On our way to Telluride where we hear there is a Spaghetti Eating Contest. We are here in Ski Country where we have seen sights beyond one's imagining unless of course you've already done Route 70 between Vail and Glenwood Springs. It was something like seeing those Tintorettos at the Academia for the first time this past March.

Drove around Vail on Wednesday which is an enormous stretch of Condos cheek by jowl appearing to be either Swiss Chalets or Bavarian Castletttes. Then to Leadville. Ate at the Silver Dollar Saloon. This is the home of Baby Doe.....remember the Opera? She was the mistress of Horace Tabor, The Silver King in late 1800s.Our waitress talked about those times as if they were still going on. She was very down on Baby Doe.



Spent our first night out at Penny's daughter's comfortable vacation condo at Copper Mountain. This is another ski community more spread out than Vail, however it appeared that no one was there but us. We wandered through this seemingly empty "town" looking for a place to eat.....like walking through a modern de Chirico painting. We found an Irish pub totally vacant and silent except for the bartender busy with his MacBook. Very surreal. Penny had a Guiness on tap.

Went south yesterday through red mountains and high deserts driving on all sorts of roads smaller than I-70,(but the only roads there were) to Placerville. Lots of road work being done thanks to the Stimulus Plan. I would love to read first hand accounts of how the roads were blasted through these mountains that look like they were made out of very very hard rock. Looking for a book store to buy one of those Road Side Geology books on Colorado.

We hope to stay in Durango tonight maybe for a couple days ..... like a base camp. I read where there will be picketing and demonstrations at Whole Foods Stores because of the CEOs stand on the Health Plan (whatever the Health plan really is).

Literary Section:

Have been reading Updike's Rabbit Run. I guess really re-reading after these many years. A friend lent it to me suggesting I see if it holds up or is dated. The book is one of those old paper backs with yellowing drying brittle pages. We all have them on our shelves. I'm only a third way through and it seems a little dated because of all the references to life in 1960 but the writing is enthralling. I can't believe Updike is dead. No one could write sentences like he did.....maybe Cheever. For example: "Her precocious beauty was like something that happened elsewhere, in France, or Persia or Heaven." Or about a couple who screamed at each other all the time...."....would shout together for hours...and then as the neighbors listened, old wounds opened like complicated flowers in the night." The story of Harry Angstrom reminds me of Bloom's journey in Ulysses but I haven't finished Rabbit yet nor did I ever finish Ulysses.

Also reading the easy read on the Astors, "When the Astors Owned New York".

What have you all been up to?