Forty Pounds of Wet Corn: Colorado, day seven

Yes, I am still a day behind, BUT I think I should be able to get caught up with this installment, as yesterday was a very easy day. 

The plan for yesterday was pretty much just to tool around the springs, which is now what we will be doing today. The biggest attraction for yesterday was going to be to head up to the top of Pike's Peak which, I have not kept up on sharing the indigenous histories of everywhere we've been, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it as I went or at the end in one long history lesson...but here's your history lesson for Pike's Peak: The tribe that lived in this region specifically were a tribe of the Ute called the Tabegauche, which we translate as People of Sun Mountain, but I do not know if that is a direct translation, or something we whited up as best we could to be understandable to us. They called the mountain Tava Kaa-vi, and we understand it as meaning Sun Mountain. Which I think is way fucking better than Pike's Peak. It's so weird how we just...claim shit? That peak isn't Pike's because he fucking saw it (fun fact, he never made it to the summit. And we STILL call it Pike's Peak. I will rarely give colonizers any flowers of any kind, but fuck, even the Spanish called it El Capitan, which is leagues better than naming it after one of themselves), and it isn't James' Peak because he summitted it in the 1800s...written records say he is the first person to summit the peak, but I flat out fucking refuse to believe that. I feel quite confident that there were any number of Ute people who had summitted it long long LONG before colonizers arrived. Written history is a scam.

Because I've been to the summit, I wanted to go visit one of my besties while Derek took my dad and Caryn up up up. So we planned on Stevie picking me up at 11:30 at the Garden of the Gods visitor center (my best digging can find an Arapaho name, but every single place I've seen it has a 3 in the presentation, and call me fuckin' crazy, but I doubt very much that the Arapaho were fucking around with leet speak. I can only find: Ho3o'uu Niitko'usi'i. I am trying to be realistic about this digging into indigenous history, because it's still written by white colonizers, and it is next to impossible for me to determine what is truth and what is bastardized, if any of it is true at all. This feels to me like a fairly good synopsis of the history of the Ute in Colorado, but who am I to tell? The language does not sound white washed...like I read something that said the buffalo were "dwindling" when in reality, colonizers were systematically slaughtering buffalo so tribes had to rely more and more on whatever the colonizers promised them and could more easily be forced onto whatever small pieces of land colonizers demanded they move to, separating them from their way of life, and making them reliant on mother fuckers who were not to be trusted. Dwindling. Be fucking honest). I did find this list of indigenous names for Colorado locations which I hope is accurate? 

On our way into town, I got so excited to see the place I had loved living in so much before I moved away to follow my husband all around the world. 

I sent a photo to my oldest, giddy as can be, saying "this is where your sister was born!!" I love that feeling of coming home, it's delicious. It's like my bones relax and my brain settles down and I am free to just be. It's tricky, because I am always hyper aware of saying I belong somewhere, because I know I really don't, both philosphically and historically, but there are certain places that make my body feel alive and settled. This is one such place. 

We drove down GoG, turned onto the road that would take us to the visitor center/park, and I just...I get so fucking GIDDY when I see the rock formations. I spent at least one day a week here when I still livedin Colorado. I used to bring a book, climb up to my favorite section of the park, and read in the late hours of the afternoon while the sun started going down as many days as I could. I loved being there. 

I am so excited to actually drive through and take real photos. I was, however, distressed to see the amount of build up they've done to like, fancy up the visitor center. There's a whole roundabout that really does not fucking need to be there. Like, just leave the fucking road as it was, that was disruptive enough. 

They dropped me off and made their way up to the summit of the mountain:

Look at my forever hot man piece!!! I did not go up to the top, obvy, so I do not have pictures of the road, the drive, the scenerey, nothing. I just have this picture of my hubbins that he sent me. 

and I went pee, found Stevie, and off we went to her place to go see her magnificent cat Gunter, her other magnificent cat Bacchus (who I have met on several occasions and was thrilled to make friends with again), to meet her mans Kyle and his dog Gus, and see the house they bought. Kyle and Stevie, that is, not Kyle and Gus. 

There is no real way to show the absolutely monstrous scale of Gunter. He is a bohemoth. An absolute ham. Just huge. A chonk. And I am obsessed. I took video of him...at least five, all of which I sent to Rhyann, hoping they would share it with their sister but realizing right this moment that I should have specified that they do that. I will just have to share the videos with Alex when I get home. Stevie is about 5'4, if that gives any scale to Gunter's relative size?

Stevie and I chatted and then she tried on all of her outfits for our upcoming photoshoots (the pieces she bought make me want to die, they are SO AMAZING), and she showed me her house and all of the things she and Kyle will be improving as they make the place their own. She also showed me her crochet projects, and she is doing such an incredible job, I can barely fucking understand it. I enjoy knitting, but I do not have the focus to keep track of stitches, so now I just knit into oblivion, counting nothing but enjoying the repetition. 

After Derek, Caryn, and my dad were down from the mountain, they picked me up and we headed down to Cy's for burgers. First we tried to head over to Crave, but found it had closed since Derek and I last checked to make sure it was still open a few months ago, and then we settled for Cy's. Which honestly isn't so much a settling, because Cy's was amazing. 

Derek and I used to eat here all the time, getting the Alaskan burger and loving every morsel. Of course, I didn't eat any of it, both because I do not eat meat and I cannot eat carbs, but I sat in the car and chatted with my children while everybody else ate their burgers. I did not get any photos of their burgers, fries, and onion rings. Derek is the most useless for documenting our trips!!! I am also the most useless at making sure he does it! Collectively we are fucking terrible!

After Cy's, we drove back up to Denver so my dad and Caryn could relax and Derek and I could drive around Rocky Mountain Arsenal to look for critters. Of which we saw a lot. Bison, coyote, deer...so many deer...and birds birds birds. Western Meadowlarks were plentiful and LOUD, and I love love love them. 

The light was so beautiful, and Derek and I drove around for about two hours, listening to birds, taking photographs, and enjoying each other's company. 

We drove back home, had a piecemeal supper, finished Ghostbusters, and then went to bed. A pretty easy day. 

And now I am caught up!!! I should be able to come home and blog what we do today, and I have no fucking idea what it is we'll be doing. Stay tuned!