Vamos Muchachos a Kansas City

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Granger Meador

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (click image for slideshow)

Realizing I had to report back to work in less than three weeks, I vamoosed to Kansas City to visit my favorite museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.  I’ve been to Kansas City a number of times over the years and in the past greatly enjoyed its Steamboat Arabia Museum and Union Station as well as shopping and strolling at Crown Center and the Country Club Plaza.  On this overnight trip I’d visit the Nelson-Atkins, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Liberty Memorial and the National World War I Museum, the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio, and shop and dine at the Country Club Plaza and in the downtown Power and Light District.

It takes about four hours to get there from Bartlesville via the rural highways of southeastern Kansas, so my first stop was for lunch at the beautiful Country Club Plaza.  Established in 1923 by J.C. Nichols, this shopping district was the first in the country designed for shoppers arriving by automobile and is modeled after Seville, Spain.  There are parking garages hidden about the district, so there are no huge parking lots to detract from the beautiful buildings and fountains.  It has many upscale shops and restaurants, including a branch of the McCormick and Schmick’s seafood restaurant chain.  I’d enjoyed dining at their branches in Seattle and Portland, so I dropped in for a delicious plate of fish and chips.  The maître d’ seated me at a high table near the bar in the impressive domed room.  Above the bar is a stained glass representation of the Mighty Mo, the USS Missouri battleship of World War II which is now a museum ship at Pearl Harbor.  Near me a table of young business people were discussing earnings reports while I happily spent my own meager earnings.

It was humid and in the high 90s, so I did not walk the mile to the Nelson-Atkins, but drove over and parked in its underground garage.  The garage has its own artistic touch.  It is buried beneath the north lawn with rippling beams of light brought in through skylights set in the bottom of a reflecting pool up top.  You enter the new $200 million Bloch Building of the museum, a stark building by Steven Holl which has a white exterior and interior and opened in 2007.  It makes a long linear descent down the southeastern slope of the grounds.  Although it seems well suited to the ungainly works typical of modern art, I greatly prefer the gorgeous Beaux Arts interior of the 1933 building designed by Wight and Wight, although its monolithic neoclassical exterior gives little hint of its beautiful interior finishes and layout.

Take My Tour of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

If I were a docent, here are the places and works I would share with you.  In keeping with the museum’s surprising free admission, I won’t charge you for this tour.  Along with my photos I have often included a “closer look” which links to the museum’s own online image viewer, which has controls at the bottom of each image to zoom in on any part of a figure, overcoming the limited resolution of the computer screen.

History

First, we enter the old building through a clever linkage by Bloch Building architect Steven Holl, having you climb to a landing on the Atkins Stairs.  The beautiful marble of the stairs complements the murals of human progress along the walls, and the female statue provides a nice focus, with me positioning you to see the halo of light about her face one of the chandeliers can create.  I point out the wall medallion of Mary McAfee Atkins, the former schoolteacher who, upon her death in 1911, bequeathed $300,000 for an art museum in Kansas City.  No, they did not pay schoolteachers better back then: Mary was the widow of a wealthy real estate developer.  I know, now you’re wondering about Nelson.  William Rockhill Nelson published The Kansas City Star newspaper and died in 1915 with a will donating his Oak Hill mansion, upon the death of his wife and his daughter, so it could be torn down and its site could become a great art museum, funded by a portion of his six million dollar estate.

Adelaide Cobb Ward Sculpture Hall

We pass Ile-de-France by Maillol, drawn ahead by the intense gaze of the bizarre Lion in the next room.  Its Greek sculptor of 325 BCE had never seen a lion, so he gave his statue the hips of a cow, the vertebrae of a goat, the ribs of a horse, human eyes, and the pose of a dog.  The pose and off-putting anatomy are quite striking, and I invite you to take a closer look as I tell you about its recent reconstruction.  We examine Atalanta and Meleager with the Calydonian Boar by Francesco Mosca (again I urge you to take a closer look), yet I ignore the nearby overmuscled bronze statue of Adam by Rodin.

Kirkwood Hall

Then I conduct you into my favorite room in the building, Kirkwood Hall.  Its twelve massive columns of black and white marble, supporting decorative plaster coves and skylights, are crowned with Corinthian capitals, each one subtly different to show the evolution of the style.  The walls are limestone and the floor is travertine, and the space is glorious.  Oddly, I never tell you a thing about the tapestries on the walls, since I don’t care for tapestries.

