What Fort Collins does have is one of the great downtown social scenes anywhere. Partly that's because the sidewalks are extremely wide, and just about all the restaurants have European-style outdoor dining areas. On the Friday night we visited, there was a great mix of young and old, several musical groups played, and we felt a wonderful vibe.
Our KOA campground was a good one, well kept up, with large sites and a lot of amenities. Everybody was friendly, and we had a delightful evening with a nice couple from Florida Nancy had invited over for appetizers and deep conversation. There was a big lake which was fun to walk around with our dogs.
Tammy Faye and Sophia especially enjoyed trying to chase after the numerous rabbits on site. We maintained a firm grip on their leashes, although I wonder how much danger their prey would have been in had they broken free. By the way, I don't think I've ever before seen our girls so happy as on this trip.
Fort Collins is about an hour away from Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. We left the dogs in air-conditioned comfort and drove our pickup truck up the mountain to see the sights. The landscapes were beautiful, but disturbing because of so many dead and dying trees. In fact, that had been a familiar sight, particularly when we passed Vail some days earlier. It's apparently a beetle infestation, aggravated by the drought Colorado is experiencing, which weakens the trees' resistance, and the usually warm winter, which allowed the beetles to flourish.
As we neared the treeline - the altitude at which trees become sparce and then disappear - we encountered a "million dollar highway" situation. No shoulders, no guardrails, no hope if a wheel goes a few inches past the white line. Dizzying to look over the edge and imagine yourself tumbling down the vertical face. Would your vehicle burst into flames when you hit bottom?
Nancy began feeling a little queasy. Then she closed her eyes and said she didn't want to go any higher. At one point she told me to pull over and let her out and she would wait for me to come back down. For some reason I got the giggles, probably because of high altitude cerebral edema; at least that's my story. I finally pulled over at a view site at nearly 12,000 feet elevation, and we joined some other tourists walking along a path to a promontory overlooking a spectacular view of snow-covered mountains. Nancy had taken offense and didn't want to be within ten feet of me. Finally she called me over, asked for the camera, and said, "Why don't you climb over there where those fellows are sitting on that high rock at the edge of the cliff, and I'll take your picture."
I realized that this was a half-hearted attempt to send me to my death, but didn't take offense, and started on my mission. Nancy told the guy next to her, "I should have asked him for the keys before he headed out."
I think she started feeling bad about her homicidal gesture and called to me to come back, but as is well known, I don't always have good sense, so I kept going, gingerly climbed up the rock, stood up, looked over the abyss, and scrambled back down.
Safely back at our campground, interpersonal relations more amicable, we experienced a remarkable light show that night when we stepped outside. There was almost constant lightning all around us - but no thunder. It was eerie and exciting, and it went on and on. The storms must have been far, far away, even though they seemed very close.
The next afternoon the sky darkened, and we learned that there was a fire in the mountains about fifteen miles away, with no immediate hope of containment. I'm sure that the unseasonably hot weather was a factor, and possibly the lightning storm from last night that had eventually moved through. Toward evening we observed the terrible beauty of a sunset seen through the smoke of that nearby forest fire.
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