn’t read CD-RWs. It is sort of an interesting anthropological experiment to listen to radio stations in other states, though (I had to entertain myself somehow). Who would have guessed that Utah has an entire station dedicated to femi-rock? Unsurprisingly, Wyoming doesn’t play anything besides country music and classic rock. Also funny were the various signs that lined the highway. Two really cracked me up. One was for a truck stop, Mom’s Country Kitchen Cookery or something like that (every restaurant in Wyoming is Country Kitchen something), and underneath the logo, it listed the following amenities in this order: “Food, Parking, Beer, Gas, Exotic Knives.” I’m not a trucker so I can’t speak for them, but after driving on I-80 for eight hours, I sure could have used a beer and a katana. The second simply said:

Wyoming
Beef Country
Uintah County
Cattle Women

No one I’ve discussed this with has been able to give me a satisfactory explanation for why someone chose those particular words and put them in that particular order and then made a sign out of it.

Saturday night saw us in Provo, Utah. We saw Inception (my second time, Glenn’s first) and went to bed relatively early, as we had a busy day of shopping for reasonably priced Scandinavian furniture on Sunday!

A note on Utah: I am ashamed to admit this, but I really thought that Utah would be a lot more Mormon than it was. I checked, and the hotels just had regular old Bibles in the drawers. I could not find a single Mormon talk radio station. There were no clean-cut young men in suits walking around distributing pamphlets. I was a little disappointed. I guess Mormons are actually people, too???? What?

On Sunday morning, we visited Timpanogos Cave National Monument. After a rather strenuous hike up, we went through three caves.

This formation was called the “heart” of the cave.

And then… IKEA! I went wild in textiles, and I also found a nice little Gustavian X-back chair on clearance. Pics of my revamped bedroom soon to come. I was wary of bringing Glenn shopping (very few people can match my endurance for shopping), but he behaved very well and he even enjoyed looking at the kitchen gadgets and the weird Swedish food.

Due to a scheduling mishap (we’d intended to go on Sunday), Monday was Via Ferrata, on four hours of sleep. We were met at six in the morning by two very cool seventeen-year-old boys called Andrew and Talon, and they led Glenn, me, and another couple, up to the climbs. The female half of the other couple was not very comfortable with heights, so her husband accompanied her on one of the easier climbs while Glenn and I advanced to the most difficult one.

On the way up, the guides pointed out this mountain to us. It’s the mountain that inspired the Paramount Pictures logo.

It must be from another direction, because I can't see it at all.

Here’s how the Via Ferrata works: alongside the metal rungs, there were bits of steel cable bolted into the mountainside, and you clip yourself into each length as you progress; that acts as your safety should you fall (which I didn’t). My mother asked me after I got home if I get scared being up so high, and I guess I do. I’m not a really great judge of distance, so I can never tell how high off the ground I am - maybe that’s why I can climb up walls and look over cliffs and not be terribly bothered. Also, the rocks at the base were so large, we never seemed higher than twenty feet off the ground, although I’m sure we were.

What goes up must come down, and that’s where I shake apart. There is a trail down from the tops of the climbs, but it’s long and out of the way, so, in a foolish moment of supreme overconfidence, I agreed to down-climb the easiest climb. Halfway down, I was officially panicking, and, as is my wont when I panic, I started crying; it’s an embarrassing habit I was never able to outgrow. But it was scary dangling helplessly by your arms and hoping your feet would come into contact with something solid! When I finally got on the ground, one of the guides helped me concoct a more exciting story than the actual series of events. I was down before the guide got there, and then I had to climb back up to rescue Glenn and a group of orphans who’d gotten lost during a hike… so, uh yeah, I rescued orphans on my trip to Utah.

It was a wonderful busy weekend, but I don’t think I’m going to be planning any more 8+ hour road trips for a long time.