Rozelle Court

Adjacent to Kirkwood Hall is the Rozelle Court, the museum’s restaurant space.  Originally designed as an open-air courtyard to relieve “museum fatigue”, its double arcade of columns surround an area of trees with a huge central fountain with a 2nd century basin of chipolina marble surrounded by bronze floor medallions of the zodiac.  Children love to scamper around the fountain and play with its jets.

Ancient Art

We then venture over to the ancient art hall to see several of my favorite pieces in the museum.   First is the wonderfully human countenance of Metjetji, a 4350-year-old wood stauette with eyes of alabaster and obsidian.  In Egypt’s Old Kingdom these figures were part of the burial and served as a dwelling place for the life force, the ka, should the mummy decay.  We take a closer look to see the joins, for like many wooden statues from Egypt, this one reflects the scarcity of large pieces of wood and was carved from multiple pieces they pegged together.

The back wall of the ancient art hall is dominated by the wonderfully sad Portrait of a Roman Youth from the 2nd century.  I point out the haunting pinched expression on the young man’s face and again tell you to take a closer look at him, and then pull away to notice how the beautiful black marble background highlights the piece.  This is the kind of highlighted presentation that is so lacking in many museums, including, I delicately whisper, this one’s own Bloch Building.  Too often modernists want the building to fade away and become a blank white canvas for the artwork.  The striking setting for this portrait and a similar one for a Renaissance statue show the poverty of the modernist presentation style.

We stop again at the Roman Muse Sarcophagus from the 2nd century.  Look at those faces!  We take a closer look to examine each face in turn.  We then stroll through the European painting galleries with their many fine works, including The Eruption of Vesuvius by Sebastian Pether with its luminescent river of magma.  A favorite sculpture is the playful Crouching Flora by Jean Baptiste Carpeaux, with me urging you to view her from various angles, admiring the delicacy of her features.

Asian Art

A huge Buddha announces we are entering the Asian galleries, where we compare the Chinese Guardian Lion to the Greek one out in the Sculpture Hall.  A lovely Shiva Nataraja is delicately balanced in the center of one room, and we take a closer look at it.  Across the hall is a huge room with a temple-like structure across the back, housing a massive ancient decorative wall painting, Paradise of Tejraprabha Buddha, with the splendid 1000-year-old polychrome wooden figure of the Guanyin Bodhisattva of the Southern Sea poised in front of it.  Compare that presentation to that of a neutral background in the closer look.  We admire its relaxed seated pose, representative of compassion.

American Art

I then take you over to meet Nick and Frances.  Nick’s full title is Nikkanochee, Prince of Econchatti, a Young Seminole Indian, Sone of Econchattimico, King of Red Hills and he was painted by Frank W. Wilkin back in 1841.  And Frances Frew Wade is immortalized as Mrs. Cecil Wade in a stunning 1886 portrait by John Singer Sargent; we take a closer look at her beautiful but cold face and dress.

We admire the colors of Thomas Moran’s Grand Canyon as we take a closer look at it and then contrast that to the luminous glow of the snow in George Copeland Ault’s dark and brooding January Full Moon, which invites a closer look.

Behind a sculpture across the hall you spot Thomas Hart Benton’s Persephone and are startled to find a leering old man in the painting taking in the view.  I explain that in Greek myth Persephone was abducted by Hades and imprisoned in the underworld.  Here Benton has shown her as a sunbathing farm girl and Hades as a lustful old farmer with a rickety cart for a chariot.  As we take our closer look, we wonder why Hades’ features resemble those of Benton himself and I say the painting reminds me of Old Master female nudes, and you interject that it looks like a modern pin-up.

Kansas City Sculpture Park

Now we’re both overdue for a change of pace, so we venture to the museum’s south entrance and its beautiful marble surrounds for murals by Daniel MacMorris.  We stroll outside to the Kansas City Sculpture Park, where your eye is immediately drawn to one of the massive sculptures of Shuttlecocks by Claes Oldenburg and his wife Coosje van Bruggen.  These playful works are 18 feet tall, 16 feet in diameter, and each weighs 5500 pounds.  Four of them are spread about the green lawns of the museum grounds as a playful counterpoint to the stern building facade.  A closer look reveals the detailing on the feathers, and if it weren’t so blazing hot we might be tempted to set up a game of badminton.

We turn for an examination of the bas-reliefs on the building and the massive bronze vases.  You tell me you have no patience for Henry Moore sculptures, which eliminates about half of those in the park.

So I take you over to the massive Three Bowls by Ursula von Rydingsvard.  A closer look reveals that they are not three stacks of stone, but instead were hewn of wood which was saturated with black graphite.  But you have to take my word for it, since you aren’t supposed to touch the sculptures, although I admit that I never stop kids from playing on the Henry Moore pieces.

