Saturday & Sundry Memories: Mysteries in S.W. USA.

Mention of UFO sightings in a bunch of predictions by a "time traveller", featured in my post dated 2 January 2019 set my mind back almost five years, to a post I wrote in February 2014. I enjoyed re-reading that post myself (inner narcissist coming out) so shall re-air it, lightly edited, for the weekend.

Back in 2014, we had recently watched an "indie" movie on DVD: The Wicksboro Incident. It's one of the genre often labelled "found footage", in documentary style though purely fictional. The film's theme: Wicksboro, a fictional small town in far south-western Texas, disappeared with its inhabitants sometime in the early 1950s. One survivor emerges from hiding decades later to tell his story to two amateur film-makers. His story involves ... aliens. 'Nuf said. A passing reader who stumbles across this blog at some future point might wish to see the movie, I will not spoil it by expanding further on the plot. The film, around 70 minutes long, starts slowly but builds. There's lots of shaky camera work, dark, almost blank screens with voices only, to reassure us that the DVD hasn't stuck in its groove (or whatever).

That film underlined, for me, how an area of south-western United States, New Mexico, part of southern Colorado, and south-western Texas seem to have developed mysterious connections to strange happenings, modern legends, the weird and the would-be wonderful. On our trips, over the years around these areas, we've visited a few locations of mysterious reputation. Roswell, New Mexico always comes to mind first.

We first visited Roswell, New Mexico in 2006, the UFO Museum and Research Center was then situated in the main street, in what appeared to be an old movie theater. A new center for the museum was under construction further down the road.

We read many of the numerous exhibits: newspaper articles, sworn affidavits and other printed material displayed around the walls. The main part of the museum deals, unsurprisingly, with the reported UFO crash near Roswell in 1947. There are, among many other things, reports and signed statements from witnesses who saw evidence of the crash and collected wreckage. Evidence of a request for "child size coffins". In several of the statements, witnesses reported seeing purple colored symbols, hieroglyphic-like, on a strip among the wreckage. There's a statement by a woman medical officer, detailed to take notes at an autopsy of bodies following the crash. She was later sent to England, and subsequently is said to have disappeared - or has not been heard from again.

Who can say how genuine any of the material is, after 60 years have passed? And yet, why would ordinary, everyday people have fabricated such a story, back in 1947 on a summer evening just before midnight, without reason? In those days there were few, if any TV programmes about extra-terrestrial phenomena to ignite the imagination. There were few sci-fi movies. What else but "a happening" could have sparked reports of such a bizarre occurrence as this? We discussed our feelings about the whole Roswell story later, after our museum visit, came to the conclusion that "something" did happen on that night in 1947. The "something" was covered up by lies from those in authority at the time. Lies from government downward are not unknown, even in current history, which fact inclined us to believe at least some of the stories told by witnesses.

On a 2005 trip to see Anasazi cave dwellings at Mesa Verde, Colorado we happened across a UFO Watchtower in the San Luis Valley, near Hooper. The site was run by a friendly lady who told us tales of strange sightings she and others had experienced. She also told us that some Native American tribes believe that their ancestors came from "the stars".

On a later trip, 2011, celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary, in the far north of New Mexico, we intended to see what we could find relating to some strange legends surrounding a tiny town called Dulce, on the border of Colorado and New Mexico, close to the Continental Divide, where altitude reaches 7 to 8 thousand ft at various points. Google search "Dulce, New Mexico" for numerous tales of varying incredibility about Dulce and what lies beneath Archuleta Mesa! We, unfortunately, decided to turn around and head home just before we reached Dulce, due to unexpected wintry weather, altitude (7,871ft), and a few uncomfortable health issues.

One particular little village on Highway 64, Dulce, was going to fascinate yours truly because of stories of UFOs, aliens and a massive 7-layered underground government facility said to be nearby - under a huge mesa. There are also stories/legends of a UFO crash near Aztec village in this area. Again, there's a ton of information, comment from locals and researchers online. Some, if even half-true would be hair-raising. It involves bio-tech experiments (which I can believe), mutilated cattle found regularly around the area (documented), alien cooperation following a firefight between government troops and aliens or "grays" (which I can't believe).

