Leaving Kremmling we talked about driving to a small town in Utah. The topography in Kremmling is dry and rocky; a windy place. We spent the night near the beautiful rock formation above. The next leg of our journey over Rabbits Foot Pass is at the 9,000 foot elevation and Jim took the wheel.
The landscape changed quickly. The pass is only 2000 feet higher than Kremmling. It went smoothly with a nice wide road, but the down slope is very straight and steep. It fed us down to a beautiful valley.
We passed through Steamboat Springs, an internationally famous ski area. Flags fly at the lamp posts with pictures of their Olympians, eight of them, plus other local champions. The flags read, It Takes A Village To Raise An Olympian. I tried to find out on-line why this isolated mountain area is named Steamboat Springs-no luck. The place has many springs and a token steamboat, which I missed with my camera.
We pulled into Craig, Colorado to pick up items at the grocery store, looked around, and decided it had much more appeal than Vernal, Utah as a place to stay. A good museum, a nice VFW and this amazing City Park. Here when a tree dies, they don't remove it. They carve it. I wandered all over the park and found about 70 carved trees.
An interesting way to deal with a dead tree. They hold a summer festival around the carvings which are done by chain saw.
With two dead trees close to each other, the artist has some creative inspiration. Tree stumps can be ten or more feet high with multiple branches.
We are parked right next to this park and while I sat outside reading, this mother deer and two kids walked into the park to nibble on some bushes, totally unafraid of me.
They decided to move on up the street where a passel of petunias and other goodies were growing.
She looked at me with curiosity, not fear. One young doe stayed in the park. But mom and one youngster enjoyed the flowers without any fear of traffic passing them by on two sides.
Mom took time out to suckle her kid for a moment.
Then she crossed the street, carefully, like she'd done this many times before.
Her kid followed, just like it was taught to do.
Then they both enjoyed another flower lunch with traffic streaming by on the main street in town. They then crossed that busy street, carefully, without fear, with no mishap, like they had done this before. Whew!!
Smarter than we think.
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