Colorado Week 7: Festivals, Football, and Festivals

We all have one:  that friend who tells the same stories over and over with vigor and expectant excitement.  Just one month into your friendship you were able to regale everyone with Aunt Pearline’s 90th birthday blooper, Grandpa Jack’s last words, and little Jimmi-kin’s cute antics in the church nursery.  Bless that cheek-pinchin’ly adorable little Jimmi-kin!  Lucky for you, I’m not that friend, so I will just glaze of the redundancies of Monday-Friday of Colorado week 7.  Here it goes.

Throughout week 7, we spent two evenings rock climbing at Shelf Road, which we’ve already told you about, two evenings cooking and listening to an audio book (Clash of Kings, the second book in the Song of Fire and Ice series), and one evening making pepperoni rolls for my coworkers.  The pepperoni rolls were a big hit, but people kept on calling them pizza rolls.  Don’t worry, West Virginians!  I corrected them and explained what makes a pepperoni roll a pepperoni roll.  I think they understood by the end of the day. 

Exciting as all of that sounds, the real fun of week 7 was looming in the illusive distance I like to call “the weekend”.  You see, it was the weekend of festivals here in southern Colorado!  In two days we attended three festivals and one special sports bar.  Here’s what happened…

On Saturday morning, we drove to Denver, where I dropped Bilbo off at Wynkoop Brewing Company to meet Mr. Cooper.  The guys were going to attend the Great Contenders beer festival, featuring Colorado’s top microbreweries. The Great Contenders is an spin off from Denver’s Oktoberfest due to the volume of people attending the larger festival.  It was created to give those interested in the wares of the state’s microbreweries a smaller and less intense venue for exploration.  Not being a beer enthusiast and in need of a new dress, I went shopping and got an iced caramel macchiato.  When I picked up Bilbo and Mr. Cooper, with a new dress and tights in the trunk, the guys said that it was a great time with lots of good beers.  Unfortunately, they only managed to take one dark picture in which Mr. Cooper only has half of a head.

    

From downtown Denver, we drove to the suburbs where Delores (GPS) led us in circles until we reached Hopper’s Sports Bar.  What’s so special about this Hopper’s?  Every game day a group of WVU alums meet here to watch the Mountaineers play football!  Finally!  There were people around us who show an appropriate amount of college football obsession!  Look at all of those Mountaineers in Colorado!  Our much beloved Mounties were sadly defeated by LSU, but we had a wonderful time playing corn hole and cheering along with our WV brethren! 

We didn’t arrive back in Pueblo until midnight, so we got a very slow start on Sunday morning.  By noon, we were on to the next festival of the weekend, The Pueblo Chili and Frijoles Festival.   The small, otherwise ambiguous Pueblo has its claim to fame during the Fall harvest of chili peppers, especially green chilies!  Like all American towns, Pueblo celebrates its heritage in full force one glorious Fall weekend every year.  Not only do they have their chilies to be proud of, but their festival itself has been voted #2 in American small town festivals!  We had been looking forward to this weekend since arriving in Colorado and were not disappointed!  There were free samples of local chili products (jams, dips, and the like), musicians played in three pavilions across town, a farmer’s market of nothing but chilies stretched across two city blocks, booths boasted beautiful dried chilies, and quirky activities and people abounded—like a gladiator child and ten foot tall Chili Man.

    

  

Most impressive were the groups of men roasting chilies in giant fire roasters.  The sweet and spicy smell filled the air as a nervous looking fellow stood tentatively by with a water hose.  If it hadn’t been so hot by the fires, Bilbo and I would have stayed to watch the chilies turn for hours.

   

Although the festival’s name is partly occupied by frijoles, or pinto beans, this small pile was their only representation spotted by us.  Poor redheaded step children, they are still part of Colorado green chili soup and have a place in Pueblo’s history.

After the Chili and Frijoles Festival, we returned to the Winery at Holy Cross Abbey for the Harvest Festival Jubilee.   Similar to Morgantown’s Wine and Jazz Festival, the Harvest Festival required a fee for a commemorative glass and wine tasting tickets; however, it did have its differences.  Wine and Jazz features wines from all around WV, but the Harvest Festival only had wines from Holy Cross.  We were initially bummed by this, but our sorrow lifted when we found out that the wine maker had two varieties made specially for the occasion.  One of these specialty wines was a Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, of which we purchased a bottle for later. 

  

The Harvest Festival was also singular in the fact that vendors and artisans were a part of the festivities.  There were bakers,  caterers, painters, jewelers, and…

   

ALPACA FARMERS!
The Elder Bauers would have been so excited!

 

The diversity of the Harvest Festival Jubilee was a refreshing surprise and a nice cap on our weekend of festivals.  The cats also had an exciting and diverse weekend! 

They sat in the window…

Turned around…

 

And sat the other way.

They were pleasantly exhausted afterwards and so were we!  Now we are looking forward to next weekend and our murder mystery train ride through the Royal Gorge!  I can’t wait to tell you all about it!

