Ivywild, or Making the Case For Being an Uptight, Gluten-Free, Brewery Loving Hipster

Mike and I went to Ivywild on Saturday with the sole intention of people-watching and making up stories about said watched people. This was a wildly successful venture (which included a British ex-madame on the run from the Italian Mob). Even more successful was the actual place. I had never heard of it, and I suddenly can't imagine my life without it. It's this wonderful school that's been repurposed as Bristol Brewery and a number of other local foodstuff peddlers. I couldn't stop squealing. I think Mike might have thought I was choking. Or retarded.

I called up Derek on Saturday and told him where I was, saying we had to come take photos here together. So, Sunday afternoon, that's exactly what we did. The Hunt or Gather market I wanted to go to was closed (damn!), but everything else was open, and everybody was very kind about letting us take pictures of their stuff. I'm really losing steam on posting, and I have to leave for school in about twenty minutes, anyway, so these are all going to come along without a single explanation.

I had quite the raging crush on the bartender in the first picture. Unfortunately, I don't think he cared one whit for my flirting. Damn. Oh, well. I may go back to let him know his picture is up, and I'd like to tag him in it, but uh, that's not terribly slick of me. I'll pass, for now.

And that's Ivywild. It's my new favorite place. I would go there tonight if I A. weren't so fucking exhausted, and 2. didn't have class. But I do have class, and I have to go get ready for it now. Bummer. Spring break was so lovely. I'd love to just sit at home and fall asleep, but it's accounting, and I really need to be present for the lecture.

Trip rewind: day four

The last day of the adventure. I was pretty sad to leave, I won't lie. Traipsing about taking photos had been so much fun!

It was a leisurely wake up day (I had stuffed myself full of broasted chicken and chicken wings at a place called Cuckoo's at Tom's recommendation. He said they have the best, meatiest, tastiest wings around. He wasn't fucking lying. I ate myself stupid, and I didn't feel bad about it at all. I did get fairly fucking wasted on the evening of day three, however. So I woke up at around 9, packed everything up, took a shower, and got checked out of the hotel (not in that exact order). This day was the day I had been looking the most forward to, though. Because day four meant the Great Sand Dunes National park. Oh my goodness. I've been aching to go here for AGES. And it was well worth the extremely taxing drive (which included a two hour stop in Wolf Creek Pass due to an accident, because we were driving in a blizzard. Colorado is so fucking weird). The light was JUST hitting golden hour when we arrived. The sand dunes are kind of difficult to spot from the road, but you can see them the further into the park you drive (which is me playing Captain Obvious, and I'm just swell at it). I saw a lonesome looking tree at the entrance to the park, ran out into the field to take a picture, and stepped in a fucking HUGE pile of very rude, unfriendly cacti. It hurt. But was I going to let that stop me? NO. So I kept on trucking.

Allen told me it looked like something out of American Gods, which is, in short, the best compliment ever. It's fairly mediocre, as far as pictures go, but I stepped in cactus for it, dammit, so I'm going to fucking love it.

And then.

DUNES.

And I lost my shit. I had to wander away so I could openly cry, because holy shit, this place is fucking gorgeous. And amazing. And I can't even explain how fantastic it is to be standing there in person. Hands down, my favorite part of the trip. Let's take a look and see what the ol' finger clicked.

Yes, yes. I GREATLY fucked with that first picture. It's hideously obvious. But I still like it. There's a picture of me taking the picture of the logs...hang on hang on hang on....

I SUFFER FOR MY CRAFT.

The winds were unkind, though. First of all, that sand whipping itself at a camera can and will seriously damage said equipment. Bearing this in mind, I walked with the camera against my hip the entire time. Secondly, please note the lack of jeans on my part. That sand whipping at my legs gave me bite marks. I left the park with four pounds of sand in my shoes, and two layers of skin left on the exposed parts of my legs. WORTH. IT.

I grabbed one more picture of that tree from earlier on my way out:

I have yet to even come close to getting the hang of properly exposing/ISOing/Shutter-speeding those light conditions, but knowing that, I don't mind that photo so much.

And that was that. Home again, home again, jiggedy jig. I was dropped off at my car (which almost got towed while I was gone, but that's a story for another day), got it jumped, and made my way home, where I chattered excitedly with Allen for a few moments before crashing out hard on my couch.

I don't think I really missed anything. That's about the long and short of the trip. I could do an entire post on the food I ate, but I'm not going to. Instead, I'll wrap up the rewind completely.

Trip rewind: Day three

Day three was shitty. Not because it was a bad day, but because the weather fucking SUCKED. It was gray and cold and kind of rainy. Day three was Mesa Verde National Park (which I would have gotten extra credit for had I gone last semester during my Colorado History class). When it was sunny, it was retardedly windy, and when it wasn't sunny and windy, it was all of the other bad things.

