Door County Image Wrap-up

The colored chairs of Ephraim looking out onto Sturgeon Bay

Another view of Sturgeon Bay

A Catholic town in the middle of the cornfields

Me, Joni, Tom and Terri

My lovely and me

Photo shoot on the beach

Geese on a pier

The same picture Instagrammed (it's an iPhone app no one should be without)

The babes and I

Tom, Terri and The Bean

There's devilment brewing in Ryan's eyes that Terri is unaware of

Ryan, squinting at my brilliance no doubt

Erin on the pier

Erin instagrammed

Durango , Colorado

View of Durango from high up in the La Plata Mountains

Erin and I are here visiting with my brother Chad and his girlfriend, Erin, who, like my Erin, is a body worker who works out of a coach house behind her house (cue the Twilight Zone music). We've had a wonderful visit, filled with good company, excellent food, liberal libations, a few good hikes and a lazy and laugh-filled tube float down the Animas River. I'll lead with that:

Erin, Erin and Chad

Totally tubular - traffic jam on the Animas

Doctor Brother chilling out in his floatie

Preparing to make my next blog entry

Plus I had to include a video of the Floating Erins hitting the very tepid rapids:

We also did some hiking and up on Engineer Mountain and in the La Plata Mountains, where Chad and I saw a bear cub, a coyote and about ten thousand chipmunks (i wasn't quick enough to get a picture of the skittish bear, so you'll have to take my word on it). Durango is very much like Ashland in many respects -- it's an artsy town with lots of great restaurants and culture, surrounded by stunning nature in every direction. What's not to like?

Yours Truly pausing to hydrate

The Erins and I

A hike along the Engineer Trail

Bonus picture:

The Animas River in a more heightened state (last year when Steve, Cath, Alison and I came out for Chad's birthday in late June)

Hickison Petroglyph Recreation Area

An ambitious petroglyph

We spent our first night on the road at the campground at Hickison Petroglyph Recreation Area along Highway 50 (http://wiki.worldflicks.org/hickison_petroglyph_campground.html). This was my second time at this campground (Erin's first), that's approximately halfway (600 miles) to our destination -- Durango, Colorado, to visit with my brother Chad and his girlfriend, Erin. A petroglyph is a stone carving that often depicts animals, hunting, humans or fertility (although some believe they may just be prehistoric graffiti or doodling). The glyphs are scratched onto the rock face or incised or pecked, as with a hammer and chisel.

It's fascinating that these Petroglyphs, as well as numerous hunting and living sites found around this area, date back as far as 10,000 to 12,000 BC and are evidence of the early hunter gatherers who crossed over the Bering Strait into North America from Asia during the recent glaciation. This was thousands of years before these nomads banded into the hundreds of disparate and distinct Indian tribes that would later poplulate this entire continent, from Florida to the Pacific Northwest, as well as Central and South America. At the time that these carvings were made, this desert was filled with lakes and forests -- archeologists refer to this early period of human habitation of the Great Basin as the Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition, which is just a fancy way of say, "Lots of lakes, plenty of game to hunt and no competition -- good times."

Enough history. Erin and I had a wonderful night here and we went on a meandering walk in the morning on the trails they have next to the campsite:

Erin in the morning

C'est Moi

A short video of this stunning landscape:

Next stop Durango . . .