Vacation . . . Start!

Yay! I'm in Colorado, chilling at my sister's place. We'll leave for Utah tomorrow, but she's working today so I'm being a slob and simply enjoying not working. I'm also checking all our supplies for the 100 millionth time. Who me? Anal retentive? Obsessive-compulsive? Of course not! I just like to be prepared. Right.

I thought my i-pod had somehow fried on the drive up here and was going to be very sad, but after some back and forth it seems to have managed to revive itself. I wouldn't have been totally music-less because I brought a bunch of CDs. My sister doesn't have an appreciation for my anime music on the i-pod, so I brought 'normal' music for her. I would have been a tiny bit distressed to have to listen to only 'normal' music on this vacation. Luckily, that seems to have been averted, although I'm fairly nervous about plugging the i-pod back into my car system.

I ran into a fair amount of construction on I-25 in Colorado. That's normal though. Summer + Colorado = road construction/repair. It's a given. I did get to take a scenic tour of Walsenburg since they had I-25 closed there and detoured traffic through the city. I had to laugh though. All the "expect delays" signs had me worried. I forgot that this was semi-rural Colorado. Their delays can't hold a candle to big metroplex delays for construction or wrecks. Plus it was mid-afternoon on a weekday. I took a scenic tour, but I wasn't really delayed much.

I've already gotten to see some interesting wildlife on this trip. In the Texas panhandle I saw a roadrunner adult with a young one come across the road. In Colorado in the Wilkerson Pass area a coyote ran across the road in front of my car. And of course here I've seen all sorts of deer with spotted fawns. For a basic city-girl, these are fun wildlife to spot. I'm looking forward to seeing more on the rest of the trip.

My sister's place is an ideal place to chill. It's so beautiful and scenic, and yesterday was one of those perfect days. Gorgeous, without a cloud in the sky, warm enough at this altitude that even I stayed in the shade. Partly that's because I burn easily at this altitude, but also it probably was upper 70's here yesterday. Quite a change from 100+, so of course I had my jacket handy to slip on when the breeze came up later in the afternoon.

I'm finally getting into the swing of being on vacation. By the time we hit Utah it should be real to me, although I'm already thoroughly enjoying being lazy. I'll try to have pictures the next time I post.

Pre-Vacation

That's not quite true. I'm actually in my vacation, rather than pre-vacation, but I'm busily running all the errands and doing all the chores necessary before a camping trip so it doesn't feel like vacation yet. I've been so busy that it's a good thing I have a couple of days free before taking off for points north and west. Yesterday I had all the maintenance work done on my car and did massive grocery shopping. I also dragged out all the camping/hiking gear, packed food boxes and just generally amassed all the stuff that needs to go with me. I'm taking more cold-weather clothes this year since word is that Colorado has been cold in the mornings already. Cold for this warm-weather person anyway.

Today I plan on accomplishing three main tasks: 1) doing major yard work. The grass in my yard is LONG, but I've put off mowing until today because it's going to have to go for two weeks now. So I'll be struggling to get it mowed and edged today (temps are still close to 100!) 2) get the topper installed on my car and the car packed except for essentials and ice chests. This will be the first year I've put the topper on by myself so we'll see how that goes. It's not particularly heavy ... just awkwardly bulky. I want to leave early in the morning, so I'll do as much as possible today. and 3) get the cats set. Really good cleaning of the cat boxes and extra attention for the cat kids. Addy started moping as soon as I started pulling camping gear out, and has been sticking to my side like glue. And of course, Zoe's eye started weeping last night. Zoe has periodic allergies in her eyes and one or both will start weeping and get all red and inflamed. Plus her little face is all dirty from the weeping. It usually resolves by itself, occasionally needs eye drops. Naturally it would start this right before I leave. I met with the pet sitter, and she should be fine with the cats. She didn't actually get to meet them because they disappeared while she was over. Not her fault. My cat kids are schtizy anyway, and I also had three door-to-door sales people ring the bell during the time she was here. Of course the cats were nowhere to be found.

So it's 6:00 am and I'm waiting for it to be light enough to start mowing. I had planned to sleep a little later this morning since I'm planning on getting up really early tomorrow, but I was awake at 4:50 am. That's about 20 minutes later than my alarm usually goes off, but I really intended to sleep later than that. It's hard for me to sleep late. I'll probably start mowing around 9:00 am, rather than when it gets light. That'll give all the responsible neighbors time to get up and be gone for work. Damp morning grass isn't a problem because it's been so dry here. Any moisture in my lawn is pretty much due to me watering. I hope we get some rain while I'm gone or my lawn and shrubbery are going to be drought-stressed.