We work our way around to George Segal’s Rush Hour.  You ask why all of their eyes are shut, and I explain that it was cast from plaster molds of several of his friends.  Shaking your head, you say that it is time for the Bloch Building.

Bloch Building

The massive new wing slides down the hill, punctuated with large boxy “lenses” which poke up to bring light down into the building and form luminous boxes on the grounds at night.  It has various works, but primarily dubious modern art.  A group of children has gathered around Horse by Deborah Butterfield, which is made of chicken wire, sticks, mud, paper, dextrine, and dried grass on steel.

You ask about the many guards who patiently stand about the building, and I say that there is one fellow who has been here for years yet never been paid a dime.  You ask if he’s one of the museum’s 650 volunteers, and I reply, “No, he’s a work of art.”  Museum Guard by Duane Hansen was constructed of polyester, fiberglas, oil, and vinyl back in 1975.

We wrap up the tour with Crow Call (Near the River) by Keith Jacobshagen, who I point out was trained at the nearby Kansas City Art Institute, where there is a Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in case you want to see some more modern works.

Back to the Plaza

Okay, that took long enough.  In fact, I spent the rest of the day at the museum, until it closed at 4 pm, and then returned for a couple of hours the next morning to tour the Bloch Building and view the current exhibition, which was not free and consisted of Edward Steichen photographs.

With the museum closing in the afternoon, I drove a few blocks to the Best Western Seville Plaza hotel, where I’d reserved a nice king bed and in-room jacuzzi.  That would be most welcome later, since I was headed back to the Country Club Plaza to shop and scrounge up dinner.  I bought a balloon launcher at a toy store for use in my physics classes and then had an early dinner in the hilariously decorated Buca di Beppo Italian restaurant.  I’d read it was worthwhile to wind my way through its warren of underground rooms to the Pope Room, which I could easily do since there were few diners at 5 pm.

Out in front of the restaurant entrance I was delighted to find the Fountain of Neptune, restored to full operation.  I have a pen-and-ink of it on my dining room wall and in recent years when I visited the actual fountain they had shrubbery planted in it.  But today water was streaming from the horse’s mouths and nostrils.  Hmmm…I think I liked it better when it wasn’t working.

In the distance I saw the half-size Giralda Tower of Seville over by the Cheesecake Factory and turned to stroll by a statue of an organ grinder, later finding the sensual Diane: Sitting by Richard McDermott Miller incongruously gracing the entrance to a parking garage.  By far my favorite was the beautiful Pomona by Donatella Gabbrielli, a stunning bronze atop a lovely basin which had a perfect stream of water flowing on all sides.  The goddess of vineyards and orchards, she held some grapes but didn’t offer me a single one, refusing to look down as I ogled up at her.

I spent a considerable time browsing the huge multi-level Barnes and Noble bookstore, and when I emerged the light was fading behind the Giralda tower and that of the Seventh Church of Christ Scientist.  So I returned to the hotel for an evening of sybaritic luxury, lounging in the jacuzzi instead of editing photos and posting to the blog.

Whimper at the Kemper

In the morning I had a puny continental breakfast and lounged in my room, reading, until it was 10 am and the museums reopened.  I began with a brief visit to the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, but a quick look around confirmed that I still don’t care for their offerings.  An ugly statue outside one of the Kansas City Art Institute buildings captured my mood, with only Architect’s Handkerchief by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, of Shuttlecocks fame, having any appeal for me.  But a delicious lunch in Rozelle Court at the Nelson-Atkins restored my spirits and I headed over to Liberty Memorial.

Liberty Memorial

I’d seen the memorial tower from Crown Center and Union Station in the past, but wrongly presumed it was little more than a columnar monument.  In 1919 a ten-day funding drive in the city raised a whopping $2.5 million and that allowed them to build an allée, or French promenade, over a mile long, with downtown Kansas City as a backdrop.  At the end of the road is a 217 foot tower inscribed with four 40-foot-tall statues representing honor, courage, patriotism, and sacrifice.  Seeing those immense stone figures on the tower reminded me of the Argonath from the Lord of the Rings.  At night, steam can billow out of the top, illuminated by orange lights to resemble a burning pyre.

At the tower’s base are two great sphinxes, covering their faces with their massive wings.  One faces east towards Flanders Fields, representing Memory, shrouding its eyes from the horrors of war.  The other faces west, representing the unseeable Future.  To either side are two stone pavilions with many old detailed wall maps of World War I and immense paintings.

