Notes from our travels across New Mexico and Colorado...
We spent an enjoyable day in Santa Fe, walking all over and exploring art of all kinds. The one thing I have to talk about in more detail is Meow Wolf. Our friend Taylor told us about it recently, an escape room-like experience but more artsy and more "on your own" wandering through the building. It started at this location in Santa Fe - so appropriate. I'm guessing it's a collaboration of a bunch of local artists, as you can tell there are multiple influences throughout.
It begins with the giant sculptures outside - hello Wolf!
No climbing on the huge spider:
We suspect this belongs to someone who works there. My favorite is the bumper sticker that says, "Pretend to honk if you like mimes"
And a robot with a flower:
Inside there are a bunch of rooms, different ways to connect them, all kinds of things to read and watch, interactive musical displays, and an arcade where you can play some of the games for free:
It's not nearly as dark as my camera makes it out to be, but definitely as colorful:
One of many curious spaces to explore:
We found a mini travel trailer in the upper level, too funny:
The neat thing (for us) is that there's a mystery embedded in the experience, and you can take as much or little time with it as you want. You can ignore it altogether or you could spend an entire day locating and deciphering the ridiculous numbers of clues. We were there over three hours, enough to get a sense of the story and start to piece things together, but we would have needed to put much more focus on the questions to figure it out.
Which is an excellent model - everyone gets their own experience, and people like us come away wanting more (and planning to go back someday). Very cool! Highly recommend.
Moving ahead to Colorado, I found another fun FKT to run called "All Trails on Mt Falcon". I love the "all trails" concept, requiring some planning and then resulting in seeing the whole of a park. John went off to rock climb with Jason and I spent the morning exploring a new place.
Views of Red Rocks on the ascent:
We've been following wildflowers this spring, from the desert blooms up to the mountains:
Mt Falcon Park is the site of a proposed "Summer White House" where presidents could spend time outdoors in the western US:
This is how far they got with building it:
In a different spot, some ruins from buildings that were actually used:
The sign at the top parking lot:
More flowers to keep me company:
A helicopter was doing some kind of major operation for a while (I couldn't see what), finally flying right overhead before taking off:
Views toward the snow-covered peaks to the west:
Flowers - and ponderosas, yay!
It was a fun few hours, accomplishing the goal, and returning to Tug-E in the parking lot. Another Tug-E supported FKT!
We found a Rivian charger at Cheyenne Mountain State Park! Our first time using one of these chargers. Thank you Rivian!
The Cheyenne Park also had some mud to practice on (Colorado was getting rain off and on for a while), which I embraced as training for the upcoming Bighorn race.
On a different day we got to run around in the Garden of the Gods, and those trails were in excellent shape. And with excellent views! John got a picture with Pikes Peak in the background between the big red rock features:
Love the trails here. And all the shapely rocks:
One other fun adventure in Colorado Springs - a tour of the Olympic training center. Triathlete Anne King did a great job of showing us around and explaining all the ways athletes prepare for The Games. Love it. Thanks Anne!
And then we were on our way north once more, heading for Wyoming (once more)!