I'd guess that there really is, or was, some kind of underground facility in this area dating from 1950s through 1970s. The fear of nuclear war was fierce then.
The US government, paranoia-filled as usual, could easily have decided to experiment, attempting to plan for all eventualities: mutations, radiation effects, etc. etc. Where better than this wilderness area with plentiful natural underground caverns, easily extended and modified, for use without much chance of discovery? That part of the stories isn't hard to believe, given the atmosphere of those times.

We didn't reach Dulce though. We stayed overnight in Chama, a village 25 miles to the east. The temperature was frigid up there in the mountains, some of what we'd assumed was remnants of the winter's snow remained in the fields and forests over the highest parts of the route.

Neither of us slept a wink that night though. The altitude was probably getting to us both. My husband, restless, decided to get up and play on the laptop. I experienced a severe attack of allergic sneezing which brought on a sharp sinus headache and it simply wouldn't let up. In addition I had developed a troublesome sore on my ankle. We both wondered aloud whether to carry on west or head back to Oklahoma next morning. When we looked outside at about 7 AM we decided at once! Snow had coated the car, and it was still snowing. Probably not at all a surprising find to the locals but a bit disconcerting to southerners like us, spoiled by an unusually warm spring. I hadn't packed any warm clothes. We had to layer up with what we had. It was Sunday, no shops were open to buy warmer clothing - there were no shops around anyway! I'd also managed, somehow, to get myself multi-bitten by an insect (goodness knows what insect would be around in those temps!) I still have 3 itchy bites on my left earlobe, several down the left side of my neck and a cluster of bites on my chest. And they ain't love bites!! We headed home on Sunday morning.

A trip to the Big Bend area of southern Texas in 2012 threw up yet another oddity. In the village of Marfa stories of "the Marfa lights" or "ghost lights" are common. Stange lights, with no logical explanation, have frequently been observed near U.S. Route 67 on Mitchell Flat east of the village. These have gained fame due to some observers having theorised a connection to paranormal phenomena....UFOs, ghostly apparitions etc.

A half-hour drive west of Alpine found us in Marfa, a tiny town made famous by some mysterious lights which appear, intermittently, in the vicinity - Wikipedia explains.

Interestingly the fictional Wicksboro Incident, mentioned at the top of this post, took place in the same general area as Marfa - possibly chosen by its creators because of "the lights"?

I shall remain among the "don't knows" on the topics of UFOs, ghosts, and strange goings-on in general - until I actually experience something to fully convince me otherwise. The experience mentioned below was getting there, it did bring goose bumps. It was an incident unrelated to UFOs and aliens, but still strange. In Santa Fe, New Mexico some years ago, celebrating either my birthday or my husband's.

We had wandered into a hotel lobby thinking it to be the entrance to an arcade of stores. We noticed a bar, still early evening quiet, decided to have a birthday drink there. I considered taking the seat near the wall at the end of the old copper lined bar, but decided it looked rather dark.

I pulled out the next stool along, then felt guilty for leaving a single stool empty, in case a couple might want seats later on - but still, it somehow didn't feel right to move to the end stool. Later in the evening, when some live entertainment was about to begin, it was announced that a beloved regular in this bar, a lady well known in Santa Fe (local singer or musician) had died of cancer a couple of days ago. The seat at the end of the bar had been her usual place to sit. The barman brought her usual drink and placed it there, in her memory. The hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle !

High Pains Drifting

Home again, home again jiggity jig.....

We enjoyed a longer than usual trip - a drift around the US's High Plains, travelling through, or in, three panhandles: Oklahoma panhandle, the Texas panhandle, and the Nebraska panhandle. The latter was a new one for us, and very nice too - possibly one of those "hidden gems" travel writers sometimes mention. We also hit the plains of Colorado in Fort Morgan, and the eastern edge of Wyoming at Torrington; home again via Kansas and northern Oklahoma.

We'd have ventured further into Colorado or Wyoming but for the weather forecast. Snow arrived in the Rockies. We experienced just an icing sugar scattering in Scottsbluff, Nebraska where we were staying at the time.

(Clicking on them should bring up clearer versions of husband's photos below.)

