Sidetracked, and loving it...
Aug. 27th, 2008 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpSomewhere, we had gotten the idea that we would go visit Mesa Verde today, but about halfway to Durango, we realized that none of us had taken any headgear or any sunblock, which would have stood us in good stead as we hiked around the park. Lacking such items, we would be lead-pipe cinch candidates for sunburn or worse.
So, we decided to take my sister-in-law Alla on an automotive jaunt to Ouray, via Silverton.
First, though, we had to stop by the Habitat for Humanity store in Durango, to talk about a kitchen faucet that Galina had bought recently. While she was palavering with management, I surveyed the used books, and walked away with Leslie Charteris' The Saint in New York, and the first volume of the Modern Library edition of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (the C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation of À la recherche du temps perdu), for half a buck apiece. I put a healthy dent in the former while Galina drove, while the latter must join a growing number of books that I want to read, and for which I must make time to read, someday.
Silverton was okay, but there was barely enough time to drink a glass of summer beer (the name was something like "Mountain High Brew") from the local brewery while Alla went souveniring before Galina herded us back into the Ford and pressed onward, to Ouray. One of these days, I want to go back to Silverton - preferably via the narrow-gauge rail line that follows the Animas River Gorge - and do some serious beverage-related research at that brewery.
I've written about Ouray before, although our first trip there predated our move to Houston, when Natalie's friend from Jacksonville, Becky, came out to visit us with her mother in 1995, if memory serves.
During that trip, we continued on, past Ouray, and made a large loop that included Telluride and came back along highway 160, past Dolores, if my geography isn't wrong. That was the trip during which we stopped at an antique store, located not far from the turnoff toward Telluride, where I bought an old Perry Mason hardback for some piddling price (was it a quarter?).
What made the purchase memorable was the result of struggling to make out some scribbling just inside the front cover that, as I determined some time later, had almost certainly been written (and then autographed) by the author, Erle Stanley Gardner.
Today, after making our proper prostrations before the idols of souvenirdom, we ate a late lunch in the same Ouray restaurant as during that first trip, which I remember because the dining room is at the bottom of a spiral staircase and the decor seems unchanged from the late 19th century. Galina and Alla had fish, which they pronounced to be excellent, while I had a bowl of chile with onion and cheese.
Upon leaving for Baikonur, I disabled forwarding from my email account to my Blackberry, and I haven't re-enabled it yet. I like having an empty inbox.
This is beginning to feel like a vacation.
Cheers...
So, we decided to take my sister-in-law Alla on an automotive jaunt to Ouray, via Silverton.
First, though, we had to stop by the Habitat for Humanity store in Durango, to talk about a kitchen faucet that Galina had bought recently. While she was palavering with management, I surveyed the used books, and walked away with Leslie Charteris' The Saint in New York, and the first volume of the Modern Library edition of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (the C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation of À la recherche du temps perdu), for half a buck apiece. I put a healthy dent in the former while Galina drove, while the latter must join a growing number of books that I want to read, and for which I must make time to read, someday.
Silverton was okay, but there was barely enough time to drink a glass of summer beer (the name was something like "Mountain High Brew") from the local brewery while Alla went souveniring before Galina herded us back into the Ford and pressed onward, to Ouray. One of these days, I want to go back to Silverton - preferably via the narrow-gauge rail line that follows the Animas River Gorge - and do some serious beverage-related research at that brewery.
I've written about Ouray before, although our first trip there predated our move to Houston, when Natalie's friend from Jacksonville, Becky, came out to visit us with her mother in 1995, if memory serves.
During that trip, we continued on, past Ouray, and made a large loop that included Telluride and came back along highway 160, past Dolores, if my geography isn't wrong. That was the trip during which we stopped at an antique store, located not far from the turnoff toward Telluride, where I bought an old Perry Mason hardback for some piddling price (was it a quarter?).
What made the purchase memorable was the result of struggling to make out some scribbling just inside the front cover that, as I determined some time later, had almost certainly been written (and then autographed) by the author, Erle Stanley Gardner.
Today, after making our proper prostrations before the idols of souvenirdom, we ate a late lunch in the same Ouray restaurant as during that first trip, which I remember because the dining room is at the bottom of a spiral staircase and the decor seems unchanged from the late 19th century. Galina and Alla had fish, which they pronounced to be excellent, while I had a bowl of chile with onion and cheese.
Upon leaving for Baikonur, I disabled forwarding from my email account to my Blackberry, and I haven't re-enabled it yet. I like having an empty inbox.
This is beginning to feel like a vacation.
Cheers...