Inside the main visitor's center was this creepy thing:

If it's supposed to be anything besides terrifying, I'm not sure. I couldn't tell if it was a native American dressed up as a 30's industrial worker in New York, or a stoop kid, or a blind beggar with obviously awful fashion sense. I just couldn't tell.

We did the long, long loop, got out to take some pictures (that I just didn't care for at all), and look! Look, it's me! Hard at work!

More driving, more driving, and then came the entrance to the valley, which was almost like being in my own weather zone. I didn't personally want to go to the cliff dwellings, so I barreled ahead and decided on the petroglyph trail, assuming I'd do it on my own and we'd reconvene at the museum (which sucked, by the way. We had lunch there, I ordered fry bread, and it was intolerably greasy). Thank goodness my decision became THE decision of the day, because it was a three mile trail. MADE UP OF STAIRS. Stairs that hated me:

I didn't want to take three miles worth of pictures, so I only snapped a couple. But it was pretty gnarly throughout. However, the payoff was worth it:

Neat!!!! And the view from the petroglyphs site wasn't all that bad, either.

They way back to the museum was WAY fucking easier than the way to the site, to be fair. But t was on the very top of the mesa, and it was a bit arduous at times. The wind was clearly in charge, and demonstrated as much by nearly knocking me off of the edge (this is a terrifyingly true story). The path was delightful, however.

I forgot my thing of water in the car, so I was figuratively dying of thirst the entire time. I honestly didn't expect the hike to be that long, or that strenuous. My first tip off should have been the sign in/sign out book at the beginning of the trail. :/

The way out of Mesa Verde was interesting, because we got pulled over for pulling over. So, not really pulled over, just pulled behind and then lectured. Oops. But I did grab these at the exit of the park, and I like them:

I told my mom I wish I had been able to visit there on a clear, sunny day. She said that my pictures are more interesting, because the weather is kind of gross. So there's that.

This picture is not at all good, but it makes me laugh, because...well....here:

That's a bike. In a tree. It's clearly been there for awhile.

The evening of day three was spent peacefully at the hotel pool and hot tub, relaxing my poor, spent muscles and enjoying myself immensely.

That concludes the penultimate rewind! Stay tuned.

Trip rewind: Day two

Day two was Silverton! Which came complete with driving along the million dollar highway. I had wanted to drive that with Dan, but it was just another one of those things we never got around to doing together. The drive was gorgeous, though. I thought about Dan quite frequently throughout it.

When we got to Silverton, it was damn near empty. But so fucking precious. I loved it. I tried to take some photos of the town from a stop off on the highway, but I'm not sure how they turned out. They didn't really grab my attention, so I didn't bother to inspect them.

All of the mines were essentially closed because of the snow. We could have trekked up there....if there had been any handy snow equipment. We voted on a drive up to the Christ of the Mine shrine, but it was so muddy and narrow that we turned around and drove around the town instead. Behold!

I sort of fell in love with the unloved, unkept state of all of the buildings in Silverton. It looked like everything was just waiting for someone to breathe life into them again. I found myself wondering if the city let itself become run down during the off months before sprucing itself up for company.

We were given a piece of paper from the lady at the visitor's center with all of the open restaurants and stores (approximately five! Commerce!), and we voted on which one to eat at. We settled on this HORRIBLE place called The Pickle Barrel (and afterwards, chastised ourselves for not going to the place with the fry bread). I got an open faced turkey sandwich that didn't advertise being smothered in gravy, but was, anyway. At least I hope it was gravy. It was foul. I could have said fowl, but that place doesn't deserve puns. Just shame. And maybe the health department's first ever J-rating. I DID love the tacky tablecloth, though. It was so ugly!

I wanted to thieve that sugar bowl (which is a long and glorious tradition in my family. My personal favorite sugar bowl that was stolen is from Cornell), but I didn't. I wanted to creep on everybody, but the local yokels were having none of my shenanigans, and watched me like a hawk anytime I pointed my camera in their general vicinity. I instead spied an empty table covered with papers, and I was so immediately taken with it. I took two shots: one to get the lighting right (which I nailed first try) and one to actually get the shot.

It was my favorite shot of the day. I don't know why. Maybe it was again because it looked lonely and abandoned. I didn't see anybody sit at the table, and we were there for at least an hour. I did it in monochrome, as well, but I don't like that version. I like this one.

After the disastrous food affair at The Pickle Barrel, it was time to drive the Silverton roads that we COULD drive on. We took the road all the way to the end and saw an abandoned mine up on the side of a mountain. I didn't get any good shots of that, but I did enjoy the mountain it was next to!