Fall has definitely fallen in parts of Colorado and Nebraska. The area around Scottsbluff was especially bright with golden Maples plentiful and practically fluorescent. I like Nebraska! Don't know exactly why, I just do - it feels like "me". I wondered if, perhaps, the feeling connected to the state's latitude. It is nearer to England's Yorkshire latitude than is south-western Oklahoma, for sure, but I'd have to be well into Canada to find similar latitude to my birthplace in the north of England.

Points of special interest were: Carhenge in Nebraska - someone had the peculiar idea of building a kind of stonehenge (as in England) from old cars. The morning of our visit was very windy and plenty cold, though not quite bad enough to keep us inside our car.

Later in the trip, in Kansas, we stumbled upon what was once known as the Cathedral of the Plains, now slightly downgraded from Cathedral to The Basilica of St Fidelis because it's not the seat of a Bishop. In any city the huge church would seem quite unremarkable, but rising from those barely populated plains, it stands out some...well...actually it stands out a lot.

We also stumbled upon Greensburg, Kansas without, at first, remembering its recent history. The cinema caught our attention, named after me too!

"Looks brand new, but who would build a new cinema in a tiny town these days?"

Hey, look - they spelled theatre the British way - just noticed!

The whole of Greensburg looked new too - strange indeed, in these parts, where dilapidation and abandonment are common. We found the small town's antique store where the answer awaited, in newspaper cuttings and photographs in the store's entrance. "Of course! I remember now - a tornado devastated this town some years ago!" Ten years ago, in fact. The antique store owner told us that the town had been in the middle of painting and tidying itself up, when the tornado hit and undid the handiwork. Still, Greensburg looks great now, and, we were told, it has been rebuilt to be, appropriately enough - "green". Locals have no argument at all when they see the drop in their energy bills each month, we were told.

We arrived home Sunday afternoon after our High Plains drifting. We forgot to take our whip along but, happily, didn't meet this legendary fellow-drifter! We did have a little "excitement" one evening though. Husband accidentally pressed the emergency button on the phone in our room, while shifting the telephone. Next thing : cops at the door wanting to know....Oops! Indeed!

A little contemplation of where the next trip might take us needed a hat (TSK!) and a drink:

Tripping

So would we! I'm not sure how far we'll get this time (if we ever get on the road, that is) probably not as far as we did on our last big adventure in Colorado, back in 2006. Posts about that trip are 11 years old, but I'll link to them, and to some of husband's photos on Flickr, in the highly unlikely event of any passing reader being short of reading matter.

"...all this travelling and seeing things is fine but there’s also a lot of fun to be had in having been. You know, sticking all your pictures in a book and remembering things."
(Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

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Photos at Flickr

Also, from a later trip, in 2010, to a different area of Colorado.

Musical and Meandering Monday

We're back! Our trip led us to the south-eastern corner of beautiful Colorado. On the way we experienced bitter cold winds in Amarillo, just above freezing daytime, freezing at night - donned padded jacket there. Bright, cool and lovely in Walsenburg CO; temperatures heated up to high 80s by Garden City KS and southward, home, bringing attire down to short sleeve weather - still windy though.

For larger, clearer images please click on photographs.

Above: view from supermarket car park in Walsenburg, Colorado. Below: from another angle, without the incongruous inclusion!

We drove The Highway of Legends from Walsenburg - gorgeous weather, some amazing scenery. Also HERE.

Right by that amazing rock wall (which stretched further than we could see due to trees) was the entrance (below) to a World War II German Officers' prison camp. Dang - but they treated 'em well didn't they? At least it'd be difficult to escape though - unless they had a Steve McQueen type resident!

We opted to travel back east on a route we'd never taken before when in this part of the country. A long straight-ish road along the bottom of south-eastern Colorado - H'way 160. Considering there'd be little in the way of civilised pee-stops, we tried not to over-hydrate. It was with great relief that around half way along the seemingly never-ending highway we came upon the small outpost store below - complete with loo/restroom. Ah! Blessed relief!

Not long after a stop at the Kim Outpost we found a memorial, of sorts, to a former town/settlement: Andrix. On the wall of the one remaining building is scrawled "Andrix, gone but not forgotten"

Reflecting on the early settlers are photographer and yours truly:

We crossed into Kansas to stay overnight in Garden City (from the scent on the wind next morning, blowing off the several feed lots in the area, the name might rather be Garden Shitty (and I bet I'm not the first to have said this!)

