My writings have become more peripatetic of late.  I continue to write in my journal, if not daily, every few days to capture the experience and try and make some sense of it..  But to blog requires some combination of photograph and narrative that requires a kind of story line.  And these lines seem to become tangled at times.   

And which is why, after only having finished my Bike Tour of Colorado (55, 66, 84 and 91 miles…the longest day was my best), I spent a week at home.  Then came back up to the mountains.  Spent the night at the hostel in Salida…wandered downtown in the early evening…got some ice cream at Safeway.  In the morning, I got to the Café Dawn around 6:30.   Ordered my latte then went outside again to take a picture on this patriotic 4^th of July…and into the viewfinder walked Steve and Tamara…owners of the house I had rented this past February.  Salida...a small town.   

Then onto the Orient Land Trust….checked in….set up my tent on a slope open to the wind to cut down on mosquitoes.  Spent time in the sauna, the swimming pool, the party pool, the top pool, and the newly accessible Meadow Pool.  There is a natural quality to the pools here...the way they are constructed...low rock walls holding the water heated by deep faults in the earth.  It is not crowded...this week after the 4th...no fireworks here.  Just pools that you can have by yourself...you, the pool, the hillside and the valley beyond.