This is a picture of part of the trail from the first hike we plan to do, Angels' Landing. It's one of my favorite hikes, partly due to this section of trail. It's almost more of a climb than a hike, what I like to call a scramble. They placed chains strategically to help you with the steep and slick places. It's really fun, but definitely not a hike you want to do it you have issues with heights. We've seen nesting peregrine falcons along this hike and last year we saw condors. I'm hoping to see the condors again this year.

Okay, can't get to reminiscing about past trips. I've still got a fair amount to accomplish before this one, and it's light enough to let the cats out and start some things. I hope to post during the trip, but if not I'll definitely post when I get back.

Yo!

To say that I'm behind in my blogging would be an understatement of epic proportions. This summer has been even worse than I expected, as far as time to blog. It's a week into August already!

This picture is my sage out in front of my house. It's been blooming this week because of the soaking rain we got last weekend. It seems to bloom randomly, but usually after a dry spell followed by a good rain. It's gorgeous when it's covered with these purple blossoms, and the honeybees love it. It's usually covered with them as well.

I taught my last biochemistry lecture this last week, so next week is the final exam and then I'm done. I've already even figured out all the grades, minus the final. After this next week I'm on vacation for three weeks and I am soooooo ready. It's been a long and busy summer, and I'm more than ready for a break. I'm headed back to Utah and Colorado. I haven't even started thinking in terms of vacation yet .... what I need to take, what I need to buy, food supplies, camping supplies, etc, etc. I'm not planning on leaving town immediately though. I'll have a couple free days to get my act together. Usually I go to Utah first and then hit my sister's place in Colorado on the way back. This year I'll be going to Colorado first to pick her up. We'll head for Utah for some camping and hiking, then come back and visit my nephew, niece and great-niece in Denver. It should be amazing fun.


I've been searching for a pet sitter. My friends who usually keep an eye on the spoiled cat-kids are both going to be out of town the same time I am. The cat girls are too old and set in their ways and schitzy around strangers for me to board them for an extended time. I have a week left to find someone I'm comfortable with leaving my house and my cat-kids with. Wish me luck.

Anyway, not much of a blog but better than nothing. I'll be working on getting back to this more often.

4th of July Weekend

Wow! I knew I wouldn't have much time time to blog this summer, but I expected to get around to it more than I have been. Time just gets away from me, and here we are half way through 2009. This feels like the first weekend that I haven't been busy since sometime in May. Although I'm somewhat impressed that I managed not to be busy on July 4th weekend.

Things are pretty slow around here right now though. The temperatures every day the last week or so have been in the 100's, and my water bill is going to be astronomical. It's a tough decision every summer. High water bills or a totally withered and dead lawn. Plus the peach tree needs water.

The peach tree ended up having a fair number of peaches, but they were small and the birds and insects got most of them. I ate a couple but mostly I still spend time every evening picking up half eaten and rotting ones from the ground under the tree. That won't be for much longer though. They're mostly gone from the tree now.

I'm happy to say that in retrospect, I totally enjoyed my trip to Innsbruck. I haven't had time to think about it much, but it was really fun, and everything went smoothly. The whole travel experience, the talk, the congress, sightseeing, shopping, everything. I've got a trip coming up in a couple of weeks to Chicago whch I hope goes as smoothly. Of course that one's a piece of cake in comparison .... a single hop with no connections and a relatively short flight. My only concern will be the weight of my checked luggage since I'll be there almost a week and need clothes for semi-formal functions. I got a nice check-in agent coming back from Innsbruck who let me slide with my luggage weighing almost 24 kilos, which I'm pretty sure is over the 50 lb weight limit.

Anyway, this blog will have no pics today because I'm blogging from a laptop and all my pics are on my other computers. After dragging my really heavy laptop to Austria I decided that if I'm going to be traveling so much in 2009-2010 and I need to have a computer with me, I was going to get a lighter one. So I did. This little one is still a full computer but it's close to the size of those little toys you can get for a few hundred dollars that essentially let you surf the internet and email people. It's nice. Sony of course. I'm partial to Sony electronics, but then I've had really good luck with them, or they're made really well. Whatever the reason, they seem to last.