The memorial had badly deteriorated by the mid 1990s and the site was fenced off.  Then, as a friendly docent in one of the pavilions told me, the city did something remarkable, passing a sales tax in 1998 and eventually raising $102 million to restore it and construct a large National World War I Museum beneath it.  Over three years they upgraded the mechanical systems of the tower, restructured the pavilions, and cleaned, tuckpointed, and sealed most of the limestone.  They excavated under the deck to build the underground museum, which begins with a glass bridge built over a field of poppies.  I’m from a late enough generation to recognize poppies as a symbol of Flanders Fields and World War I, but uncertain as to why.  It turns out that Canadian military physician John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Field had the image of the red poppies that bloomed in the cemeteries of some of the worst battlefields in Flanders in World War I, becoming a symbol for the bloodshed of the hideous trench warfare.

The museum has interpretative films and displays of weaponry, uniforms, a 20-foot tall model of a bomb shell crater, and immense interactive display tables.  The most interesting exhibit for me was a primitive French tank, which looked like a horror to ride in and operate.  I rode an elevator up the tower and then climbed 45 steps to the top where an observation platform provided a tremendous view of Union Station in the foreground and downtown Kansas City beyond.

Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio

At the suggestion of a Facebook friend and cultured former coworker, I then drove over to Roanoke Park to tour the Thomas Hart Benton home and studio.  Thanks to the terms of his will, the property is completely intact, with the clothing, furniture, and paint brushes still in place, as if you had walked in while the family still lived there.  Benton’s wife of 53 years, Rita Piacenza, would hold spaghetti dinners at the large dining room table, with Benton’s paintings displayed on the walls in case someone might wish to purchase one.  A particularly kind and helpful docent gave me a personal tour of the property, providing fun insights into his character, working habits, and family life.  She pointed out the diminutive furniture, explaining that despite the size and forcefulness of many of his paintings and murals, Benton himself stood only about 5’2”.  I was particularly interested in how he used clay models to work out the shadows and perspectives in his paintings and was glad to see a recreation of one, along with the decayed original, in his studio.  I wish art museums would have more displays of the mathematical and physical methods great painters have used to achieve their effects.

Power and Light District

It was now mid-afternoon and time for my last stop on this trip, the Power and Light entertainment district that has sprung up downtown between the Convention Center and the Sprint Center arena.  This area is known for its night life, so I was here at the wrong time of day.  But I stepped into the lobby of the AMC Main Street theater and poked my head into the upscale Lucky Strike bar and bowling alley, surprised that there was no smoke.  A band was tuning up at the KC Live venue, where they have free live shows beneath the gaze of urban cowboys and cowgirls.  Knowing there were few good restaurants along the highway home, I took the advice of another friend via Facebook and stopped into the Bristol Seafood Grill for a tasty fresh salmon with asparagus and pea risotto, topped off with a lemon tart.  I had the place to myself and the food was quite good.

Vamos Muchachos

And now for those patient few who have actually read this far, I shall explain the title of this post.  While I was dining at the Bristol a catchy song began to pound.  I was humming and bouncing to the beat (like I said, I had the place to myself) and wanted that song for the road.  In the old days, I would have had to ask a waiter if he happened to know the song and perhaps look for a CD later or, in my high school days, look for a 45 rpm single at the record store which I’d later dub onto a cassette tape for the car.  But now there’s an app for that.  On this trip my new iPhone 4 was a blessing, as the TomTom GPS app booted quickly and kept running in the background.  Now I used the SoundHound app, which listened to the song playing on the overhead speakers and, despite a conversing bartender nearby, identified the song as Vamos Muchachos by the Finnish (!?!) band Pepe Deluxé.  I used the restaurant’s WiFi to purchase and download it and happily played it, along with my usual podcasts and audiobooks, on the long drive home.  Knowing no Spanish, I loosely translate this post’s title as, “Boys, go to Kansas City!”

Click here for a slideshow from this trip

Posted in art, music, photos, travel | 2 Comments

July Escape Day 8: Poor Tucumcari

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Granger Meador

Dying Tucumcari (click image for slideshow)

I know, I initially said Day 7 would conclude my July Escape posts, but that was before I pulled off for lunch in poor Tucumcari, New Mexico on my way back to Oklahoma.  Once a thriving hotel town for Route 66, its main drag is now littered with abandoned buildings and decaying hotel signs.  While Amarillo has grown like a weed, much of Tucumcari is about to dry up and blow away.

