Leaf peeping

I realized a few days ago that I had a fairly free weekend coming up. All three of my classes have assignments due on Monday, so I'll have a lot of grading next week, but right now there's almost nothing on my plate. I stayed late at school on Friday and made Monday's complicated handout for two of my classes, so I don't even have much prep to do (the other class will be giving presentations).

What would I like to do, I wondered, with all this free time? And then I remembered that it's Fall Color time in the mountains. "Could we go look at leaves this weekend?" I asked Rocket Boy, and he agreed that it would be nice. The twins, of course, did not want to go, but I said tough, we're going. We also brought our new next-door neighbors'/old friends' youngest son with us, and that made it more fun. Z is 10 years old but only one grade ahead of the twins, and they've been playing together constantly ever since he moved in two weeks ago. It's pretty funny, actually. I told Rocket Boy that we're getting a sense of what it would have been like to have THREE kids, and our friends/neighbors are getting a sense of what it would have been like to have FIVE.

The boys spend so much time with Z that they haven't been watching TV. I thought Kid B really NEEDED the television, it's an important source of comfort for him. But apparently playing with Z trumps that. They have all sorts of ongoing games: Kitty Cat Elementary, which is a school game, and also Miners, where they pretend to live in a mine. They also eat together quite often, which means that either Z has dinner with us, or the twins have dinner at his house. Sometimes all three of them eat dinner at both houses (we tend to eat earlier; Z's family eats later). Here they are having breakfast at our house this morning -- this was Z's second breakfast, of course. Fortunately nobody is fat, other than me. Just hungry.

We took 285 into the mountains, but around Aspen Park we hit a huge traffic jam that continued to plague us for many many miles. No major event, no accident. "It's the leaf peepers," I told Rocket Boy. And of course it was. This weekend had been advertised in the media as the best time to see leaves, so what appeared to be the entire population of the Front Range decided to do just that. We stopped in Bailey for our usual lunch at the Cutthroat Cafe, but then got back into the traffic jam again. As we approached Kenosha Pass, which is stupendously gorgeous at this time of year, the traffic slowed to a crawl. A very slow crawl. The area around the trail up there was a gigantic parking lot. So many people. And everyone looked happy.

Part of the reason so many people came out, I believe, is that it's an amazing year for aspen. They're not just yellow! They're gold and amber and orange and rust. Something to do with the late summer temperatures and the amount of rainfall. I remember the first year I moved to Colorado and went to the mountains to see the "fall color" -- which was yellow. Yellow aspen, nothing else. Very disappointing. But this year! It's amazing out there!

We went on beyond the pass and stopped at the monuments just beyond it, where there was parking. The boys and Rocket Boy hiked around, while I stayed at the top and admired the trees. There was a lot to admire. At one point the memory card in my camera filled up, and I quickly went through old photos and deleted anything I thought I could live without, just so I could take more pictures of trees.

You can also get a great view of South Park spread out below you from that spot. I love South Park. In a way it reminds me of Death Valley, though with a rather different climate. It feels like a sacred space. We didn't go to Alma/Fairplay on this trip, for which the twins were grateful, but we did go down into the Park. We turned off at Como and headed for Boreas Pass, another place that supposedly had great leaves.

And it did, though one woman we spoke to told us the leaves had been better four days ago. It's so hard to hit it just right. Today was plenty gorgeous for us, though. On the road up to Boreas Pass we kept driving through these sort of tunnels of yellow and orange leaves. I experience the color as almost palpable: when we drove through a grove I felt as though the ambers and golds were actually touching my skin, and it gave me the shivers. And the other people were so funny! The road up to the pass is extremely narrow and winding, but around every corner there might be a big SUV just sitting in the middle of the road, its owner wandering off to the side with a camera and a dazed expression. It's not a road you can drive fast on, too rocky, but still -- there were some close calls!

The last time we were in the mountains we neglected to bring any sort of wrap, so this time I was very good and remembered to bring sweatshirts for me and the boys. And then, as we drove up to the pass, the temperature dropped down to 33 degrees. Also, it began to snow lightly. I was wearing a t-shirt and capri pants (and a sweatshirt). At least I had real shoes. Z fortunately wore long pants, but the twins were in shorts! And Kid B, for most of the trip, wore Crocs with no socks. Finally--AFTER this photo was taken--he agreed to put on his shoes and socks, but still, those cold little legs! And how very thin our sweatshirts seemed (Rocket Boy had a windbreaker which wasn't much better).

The other end of the pass road dumps out in Breckenridge, where we went to our favorite park, with the railroad-themed equipment and actual old engines on display. And then we continued on to Frisco, where we had a sort of meal at the Starbucks inside the Safeway (hot chocolate for the boys, chai tea lattes for me and Rocket Boy, and everyone got to choose a pastry--not very nutritious, but it was the pick-me-up we needed).

Rocket Boy drove us home on I-70 (I had been the driver up to this point) and there was an impressive amount of snow on the mountains right around the Eisenhower Tunnel, but nothing on the roads. Originally we had considered going back over the mountains via Guanella Pass, and going home on 285 again, but we wisely decided we were done. For one thing, we would have been driving in the dark much of the time -- Rocket Boy said the aspen might look nice by moonlight, but it was cloudy, and anyway the waning moon wasn't due to rise until after midnight. We ran into a lot of traffic again when we turned off onto Highway 6 -- maybe other leaf peepers going home, but maybe not. RB pulled into our driveway a little before 7:30 and it was just barely dark. "No, you may NOT go play at Z's house, it is BEDTIME."

Honestly, it was a perfect day. I couldn't have asked for anything better.