A tale of two farms (The Littleton Museum)

1862 farmhouse recreation

Original 1892 farmhouse

A historic farm can lure a creature of the city. Don't just remove me from traffic and constant gadgets, take me back a century or more. 

The Littleton Museum boasts two farms on one site. The free museum details the city’s history, but its living exhibits bring together two ages of farming in the Mountain West separated by just 28 years. 

With my Denver days ending, I needed that little field trip to Littleton.Settlement came to Littleton and its prime spot on the South Platte River in 1859, during the Pikes Peak gold rush and shortly before the 1861 formation of Colorado Territory.  In the 1950s suburban boom, Littleton became firmly enmeshed in metro Denver. 

The city will always be connected to the 1999 shooting massacre at Columbine High School that didn’t occur in Littleton proper. But the name still resonates decades later. 

While the farm buildings have been moved to the site of the Littleton Museum, they still operate as farms, growing crops while raising various livestock. One farm reaches back to 1862 and the other to 1890. They use methods of the time, and volunteers are also period appropriate. 

A sheep shed and schoolhouse moved to the site also date to the 1860s, although the ice house dates to 1910 before refrigeration grew widespread. The 1862 farm had sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, donkeys, and horses. 

The 1862 house feels like a product of the frontier. If it were original, it would have been built from trees that grew on the floodplain of the creek that feeds the small nearby reservoir, Kedring Lake. The cornstalks in the vegetable garden also carried a drought-weary look. A dry winter and record-setting summer had no mercy on these crops.. Drought sapped the creek dry this year, while the reservoir ran painfully low. 

Hemmed by several large trees, the McBroom Cabin seemed comfortable enough for a family that would spend most daily hours working the fields and tending to livestock. In 1862, farmers made their own clothes or bought them from a independent woman in the village who made them (as the reenactor explained to me, that partially led to the term spinster). 

The original cabin has moved indoors for preservation reasons, while the rebuilt cabin is still welcoming, as were the volunteers. We can imagine the people who populated this farm – they would have crossed the Great Plains on ox-driven wagons, the dry country too tough for horses. 

 A root cellar sits a short distance from the cabin, close to the replica barn built with period tools in the 1980s. Even on a 90-degree day, one can imagine a wintry dash from the house to the root cellar. 

A herd of sheep roamed a large paddock, lambs springing around the edges of the group. A large male grunted and called from a corral separating him from the others. 

When reaching the 1892 farm, the different is stark. The exhibit includes a working blacksmith shop. With the clouds gone and the heat soaring, I stayed far away.

The 1890s Bemis Home looked almost contemporary. By that time the railroad brought materials from the east. Clothes could be shipped from eastern textile mills, as could building materials. 

Some farm staples went unchanged – a cow grazed at the feed bin with a watchful eye on her two-week-old calf. Mom finally gave me the stink eye and I moved on. 

A windmill turned slowly at the 1890 farm’s edge, a symbol of the homesteading farms that would dot the west after the Native tribes were driven to reservations. Colorado’s tribes were expelled after the White River War in 1879; only the small Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute lands in far southwest Colorado remain. 

Both farms represented a life immeasurably more difficult than what prevails in 21st century Colorado. Something in that life remains attractive. Those would have been grueling days. Farming not just to bring something to market, but to ensure your own survival. We have no concept of the risk involved, that a few bad winters could wipe out anyone. 

With open terrain and wild animals all around, those could have been terrifying nights. Wild animals and wide-open lands all around. Grizzly bears still lived in Colorado, and mountain lions would not have been relegated to the mountains. 

The farms provided ample opportunity the let my vision blur out and dream a about a hard, fruitful life on the mile-high frontier. 

Between the pastures

Quicksand avoids all pitfalls

An unusually rainy evening seemed the perfect time to step indoors at the Black Sheep and catch up with a 90s alternative favorite thriving in its second run. 

Quicksand was one of the mid-90s also-rans, when major labels swooped to sign every punk, hardcore and post-hardcore band in hopes of finding the next Metallica, Nirvana, or Green Day. Critically lauded, Quicksand's sales did not follow. Quicksand put out two albums of engaging heavy rock (Slip and Manic Compression) before breaking up in 1995. 