I drove up and down the strip to photograph some of most interesting signs, struck by how delapidated the town has become.  I found a nice online collection of photos by Jim Ridge which paints Tucumcari in a more positive light, but clearly more of the businesses have gone to rack and ruin since his visit.

Click here for a slideshow of Tucumcari signs

<–Day 7 of this adventure

Posted in photos, travel | 2 Comments

July Escape Day 7: Atchison, Topeka, and the…

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Granger Meador

Santa Fe (click image for slideshow)

My day began with waffles again, for the third day in a row, fortifying myself for a drive south on US 84 from Pagosa Springs to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  On my way through the dry Carson National Forest I saw some beautiful sandstone formations and then a sign for  “Echo Amphitheater” – which certainly demanded investigation.

Two bucks bought me the privilege of walking up to a massive concave erosion in a sandstone hillside.  Little lizards darted across the concrete sidewalk leading up to the formation, and I paused to admire the hillside both to the left and the right of the amphitheater itself, and then walked to the reflector and tried out the quick, faint echo.

Leaving the area, I passed some buttes near Ghost Ranch, the summer home of artist Georgia O’Keefe and now a retreat for the Presbyterian Church.  This portion of US 84 was quite scenic, prompting me to pull over at picnic stops and admire view after view after view of the fascinating red sandstone formations.  It is no wonder O’Keefe loved it here.  The road soon passed by the Rio Chama, a tributary of the Rio Grande, and on through the tiny town of Abiquiú, where scenes from the latest Indiana Jones movie and City Slickers were shot.

I had a long traffic delay in Española, a town of 10,000 or so which claims to be the First Capital City in America since it was designated as one for Spain back in 1598.  I began to wonder if US 84 would be a 35 mi/h drive for the entire 25 miles to Santa Fe, but after surviving some construction funded by the Recovery Act of 2009, the road finally ran back up to highway speeds until I hit Santa Fe.

I followed a 1961 Bonneville convertible through much of Santa Fe, bound for a recommended Mexican restaurant, only to find that it was not open on Sunday.  My iPhone was being far too sluggish to try and ask Yelp or Urbanspoon or the like for another recommendation.  AT&T had little data service around Pagosa Springs and often no phone service at all along the highways in south Colorado and north New Mexico, plus my iPhone 3G has been very sluggish ever since I upgraded to iOS 4.  I’m very glad my new iPhone 4 is waiting for me back home – my TomTom GPS navigation app on this trip has been agonizingly slow to both boot and respond to commands.  Plus I hate having to exit out of it to adjust audio playback, search the internet, and so forth.

Anyhow, I located lunch by the tried-and-true method of looking for a packed parking lot.  I found it at Los Potrillos, a converted Pizza Hut.  I wondered about that, but the place was humming and sure enough, my fajitas were excellent and accompanied by two thick handmade tortillas.  I now find an online review agrees with my assessment (and the money I saved on lunch I later spent on an absurdly overpriced lemon tart and $2.50 Sprite in the downtown Plaza district).

I then drove over to a railroad station and parked, catching a shuttle bus up Museum Hill to the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, which is billed as the world’s largest such event.  It began in 2004 and this year had 170 folk artists from 52 countries for the three-day market.  I like to visit art museums, yet I’m no collector of folk art.  But after several days of solitary trail hikes, I was ready for a crowd and expected there would be some interesting international entertainment.

It wasn’t long before I was staring into the face of a live Vietnamese lion…as enacted by members of the Quang Minh Buddhist Youth Lion Dance Team, that is.  Soon I spotted some African drums up on the event stage and found a seat for a performance by Agalu and Friends.  This drumming group is led by Akeem Ayanniyi, the ninth generation of his family to play the traditional Yoruba talking drum.  He hails from the Western Nigerian town of Erin Oshun and settled in Santa Fe in 1993, founding the group in 1998.  Other group members include Nigerian percussionists Ayo Adeyemi, Tunde Ojeyemi and Gasali Adeyemo, who play djembe, djun djun, ashiko and bata drums.

Their performance was invigorating in the heat of the afternoon.  Soon after they began a gent in tight biker clothes was up by the stage wiggling to the beat.  Then he was joined by a tall red-haired lady, with a silly Dalmation dog bag slung on her back.  I didn’t get to giggle for too long, because the performers want an active audience.  They would teach us the words to a song and have us sing along with them, clapping our hands with the beat.  It was grand fun and I made sure to catch a few snatches of the event on video.