Colorado Week 6: The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey and Black Canyon of the Gunnison

“How do you solve a problem like Maria?  How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?  How do you make her stay and listen to all you say?  How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?”

Those poor befuddled Austrian nuns obviously never tried turning their monastery into a winery and offering Maria some lovely Merlot.  That idea was reserved by the Benedictine Fathers of Canyon City’s Holy Cross Abbey.  When the abbey was closed, it’s halls became home to one of Colorado’s most popular wineries, The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey.  Last week, Bilbo and I dropped in to try the products of their vines, gaze at the gothic architecture, and pick up a few souvenirs.

  

The tasting room is open daily and offers a long list of free tastings and a smaller assortment of $1 reserve tastings.  A very kind and knowledgeable barista offers valuable information and tasting instructions as she pours sample after sample into your glass. Our favorites were the Sauvignon Blanc Reserve, the Merlot Reserve, and the Port…and that is what we brought home with us.  In honor of our new acquisition we had a wine and cheese dinner, with which the Sauvignon Blanc was delicious!  

The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey was our only weekday expedition as we spent to rest of our days recovering from Quandary Peak and preparing for The Black Canyon of the Gunnison, where we spent the next weekend.  The Black Canyon, inaccessible to humans for thousands of years, was formed by the rushing Gunnison River.  The river’s booming water has carved a canyon 53 miles long, 2,722 feet deep (at its deepest point), and 40 feet wide (at its narrowest point).   Its wonder has been admired and feared throughout history, but the Black Canyon of the Gunnison was not designated as a National Park until 1999.  Since then 230,000 visitors per year have come to drive the rim road, hike the rim and the depths, and climb the cliffs.  The park has two main areas, the North and South Rims, which are divided by the canyon itself.

Our first day at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison we drove along the South Rim, the main road in the park, stopping at vista points to take pictures and soak in the scenery.  We had hoped to take a 1.5 mile hike into the canyon that day, but the Park Ranger strongly recommended that we skip it due to the morning’s rains.  As he put it, “You would be stuck climbing back up a slippery, muddy mess for a mile and a half.”  That didn’t put a damper on our trip, though, because there was plenty to be seen from up above.

 

 

A landmark within the park, the Painted Rocks overlook has a mythical touch.  Can you tell what creature’s likeness has been formed by the rocks? 

(It’s a dragon.)

To reach the north side of the park from the south, or vise versa, you must drive 90 miles around the canyon and through the surrounding towns.  To give ourselves an edge for our morning hike along the North Vista Trail, we drove to the North Rim campground that night.  In true Bauer fashion, we arrived just in time to claim the next-to-last available campsite and soon settled in.  The night was cold, just above 30 degrees, and rain fell hard, but we stayed warm in our sleeping bags and sweats.  The hard part was getting out of our sleeping bags in the frosty morning hours.  

Thanks to a warming breakfast of oatmeal and tea, we were soon on our way to the 7 mile North Vista Trail. It has been listed among the best hikes in America by Backpackers Magazine, so we were very excited to give it a go. The hike begins at the North Rim Ranger Station, winds briefly through a grassy field, then brings you to the north side of the Painted Rocks.  See the dragon again?

 

The trail continues a light 1.5 miles along the canyon rim to Exclamation Point, where you are rewarded with a birds-eye view into the depths.   After the previous weekend’s jaunt up a fourteener, we were surprised at how quickly we glided over this trail!

There I am being an exclamation point by the Exclamation Point sign. 

From the overlook a mere 2 miles stands between you and the summit of Green Mountain.  The ascent is gradual, smooth, and seems to go by very quickly.  We were quite jolly as we went on with ease towards the goal.  So, so much easier than Quandary Peak!

The canyon kept sinking further and further below us as we went and soon the the Ranger Station where we began was nothing but a little dot.

 

 

That’s it in the dip between the trees.  Can you see how tiny?!  I know I’ve already said this—twice, I think—but we were amazed at how quickly we had reached this point!  Quandary Peak took 5 hours to summit and 3 hours to descend.  By this point we had only been hike about an hour and a half.  

At almost 2 hours on the dot we reached the summit of Green Mountain.  The trail made a loop around the top of the mountain to assure a full panoramic view of the canyon below and mountains beyond.  In the last picture you can see a snow crusted range that blends in with the clouds—Bilbo’s favorite feature on the horizon.  

 

On the way back to Pueblo we took a scenic byway that provided a glimpse of Grand Mesa, a drive through Grand Junction, and an unyielding supply of mountains and canyons.  It took us quite a bit longer to arrive back at our humble abode this way, but the scenery made it worth while!  

Thus ended our 6th weekend in Colorado and the first half of our Colorado adventures.  We will celebrate the beginning of the second half with a few Colorado fall festivals, including the Chili Festival I was telling you about.  More on that next time…