The weather was glorious. I'd say it was about 45 degrees out, wonderfully sunny, and with perfect clouds. I was so happy, despite all of the driving (driving for extended periods makes everybody miserable. I'm no exception). We had driven by an abandoned processing mill type thing that looked very, very closed (and also infested with ebola), but it had such a lovely, interesting color and texture. The gate was open on the way back, which is obviously an invitation to drive right inside!

They're more than a little washed out, but I did that on purpose. I wanted enough color in there to make them interesting, but with that condemned, keep the fuck out feel still hanging out.

There was one more drive through Silverton to take pictures of the train cars. I...um...wasn't wearing snow-appropriate shoes (if you didn't read that as 'flip-flops', you should have), so I had to stay behind. But I busied myself taking pictures of a weather metal barn door:

Only one more picture from day two, I promise!

Dinner was Steamworks again, because it is SO fucking delicious, I don't think I could ever get tired of eating there. I even had some beer! An IPA, of all things! It was called Conductor, and holy shit, is it tasty. For beer, at any rate. I had more than a few sips.

Night shoot!

This was on the 50, in the middle of the night. In pitch darkness (which is exactly how it should have been). No cars passed by the pull off spot while we were shooting, so no light interrupted anybody's shots. I got super cold super fast, but I did manage to take this picture:

It's nothing fancy, but I loved it. That entire shoot, while freezing and not productive for me, was still wonderful.

Trip rewind: Day one

I realize I am several days late on posting this. I had every intention of posting these day by day (it turns out the hotel DID have wi-fi, so I wasn't as off the grid as part of me had hoped I'd be), but I ran myself so ragged that all I wanted to do was drink and edit my photos at the end of every day. I didn't want to sit and write recaps, I wanted to go to sleep.

So. Recaps can be done now! While I listen to Whitney Houston's I'm Your Baby Tonight. On repeat. No fucking shame.

Ok, so!

Monday morning at 1am, the journey started. The first stop was Texas to take sunrise photos, because why not? I didn't go to sleep on the drive there, I instead slammed an energy drink and remained a chatty Cathy for seven hours. The place we meant to go take photos of was impossible to find, and since we didn't want to miss the sunrise, we settled for an empty field with abandoned equipment on it. I dressed for car comfort and not weather, and Texas was surprisingly cold. That forty minute photo adventure was a very chilly one for my extremities. I think it paid off, though:

I took about sixty different photos of this area, with different angles and zooms and not zooms, but this was my favorite. It felt quiet and lonely and a bit defeated. And a lot of the photos I've been taking lately feel that way to me, and that's why I'm taking them. More self portraits, just minus my silly face.

The rest of the day was a lot of pulling over at things that looked interesting to take photos. First random stop? An abandoned gas station:

The window picture was my favorite from the day. I don't know why, really. Maybe because it looks so broken and unloved and forgotten. The gas station that time forgot.

Then there was the abandoned gymnasium that I don't think anybody had visited since 1963, and I only throw out that year because 1., it sounds funny, and B., the oven in there was fucking OLD. I don't know why there needed to be an oven in a gym, but there you have it.

I'm not terribly fond of this picture, but I do love the light. I was 2/3 stop under, so everything is darker than it should be. I wanted to go all HDR on it (because this camera does that!), but I was SO FUCKING COLD (the windows were broken, it was windy, and standing in front of them was like being in an arctic windtunnel, and I fucking hated every second of it), and I didn't want to go run back to the car to get the tripod and set everything up. So I settled on this. This building apparently had a creepy basement that I didn't notice, but I wish I had. I would have gone down there, if for nothing else to get out of the god damn wind.

When we hit New Mexico, there was this lonely windmill next to a dead tree, and I screamed at the top of my lungs to turn around so I could run and take a photo of it. I only took one and hoped for the best. At this point, I was deliriously tired.

Thankfully, it turned out decently enough.

The rest of the pictures I took didn't really turn out, because the entire vehicle was too exhausted to stop anywhere, and we still had a six hour drive in front of us. So the pictures I took were taken from the car.

It was a busy, busy, tiring day. Once we got to the hotel, I fell asleep pretty immediately after check in and dinner. I don't think it helped that I ate artisan chicken and waffles (which were a revelation, I don't mind saying so. We ate here every. fucking. night because the food was SO tasty.

That was pretty much the extent of the first day. I very anxiously looked at my photos at the hotel, edited them, and crashed the hell out.

Stay tuned, because there are several more days, and more adventures, coming. For now, however, I have to get ready to go to breakfast with my buddy. I'm pretty excited to go to Over Easy and have a spectacular mimosa. Drinking before noon because I have no sense of propriety!

Day two is next!