July 4th: A 2 Part Post

Part 1: Sympathy For The Devil

When we woke up we decided to go for a hike, and after some discussion, we settled on a trek to the fire lookout tower on the top of Devil’s Head mountain. It’s located just west of town (about 1 hour by car due to the slow driving on the roads) and is a landmark spot on the front range. We haven’t done the hike together in several years, although two summers ago I went up with Tanner. We put Ezra in the pack and started out….since it was during his morning nap period, Ezra actually fell asleep in the backpack – which surprised us because of the movement in the pack due to the elevation increase in the trail – but he slept for about the last 30 minutes of the climb up.

Rewind just a bit to the first 10 minutes of hiking from the car…and you get to the point in the story were we stumble upon some Blue Columbine flowers. These are a real treat to find growing in the wild, and they are in full bloom for only a few weeks every year (see pictures below). It was the first time that I had ever seen one on a hike and they were just about perfect. The weather has been abnormally wet (at least compared to the last 10 years), so everything is very green and the wildflowers are out in force. We enjoyed the rest of the hike to the lookout, and spent only a few minutes on the top due to the temperatures being in the 60’s and very windy.

Part 2: Red, White, and Bust

The afternoon/evening plan was to meet up with my parents, Cyrilla and Tanner, and the Allens. It’s the traditional 4th of July gang, and we have celebrated together for each of the past 3 or 4 years. The town had big plans for activities for the kids, music, and fun stuff for the adults, then some fireworks. Alas, Mother Nature had different plans and the skies opened up on the whole are for the better part of the evening. The events at the park were cancelled, but the fireworks were still scheduled to appear as planned. After hanging out at Cyrilla’s house for several hours, we all headed to a spot to watch the fireworks that were supposed to go off at 9pm. 9:30 rolled around, and they finally started the show. The lackluster, boring show: one firework at a time, then a 20 second finally that featured 30 fireworks all of the same color being shot off at the exact same height.

There was a whole paragraph that originally sat here before the one that you are reading. It was about something that bothered me about certain decision making processes and outcomes that related to the 4th of July. After typing it and reading it, a little voice in the back of my head said that I should be afraid if it was actually published since this is a public blog. Therefore, I invite you to talk with me in person sometime about it….it’s really not that exciting, it just might be taken personally by some people.