Jimmy loved to fish, so I believe that is why we went to Estes Park. That was the prettiest park with a lake I have ever seen in my life. I don't recall me catching anything, though I tried. I do remember there being a water moccasin in the lake near where Jimmy was fishing. I was freaking out. At that time I hated even seeing a snake, I had a severe snake phobia then. It never got on the bank where we were, but I kept a distance from that sucker.
We didn't stay long at Estes Park, just long enough to smell the fresh mountain air and see the blue sky. I loved being in the mountains, so different from my suburban home back in Missouri. Where I am from is quite humid in the Summer and Colorado is anything but humid. Instead of air conditioners as I am used to, they had swamp coolers. They might look similar, but where air conditioners aim to remove humidity in the air, swamp coolers put humidity back in the air. This is important, because too dry of air can give one sinus problems, and for me I got bloody noses a lot the first few months I lived there.
Now I am not 100% sure what camp ground we ended up going to for the weekend, but I do know that it was over 11,000 feet up in altitude. Things are a little different that far up, little less oxygen and that has a weird affect on some. Also it seems like you can touch the starts up that high. And the sun is bearing down on you differently than at lower elevations like in St Louis.
We found a campsite, pitched a tent and started a campfire. Jimmy was really good at starting the fires and barbecuing as well. We had plenty to eat, some adult beverages to consume, and Jimmy liked telling stories so he told us a freaky story. I myself was a little weird from the word go as a child, in that I was fascinated with fires. My dad used to make them in the BBQ pit and then wave his hands over the fire, as to look like they were going to be confused. Jimmy didn't do that but his fire was good and roaring and putting off a lot of heat. And I just the loved the look of it and the sound of the crackling it made.
While we had the fire going so well, I hadn't noticed that the temperature was dropping .... really low. When we had gotten there in the middle of the day it was probably in the 80s in Denver, but 70s or so in the Mountains. At the campsite, apparently it had dropped into the 40s. Can you say freezing? We finally turned in for the night, Jimmy and Lisa in one huge sleeping bad, me in my own. But by the middle of the freezing cold night, I had to join them, because it was SO darn cold, I was suffering a bit from hypothermia. I couldn't sleep and we all three huddled together until the sun broke. We put everything in the car and drove back down the hill. And that is when my first ordeal with the changing elevation affected my ears .... really bad.
My ears popped a lot coming down, and they were hurting so much. When we got back home, I wasn't feeling well. I eventually had to go see a doctor and have him check to see what the heck was going on there. I found out I had a sinus infection and a blocked ear drum, that was what was causing the pain. Jimmy had tried to help me by putting some oil in my ear, but that didn't help, and it was a little too warm to bear in my sensitive ear. I was lucky that without medical insurance I could find a doctor that wouldn't charge me too much to be seen. When I was in my early 20s, insurance wasn't anything I ever really worried about. That of course changed as the years rolled on.
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Another time we went up in the mountains but this time it was in the winter. We went up there and hung around Dillon Colorado. Someone Lisa knew had a cabin or something like that up there that we girls would stay at. One night we found a bar at the bottom of one of the ski slopes near Vale and I watched out the window at the skiers coming down the mountain and then they'd get on a ski lift to go back up and do it all again. I couldn't ski, I had the weakest ankles. Me and gizmos like skis wouldn't get along anyways, I was a known klutz with athletic equipment. LOL. But that was a pretty fun time, it was cold and snowy and slick outside. Seems I was worried the entire drive we might slip off the mountain roads and head to our untimely deaths off the mountainside. Obviously that didn't happen....I'm here to write about it.
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Another time we went to Red Rocks Amphitheater, which is a venue carved out of the mountains in Morrison CO, where of course the Earth is red and rocky. I don't remember who we saw, but it was most certainly a rock group of some sort. I would be up there again a few years later and it looked the same. At that time Lisa took me there and we saw Tesla and someone that opened for them. Up until this point I had always thought it was Lifehouse, but I did some Internet searches and found that was not the case. Could have been Poison, they did tour with Tesla back then. I remember that back in 1992 I was more interested in Country music, so I wasn't thrilled with Lisa's music choice for a musical evening out, but in the end it was a fun time, and that Amphitheater has awesome acoustics!
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The only other visit to the mountains I remember was with my bosses family when I worked at BMW Financial. He had a cabin in the mountains outside of Aspen. His daughter Coleen drove us up there and we enjoyed a night of dinner, drinking and stories. And that the only bathroom was an outhouse. Was that ever interesting for this "city" girl. The roads winded and winded around slowly up that mountain, it was the most interesting drive I remember. At points only one car could go up or down at a time on the road. I would never have driven that....not then, not now. Heights and narrow roads are not my friends. :-)
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.....thinking about times gone by and the many adventures I had had back then, I often wonder why I never wrote about these then. It surely would have made remembering things now a bit easier. But when you are young, as I was then, you often just live life and don't think about the future. You think you are invincible, and not going to die, and not going to get old. What silliness that all is! We all have to die, most of us age and age until we get pretty old before that happens. Why not write down some things for prosperity and for memory's sake? You never know if you're going to want to write an autobiography or a blog for all to read. And there is STILL more to share. Keep on reading.
One of my pics taken circa 1987 or 1988 in foothills of the Rockies.
Love those red rocks!
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