Goin' Places That We've Never Been

 Willie Nelson plays the Rocky Mountain air, and we sit peacefully awaiting our bedtime in the RV parking lot of the Red Rocks Park, just up the mountains from Denver, Colorado. We'd seen an add for the show while wandering Denver yesterday, and made the drive out to the natural mountain ampetheater to see if we could find a way to catch the show, or maybe get ourselves in.

The stage is set in the side of a bulging red cliff, facing directly up a Rocky Mountain foothill in between two massive rock formations sporting 200 foot sheer drops on each side facing inwards toward the ampetheater. They parallel eachother as if a 300 meter wide swath of red rock had been scraped clean from the side of the mountain, and a stage was built in between.

Around back, you can climb some boulders and a wall to enter the ampetheater, assuming an abscence of authority at the time of entry. I did so, leaving Christian and Mark behind with fears of potential interactions with security inside, and agreeing to meet them back at the bus in time to leave and meet Mark's friend Olivia back in Denver. We met back up, but our meeting fell through, so we headed back to climb the mountain face that looks down directly on the stage. We climbed and sat and waited for Willie, then heard loud and clear, projecting from between the monumentous walls of the earthy sound tunnel, Whiskey River, take my mind. A couple songs in it got what we deemed to be dangerously dark to make a descent, and thus we now find ourselves huddled, waiting to sleep in the chilly mountain air that carries the high and lonesome voice of our own Texas idol. He'll sing us to sleep tonight.



Garden of the Gods



In the last days, we've hit Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, and Denver, meeting Olivia and Jonson, two of Mark's friends from Chicago, along the way. For the past two nightsw we've, by necessity, woke up before daybreak to move the bus and avoid confrontations with either suspicious property owners or parking guards that would be out in the morning.

Two days ago we woke up near 5 and chugged into the Garden of the Gods outside Colorado Springs, where we waited for the sun to come out and the rain to leave before starting our day fresh, scaling the huge rocks formations that penetrate the ground like lawn ornaments of the divine, and create somewhat of a dwarfing walk-about sculpture garden. From there it was onward to Denver, and a missed connection with a friend of mine who had warned me that she was not going to be around, and yet we tried to find her anyway. Oh well.

Denver was a nice place to wander, and we sought out Colfax, the road that I had previously been warned was the sight for all thefestering of low-down and dirty business that went on in the city. It was nice. They like bars on that street. Bars and thrift stores. It was, by chance, in the window of one of these bars that we caught word of Willie's show, so after a night spent parked infront of someone's house and a ham and egg sandwhich dinner cooked in a city park, we woke up to head to the mountains. And thus, we find ourselves here.


From this point onward our pace will slow. We've made it out of the plains and into the mountains, so movement westward will grind down to a crawl as we make the time to stop and cook and bath and explore that paths we chose to follow. Tomorrow morning we'll head across the mountains.