Later I managed to locate their booth and, while I resisted purchasing a drum, I did buy a CD.  After a couple of hours in the bright sun at the market, I was glad to board the shuttle, where I visited with a lady who has homes in Roger Mills county back in Oklahoma as well as in Odessa, Texas and Taos, New Mexico – an interesting assortment.  Back at my car I drove to the historic center of town and parked near the Plaza, which was founded in 1610.

My first stop was the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, a yellow limestone Romanesque Revivalist building built between 1869 and 1886.  Out in front of the cathedral a statue of Saint Francis was joined by one of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first North American Indian to be declared a saint. She was Mohawk-Algonquian and lived from 1656-1680 in what is now New York state.  The towers still lack their originally planned steeples – maybe Frank Keating can campaign for them since he managed to finally get a dome put on Oklahoma’s capitol building.

I admired the cathedral’s bronze door reliefs, the nave, the sanctuary with its altar screen, its large crucifixion sculpture, the La Conquistadora statue of 1626 in her elaborate chapel, and the version of Our Lady of the Rosary in stained glass.  Then I walked over to the Plaza itself, with its fairly plain American Indian War Memorial monument.  The nearby Palace of the Governors, the oldest continually occupied public building in the United States, had Indian vendors lined up along its portico who were selling primarily turquoise and silver jewelry.

Adjacent to the plaza was the New Mexico Museum of Art, which had an odd exhibit of decorated cowboy boots and accompanying painting and drawings, some of which was a bit risqué and both hetero and homoerotic (a classification one must base on the gender and intent of the artist, I suppose).  I somehow doubt that exhibit would be shown intact in Joklahoma, just as at home I never overhear folks talk as I do in these parts, discussing ways to reduce their environmental impact and do their share to inhibit global warming.  Maybe when I retire I’ll move to a liberal area and bask in the ambience, as it has been a refreshing change.  My favorite pieces at the museum were Cui Bono? by Gerald Cassidy, The Game by Deborah Hamon, and Rolls Royce by Henri Silberman.

I wandered over to the La Fonda hotel and, braving sprinkles, went up to its outdoor Bell Tower Bar.  True to my teetotaling, I ordered a horribly overpriced Coke and gazed down at the Loretto Chapel, which some dinner companions in Pagosa Springs had mentioned for its supposedly miraculous spiral staircase, an impressive work we now know was created by Francois-Jean Rochas.  Unfortunately the chapel was closed, so I did not get to see it, only the chapel’s exterior.

The nearby Sage Creek Gallery had various bronzes for sale, including a version of arrow skyward, an odd merhorse work, a bronze of a girl which looked best when she was looking away from you, and some storks with gold highlights.  The humans worked better for me than the animals.

Strolling about the area, I purchased some selenite at a rock shop and noticed red peppers hanging on a balcony and the elaborate exterior of the Lensic Theater of 1931.  Then I found the French pastry shop where I had my pricey lemon tart and Sprite while gazing at a mosaic on a wall across the street, which turned out to be of the interior of the Lensic.

I was satiated and footsore, so I made my way through sprinkles to my car, passing by a sculpture at the Radio Building which had a solidity and mass reminding me of something by Henry Moore, but more representational than his work.

I drove over to the Super 8, pleasantly surprised that its stark exterior was offset by nice subdued southwestern interior stylings.  I made good use of its in-room WiFi for this post.  What a treat it is to have fast WiFi in my room again, something I sorely missed back in Pagosa Springs.

Tomorrow I’ll rise and skip the motel breakfast (they’re featuring waffles…no!) and spend my day on the interstate, bound for my hometown of Oklahoma City for a brief visit with my parents.  Then it’s back to Bartlesville for a two-day inservice training.  I’ll try to be attentive, but my thoughts will likely drift westward in fond remembrance of this July Escape.

Click here for a slideshow of today’s adventure

Day 8 of this adventure–>

<—Day 6 of this adventure

Posted in photos, travel, video | 4 Comments

July Escape Day 6: Nature’s Mountain Garden

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Granger Meador

Meadow Near Williams Creek (click image for slideshow)

After a sleepless night at the lodge, I was determined to wear myself out today to earn a good night’s rest before leaving Pagosa Springs tomorrow for Santa Fe.  I had half a waffle at the lodge, joined at the table by a lady who was in town for a Shaklee conference.  Like my female dinner companions from Thursday evening, she waxed on about how yesterday was her first visit to the hot springs and how wonderful it was to bound from pool to pool, cool off with a dip in the river, and then jump back into a warm pool.  I’m more enthusiastic about hiking than swimming or wading, so I’ll save a dip in the hot springs for a future trip.

