Oops! it's all out of order.  I'll see if I can fix it !

Crap.  I can't edit from this stupid phone.  I guess this will be a little puzzle, then...

START HERE :

I didn't want to stick this in the Dailies b/c of the pics.  Hope this works; I'm on my phone...

I left ColoSpgs yesterday (Thurs) on my way to the Leadville Marathon (Just the Marathon.)  I drove to Buena Vista, home of my favorite prison.  It's an okay-looking prison from the outside, but the view is pretty awesome.  Imagine this :

SKIP AHEAD TO  THE "XXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

The pics don't begin to capture how beautiful it all was.  It was like that in every direction.  Surrounded by such beauty, about the only thing you can think about is how horrid and despicable those L&O people are.  I really wanted to make some important contributions to the various L&O threads, to point out that they are just a bunch of spiteful, name-calling jerkwads and that I hate them, hate them, hate them.  Maybe THAT would get them to start being nice to us.  But sadly AT&T's service in some of these high glacial cirques really sucks ass.  So I just killed the time looking at the scenery.

The clouds all cleared by leak time, and each and every star came out.  There was a huge shooting star; first time I've seen the after-glow of the tail.  It seemed so low I ducked a little!

Morning came, I snapped this pic looking in a different direction, and headed into town for breakfast, then coffee, then a cold dip in the Arkansas river.

Now I'm just killing time until the race tomorrow.  Thankfully, no T-storms forecast until afternoon : a great motivator!

THE END !!!!

XXXXXXXXXXXX

HERE'S WHERE WE CONTINUE....

but maybe with a few bars and cocertina wire. Not bad, eh ?

After a quickie picnic dinner I took a left at the stoplight and drove up the hill to here :

This is the top of Cottonwood Pass, looking back towards town.  I came here to take a peek at the weather.  The place I'm going is a trail that starts there (points to trees at upper left of picture) and goes to there (points over ridge in center and down behind it, in front of ridge in background.)

Weather looked good,forecast was good so I drove back down to the trailhead and parked.  Climbed 12-1400 feet in 3-ish miles to around 12,000 feet.  It felt easy and I didn't feel the altitude much (Yay!).  I made my way to my favorite camping spot and pitched my tent :

The wildflowers are just getting started:

NOW GO BACK TO THE SKIP !

These pictures are gorgeous. Enjoy the run.