Twenty years later, they resume the band and have put out three records in the decade since, including 2026’s Bring on the Psychics, the reason for this tour. These days Quicksand plays as a trio, sacrificing none of its intensity. 

The less said of the openers, the better. Two were relatively innocuous hardcore bands, while the third could only be described as “What if Michael Rappaport fronted a punk band?” That was not a question I wanted or needed answered. I'll leave the band names out of the blog. 

After nearly three hours of openers, Quicksand could not emerge soon enough. When they did, not a note disappointed. In a little more than an hour, Quicksand belted out 17 songs, including all of Bring on the Psychics with songs from their two 1990s records peppered in. 

Their energy and technique pulled the show back from its dampening start. They set out with a blistering pace and never eased up. They get labelled as post-hardcore, but to me they play the brand of grunge-influenced 90s rock that defined my teen years. They would fit comfortably on a bill with Helmet or Local H. 

That they could still bring that noise convincingly after a 20-year hiatus and seamlessly blend in new material was a testament to Quicksand’s skillful playing. 

 There was no encore, but none was necessary after Quicksand’s scorched earth song choice.

The Toledo Zoo's endless encounters

It would be impossible to visit the Toledo Zoo & Aquarium and leave without experiencing some level of sensory overload. A zoo, an aquarium, and a natural history museum all land on the same admission. The latter two could easily stand on their own. On summer nights, an amphitheater opens for concerts. 

My Pueblo Zoo membership earned me a discounted admission ($16 instead of $30). The ticket clerk had never heard of it, but they go off a list, and there it was. I will take a zoo discount any day. 

The zoo kicks into gear quickly with Arctic Encounter, where a lively polar bear splashed in its pool and flung a bucket around. An indoor blind allows visitors to see how huge the bear really is. The massive bear showed off his size and speed after leaving the pool and moving around the enclosure. In the adjacent exhibit, the harbor seals and California sea lions had no idea how lucky they were, an apex predator just one exhibit away. 

Many of the African animals can only be seen from a great distance without getting tickets for a train ride. We opted to feed lettuce to the giraffes – staff requires you to stop if six-month-old giraffe Eugene approaches, but even with three giraffes our lettuce leaves disappeared in seconds, their giant prehensile tongues showing no hesitation. At that point the zoo felt a little slight. I didn’t realize the rest was across the highway. 

Our tour guides – Meg’s nephews – showed us to the pedestrian bridge. There’s also a tunnel that runs under the street. From the bridge we descended into the big city zoo I expected. We passed the cassowaries and entered a large aviary that offered a cross-section of species from across the globe. 

Among newer exhibits, the Works Progress Administration construction of the 1930s zoo buildings still stand tall. Many have been renovated but the stone facades were incorporated into their new looks. 

The zoo includes several attractions that could stand alone. One is the aquarium building, which hosts enough creatures and galleries to fill an hour. A sea turtle with paralyzed rear fins propels through the tank solely by her front fins. Numerous small sharks cruise the tanks – leopard sharks, bonnethead sharks, and nurse sharks. The bright silver scales of a tarpon glimmer. A sturgeon moves slowly, barbed face hiding a gentle demeanor. 

No aquarium attraction draws as much attention as the saltwater touch pool, where rays, skates, and other fish cruise around. I bumped a few rays’ heads and grazed fingers on their squishy backs. 

Bonnet head shark

 

Sturgeon

Japanese crabs in the dark

But the giant Japanese spider crabs break out furthest from the other exhibits. Giant crabs move silently in a darkened tank. They are conserved in Japanese waters to prevent overfishing. With their oversized limbs they move methodically across their tank, alien and unknowable. Crustaceans don’t often get a spotlight, but these crabs deserved their large, delicately lit tank. 

The zoo’s other standalone is The ProMedica Museum of Natural History, founded as the Toledo Science Museum. It’s a stately WPA building, with taxidermied remains of numerous animals spread across two floors and a rainforest exhibit we ran out of time to visit. 