Austin and San Antonio, Texas

I hate to fly. But I like traveling - the actual act of traveling, the main carriage, I enjoy that. The people in their business suits, the luggage, the rush-rush-rush of everybody around me, the feeling that all normalcy is suspended, so I can run into one of the little airport shops and buy a candy bar and five magazines, and who cares? I love the men and women who still get all dolled up in their best, as though we are all living in some fabulous 1950s movie musical. Airports are also a prime place for excellent people-watching, and I am a passionate people-watcher.

So powerful is this rush of anticipatory adrenaline, I usually forget about the fear-of-flying thing until I’m actually sitting in the plane and hearing the engines roar to life. It’s the take-off and landing I can’t stand; during the stable part of the flight, I can actually bear to open the window and admire the view, the quilt of the land below, the soft curls of the clouds, city lights like jewels on black silk. But during the bumpy parts, hopefully I’m in a window seat, so I can pull down the blind to spare myself the traumatizing sight of the plane plummeting uncontrollably toward the earth. As Patton Oswalt so eloquently put it, flying is spitting in god’s face. It just shouldn’t be happening, this metal object filled with people should not be floating above the ground. I can’t get over it.

Anyway, where all this was leading before I jumped the rails was that I went to Texas this weekend. Glenn was out there for some training, and he flew me out to see Austin and San Antonio with him over the weekend. His brother, who is a chef at a gay restaurant (seriously), lives out there with his wife and two kids, so I met part of the family, too. On Friday night, we spent the early evening standing on the Congress Avenue Bridge, waiting for the 1.5 million bats that nest underneath it, the largest urban bat colony in North America, to fly out for the night. That was pretty spectacular - there were boat tours sailing back and forth beneath the bridge shining red lights up at them so you could see them better, and sometimes when the light hit just right, it was like watching thousands of autumn leaves falling at once. It was very cool to see them zip around after insects and hear them clicking away with their echolocation.

After it got too dark to really see any more bats, we were planning to visit Glenn’s brother Mark’s restaurant, M2, but Glenn made a very Glenn suggestion that we go to another restaurant first for a sort of pre-meal meal. I readily agreed, given that all I’d eaten in the last few hours was a candy bar, and we got jalapeno cheddar sausage kolaches and drinks at the Shiner Saloon. I really regretted our visit to the Saloon later on, though, when we got to M2 and Glenn’s brother began sending out bowl after bowl of absolutely delicious free food and I could hardly touch it. The antelope skewers over the grilled watermelon were my favorite - it is a testament to Mark’s skill and talent that I ate the watermelon and liked it. No eel bacon, though – it wasn’t a very popular item and they pulled it from the menu. In fact, the whole restaurant isn’t doing too well, and Mark’s expecting it to go under very soon; we were actually worried that it would close before I even flew into Austin. I was concerned about what Mark was going to do, but he’s already got another job lined up, and he really seems to loathe the place anyway.

Saturday morning we checked out of our hotel and went to meet Mark’s family; I played Lego Harry Potter with his little boy while Glenn and Mark caught up, and then Glenn and I drove the 90 minutes to San Antonio and the Alamo. The best thing I learned at the Alamo was that Phil Collins is a huge Alamo freak; he owns the largest collection of Alamo artifacts in the world, which he keeps in the basement of his house in Switzerland. His collection includes the world’s largest Alamo diorama, which is housed in a little antiques shop across the street from the Alamo itself. The shop owner says that he comes to visit it occasionally, and that he was just there the previous Friday. The story is that he used to love watching Davey Crockett on TV as a kid and now he’s incredibly passionate about it. My favorite thing about historical sites is seeing all the little domestic items they used, the sugar pots and the bits of china and the silverware; I like the idea of something created entirely by hand, before mass-produced became the norm, totally unique and one-of-a-kind.

"If this siege continues, I may have to surrender sober." - Davey Crockett

Mark had recommended the Tower of the Americas as another cool thing to see in San Antonio, so after the Alamo, Glenn and I Riverwalked over to it. We saw a wedding and a quinceanera on the way! I think the view from the top of the Tower would’ve been more spectacular at night than during the afternoon, but the Riverwalk was pretty fun. It’s so hot in Texas, it was nice to be able to splash the water on my chest, no matter how gross it was. That night we tried to find the Bracken Bat Cave, home to more than twenty million bats, but we drove in circles forever and never saw a hair of any bat swarm, so we just went home. Neither of us was feeling too well by that point anyway; I’d had a headache all day and I was getting hungry, and Glenn said he felt “funny.”