Onward through south-west Kansas and eventually north-western Oklahoma. There was quite a lot of this - and, by now many bugs on windscreen and front bumper. The car looked as though we'd travelled through some far flung jungle by the time we reached home. We were well in front of a storm line forecast to hit our region on Sunday, which did in fact result in a tornado warning for our town and county, Sunday evening, but we missed all but the thunder.

John Denver sang us in, and sings us out. I miss John Denver, still. I shall miss Jonathan Cainer for ever - and only now do I allow myself to weep.

Southwestern Oddities

We watched an indie movie on DVD the other night, The Wicksboro Incident. It's one of the genre often labelled "found footage", documentary style but purely fictional. The film's theme: Wicksboro, in far south-western Texas (fictional small town) disappeared with its inhabitants sometime in the early 1950s. One survivor emerges from hiding decades later to tell his story to two amateur film-makers. His story involves ...aliens. 'Nuf said. Someone who happens across this blog at some point might wish to see the movie, I don't want to spoil it. It's a short film, only about 70 mins, it starts slowly but builds. There's lots of shaky camera work, dark, almost blank screens with voices only to reassure us the DVD hasn't stuck in its groove (or whatever).

The film set me thinking how an area of south-western United States, New Mexico, part of southern Colorado, and south-western Texas have developed mysterious connections to strange happenings, modern legends, the weird and the would-be wonderful. On our trips, over the years around these areas, we've visited a few locations of mysterious reputation. Roswell, New Mexico always comes to mind first.

We first visited Roswell, New Mexico in 2006, the UFO Museum and Research Center was then situated in the main street, in what appeared to be an old movie theater. A new center for the museum was under construction further down the road.

We read many of the numerous exhibits: newspaper articles, sworn affidavits and other printed material displayed around the walls. The main part of the museum deals, unsurprisingly, with the reported UFO crash near Roswell in 1947. There are, among many other things, reports and signed statements from witnesses who saw evidence of the crash and collected wreckage. Evidence of a request for "child size coffins". In several of the statements, witnesses reported seeing purple colored symbols, hieroglyphic-like, on a strip among the wreckage. There's a statement by a woman medical officer, detailed to take notes at an autopsy of bodies following the crash. She was later sent to England, and subsequently is said to have disappeared - or has not been heard from again.

Who can say how genuine any of the material is, after 60 years have passed? And yet, why would ordinary, everyday people have fabricated such a story, back in 1947 on a summer evening just before midnight, without reason? In those days there were few, if any TV programmes about extra-terrestrial phenomena to ignite the imagination. There were few sci-fi movies. What else but "a happening" could have sparked reports of such a bizarre occurrence as this? We discussed our feelings about the whole Roswell story later, after our museum visit, came to the conclusion that "something" did happen on that night in 1947. The "something" was covered up by lies from those in authority at the time. Lies from government downward are not unknown, even in current history, which fact inclined us to believe at least some of the stories told by witnesses.

On a 2005 trip to see Anasazi cave dwellings at Mesa Verde, Colorado we happened across a UFO Watchtower in the San Luis Valley, near Hooper. The site was run by a friendly lady who told us tales of strange sightings she and others had experienced. She also told us that some Native American tribes believe that their ancestors came from "the stars".

On a later trip, 2011, celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary, in the far north of New Mexico, we intended to see what we could find relating to some strange legends surrounding a tiny town called Dulce, on the border of Colorado and New Mexico, close to the Continental Divide, where altitude reaches 7 to 8 thousand ft at various points. Google search "Dulce, New Mexico" for numerous tales of varying incredibility about Dulce and what lies beneath Archuleta Mesa! We, unfortunately, decided to turn around and head home just before we reached Dulce, due to unexpected wintry weather, altitude (7,871ft), and a few uncomfortable health issues.

One particular little village on Highway 64, Dulce, was going to fascinate yours truly because of stories of UFOs, aliens and a massive 7-layered underground government facility said to be nearby - under a huge mesa. There are also stories/legends of a UFO crash near Aztec village in this area. Again, there's a ton of information, comment from locals and researchers online. Some, if even half-true would be hair-raising. It involves bio-tech experiments (which I can believe), mutilated cattle found regularly around the area (documented), alien cooperation following a firefight between government troops and aliens or "grays" (which I can't believe).