Reconstructions of extinct Ice Age species tower on the main floor, from the short-faced bear to the giant sloth to Irish elk. One gallery gives visitors an ant’s eye view, with mushrooms, toads and other ground coverings pushed to massive proportions. 

Walking through this gallery, I spotted another touch pool in a distant chamber. This pool had no line and no visitors. I washed my hands and dipped my fingers into the freshwater, hoping to run them along the back of a sturgeon. 

More than a dozen sturgeon cut through the pool. They favor the pool bottom and did not make touching easy. I caught of the backs of a few larger ones. Bony fish is no joke, as my fingers traced their vertebrae down to the tail. 

Sturgeon touch pool

 The most recent WPA building to receive an overhaul was the Reptile building. The stone and brick core of the original building remains, but the Toledo Zoo has refreshed the exhibits with steel and glass, giving the animals more room to move. Viewing areas also displayed the American alligators and a separate pool for a massive saltwater crocodile estimated at 60 years old. Along with its eyes and snout above the water, the pool viewing window revealed its armored tail.  

Dwarf caiman

But the smallest member of the crocodilian family stuck with me most. A dwarf caiman occupied a much smaller exhibit than its cousins. They tend to top out at five to six feet, and sport bony plates across their body that prevent them from being easy prey. They are a keystone species across much of South America, including the Orinoco and Amazon watersheds, their presence the indicator of a healthy ecosystem. In a zoo where no one could see everything in one visit, the little crocodiles and sturgeon pool are the things that stuck most with me. 

The last stops spotlighted the zoo stalwarts, the animals that make a visit incomplete if we don’t see them. The African elephants leisurely grazed in their yard, a calf following its mother and sometimes hiding beneath her legs. Tigers hid in the midday heat, as the takins seemed unfazed by the 90-degree afternoon despite their Himalayan roots. 

Bears have no trouble retreating to the water when the heat grows too strong. A trio of brown bears splashed and lounged in their exhibit’s pool. The signs identified one as a Kodiak bear. The Kodiak subspecies can grow twice as large as standard brown bears, even as large as polar bears. It was not hard to figure out which one hailed from the Alaskan island, as its head was way bigger the other three brown/grizzly bears. 

Unlike the solitary polar bear on the zoo’s other side, the brown bears didn’t seem to mind each other as the water warded off the heat. 

Just like that, three hours breezed by, the Toledo Zoo’s almost limitless animal encounters filling every second.

Snapshot of the Great Lakes

 

Seated at the western end of Lake Erie, Toledo seemed the right spot for the National Museum of the Great Lakes. 

Like many Great Lakes ports, the riverbanks of Toledo are still heavily industrial in spots. The city returned some of the old industrial area to parkland, but the history of commerce and travel across the region gets chronicled at the National Museum of the Great Lakes. Tracing the history back to Native trade across these waters, the stylish museum sits adjacent to two historic vessels are permanently docked on the Maumee River’s east bank. 

Poor air quality made it hard to fully appreciate the ships. We took the staff’s advice and viewed them first before delving into the museum. 

The museum includes summertime access to the SS Col. James M. Schoonmaker, a lake freighter that stayed in service for nearly 70 years, and the Great Lakes Towing Co. tug Ohio. The inside of the Schoonmaker offers a glimpse at the freighter’s immense cargo holds, which could host coal, grains or other materials. The engine room is a from a different time and different world, and one can only imagine the sweaty work involved to keep the ship running. 

The crew chambers were spartan, with a kitchen not unlike a diner, while the officers dining hall felt straight from a high-end restaurant. The aft of the ship hosted quarters and a wooden parlor for the shipping barons, which were elegant and unlike everything else on the Schoonmaker. Life might have been hard for the crew, but not the captains of industry. 

After walking the deck, engine room, bridge, and parlors of the Schoonmaker, we breezed through the tug Ohio. 

There’s a whole history of lake travel lost to the 21 century. Passenger ships were regular until the business grew unprofitable from car and air competition in the 1960s. Perhaps the last shipping baron of note was George Steinbrenner, better known these days as the longtime owner of the New York Yankees. 