Sunday morning saw us both feeling refreshed and healthy, so we went to the Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio.

The natural bridge of Natural Bridge Caverns

I think Glenn may have preferred the Alamo, history buff that he is, but this was definitely my favorite part. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries as soon as we entered the coolest parts of the cavern. I was being injudicious with my photographs, though. I don’t take a lot of pictures on my hikes, since a tree’s a tree, a rock’s a rock, and mountains are actually really ugly up close, but I’ve never seen anything like these caves! I was taking pictures like, well, like Glenn. However, I continue to be the world’s worst photographer; below is what I could scavenge from my memory card full of blurry photos with bits of my fingers and hair in them. These sculptures were really unbelievable, and the pictures don’t do them any justice.

All of the formations had this low waxy sheen to them. I was dying to touch them, but you’re not allowed. They did pass around some chunks at the end, but they were dirty and rough from being handled.

We did a couple tours of two different caverns; the Natural Bridge Caverns are what’s known as commercial caves, meaning they’ve been thoroughly explored and set up with staircases and hallways so us normals can go through them. Going up and down the stairs made me really feel like I was in shape, since everybody else was huffing and puffing around me – yay for being used to thin air! Then it was back to Austin for another brief visit with Mark and on to the airport to face the flight back home. It was so nice to breathe in Colorado again; breathing in Texas made me feel like a fish.

It was such a fun weekend that I’m really looking forward to Utah in a week.

Colorado Gators Reptile Park

I wrestled alligators this weekend; what’d you do?

No, seriously: the Colorado Gators Reptile Park in Mosca offers an alligator wrestling class for anyone who’s stupid enough to do it – obviously G and I had to sign up. The price is 100 bucks a head, and it’s well worth it. We were taken under the wing of Jay, a man with a ponytail and a cowboy hat who kept making these dry morbid asides that I’m still not entirely sure were jokes; he started us off with the babies, which were swimming around in a big metal tub with red-eared sliders. After he showed us the technique and while everyone was standing around looking unsure, I hopped right in and caught one; according to Jay, the number one rule in gator wrasslin’ is don’t hesitate.

Alligators are surprisingly squishy; I thought that lovely texture of their skin would be bony and hard, but it’s not. After the babies, as a bonus, we got in the tank with the farm’s 100-pound alligator snapping turtle. Kong is truly a dinosaur. I couldn’t lift him by myself, so I got a pic with his smaller cousin.

The insides of turtles are very sandy and wet. We moved onto teenage alligators next. This required a more elaborate technique than just snatching them up by the back of the neck. We had to drag them in from the water by the tail, swinging and dancing around them while they tried to snap at our legs and hands, yank their tails backward towards us and then jump on their backs and push all of our weight down on their necks. Usually at this point, they’d go nuts and somebody else would have to hold the tail or it would drag you back into the water on its back.

Before you feel too bad for the poor little guys, there was a purpose to this that wasn’t purely sadistic. Alligators are nasty creatures, particularly to each other, so what we were doing was catching the gators and holding them down so Jay could put Neosporin on their cuts or give them shots of antibiotics. It’s something that has to be done around the farm, and the gators just swam back out to their sunning areas when you let them go.

Lastly we got to do a photo shoot of sorts with the biggest gator on the farm, a gigantic nine-foot female. This was actually probably the safest of all of our encounters, as Jay put her on a rope leash while we got to sit on her.

I got to kiss her nose, too, but I couldn't hold her head up long enough for a picture.

For completing the class, we each got a certificate of insanity, er, I mean completion.

Very cool weekend trip, and an excellent workout. I have an alligator head souvenir on my desk at work now; I’m telling everyone that I twisted it off with my bare hands.