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.

Our next album cover

Staying in motels, driving the big open spaces of the American South-West, listening to Muse and Mumford and Sons and eating burgers and beer is having a strange effect on us.  We keep posing for the covers of our up-coming album(s):

At Canyon de Chelly, Arizona.

Or perhaps more moody?

Root beer and chicken wings in Durango, Colorado.

Canyon de Chelly again.

At Four Corners, where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico meet, it took a while to decide who would stand in which state.

At Four Corners, where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico meet

Road trip!

We are in the middle of a week long road trip around the American South-West.  On Sunday we visited the Sand Dunes National Park in Southern Colorado, an extraordinary 30 square miles of sand dunes, butted up against rocky, snowy 14,000 foot peaks.  Rivers have carried the sand down into the valley, and wind has blown it up against the mountains and into perfect dunes.  Never has dune running been so exhilerating!

Sand Dunes National Park, Southern Colorado

Climbing back up after a run is hard work

Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind