{"id":1622,"date":"2011-08-30T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1622"},"modified":"2012-01-12T12:23:45","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T11:23:45","slug":"1622","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1622","title":{"rendered":"Highway to the Sangre de Cristo mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"
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road to Sangre to Cristo mountains, Colorado<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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In Colorado to ride horses in the mountains.\u00a0<\/strong> One of the first times I’ve been in rural America – most of my previous visits have been to the cities – and I’m blown away by the scale and wilderness.\u00a0 The largely empty highways seem to go on forever.\u00a0 The mountains are chunkier than I’d expected as well \u2013 we\u2019re a stone’s throw from Pikes Peak at over 14,000 feet.<\/p>\n

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Even the apples are bigger in America. And there’s a reason for that.\u00a0 They grow a thousand times as many apples in the States as in Britain, but they prefer theirs to be \u2018meal-sized portions\u2019 – so they export the little ones to us, with our smaller appetites and orchards.<\/p>\n

We take a pack trip into the Sangre de Cristo mountains, south-west of Colorado Springs, and spend some nights at over 10,000 feet with nine wonderful horses who pick their way surefootedly across some difficult terrain.\u00a0 The forests are a rich mixture of aspen, spruce and pine, with wild raspberries growing underfoot and a few bears lurking around to add spice to the mix (we have a large Great Dane with us called Guinness, who is said to be more than a match for any bear, as they are notoriously afraid of dogs).<\/p>\n

I’m with my old friends Gary Ziegler, who has led trips with me in Peru many times, and his wife Amy Finger.\u00a0 Their Bear Basin Ranch lies on the old stagecoach route to Westcliffe, and has over 4000 acres of fine riding country to explore.<\/p>\n

By coincidence I’m just re-reading John Steinbeck’s excellent Travels with Charley<\/em>, in which he also travels across America with a large dog, who at one point barks at a bear.\u00a0 It’s almost exactly 50 years old, written in 1961, published 1962, almost his last book and a fine tribute to his love for the wide open spaces of America as well as a melancholy forecast of some of the changes he could see coming.\u00a0 It came out the year he won the Nobel Prize and was subtitled \u2018In Search Of America\u2019;\u00a0 perhaps helped by the Nobel Prize, it was a bestseller and deserved to be for the simple, direct approach he took to travel writing, and his perfect ear for American dialogue: \u00a0‘the Badlands of Missouri are like the work of an evil child…’<\/p>\n

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.     In Colorado to ride horses in the mountains.\u00a0 One of the first times I’ve been in rural America – most of my previous visits have been to the cities – and I’m blown away by the scale and wilderness.\u00a0 The largely empty highways seem to go on forever.\u00a0 The mountains are chunkier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,65,1,3],"tags":[96],"class_list":["post-1622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-literature","category-uncategorized","category-travel","tag-colorado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1622"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1779,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}