Slight Change of Plans

The pool party was canceled for inclement weather, so the plan was that my human friends and I were going to head out and do something fun for Memorial Day weekend. We hadn't figured out what yet, and first, I needed to walk Voltaire and visit with my sister, Kumo, a little.


When I called Kumo and told her the pool party was off, she said she was going to head over anyway, just to visit and "scope the place out."


Upon hearing the distinct sound of Kumo's motorcycle approaching, Voltaire seemed to remember Kumo and started barking, and jumping around excitedly. Kumo lived with us when Voltaire had her puppies, and was quite the puppy nursemaid for a bit.


Even though the pool party was canceled, this did not seem to dissuade Kumo from wearing a grass skirt to ride over on her bike.



Turns out, it was a rented hula dancer costume, and she wanted to get her money worth out of it. (I read no reports of bunny on a motorcycle in a hula outfit related motor vehicle accidents, so I guess that's all good.)

So instead of going out with my friends to do Memorial Day things, I ended up sitting around in my apartment with Kumo chatting. It was nice to catch up, but she was a bit cagey when it came to talking about where she's living. I hope she's doing okay. She said she would have to have her belongings "called for" and that she'd see me soon. So maybe it's all in storage or something. Maybe she'll tell me the details next time I see her. She said she'd bring her dog, Tsume, and Voltaire will like that a lot. She hasn't really had another dog to play with for a while.

Not a very exciting Saturday in spite of it being mostly spent with Kumo. But quiet is okay, at least while I'm still getting settled in.

- Gage

My Dinner With Girlzoot

This week is shaping up to be a rather social one.

My buddy Mal is coming to visit from Washington state in a few days.

I finally decided to let my sister, Kumo, know that I was back in Colorado. I've been invited to a pool party on Saturday, so I told her we could just meet up there. She sounded really enthusiastic... which is always a little worrysome with Kumo.

And tonight, I got the honor of having dinner with my friend, Girlzoot.


She told me she gets lost easily, so we agreed to meet at Cafe de France, where we've been before.

It's been months since I saw her, way before I lost my mind and go married, and over those months I've found several books that I thought she'd like. So while we were waiting for food to show up, we looked through the books I found her. She seemed pretty tickled with them.



Dinner was pretty good (I had the pasta salad), but dessert was the BEST. We split something with orange and chocolate that was really just wonderful.


She agreed to let me blog about dinner with her, if I'd help her with her art project. It's kind of neat. You can see it here - Girlzoot: Words and Faces.



Then it was off to Build a Bear to see if I could find a pair of swim trunks for the pool party (I did. Thank you, Build a Bear), and where I was serenaded by Girlzoot singing "Sing, Sing a Song" with a little stuffed microphone.

Now there's something you don't see every day.

It's been much too long since I've seen Girlzoot, and there are a lot of my friends I've neglected with this whole marriage thing. I need to see about fixing that. But first I need to figure out which box my address book is packed in. It's got to be here somewhere.

- Gage

Trail Blazing Bunny - Part 2

Okay, so when I left off, we'd just taken a break from trail building to have some delicious Sloppy Joes for lunch.

And corn stuff that was WONDERFUL.


I got to spend part of my lunch talking to the fabulous Donna Warner Wilson, who is the CEO of Cherokee Ranch. Which I figure must be kind of like being Queen, only she doesn't live there, and without a crown. She was very nice and I really enjoyed chatting with her over sloppy joes.


Before we all got back to it, we were addressed by the lovely Ann Baker Easley, Executive Director of the VOC. She had some really encouraging words, and just reiterated how important to this the volunteers are. I'd heard there were about 115 volunteers who showed up, and that is a LOT of sloppy joes, but it's also a lot of people giving up a Saturday they could've just been lounging on their couch eating ice cream sandwiches and watching TV to come build a trail. That's pretty impressive.


So back to trail building. We went back to the trails we'd finished and cleaned up the tools and everything.

I think they both looked great, but then I might have been a little biased, having had a paw in the creation of them.

One of my crew mates, Ian, planted this little tree to help show that this WASN'T part of the trail. It's tough making trail borders look like they weren't put there on purpose and the branches and stuff just happened to fall there.


We had to wait for just a little bit to join all the folks up closer to the castle for the final little bit of trail that needed to go in.


Fletcher brought around water for everyone, and we finished things up, tidied edges, that kind of thing.

Some of us posed in the sun, on a rock, like a wild bunny. Well, a wild bunny with sunglasses.


Finally, everyone was working on the path closest to the Castle. This is where the crusher fines would be coming in, and they really do make a beautiful path.


But they have to be carried down by the wheelbarrow full, and that can be kind of tricky on lumpy ground like this. So some of us were running back and forth with wheelbarrows, some were digging out the path so it was about 1" deep, and some were tamping down the crusher fines on the path. It was a whole lot of movement, and pretty fast, because everyone was ready to be done and go to the Castle for ice cream!

It took a lot of work, but finally, the trail was done. Completely and totally DONE.


There's the "before".


And the "after".

Then it was up to the Castle for ice cream and tours!


The Castle is INCREDIBLE. That roof is seven color slate, which is available only in Vermont (I think. I was pretty worn out by the time we got to the tour. I could barely hop.)