You can’t get into the lore of the Great Lakes without the Edmund Fitzgerald. The museum knew this well. 

In one of the crew chambers of the Schoonmaker, the lyrics Gordon Lightfoot’s seminal song about the Great Lakes’ most famous wreck are framed on the wall, which seemed appropriate. It was a ship of an earlier generation, but one that would have faced the rough Great Lakes weather that arrived with November. Lightfoot took immediate inspiration from the tragedy of the largest ship to sink on the Great Lakes, breaking in two and sinking to the bottom of Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, claiming all 29 men aboard. 

What did surprise me were the artifacts from the actual Edmund Fitzgerald exhibited in the museum. These times bobbed up from the wreckage site, some 500 feet below the surface. The inflatable lifeboats deployed automatically due to building water pressure as the ship sank. 

Freighters still ply the Great Lakes, but the museum made me wish that passenger ships still did. I know little of Lake Erie’s north shore outside of the border crossings on either end. Even a ferry from Cleveland to the Canadian side always felt like an omission. 

Sure, no major population center awaits just over the horizon in Ontario, but it felt like a good dream. After all, the Great Lakes should not be the sole dominion of giant freighters and those who can afford their own boats. 

The other side of the lake

From the deck of the SS Schoonmaker

 

Downtown mural

Tallest building and open drawbridge

No travel barrier exists along the Lake Erie shore between Toledo and Cleveland. Anyone can just follow the roads west. 

But Toledo was just an abstraction to me. Two hours down the Ohio Turnpike or Ohio Route 2 was too far and never once considered a travel destination. The furthest point west my family traveled in Ohio was Cedar Point. The closest I came was a 2002 Put-in-Bay trip, and several trips north on I-75 toward Detroit or Ontario. Passing on the Ohio Turnpike doesn’t count since it cuts south of the city. 

Meg hails from Toledo, as do several generations of her family. In late July, I finally stopped in The Glass City. The small but sturdy skyline of Ohio’s fourth-largest city lies on the Maumee River at Lake Erie’s west corner, surrounded by farmland once occupied by the Great Black Swamp (small patches have been restored or preserved). 

The drive up from Cincinnati would wait till the Sunday drive home. We crossed rhe Ohio at Louisville and headed up to Indianapolis then a diagonal to Fort Wayne. We crossed the same farm country that occupies most of Ohio west of Columbus. Red-roofed barns and wide-porched farmhouses sat at the edge of fields, properties broken by little thatches of forest. A congregation of Amish and/or Mennonites in their traditional clothing sat at a truck stop due to some mechanical problem on their bus. 

 But the picturesque farm country quickly grew hard to enjoy let alone see as smoke blotted out the sun. I didn’t count on Toledo having the worst air quality in the country during our visit. The weather app might call it fog, but it’s smoke. 

No fire appeared. Where is the fire, you might wonder? It sure wasn’t local. The fire comes from one thousand miles away, raging in the ancient forests of north Ontario. A series of strong winds ushered it south. Politicians of a certain stripe were quick to criticize Canada and slow to mention climate change. 

Perhaps taking care of the wildfires ravaging the west would be a more prudent. Eighty miles from my Colorado home a cadre of Canadian firefighters and equipment have battled one fire after another. 

I never experienced anything like that smoke on the Great Lakes before. With the root causes of the fires unlikely to end, I expect it might be the first of many smoke alerts. 

But back to Toledo. In some ways, it felt like Cleveland. Strong institutions, well forested, some rundown areas (although it was often block to block).  

Toledo can claim one of the best-named teams in minor-league baseball – the Toledo Mud Hens, which goes back to 1896. The Detroit Tigers affiliate plays in a nice downtown ballpark surrounded by a revitalizing warehouse district. 

We had dinner at Quenched and Tempered, a sleek but unpretentious taproom across the street from the ballpark. Less than 20 minutes before game time, the team cancelled the Friday game on account of air quality. The sports culture ties into Michigan more than Ohio. Ohio State and Cleveland sports fans are secondary to University of Michigan and Detroit support. Before the Mud Hens games, Tigers gear was everywhere. 