I then headed north on Piedra Road toward the mountains.  After many miles of gravel road I reached the Williams Creek trailhead at the very end of Forest Road 640, mine being the fifth auto in the lot.  This Saturday I would see almost as many hikers, and definitely more horses, as I encountered at Piedra Falls two days earlier.  I’ll describe the trek out away from the trailhead, using shots from both the morning journey out and the afternoon return as needed for better light.

The trail started out with a steep rise which made me thankful for my trekking poles.  For a long time I could hear but not see Williams Creek gurgling far below to the east, beyond which one great peak or another would show in breaks in the tree cover again and again.  Eventually the trail popped out along the edge of jagged eroded bluffs on the western side of Williams Creek with a heavily eroded side creek channel.

Part of this hike had been described as a visit to a “walled garden” and soon I saw what they meant, as mountains to the west and a long hill to the east channeled me down a treelined path strewn with wildflowers.  Amidst towering birch trees were many examples of larkspur, Queen Anne’s lace, and more.  Sadly many of the pines were dead or dying – a gentleman along the trail would tell me there is a fungus killing them off, leaving dead pines with hanging mosslike filaments.

Then ahead I could see an opening into a great mountain meadow.  Surrounded by trees and mountains and strewn with wildflowers, it was a tremendous sight.  I actually scampered along the trail, much like Dorothy Gale and Friends amidst the poppy fields on their way to Oz.  Instead of poppies, I was enchanted by buttercups and bluebells.  The trail wound on to a stand of tall plants with long green leaves and spikes of white flowers, and beyond them was a long line of birch tree mountain sentinels.  I met several hikers in the meadow, including the fellow who knew about the tree fungus and said his daughter was out here last August and the entire lower part of the meadow was a vast field of daisies.

The trail then reentered the forest and wound its way down to Williams Creek at the three mile mark.  There was no easy path across the creek without getting my feet soaked, so this seemed the right spot to have a snack and then reverse course back out across the meadow to a trail junction I had passed earlier.

I encountered four horses with three riders on my way back, no surprise given the many times I had dodged horse presents along the trail.  Then I turned down the Indian Creek trail to enjoy some yellow beauties and wild roses.  After half a mile, this trail also led across Williams Creek.  This time there were more logs and rocks to make a dry crossing, but instead I fully extended one of my trekking poles so I could plunge it into the creek bed for balance, set the all-too-short timer on the camera, and dashed out onto a log for a self-portrait.

My leisurely pace on the way out meant that this seven-mile hike would take me 3.5 hours plus another two hours of round-trip car time from Pagosa Springs.  The usual afternoon storm clouds were building, so it was time to go.  That was when I had my iPod moment of the trip.

Since I purchased my first iPod, the miracle device that allowed me to take my music library with me everywhere, each of my big summer trips has brought an audiovisual moment that I will always remember.  It happens when the sound in my ears perfectly matches my feeling of joyful release at the majesty of nature that I am experiencing.  The first time was when I was out on Mount Rainier in Washington for the first time, sliding across the snow in short sleeves and tennis shoes.  The iPod was on shuffle play and the boisterously silly MMMBop by Hanson came on and had me capering about the snow like a madman.  The most recent iPod moment had been last summer when I listened to the incomparable Rufus Fears telling me the story of Goethe’s The Sufferings of Young Werther as I glided through a misty coastal forest at Cascade Head.

Today I had two successive iPod moments.  I had started the hike listening to some horribly boring lectures on archaeological theory, which I had happily abandoned for some Agatha Christie short stories about the mysterious Mr. Quin.  But for my return journey today I hit shuffle and as I bounded through the birch trees I was inspired by Yoko Kanno’s orchestral stylings for Call Me Call Me by Steve Conte.  I was no doubt grinning like an idiot all through the piece, only to then find my trekking poles scissoring along at high speed as I bounded downhill to Golden Earring’s fabulous Radar Love.  I don’t expect it to make any sense to anyone else, but now whenever I hear those songs I’ll be back on the trail at Williams Creek.

My playful mood coming down from that natural high left me gathering pine cones at one point on the return, creating my own little pine cone forest in a tree stump beside the trail.  It beats graffiti.  I also stopped to take a close look at the whorls amidst the remains of a large dead tree, and finally popped out at the trailhead to find that five autos had now become two horse trailers and nine autos.

