Relaxing keeping busy

Keeping busy is not hard to do here. You can be as busy, or not, as you want to.  My level of busy-ness seems to revolve around free concerts, golf, hiking, fishing, mountain biking, and local entertainment.  This last week has involved the following...

Hiking up McCullough Gulch.  A gulch is a deep, narrow ravine.  Well the picture below shows where I'm headed.  Not the summit at the top of the photo, but the ridge below that.  I fail to see where the description of gulch comes in, but it sounds "western."

The is a popular trail just south of Breckenridge,
mostly because it is just 2.7 mi roundtrip.  The
only issue is that it is fairly moderate in steepness.
So breathing for the non-local becomes a challenge
at times.  Topping out at around 12,000 feet, the
elevation change from trailhead up is just under
1,000 ft. (in a relatively short distance, mind you!).

The beginning of the trail is a steep 4x4 road.  Part way up I was greeted by a
snowshoe rabbit...

...with it's big white feet.

The trail narrows and becomes more rocky
and root-bound as you climb and soon
becomes engulfed in wildflowers.

And sometimes it's not obvious where the trail is, so they graciously show you.

Love me some Columbine.

Some Aster.

Halfway up I am distracted by these falls
and take a few minutes to breathe.

Reaching the top (as far as I was going) I was met by a giant mirror in the form
of a small lake.

Before choosing this trail this morning, I Googled the heck out of it to see if there were fish to be sought after.  Beth and I had hiked this trail last year in the spring and it was still covered in snow, so it was on my radar to try again with my fly rod in tow (I'm a poet!).  My first observation upon reaching the lake, was not it's beauty or the silence, but did I see any motion in the water.  My fishing adrenaline tanked, as I observed the water seemed a couple feet deep and was not sufficient to support my worthy opponents for this outing.  At that point I sat down, had a snack and some water, and only then began to appreciate my surroundings.

Shortly after this picture, the wind began to
pick up and the glass disappeared.

Love my panorama, as distorted as it may be.

Since I couldn't fish, I snapped off pictures
of my next favorite thing to do, photograph
flowers.  This is an Elephant flower.  You
can see it's ears and trunk.

Some serious cairn activity here!

Did I mention being engulfed by wildflowers?

Some yellow paintbrush still in the making
with some elephants looking on. 

Don't know what it is about Columbine,
but love it.

Same with the paintbrush. 

Not sure what the yellow is, but it was
plentiful.

I was up early enough to be the first one up to the top, other than the two sets of campers that had packed in previously.  But on the way down, I met lots of hikers on their way up.  I was in a bit of a hurry to get down so I could try some beaver ponds I saw below.  Surely they have some fish.  NOPE!

Mountain biking has been coming into focus for me over the last year.  Last year I spent some time at Landahl Park Reserve, out by the Lake City ammunition plant, where they have a number of "mountain biking" trails.  Not a lot in the way of "off road" trails in our area back home.  I did develop some skills that helped as Greg has been taking me on trails here in Colorado.  The following are courtesy of KMA West, Goodman's High Altitude Adjustment Bootcamp.

Taking a break from the incessant grind from the tutelage of Coach Goodman,
I consider heading home, by way of a cliff.
I think this is the Lakeshore Perimeter Trail in Frisco.  Loved this trail.

The lake was so low, we road out to what is normally an island!

Another day, another ride... Here we headed
up Soda Creek to bike over to Breckenridge.
It was cut short by numerous miles and hours
due to something reaching out and doing
unspeakable things to my derailer.  It was twisted
and poking into the spokes of my rear wheel.
Greg muscled it to a point where I could coast,
but couldn't pedal.  Bushwhacked down a hillside
and coasted a ways before Beth and Susi picked us up.
Beats riding of a cliff!

Later we went rainbow hunting.  Great sunsets and rainbows here!

Fishing is always the go to activity to do when nothing else is on our radar.  After dinner one evening I headed a few minutes away to the Blue River, before sunset.  Parked the car and donned my fishing accoutrements (Google that!).  I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a fish taking an insect off the surface of the water, in an eddy next to a riffle.  I had just tied on a caddis fly, casted to the spot and BOOM!  I am not a big fish fisherman.  I am a small mountain stream, cast to starving fish kind of fisherman, so this was like winning a playoff game of sorts.  It fought real hard and gave me a couple of splashing, aerial acrobat moves.  My little rod was bending pretty good.  I was lucky to get a blurry photo.

I did finally get some fishing in one evening.  First cast on the Blue River.
This nice brown gifted me the experience of catching instead of fishing!
It didn't fit in my net real well, it was pushing 16 inches or so.

We took an excursion to Leadville one day.  It's main drag has some shops we like to check in on and restaurants to try.  We overheard one of the shop owners say she was a bit warm today.  I told you it's all relative!

When not listening to the Friday night concerts, golfing, hiking, fishing, riding, or trying to figure out if the kids you saw on the park bench were stoned or not, we sometimes walk along the lake and soak up the sheer beauty of this special place.

Lake Dillon

My Zen from the Road:  After catching that nice fish on my first cast the other night, of course I had to keep after it until I had no light left to fish by, because I was that good!  Ha.  But in my hunt for the next "biggin," I got back in the car and traveled downstream in search of another perfect spot.  Minutes later I found myself in the middle of the stream as the valley opens up even more, fishing (not catching), and I looked up to see the last few minutes of sunlight on the surrounding mountainsides.  What light that was left was glistening off the ripples in the water upstream, and I was in "A River Runs Through It."  That was a moment.  And it ended in a cloud of mosquitoes!  But, I have a new happy place.