Toledo has stayed vibrant through another Michigan connection, the auto industry. Toledo remains the headquarters for the Jeep brand, with Jeep Wranglers still constructed at a Toledo-based plant. It still underwent a major population drop, but it was also sturdier. You could see the blocks that fell into disrepair, but not necessarily whole neighborhoods. Sometimes vibrancy changed block to block. 

The city’s population has not grown since the 1960s, but it never grew as large as Detroit or Cleveland. Areas with a suburban feel stand only a few miles from downtown. Once heavy on German and Irish immigrants, it has a heavy Eastern European influence (as seen with Tony Packos, a local dining institution). 

When the smoke cleared, I got a better view. Despite its industrial origins, the city has shifted toward riverfront parks and paths. The small skyline finally broke out. Industry has not been moved away, not with the advantages of Lake Erie shipping so close, but it seems to do well. 

Maybe the smaller scale is appealing in middle age or whatever I qualify as now. Still, I can’t help but see the bones of any Rust Belt town and know they are sturdy. This one just anchors a different part of the lake. 

Let's try it with a little less smoke next time.

The commute nears its end

Heading down Monument Hill, July 2026

 

Rising over Monument Hill on any dark morning, and the road traverses a stark, beautiful dreamworld. 

On the high plain between Denver and Colorado Springs, a number of mesas and buttes punch through the pre-dawn no matter the skies that frame them. 

Most commute days start in total darkness, when Colorado Springs feels fast asleep. Only in months on either side of the summer solstice do I depart with daylight. 

The highway tells a different story, although traffic ebbs and flows, usually moving at the speed limit or faster. There are trucks, but not an abundance. 

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, RVs and trailers grow thick as tourists descend upon the Front Range. In May, the volume noticeably creeps higher, as the occasional RV grows into several dozen between South Metro and Colorado Springs. 

But crossing the pass atop County Line Road is the moment when I feel like a western commute. Nothing can rival that sight. Monument Hill is one of Colorado’s lowest passes, but it is a magnet for the worst weather on I-25, so I tend to stay home on bad weather days. 

Headed up the hill

North of the pass, the road traverses southern Douglas County, which is largely undeveloped with a few small towns, county parks, and large farms/ranches. Snow coats these hills far longer than anything in Colorado Springs or Castle Rock. Several ponds in the Greenland area host numerous water fowl. One morning I counted six heron dipping their beaks in search of breakfast.  

The ponds could draw some larger visitors in the future. The state built a wildlife overpass around Greenland. Several elk and deer have already been spotted on trail cameras. 

The highway is an engineering marvel, crossing foothills and craggy land before straightening near Larkspur. Sometimes I take the toll lanes coming home; I have learned where the traffic bogs down for no reason, and $2 for 10-plus miles is worth not dealing with that foolishness. 

Nature has one last flourish to deliver.  Every commute, I look for ripples from the beaver pond on the west flank of one mesa. The lodge is unmistakable, and the surface freezes solid in winter. But I have yet to see evidence of the lodge’s builder in that quaint pond. 

The mesas run up to Castle Rock – the town’s namesake is one of them. The Rockies become more visible here. Civilization creeps in at Castle Rock, a booming suburb with endless rows of apartment buildings designed to be as architecturally uninteresting as possible. 

Centennial office site, 1950s (Source unknown)

 With construction of a new exit south of Castle Rock, the industry runs thick. In the zone sit numerous flatbeds with steel beams waiting for installation during the night closures I just miss. The road comes with two main challenges – getting to work before sunrise, when the blinding rays enter the morning, and traffic, which gets thick around 7:30. 

Traffic backs up for 470, Denver’s outer loop, and I have to tolerate it; the County Line Road exit lies just off a few hundred feet north. Inattentive drivers always sit in the “exit only” lanes for County Line till the last second. 

Apocalyptic IKEA view, August 2023

I park with the blue bulk of IKEA's south Denver store across the parking lot. I have walked for breakfast regularly, and inevitably left with handfuls of household items I didn't know I needed.  Consider what an ordeal most people face just to visit IKEA, I felt lucky to have it so close. 

