Mostly Pictures

BTW, If you just want to look at pictures, click on a picture.

M commandeered the rental van for an outing over the recently opened Kebler Pass to Crested Butte. As the road climbs, the surface switches to gravel. Road dust can cause problems, which dust suppressants mitigate though they have their own issues. I bring this up because, along with water rights and easements, folks here care enormously about "environmental" issues: Specifically, political fault lines have a lot to do with one's livelihood.



For visitors there is the view, which is incredible.



Tourists may wish to think the view should not change. Hikers would like quiet, imagining an unspoiled, unused landscape. Hunters would like game that is healthy and ever present. Skiers want enough infrastructure to support a jacuzzi in their room and a sous chef in the kitchen.

Some tourists decide to no longer be tourists and to move in.



They must now make a living. Generally this means catering to tourists, or working in a mine or on a farm, or buying and running a ranch or farm. Other options include practicing medicine, teaching, etc. Mainly the choices are 1) tourist industry (skiing, hunting, rafting), 2) local economy (grocer, teacher, banker, real estate agent, IT professional), 3) working for a global interest (mining, logging).

Sometimes there's a crossover. For example fruit farms are mostly local, but wineries need tourists. Mines belong to global interests, but the local economy would crash without miners' paychecks. A restaurateur or boutique owner may prefer dollars from tourists, but won't last through the year without local support.



And the environment runs through the middle. Tourists come for a pristine one, global interests come for a material one, and locals depend upon a predictable, self renewing one.

You would think these folks should get to know each other that, with the exception of far away global interest executives and the actual tourists, they depend upon one another. Because even though the miners work for a global interest, they live with the (and are) locals. Because even though the locals prefer money that tourists bring, the dependable money (for the foreseeable future) comes from miners. The actual tourists and the actual global interests are only passing through, around for the ride while there's a ride to be had.

Everyone benefits from safe mines and environmentally responsible mining practices, and from a beautiful and minimally polluted landscape.

As for global warming, well, that is an important topic. But not one that can be solved by shouting.



Below are choke cherry flowers. The best pie I ever ate was made with dark, ripe, choke cherries. Each cherry has a little bit of fruit and a large pit. It takes a couple of buckets of cherries to get 2 cups of fruit.



We got out to take pictures and walk around.





Even the weeds are pretty.



We got out for another break and to throw snow.











Remnants from an earlier trans-global boom, which lasted less than six years.



These pictures were taken in mid-June. For the western side of Colorado, a LOT of snow fell during the winter.



The last of the snow is melting. Below are ponds created by beavers' activities.



Crested Butte, a skiing and tourist mecca.



A week earlier there were sand bags along the channel, to keep the stream from flooding the streets.



This was taken on the way back to Paonia. There's a lot of water flowing down the mountain.



So many shades of green.



We tried a side trip to Lake Irwin, close to here, but the road was blocked by snow.



We tried another side trip, to Lost Lake. This time we came within a quarter mile of the lake before we had to turn around.



Below is a single yellow flower from a field.



And here is the field with many yellow flowers and a stream. Everywhere we stopped at higher elevations we saw snow and melt water.



This wasn't a good stretch of road on which to stop, or I'd have taken more pictures of the rock face. It looks tortured, with rock tilted in a variety of directions, and squeezed to fracture and fall.



We're close to the paved road, near the bottom of the pass.



My camera battery came to an abrupt halt, making these my last pictures for the day.