Colorado is a great place to be.
- In Ohio, there’s enough humidity for a fish to live on land. In Colorado Springs, there’s barely enough for a cactus to scrape by.
- In Ohio, temperatures regularly soar into the upper 90s during the summer, while Colorado Springs’s temperature varies between the upper 70′s (for overcast) to mid-80′s (sunny). In fact, most news reporters out here think that the upper 80′s with low humidity are real “scorchers.”
- Ohio has the Appalachians, which I’m not sure I’d want to go see; Colorado Springs has the Rockies, which I can see from my back porch.
Basically, I’m really enjoying our new locale. The move went well, with nary a hitch, and we actually got off fairly cheaply considering.
After getting settled into our new townhouse for two days, we took off for the 600 mile drive up to Yellowstone for a family reunion, where we spent time in Jackson Hole, went white-water rafting, and spent a whole day in the park. It was a great trip, and I’ll have pictures once my brother sends a CD to me of all the ones he took. He’s got a really nice camera and knows how to use it, and a lot of the pictures should be spectacular. Yellowstone itself is just amazing — how nature crammed so much stuff into one park is almost incomprehensible. We saw Old Faithful, elk, bison, coyotes, and more, but my favorites in the park were probably the Sulfur Cauldrons, particularly the Churning Cauldron.
The Churning Cauldron is basically this super-heated pool with sulfur bubbling up from underneath it, with steam billowing from it at the top of a hill. So me, still acclimating to the 7,000 foot elevation, basically gasping for air at the top of the hill, start inhaling vast amount of humid steam/sulfur air, which is not very fun (the wind would occasionally blow the wretched stuff in a different direction for a few blessed seconds, providing me with fresh air). But it’s an amazing sight, and the sulfur is boiling up at such a furious pace…I hadn’t seen anything like it before. Nearby is also the Dragon’s Cave, which is a natural cave that, due to water spilling in and out of it and the steam plume constantly streaming out of the entrance, really looks and sounds like the home of a dragon.
Once we got back, we had a few more days to get our stuff arranged (and I got a new 37″ LCD HDTV as a graduation present), and then I started work. I don’t really want to say too much for a variety of reasons, but suffice to say that it wasn’t really what I was expecting after having moved across the country. I’m basically on “overhead,” meaning they are still looking for a specific spot on a project for me. Kind of a bummer — mostly just because I’m going insane sitting at my desk 40 hours a week with nothing to do. It’s probably one of the best problems a person could have, but having a job doing nothing isn’t as great as it might sound. I’ve been trying to keep myself doing “job-specific” things, like studying up on coding languages, writing some code, familiarizing myself with the company, etc, but I also take frequent breaks to make sure my mind is still there when this is all over.
For Colorado sights, we haven’t done too much. We went to Fourth of July fireworks at the Air Force Academy and a BBQ at my cousin’s house, but, other than that, have mostly just been getting settled still. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find time to go see the Garden of the Gods soon.
Tags: Colorado, Yellowstone
July 10, 2008 at 8:46 am |
Whenever you talk about Garden of the Gods, you are required to say it like so:
“Garden….OF THE GODS!”