I try to paint the drive with minimal strokes for people at work so no one realizes I actually enjoy it under the right circumstances. It’s an album-length drive that can move swiftly at those hours. 

Fifty-five miles is no quick distance, and often the worst of American driving is on full display. But pieces of the commute present beauty every time. 

Three years later, the end of the commute looms. Work situations have changed – my division is getting sold off, and I’m the only employee of that division in Denver. 

Springtime office visit view, 2025

Wintertime office view, 2024

 By the end of 2026, I will bid goodbye to the commute. One last drive south with a box of personal items from my Denver desk. When I travel north, I will remember the commute, but it won’t be a routine anymore, just muscle memory. 

Maybe I will find another job in South Metro Denver. Maybe I’ll move to Denver for job further up. But the latter means the commute of soft morning light on the mesas won’t resume. 

Homeward bound, June 2023

The relentless fire (Aspen Acres edition)

A dry, warm winter made the brutal 2026 fire season a certainty. In climate this dry, it takes nothing – spark from a blown tire, errant fireworks, a lightning strike, or a tossed cigarette can start an inferno. 

Little fires have popped up since late winter. One burned near the edge of Fort Carson in April. But the big fires are just getting started. A fire jumped the Utah-Colorado border and took the lives of three firefighters dropped off in a remote area to carve a fire break. A fire in the San Juan Mountains burns between Ouray and Ridgeway. 

But almost daily I see the distant smoke rising from the Wet Mountains, where the Aspen Acres Fire is only slightly contained. The Aspen Acres Fire has raged for two weeks and pushed past 100,000 acres, making it one of the state’s biggest fires ever. The force fighting Aspen Acres has grown to more than 1,600 people. If the fire spreads beyond Wetmore, the next threatened place becomes Florence, and the complex of federal prisons on its west edge that includes the ADX Supermax, home to El Chapo and every criminal with “bomber” in their nicknames. All those people on the ground have been digging earth to make firebreaks to slow the fire and increase containment. 

This fire will be forever linked to the small community of Beulah Valley. Driving 20 miles across the rangeland west of Pueblo gives no indication that Beulah lies ahead until the road twists down into the beautiful, forested valley. Above it lies the Wet Mountains, which generally receive substantial moisture despite being in the 12,000-foot range. Night skies run as dark as it gets – one night several years ago, I was content to watch the Milky Way from the middle of Pine Drive, no artificial light anywhere near me. 

The Beulah Volunteer Fire Department have been heroes here, getting residents evacuated and trying to minimize impact on the town, even as some firefighters lost their own homes. In Colorado, there are few mountain spots where a person of middle-class means can live anymore. In some places the super-rich (Aspen, Wyoming’s Jackson) have been pushing out the merely rich. In others, a modest two-bedroom house might surpass $1 million, and an efficiency apartment would be priced beyond the income of any local service worker. 

Beulah is among the few that feels more like a community, where everybody knows each other. People I know host a community dinner for more than 200 people every June. They celebrate other community meals together, including Thanksgiving. 

This year, July has brought the Aspen Acres Fire to Beulah. The fire reached Beulah quickly and has threatened the towns of Wetmore and Rye, also under evacuation. The national forest land in the Wet Mountains is remote with few access roads, giving the fire room to burn. While no lives have been lost, the evacuation order still holds. Barns at the state fairgrounds in Pueblo are full of evacuated livestock. 

Thus far, Beulah has taken the brunt of the damage. A drone tour from the Pueblo County sheriff shows the damage (watch here, but be warned, it’s tough). At first it seems like the Beulah has not been hard hit. The pine forests seem intact in many places. But a closer look reveals the horrible truth – piles of white ash between the trees are former houses. More than 200 homes in Beulah were destroyed. 

This fire forms a sad epilogue to Zoofari. I don’t know how many of those friendly folk are now homeless, but I know some are. In their company, I went from eating alone to being surrounded by friends in a few short minutes. The lady who saw me by myself and introduced me to them might have lost her house. 