My car hurtled out from under the lowering clouds towards sunny Pagosa Springs, with sprinkles wetting the gravel road as I passed a picturesque lake.  I made my third visit to JJ’s Restaurant beside the San Juan River, having my third delicious meal there.  While it had been in the 60s and 70s during my mountain hike, it was 86 down in Pagosa Springs.  But that did not deter me on this final day to hike.  I hiked two miles up and along the western slope of Reservoir Hill above Pagosa Springs, finding a cabin used for festival registrations and a number of antenna towers.  I zoomed in for the view of the San Juan River winding through downtown and one last view of a mountain peak in the distance, complete with guy wires.

Nine miles of hiking was enough for the day, thank you, so I headed back to the lodge to edit and post the photos, and since my lunch was large and late, I’ll head to McDonald’s for a salad for dinner.

Tomorrow I venture south to Santa Fe, New Mexico and the next day is a long slog from there to Oklahoma City.  So tomorrow’s Day 7 will be my last post from July Escape 2010.

Click here for a slideshow of today’s adventure

Day 7 of this adventure–>

<—Day 5 of this adventure

Posted in day hike, photos, travel | 2 Comments

July Escape Day 5: Fourmile Falls

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Granger Meador

Lower Fourmile Falls (click image for slideshow)

I started the day with waffles at the lodge and then set out onto the gravel roads north of Pagosa Springs again, this time about 16 miles north to Fourmile Falls.  Part of a 12.4 mile loop trail that reaches up into the mountains to Fourmile Lake, I took the first three-and-a-quarter miles or so of the loop which headed up to two waterfalls.

By 8:45 am I had driven to the end of the road at 9,225 feet and set out, with Eagle Mountain rising up to the east beyond the trees.  Zooming in, the jagged peak to me resembles toes sticking up from a giant foot.  Turning northwest, I could see Pagosa Peak looming overhead.  It was slow going for me today, climbing up a total of over 1,600 feet (with a net gain of perhaps half of that) at elevations above 9,000 ft.  Several hikers passed by me throughout my journey – I’ll pretend they were all Colorado natives, but who knows?

Eventually I had ascended far enough to catch my first glimpse of the Lower Falls to the side of Pagosa Peak, hurtling 300 feet down the mountainside.  The trail wound below them and I spotted a bushwhack that allowed me to climb to the base of the falls, where I found two of the hikers that had passed me earlier perched on a rock, helpfully providing a sense of scale to the falls for my photo.  I ascended to the rock face so that the misty spray could inundate me and cool me off, and then clambered down far enough to shoot a video of the falls, carefully crossing the rushing creek and giving the water repellent spray on my boots a workout.  (Thankfully it worked.)  Then I climbed back down to the main trail where, on my way back by here later, I’d see people high up against the falls, providing a nice sense of their scale from afar.

The path ahead wasn’t very clear here, but I opted for a very rocky trail leading upward, which turned out to be the correct one.  It was a very steep slog, rising about 450 vertical feet in a short ways, but I knew there was a set of Upper Falls that would make the effort worthwhile.  Eventually I could see off to the side the Upper Falls with their mountain backdrop.

I worked my way around to view them head-on and shot another video clip.  Seeing gray clouds beginning to build overhead, I knew I could not go much farther safely.  So I climbed up to get a view of the creek running down through the terrain from above the upper falls, where I sat down for an 11:00 snack.  I had gone 3.28 miles by then and was feeling winded and tired and ready to head down.

On my descent, breaks in heavy clouds above Eagle Mountain highlighted a patch of snow that was holding on there in July.  I wearily made it the rest of the way down, only pausing to capture a flower or…several.  The drive back to Pagosa was accented by breaks in the clouds, dappling the beautiful landscape in sunlight.  I shot one last panorama and called it a day.

It was 2:00 pm when I returned to town and I stopped at Chaco’s for a splendid, both in taste and size, fajita lunch.  Stuffed to gills, I waddled to my car, too bloated to dodge the raindrops as I headed back to the lodge to edit and post my photos.

Given my weariness from today’s hike and the weather forecast, I’m changing my plans for tomorrow.  Rather than drive over 50 miles from town for a long hike at an altitude of 11,000 to 12,000 ft, I will instead take things easier.  If it is not too rainy, I’ll drive back out to the very end of Forest Road 640 off Piedra Road to hike up in the mountains along Williams Creek, perhaps three miles in and three miles back.  But if thunderstorms make that seem dicey, I may just hike at the Reservoir Hill Mountain Park above downtown.

Click here for a slideshow of today’s adventure

Day 6 of this adventure–>

<—Day 4 of this adventure

Posted in day hike, photos, travel, video | 2 Comments