I'd guess that there really is, or was, some kind of underground facility in this area dating from 1950s through 1970s. The fear of nuclear war was fierce then.
The US government, paranoia-filled as usual, could easily have decided to experiment, attempting to plan for all eventualities: mutations, radiation effects, etc. etc. Where better than this wilderness area with plentiful natural underground caverns, easily extended and modified, for use without much chance of discovery? That part of the stories isn't hard to believe, given the atmosphere of those times.

We didn't reach Dulce though. We stayed overnight in Chama, a village 25 miles to the east. The temperature was frigid up there in the mountains, some of what we'd assumed was remnants of the winter's snow remained in the fields and forests over the highest parts of the route.

Neither of us slept a wink that night though. The altitude was probably getting to us both. My husband, restless, decided to get up and play on the laptop. I experienced a severe attack of allergic sneezing which brought on a sharp sinus headache and it simply wouldn't let up. In addition I had developed a troublesome sore on my ankle. We both wondered aloud whether to carry on west or head back to Oklahoma next morning. When we looked outside at about 7 AM we decided at once! Snow had coated the car, and it was still snowing. Probably not at all a surprising find to the locals but a bit disconcerting to southerners like us, spoiled by an unusually warm spring. I hadn't packed any warm clothes. We had to layer up with what we had. It was Sunday, no shops were open to buy warmer clothing - there were no shops around anyway! I'd also managed, somehow, to get myself multi-bitten by an insect (goodness knows what insect would be around in those temps!) I still have 3 itchy bites on my left earlobe, several down the left side of my neck and a cluster of bites on my chest. And they ain't love bites!! We headed home on Sunday morning.

A trip to the Big Bend area of southern Texas in 2012 threw up yet another oddity. In the village of Marfa stories of "the Marfa lights" or "ghost lights" are common. Stange lights, with no logical explanation, have frequently been observed near U.S. Route 67 on Mitchell Flat east of the village. These have gained fame due to some observers having theorised a connection to paranormal phenomena....UFOs, ghostly apparitions etc.

A half-hour drive west of Alpine found us in Marfa, a tiny town made famous by some mysterious lights which appear, intermittently, in the vicinity - Wikipedia explains.

Interestingly the fictional Wicksboro Incident, mentioned at the top of this post, took place in the same general area as Marfa - possibly chosen by its creators because of "the lights"?

I shall remain among the "don't knows" on the topics of UFOs, ghosts, and strange goings-on in general - until I actually experience something to fully convince me otherwise. The experience mentioned below was getting there, it did bring goose bumps. It was an incident unrelated to UFOs and aliens, but still strange. In Santa Fe, New Mexico some years ago, celebrating either my birthday or my husband's.

We had wandered into a hotel lobby thinking it to be the entrance to an arcade of stores. We noticed a bar, still early evening quiet, decided to have a birthday drink there. I considered taking the seat near the wall at the end of the old copper lined bar, but decided it looked rather dark.

I pulled out the next stool along, then felt guilty for leaving a single stool empty, in case a couple might want seats later on - but still, it somehow didn't feel right to move to the end stool. Later in the evening, when some live entertainment was about to begin, it was announced that a beloved regular in this bar, a lady well known in Santa Fe (local singer or musician) had died of cancer a couple of days ago. The seat at the end of the bar had been her usual place to sit. The barman brought her usual drink and placed it there, in her memory. The hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle !

Ingredients of Tragedy

It's hard to know what to write about Friday's tragic news from Aurora, Colorado. So many families left devastated - for no apparent reason. Most that could possibly be said, from all angles and points of view, has already been written many times over, internet-wide.

I do not feel right talking about the astrology of James Holmes in current circumstances, but do understand why it is of interest to astrology fans. Lynn Hayes has investigated his natal chart HERE.

Placing blame on any one factor, including astrological indications, seems to me to be the wrong way to look at the tragedy. A lethal combination of factors contributed to it, some we can pinpoint now, others will become clear in the future, when further details on Holmes and his history are eventually released.