Most early images from the Wet Mountains come from high above or the occasional active trail camera that has not been consumed by the wave of fire. As containment has gradually grown above 60 percent, the toll has become clearer, even as the fire still rages to the southwest of Colorado Springs. 

The best-known place in the fire zone is Bishop’s Castle, the labor of love constructed in this wilderness over five decades by one dogged man, the work now continued by his family. While the castle looks sturdy, fire would expose how much wood went into its construction. It appears as if the castle has not been consumed. Until the fire is out, there is still risk, as the castle sits in the evacuation zone. 

Other popular facilities have not had such luck. The Pueblo Mountain Park lost all its facilities, with only the stone walls of the lodge remaining, and all 2026 events cancelled. 

All of it brings me back to Zoofari. I spend most my night in the company of Beulah residents. Pretty much everyone from dinner was from there. Some of those new friends undoubtedly lost their homes. The early images of the town show home One could only imagine the horror. 

Just a week after a fun evening, the world gets turned upside with evacuations and houses scoured from the landscape. Beulah will rebuild, but it will be a hard road for those who lost everything to a mammoth fire.

Forgotten remembrance: 20 years of Don’t Call Me Ishmael

I missed my own anniversary. 

Sometime around Memorial Day 2006, I noticed everyone I knew had a blog of some sort. What else could I do but try my own hand at that game. I wrote two posts after driving home from a campout and attending the Worthington Memorial Day parade. It was an outlet to my opinion column, a place to write with less restraint. 

On Memorial Day 2026, I never gave though to the blog-a-versary. Only in July, remembering a favorite summer some 20 years ago, did I realize the occasion had not been marked. The writing has changed over the past two decades, with travel the dominant topic, along with hiking, local exploration, and music. Some of those old posts are downright embarrassing, but I leave them up, letting it serve more as a diary than a grand repository of thought. 

Across thoseyears, I accumulated 1,528 posts. That averages to 76 posts a year, although that is skewed due to the one year when I managed 250 posts. I still don't know how that happened, although the posts skewed shorter in those days. I tend to write longer now, in search of something more qualitative or thoughtful. I don't always accomplish that, but the blog's half-dozen regular readers have not complained. 

Twenty years later, I still aim for 50 posts a year. I’d like to think the writing might still be ongoing as I approach 70 two decades from now. As long as I still enjoy it, the blog will be there in some form. 

The readers have never been there and if I did it for validation alone, it would have not survived 2006. But it has lasted through three times, two multi-state moves, four cats in the house, one significant other in the house, and gives me an outlet I sorely need most days.

A moment away at 2026 Zoofari

Will squeeze through rails for crunchy produce

I had no idea what would unfold at the Pueblo Zoo on the summer solstice. I only know it fell on Pueblo’s hottest day yet in 2026. The 100-degree afternoon left me wondering if an outdoor event was a big mistake. 

I grabbed a hotel in Pueblo West, so I did not have to trek home that night. Before I got into some business casual clothes, I took the coldest shower I could stand. 

Quinn is being watched. 

Zoofari is a more upscale event than most the zoo offers - $150 a head, no one under 21. Before I bought the ticket, I did wonder if it were too upscale for me, having rarely worn slacks since the pandemic. For once the zoo had a dress code – no jeans or T-shirts. I showed up with a golf shirt and slacks, but nice shorts in the car. 

Upon seeing numerous men wearing shorts get in line, I returned to the car and went with the shorts. No one minded. This wasn’t Brew at the Zoo, and I appreciated that. But I also appreciated not having to swelter in those slacks. 

Before serving dinner, Zoofari hosts a series of animal close-ups. Being indoors made the penguin encounter an easy place to begin. The zoo has 10 penguins, including a chick hatched in early 2026. The keeper brought out Quinn. 

Before they could get the door closed behind Quinn, two other penguins, including Duckie, attempted to force their way through the door. It’s an exhibit full of quirky personalities. I was hoping for Duckie, since he became a celebrity when he made it deep into a national March Madness competition of zoo penguins, only losing to a young penguin chick from the Indianapolis Zoo (a market 15 times the size of Pueblo). 

