Tag Tuesday - The Spoon; And a Story: BIGHORN IN THE SKY

Today's theme in Tag Tuesday stretched us a bit! The theme is the SPOON and here's my take on it:

(click for detail)

The background is from a collage of fiber, fabric, papers and acrylic paint on Tyvek. It's the same piece from which I have cut postcards earlier and posted on my blog. If you want more details about the making of this, please click here.

Bighorn In The Sky

Twentieth in the Tuesday Story Series

When our daughter became old enough to travel, my husband and I used to take her with us on his business trips. He would travel several times a year for his job, and because we home schooled, we could go anytime. Her first trip was to Colorado when she was seven years old and we enjoyed very much being able to be there together!

We were staying in Ft. Collins, which was about an hour north of Denver. Colorado State is there and John was involved in a project with the Engineering department. So while he was in meetings during the day, Tabitha and I did a lot of sightseeing. John and I had been to the area before and so I already knew where she and I could enjoy some wonderful outings. We rode the trolley in Ft. Collins, visited a petting farm, went to the "old town" area of the city and to the zoo in Denver. But my favorite place to share with her was Mt. Evans.

Mt. Evans is almost directly west of Denver and is the highest paved road in America. At the top is an observatory (not open to the public) and the ruins of an old restaurant which burned down many years ago. But before you get to the top, there is a wonderful area with a glacier, and a small lake called Summit Lake. In the summer, you would still see snowflakes and if you were from the "flatlands" like we were, you had to move slowly because of the high altitude. It was so beautiful! We came very close to mountain goats and bighorn sheep.

 June 1986 - Mt Evans at Summit Lake

The road up to Mt. Evans is two lane, and on one side there is no shoulder. I kid you not, it is straight down, with only about 6 inches between the pavement and the edge. You did not speed. The view was tremendous, but you drove very slowly! On the day I took Tabitha up there, as we were coming back from Summit Lake we noticed Bighorn Sheep walking single file between the road and the drop off. We slowed down (even more) and pulled up along side of them. I rolled the window down and the leader of the pack stopped and studied us. I whispered to Tabitha to feed them one of the snack crackers she had in her lap and she held one out to him. He stuck his head in the car and munched it down, then suddenly several of them were trying to get in on this largess. How they managed to finagle around like that in such a small space is very amazing! We finished feeding them everything we could find and because the drivers in the few cars behind us were getting impatient, we reluctantly drove away.

1990, Mt. Evans with Tabitha and Bighorn

That trip has always been one of my favorite memories. Every time we had a trip to Colorado, we made sure to drive to Mt. Evans. However, the last time we were there, we were disappointed to see that there was a admission booth where you had to buy tickets to drive up the road, and a gift shop, etc. Mt. Evans had fallen to commercialism, and it wasn't quite the same. We really enjoyed it when it was a wilder place!

Rebecca