One obvious key factor is the easy availability of, not just "a gun" but several extremely powerful guns, and a ridiclous amount of ammunition, said to have been purchased online. If Americans must have a gun, because they believe it to be their right under the Constitution, then let it be "one gun" - no more than a single weapon, with limited access to ammunition. Without his AR-15 rifle, his 12-gauge shotgun, and his two .40 caliber handguns, and enough ammunition to start a small war, the scale of this tragedy would have been much reduced. More than 70 families would not be in shock today.

A second factor is the increasing amount and increasing depth of violence presented as entertainment. I know the old argument that people, and even children, have always been "entertained" by violence - in fairy tales, cowboy films and various comic books. When the violence is brought home in the form of interactive video games, or enlarged to massive screens with CGI enhanced images, violence is being ingrained into the psyches of viewers and gamers in a way comic books and fairy tales could never have achieved. In the case of this most recent deadly shooting news accounts suggest that Holmes had dyed his hair red and told the police he was the Joker, a character from the Batman series.

The killer's state of mind is a third factor - we cannot know his motive, or whether he had a motive other than to draw attention to himself. His mind must surely have been unbalanced though, either temporarily by drug use or chronically due to mental illness which had, so far, gone undetected.

A fourth key factor is the fact that people in general have become insensitised to violence, not only to mass murders on and by their own citizens at home, but also to what they allow their President and their government to do in their name.....drones are killing innocent bystanders, some children, on a regular basis and few in the USA seem to care.

A mix of all of the above coming together, not forgetting astrological pointers indicated by the astrologer's piece, linked above, brought this most recent tragedy to one of the US's most beautiful states, a state which has suffered badly, too, from destructive wildfire in recent weeks.

I still cannot understand, though, why young men - and it is almost always young men involved in these tragedies, unleash their rage on innocent people, with apparently no link to anything which might be the cause of such rage.

NOTE:
There have been 6 random mass-shootings in the US so far this year:
July 19, Aurora, Colo: Gunman shoots into a movie theater, killing 12 and injuring 50 others.
July 17, Tusaloosa, Ala: Gunman shoots into a bar, injuring 17.
May 30, Seattle, Wash: Gunman shoots into cafe and later carjacks a woman, killing five and injuring one others.
April 7, Tulsa, Okla: Two gunmen accused of shooting passersby in a north Tulsa neighborhood, killing three and injuring two others.
April 2, Oakland, Calif: Gunman opens fire on classroom at Oikos University, killing seven and injuring three others.
March 3, Pittsburgh, Pa.: A gunman opens fire on a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, killing one person and injuring seven more.
February 27, Chardon, Ohio: Teenager shoots into high school cafeteria, killing three and injuring three others.

When will enough be enough?

"WILD ARRAYS"..............(non-astro)

"These reckless heaven-ambitous peaks,
These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,
These formless wild arrays...."..

(from a poem by Walt Whitman: Spirit That Formed This Scene, written during his visit to Colorado in 1879.)

Last week's trip brought very welcome lower temperatures - daytime 80s with much cooler evenings, rather than the recent Oklahoma 100+ degree burners and sticky nights. Some spectacular scenery, though, was the true highlight.

We had only a vague route planned when we set out, but even that was abandoned once on the road. What was intended to be a round trip setting out via Texas, returning via southern Kansas didn't work out, due to disrupting road works or a few missed turnings, followed by the attitude, "what the heck, we'll go back more or less the way we came and stop off to see Amarillo's antique shops!"



Highlights and unexpected encounters of the trip follow with my own photographs, and a couple from my husband's camera.

We travelled west from home in SW Oklahoma via the Texas panhandle to Clayton, New Mexico, our first overnight stay. On to Salida, Colorado next day. On the way, 16 miles northwest of Rye and about 25 miles southwest of Pueblo, Colorado we came across "Bishop's Castle". There's a good, detailed article on the Castle HERE

In a nutshell: the Castle's creator, Jim Bishop, works in his family's ornamental iron shop in Pueblo for seven months each year, when weather keeps him from castle building. For the past 40+ summers he has painstakingly and almost single-handedly constructed this amazing edifice from local stone, scrap metals and other cast-offs. He has constantly battled local authorities who were, initially, less than impressed by his complete disregard for local byelaws.











