Dan and Morwenna run some errands

Unless you have an unexplained (and inexplicable) love for bland shopping centres, you may pass on this one.  But Table Mesa shopping center is a big part of our life here.  Dan and Morwenna were let loose there with my camera last week.

First, the cafe - serious business.  Dan has discovered cinnamon rolls.

Then King Soopers, our grocery store. "Have a sooper day!"

Fruit and veg look good, quality not always great

Outside my yoga temple. Yoga is Boulder's religion.

You bump into friends - here, Mat's colleague Quinn., with his cart.  Yeah!

Remember this Granny and Danna? Favourite treat spot.

Local currency - hard earned by me locally!

Rodeo!

Well, I knew it would be hilarious, but I hadn't dared hope that it would be so much fun and so impressive.  Hilarities included endless ten gallon hats, chaps and big buckles, piped country and western music ("textin' till ma fingers bleed"), burgers, bad beer, and an announcer from Texas who said things like, "he comes from a family of ropers".  Mat was the only man not wearing jeans, and certainly the only wearing a brown corduroy jacket.

Blurry bucking bronco + attendant

The site is a horrendous dust bowl which straddles Interstate 70 in South Denver and the Rodeo took place in, yes, The Coliseum.  We discovered that Cody is a proper cowboy name.

And the cowboys showed some serious skill, strength, horsemanship and courage.  We discovered that bucking broncos used to be wild horses but now are bred to buck and (according to the totally unbiased announcer) love it and suffer no cruelty.  We had a question about a strap that is put around the horse's tummy and removed when bucking is no longer required ...  Any insider knowledge on that anyone?  Hope you can watch the video.

Blurry calf lassoeing

We saw bareback broncos and saddled broncos, lassoeing, racing round barrels, olde worlde 6-horse mailcoach, and, bull riding - BIG bull riding.  Also cowboys leaping off their horses and wrestling down young bulls, and trussing up their legs. And of course mutton bustin - small boys and girls riding sheep until they drop off and are scopped up by their moms in pink sparkley cowgirl hats. Everything!  It was a very slick, professional show, but if you looked at the cowboys just before their 8 seconds of fame, they couldn't hide a pretty tense, concentrated expression.

prize winning golden Highland cow.

We went to a stock auction, and the stock that day was ... Highland cows.  Big thing in the US apparently, and some highland blood in your stock makes for leaner meat, better conversion of poor pasture and easier calfbearing, apparently.  A young bull sold for $6,000.

Family climbing

Thanks to birthday offerings from Mary and Jamie, Mat has taken 3 climbing evening classes at the Boulder Rock Club, and we have all got the climbing bug.  Indoors so far, but there are lots of promising outdoor opportunities around here once things warm up.

Morwenna getting into harness.

I'm holding on

Yee ha cowboy!

Forgot to keep his chin tucked

Yes - we're going to the rodeo!!  Thanks to Mat's chat with his barber today, we have discovered that the National Western Stock Show is on in Denver at the moment.  We have tickets to the rodeo on Saturday.  For the best seats, you have to wear a buckle.  This event has been running for over a century and we are hoping for the full array of cowboys, lassoeing and bucking broncos.  Yee ha.

Mutton bustin': looking forward to seeing some on Saturday. Is it too late for Dan to start? (see little boys lined up behind...)

Christmas holidays

Christmas morning looking over frozen Viele Lake to NCAR, taken 2 mins from our house.

Downtown Denver in the background outside the Pompeii exhibition

Click on photos to see them bigger! It snowed overnight on Christmas Eve and stayed below freezing day and night until after the new year: a veritable white Christmas.   No good for snowballs, but do come and use our spare room if ski-ing on powder snow is your thing.  

We went to Denver a couple of times over the holidays, including a very good Pompeii exhibition which I think is coming to the British Museum later this year, and a "van Go" exhibition.  Other than that, some lovely snowy walks and socialising with the friendly folk here.  We introduced them to crackers; amazingly, crackers are practically unheard of here.

Pepito, our neigbour's enormous rabbit

Morwenna was busy with Pepito, our neighbour's rabbit, who we managed to keep alive in arctic temperatures while they holidayed in Hawaii.

Morwenna is a sturdy walker these days

Bear Canyon trail: up through the pine woods

Lunch by the rocks

Christmas chicken dinner

Christmas day in the snow

Morwenna and her Christmas dinner

Cliffs and guns: two new lows

Our neighbour and Morwenna's friend Eden is off to Hawaii today for Christmas and we are looking after her enormous rabbit Pepito, and inheriting their Christmas tree.  President Obama is also in Hawaii, and I hope he is having a good Christmas.  I am imagining him with his head sunk in his hands, as he tries to work out how to make progress when he has to deal with the Republican party and the NRA (National Rifle Association).  

The Republicans have flatly refused to raise taxes on millionaires, and the NRA's response to the Connecticut shootings was to advocate armed guards in every elementary school.

No doubt this was reported in the UK.  But when your own children go to one of the elementary schools to which the NRA must be referring, it brings it home more.  How can these views be mainstream (the NRA has 4 million members) and yet so removed from rational thinking?  

After Dunblane in 1996, hand guns were banned in the UK.  Even a small step towards that here - e.g. changing licensing laws for automatic weapons, would be a victory for Obama.

Canyonlands

Small boy, big landscape.

Our route into the next canyon, to the left of the large butte on the right - improbably? 

Up the slick rock

Another album cover shot at our lunch spot.  Where's my head?

We had an amazing day in Canyonlands National Park in Utah.  It's a wild and remote park (as those of you who have seen the film '127 Hours' will know) and during our five hour walk we saw only a couple of people. We were glad to be hiking in November, as there isn't much shade, it's a desert and gets very hot in the summer.

We walked through one canyon and then had an exciting ascent on 'slick rock' over to another, with lunch with a view of both.  The scenery is a geologist's dream.  The whole area rests on a thick layer of salt from an evaporated sea, which was covered in sandstone by the next sea which came along. The sandstone is now being weathered by wind and ice into all sorts of weird and wonderful rock shapes.