Quinn surveying the room. 

But Quinn was quite the personable fellow as well. The zookeeper brought Quinn into a penned observation area, where he explored his space and acquiesced to gentle pets from onlookers. His exhibit-mates took to the water and for a while he watched them. The feathers were far softer than I expected, and not rubbery at all for a seafaring creature. Quinn is nine, old for an African penguin in the wild due to predation, but he lives in a habitat with a 30-year-old African penguin, so age is just a number. 

Some teen volunteers showed off other animals in the EcoCenter. A pair of domesticated ferrets roamed a pen, eager to check out some tunnels in the enclosure. Then I need to feel the shell of the turtle exploring another pen. 

The sun dropped enough that the outside animal encounter was bearable. Two exotic cattle came out for crunchy snacks. One cattle, a shaggy Highlands breed, preferred carrots, the other was particular to apples. They could squeeze their heads through the fence up to their horns and went as far as they could after they finished each round. 

The third encounter was at the zoo's veterinary center, which is not normally open to the public. Those areas include the hay barn, the oldest structure at the zoo, another of the august stone structures that rose under the Works Progress Administration. The area supervisor and the zoo veterinarian took us through the pristine facility. 

Pueblo Zoo does not have any megafauna – giraffes, elephants, rhinos – so most animals can be examined in their facility. The bison get exams in their yard because it’s too hard to move them if sedated (bulls run 3,000 pounds). They had one small animal in an incubator – she had been rejected by her mother, but the zoo staff were letting her age here so she could eventually rejoin the enclosure after an introduction. Out of respect for the zoo, I won’t say who was in the incubator, as they also asked me to keep photos off social media (and this blog would count). 

Instead of a buffet, they had food from three food trucks, plus an open bar. I drank water and mocktails whenever the chance presented. On a full stomach, sangria seemed too fitting on this triple-digit night. For entertainment, the night included acrobats twisting through metal rings attached to the roof of the pavilion, and an Americana band. 

I have always been partial to seeing places outside of typical hours. As the live auction rattled by, I excused myself for a last pass through the zoo on the longest day of the year. The pelicans bedded down on the shores of the moat that surrounds the lemur’s outdoor island. The goats, cattle, and sheep kept grazing, unfazed by fading daylight. Inside the EcoCenter, the penguins congregated toward their nesting nooks.  

Drowsy pelicans.

Penguins winding down. 

Everyone around African Adventure had called it a day. The lions had left their yard for the off-exhibit area. Most animals with indoor spaces had adjourned for the night. I did not blame them. Even with the sun nearly set, the heat did not really relent. We were still in the low nineties as twilight approached. I hoped the late hour might be ripe for an appearance by one creature I have never seen at the Pueblo Zoo, their ringtail. A Southwest raccoon relative, they are highly nocturnal, and twilight still proved too early to catch any glimpse of him. I will keep hoping to spot him. 

At that point I needed a break from auction watching. The night ended with a live auction full of items far out of my price range, but I had designs on a few silent auction items. 

The animal print paintings made by actual animals fit a theme in my living room. Years ago in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, I purchased a painting of grizzly paw prints painted by the Riverside Discovery Center’s resident bear, Smokey. 

The Zoofari silent auctions included a handful of paintings from resident animals – one from Ducky the African penguin, one with prints from each member of a new penguin family, and a nose print from their bull bison C.J. I watch them religiously all night but fell behind as both penguin paintings soared above my maximum. The bison nose print bidding slow and I pounced and $105 proved the high bid. 

My major prize. 

As the night wound up, I walked out with my new bison art plus an appreciation for how Pueblo could come out for one of its venerable institutions. While waiting for my item, I had a good conversation with a board member about the ups and downs of the Pueblo Zoo, about how its staff carves out out a community place on a shoestring budget. In a night where almost every conversation was with a stranger, it felt right to have one more before I hit the road. 

The zoo holds its own, caring for two hundred species that liven up its corner of City Park. Plus, its bull bison painted a pretty nice nose print.