So here's a short blog, and hopefully I'll get back in the habit of blogging. Later.

Home from Innsbruck

Home again. Much as I love to travel, it's always nice to be home. I may be doing an occasional random Innsbruck post or two in the future to try to post more pictures of the MANY I took while I was over there. This picture was taken from the Imperial Garden, the Hofgarten, which was basically outside the back door of my hotel. Because it was so close, I got a chance to wander in it several times. The garden was huge, well-kept and gorgeous and contained an immense variety of trees and shrubbery, probably from all over. This massive tree was completely in bloom, and like most of the varieties in the garden, I have no idea what it was. It was beautiful.

I have so many pictures from this trip that it's difficult to decide which ones to include in this blog. I have more pictures from the church, but given that I've already posted some from there, I should post other pictures. I have quite a few from this garden also, as well as quite a few that I took when we went up the mountain. None of the pictures really do justice to the scenery, but maybe they give an idea of how beautiful it all was.

One afternoon two of my colleagues and I took off for some sightseeing. We rode the cable cars up to the top of one of the mountains which surround Innsbruck. From there you have a pretty spectacular view of the Alps, as well as a great view down at Innsbruck. The day we went it had rained in the morning, and there were still quite a few clouds between us and Innsbruck. You could get occasional peeks down, and it was cool to see the cable for the cable cars disappear into the clouds and then to travel through them. This picture to the left shows that. The clouds would hide us and then pass by, or we would climb out of them. The trip began at the Congress Center and a tram takes you through four stations to where the cable car starts. The tram rail rises very steeply and so the cars are set up to pretty much stay level. Unlike a train, the tram cars are apparently hooked to the track so that on the steep sections if you're in the first car, you're looking out over the top of the cars behind you since they're lower on the track. At Hungerburg you get off the tram and walk to the cable car station. There are restaurants and houses there ( a small town?) and on the way down we stopped for strudel and drinks. Going up, we just wanted to get to the top.

There are two cable cars to go to the top. The first one is large and takes you from Hungerburg to Seegrube. There are two cars for this section, one going up while the other one comes down. The next section runs between Seegrube and Hafelekar and has only one cable car running up and back. At the top there is a short hike up to the summit where there is a cross with the words, "Bergsohne Innsbruck 2007" on it . This picture gives you an idea of the hike up to the summit although the picture is probably too small to let you see cross. One of my friends and I hiked up to the summit, took pictures at the cross and looking down to try to get a good shot of Innsbruck through the clouds. We never did get a great view of Innsbruck from the top because the clouds kept passing by. We had good views of it from the cable cars once we got below the clouds, but couldn't get good pictures from the cable cars. This shot is through/around the clouds from the top.

Dom St. Jakob

I wanted to post a few more pictures of the church where the organ concert took place. The internet connection that I have has been less than cooperative, so we'll see if I can manage to do it. This is a picture facing the altar of St. Jakob. The church is very beautiful, but very overly ornate in the Baroque style. It was built between 1717 -1724, heavily damaged in WWII, and restored.

The ceiling is completely painted, just like the area over the alter. Although I also have pictures of the ceiling, they'll have to wait. It was all I could do to get these two pictures to post this afternoon.

The whole church is very ornate, with small sculptures and paintings throughout, as well as bigger figures. Most of the decorative pieces that are found in this church, I have no idea what their significance is, like this gold and silver structure which juts out from the wall above the height of a person's head. And of course, as can be seen from the last post, the organ fits the style of the rest of the church. The pictures don't really do any of this justice, but especially the organ. The biggest pipes are bigger aound than a man's head, and the sound that can be produced by it is terrific. The lowest sounds seem to shake the building and set up an answering vibration in your chest.

Today we took the cable cars to the top of the mountain. Waaaaay fun. And of course I have pictures. I'll post them later since every time I try loading a picture it tends to make me lose my internet connection. I seem to be a day behind in my posts.

Time to go meet folks again, so more later.

Organ Concert

This will be quick today because I've gotta meet some people. Just thought you might like to see the organ that the concert last night was performed on. Pretty awesome, huh? It was huge and gorgeous and could create a massive amount of sound. The concert was . . . 'unique'. 'Experimental' would be the best description, I think. It sounded more like 'noise' to me, but quite obviously I'm not an expert. The church was gorgeous though. Dom St. Jakob. I'll post more pictures later.