This is a nifty little building that I think I overheard one of the Castle docents say was a guest house. Oh, it looks small, but I guess there's a spiral staircase in it that goes down to the guest rooms. Or something like that. I'll have to ask when I go back.


The view from up here is amazing, and I can't imagine a better place to put your Castle than up here.

You can even see Pike's Peak! What a view!


I never did get a chance to ask about the cannon, but seriously, what Castle doesn't need a cannon?


The tour was wonderful, but there are no pictures allowed inside the castle, so I don't have any tour pictures to show you. While we were waiting for everyone else to get out of the tour, we hung around eating ice cream.


And some of us posed on rocks in front of trees.


There was a raffle.


But I didn't win anything. And after the raffle, we all went home. Kirkachu and Wendy talked about going back and walking the trail, but we were all way too tired, and we all promised to come back and walk the trail again someday soon.


On the way down, we saw a deer.


And like the good tourists we are, stopped to snap pictures.


She sure was pretty, though.


We decided that we'd worked hard enough, none of us felt like cooking. So we ended up in a Red Robin for delicious burgers.


And still not carrot cake. Harumph. I guess this diet thing is making Wendy happy, but I'm starting to have carrot cake withdrawal!

The salad did have carrots in it, though. So I guess it's okay.

I don't know what adventures we have planned next. I skipped the Mothers' Day picnic because I was still really, really worn out (and it was cold. I don't like cold picnics.) So we'll see. It's great to be back, and trail building really was an incredible experience.

To look back at that last trail and know that an hour before, that hadn't been there. It was like magic. I can't describe it, but if you'd like to see for yourself, I recommend you check out the VOC - Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado. I know I'll be doing more projects with them, so maybe I'll see you there.

Also, I highly recommend a visit to Cherokee Ranch and Castle. It was really obvious to me on the tour how much the docents and employees there really care about the Castle and everything in it. Also, I think the lady who lived there last, Ms. Tweet Kimball, seems like a real character and it was a lot of fun hearing about her and her cattle. They offer tours and teas and brunches and all kinds of musical events. Hopefully we'll be checking out more of those too.

For now, I'm pretty content to continue settling in to my home. It's great to be back in Colorado. I missed it more than I knew.

- Gage

Trail Blazing Bunny - Part 1

Kirkachu had talked Wendy and I into going with him on a trailbuilding project with the VOC (Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado). So for a Saturday, we were up pretty early.


I navigated, of course.


We were building trails at the Cherokee Ranch and Castle, and it was really beautiful. But I didn't see a castle.


I did see a wild turkey. But no castle.


Until, one more bend in the road and...


There it was!


Cherokee Castle!!


The Cherokee Castle is really something to see. It was originally called the Charlford Castle and it took two years to build, from 1924 to 1926, and that's just the beginning of its amazing history. They said we'd get a tour after the trails were all built, and I was really looking forward to that.


But first we had to figure out what to do with all of this trail building stuff (called crusher fines). This ALREADY looked like hard work, and we hadn't even started yet.


We wandered over to the picnic area where they were setting up to check in the volunteers and where all the crew leaders were meeting.


There's a beautiful view of the castle from the picnic area.


The views up here were breathtaking.


The VOC had provided lots of water for the volunteers. VERY important stuff up here, doing such hard work in the mountains.


There was a crew leader walkthrough, and Wendy and I followed Kirkachu (who was like a crew leader caterpillar that day - almost there, about to turn into a beautiful crew leading butterfly. Hmm... rereading this I think maybe I shouldn't do blog entries so late at night. -Gage) Anyway...



All of the crew leaders were assigned their parts of the trail. There was the main trail, a loop, and a couple of "stubs" that were all going to be done in one day!


Some parts of where the trail was going to be looked a lot more difficult to clear than others.


But, there was already a pack of school kids coming on Monday to hike the trails we were building on Saturday! And looking at the view, it seemed to me that if it opened this up so kids could come up and see this, it was worth it.


Back to the picnic, where more people were starting to gather.


A bunny and his drinking water. I agreed to share with Wendy.



A lot of families come and get involved with the VOC, which is a really wonderful thing to see. They even had a special project specifically for the littler kids. The smaller kids got to plant trees by the pond. At the end of the day they looked like they had a really great time at it.


Up next, everyone had to be put into a crew to start working on their part of the trail.


Super big tools, but Wendy said she thought I'd be able to help anyway. If we're going to keep this up, I might have to invest in a set of tools of my own. We'll see.


We got to be on Kirkachu's team. Standing next to Kirkachu is Steve Austin. No, not the bionic man, the guy who was mentoring Kirkachu on how to be a crew leader. He was incredible. Steve knows a LOT about building a trail, and it made me tired just WATCHING him. The guy's got a lot of energy.



Everyone kept saying that our part of the trail was pretty difficult, and it certainly was a LOT of hard work. But we got it done! And our reward...


Another section of trail to do. But this one wasn't quite as difficult.


We pretty much finished it up just before lunch, which is a great stopping point for this already super long blog entry.

My trail blazing blog entry will continue on Saturday the 16th! Check back! I got to see the Castle!!!