Almost as jaw-droppingly amazing as his Castle is the man himself. He has to be one of the USA's great eccentrics (and I'd thought England had 'em all!) He has to be classed as eccentric, anarchist, anti-establishment, and an example of how a syndrome dubbed "concretia dementia" manifests. Concretia dementia = "excessive compulsion to build using whatever materials are readily available, usually concrete, bottles, cans, scrap metal and other industrial and household junk."

While we were taking photographs of the Castle he was there, using the back of his truck as a soapbox, expounding on the ills of today's political climate. Most of what he said broadly matched my own views - something I wasn't expecting. My husband felt uneasy about the situation as a little crowd began to gather around Mr. Bishop. Bearing in mind those revered 2nd Amendment rights (to bear arms), and realising that extreme views on the opposite side could well be held by some visitors, we left. I would have liked to chat with Mr.Bishop, and would have certainly asked for his birth date, strongly sensing an explosion of Uranus!





Just one example of Jim Bishop's ingenuity (from article linked above)

Enter The Dragon:
In the mid 1980's, a friend of Jim's was driving a truck full of discarded stainless steel warming plates from the Pueblo County Hospital to the landfill. He decided that Jim could probably put this motherload of expensive stainless steel to better use than the dump could, so dropped it off at the Bishop Ornamental Iron Shop instead. Jim spent the winter building a chimney out of the steel, riviting thousands of hammered "scales" that he had cut out of the plates together around a steel frame. The dragon was completed in the spring and Jim hauled it up the mountian to tackle the daunting task of raising and installing this incredible sculpture to where it rests today perched off of the front of the Grand Ballroom eighty feet in the air! Later on came the addition of a burner from a hot air balloon (that was donated!) which Jim put in the back of the dragons throat, making it a true Fire Breathing Dragon! The dragon usually gets fired up weekends through the summer.

There had been a vague plan that Salida would be our "base camp". We'd stay for 3 or 4 nights. However, due to an uncomfortable motel we moved on after just 1 night, though not before exploring a couple of mountain towns: Buena Vista, and further north in a high mountain valley at 10,430 ft, the old mining town of Leadville. We'd have loved to explore and take photos of Leadville's Victorian architecture, but the altitude hit us both within 15 minutes of walking the main street. My head began to swim, later morphing into a severe headache; my husband soon became breathless and uncomfortable. Sadly, we didn't experience the best that Leadville had to offer.

Moving westward to Gunnison next day, we stayed two nights, explored the surrounding area and discovered the very photogenic little town of Crested Butte, north of Gunnison.











We made a round trip back to Gunnison, via Kebler Pass (10,000+ ft) and mainly unpaved roads open only from May to October. The unpaved roads took us through some spectacular scenery. In a few weeks' time it'll be even more spectacular, when the Aspen forests turn to gold.






















Heading east, towards home, on the start of our return journey, your friendly neighbourhood blogger got in the way of her husband's shot of "an interesting building" in Saguache, a tiny town of less than 600 people situated in the San Luis Valley. From insignia on the building it seems to have had masonic connection. Tiny as it is, Saguache is the county seat and the county's most populous town.



Somewhere on our route I'd spotted a couple of toy elder citizens in a rather murky store window. Two live elder citizens joined the scene.



Our last night on the road was spent in Canyon, Texas, a few miles south of Amarillo. In a nearby wee town called Claude, we stopped to look around an antique-cum-junk store where I bought a book for $1 "Effective Writing" by Robert Hamilton Moore, then tried to chat with a local - who didn't seem too interested.



And so.....here's to the next time!



EPILOGUE: In an antique store in Amarillo's 6th street (the street's full of 'em) I bought me a framed aphorism....motto(?) I will apply the thought it contains to my attitude to the United States of America, when I consider some unfortunate attitudes and what I, as a relative newcomer from a different culture, see as its political wrongs.

It goes like this:

I CAN COMPLAIN BECAUSE ROSEBUSHES HAVE THORNS....
OR REJOICE BECAUSE THE THORNBUSH HAS A ROSE...
.....IT'S ALL UP TO ME.

Colorado is, without doubt, one of the US's most beautiful blooms so, right now, I'll rejoice.