Travels of the Blue Jacket

Today was sort of a rainy day so we were debating what we should do with the day.  Finally we decided that we would go to the Pawnee Grasslands and see the Pawnee Buttes by hiking on the Pawnee Buttes Trail.  It was sort of a long drive out there with most of it being on dirt roads.  Our GPS was completely useless because we weren’t going to a “city” and because the roads were all dirt county roads that had official names that we were not aware of, so they didn’t come up in the GPS.  I navigated with a good old fashion map, though I am convinced that the map was not drawn to scale and when there were supposed to be right angle turns it was more of a fork off in the road.  Oh well, we found our way and even saw some animals like a falcon and a proghorn on the way. 

We also saw a windmill field.  I am not sure how many of you guys I told about my trip to Kansas a while back for work, but they had a windmill farm there and I drove an hour into the middle of nowhere Kansas to see them.  They were awesome but I couldn’t get close enough for my liking.  At the windmill farm at the Pawnee Grasslands you could almost pull right up to the windmills.  In fact, we got so close that it was TOO close and we had to back up a bit in order to fit the whole windmill in the frame of the camera. 

Finally we get out to where you have to start a hike to actually see the buttes up close. 

When I tell you that it was 48 degrees with winds that made it feel like 40 I am not exaggerating at all.  It was also raining slightly, well if you can call it raining, it was more like sideways water pellets.  We had a quick picnic lunch at the car.  His parents actually backed their car in to block the wind and rain (since it was only coming from one direction) but I was still too cold so I got back in our car to eat my sandwich.  Craig really wanted to go on the hike down to the buttes and I really wasn’t feeling it but we bundled all up (added a pic of Craig bundled up)and I decided that I would give it a try.  His parents decided that they didn’t have the equipment to go we they waited for us in the car.  I actually didn’t know if I wanted to go on the hike but Craig really wanted to go so I agreed with the promise of some hot chocolate when we finished (even though it would be 40 miles back to civilization and hot chocolate).  All in all the hike turned out to be really beautiful.  It was really windy and rainy on the way down but once we got in between all the formations the wind died down and it was really pretty out there.  Craig tried twice to pick up cactuses and twice got stuck (not sure why he didn’t figure that one out but I laughed both times).  When we got toward the spot in the hike that we were going to turn around this really thick fog rolled in.  It was very bizarre because we couldn’t see the formations that we had just seen 10 mins before.  It was a pretty nice long hike (we think about 4 miles) so by the time we got into it a bit we were pretty wet and muddy.  I actually didn’t take my big camera with me, I only took the point and shoot which ran out of batteries almost right after the first picture that I took.  Which is this one…

Craig’s parents had started the car when they saw us coming and turned the heat on and his dad gave me a blanket to use until I got warm again.  Truth be told, I was pretty hot by the time we got back up to the car because most of the way back was uphill.  It is that kind of hot though where you are sweating underneath your layers but then once you cool down you are just wet and cold…yeah.  After we took off the outer, wet layers it was time to hit the road home.  We decided to go out on different dirt roads than the ones that we came in on so we could see some more scenery.  They have these open pastures out there where the cows just roam free…no fences or gates or anything.  If there is somewhere that they don’t want them to go then they just put these cattle guards in the ground so that the animals won’t go where they don’t want them.  A couple of the cows had gotten out where we were driving so Craig pulled up next to them to talk to them.  I really don’t think that I have ever seen a cow up that close before.  Once he started talking to them they would also take off running which brings up the fact that I have never really seen a cow run before.  Normally they just stand in fields and munch on grass or hay or whatever…it was kind of funny to see them run.  After we played with the cows we raced some pronghorns until they almost ran into the yard of a house at which point they quickly turned around and ran into the open field.  We probably got up to about 30-35 miles per hour with those guys.

After racing the pronghorns and talking to the cows we started back toward Fort Collins.  They actually have a place called Culver’s that is from Wisconsin (also where Craig is from for those who don’t know) so we headed there to get some Butter Burgers and some fried cheese curds.  They were both delicious and needed to be topped off with an ice cream…yummy.  It was so rich though that I saved most of mine for the next day, just to spread the ice cream love!

running cow that Craig gave a verbal thrashing.