Summer Camping

July 3, 2009 – I’ve been at this stuff about 5 days now. Seems longer. I already took my first day off. Went on errands with Ashley and Travis on Wednesday. Quite a rare occasion for them to both have the same whole day off during the summer. We headed to Colorado Springs (referred to the locals here as The Springs). We stopped by The Poppy Seed clothing store Manitou Springs on the way for Ashley to get a dress for an upcoming wedding she and Travis are headed to. And as the name implies, it is a hippie type store.

As Joyce pointed out to me, unlike Oregon where the entering city signs list the population, here in Colorado they list the elevation, which seems to be a much bigger number than the population. Thus you get “Entering Denver, Elev 5280”. Yeap, they list it as a mile high exactly. Here at camp we are living at 8500 ft, well over a mile and a half high.


Put the following coordinates into Google Maps and you’ll be taken to the High Trails camp where Joyce and Ashley are working.
38.890125,-105.328193

These coordinates should show you where we reside.
38.856555,-105.302176

If you hit the satellite view and zoom in you should be able to see the buildings. And no, there isn’t snow here at this time.

It really is beautiful country out here, at least in the summer time. I can’t vouch for winter, but it’s probably okay if you like snow. See some pictures at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/MaiersInAfrica/CO_20090703#

I haven’t been overly busy so far. I’ve driven for 3 trips so far. It’s a nice way to get to see the country side. Yesterday’s took me through part of the 2002 Hayman fire area, which was CO biggest fire and started by a US Forest Service employee. The undergrowth is coming back and without having to compete with the trees, the wildflowers are remarkable and everywhere. Quite interesting views as you look out over valleys to the rocky mountains on the other side and just see thousands of burnt tree stumps dotting the hillsides. While I think the pickup spot was less than 30 miles from camp it took 1-1/2 hours to get to due to the using paved and unpaved county roads and the numerous curves going through the back country.

Joyce got to experience her first overnighter this week, a 3 day trip. She enjoyed it – the views were amazing, the kids great and plenty of counselors to help. She did say it was cold and she did sleep most of the 2 nights inside one of the vans and not her tent. The art projects were great and I got reports from some of the other counselors on the trip that they loved having her along.

Yesterday I also finished hacking the bark off a log to be used for a totem pole. The girls should be working on it tomorrow. The plan is for the campers this session to start it and the ones from the second session to finish it. I also started looking into the pottery situation. There are a couple of throwing wheels and at least one usable electric kiln, so I’m trying to pull up my memories of 30 years ago when I did some potting in my mom’s studio in Eugene. I’m rusty, but still better than the campers. And there is no telling what type of clay is actually being used. There seems to be many sources and a lot of them are from years past and mixed together, soaked and reused. I’ll have to treat it all the same and hope it works the way I fire it. I need to get a couple of pieces for the kilns before I fire them up, but hopefully by the second session I’ll have it all figured out.

Today I actually got to help a couple of the girls throw pieces on the wheel. We did okay, but I think they had fun doing it.

Reporting from Florissant (elevation 8166 ft)
Paul Maier