Fourthousanders

It's a new day, a new week. We're back from Denver. How strange I feel right now. Reality has been weird to me. But here I am, I'm not going to complain about it. Denver was nice, really nice. Our friends are great. They allowed us to stay at their house and we visited and checked out different places in Denver. We had some local pizza delivered, it was good. We had some Indian food that I actually finished for breakfast this morning. We visited Great Divide brewery, great brew there. We discovered the "gastropub", which was actually reasonably priced. They had some fantastic french fries there. We had no good coffee, disappointingly. I am impressed that Denver has no major river running though it. Am I mistaken? Well, there's the South Platte, which I'm guessing eventually runs into the Mississippi. Some Denverites are so conceded that they would say that the head of the Mississippi is in Denver. Oh my gosh, I was reading the local Denver magazine. It's called "5280". They are so proud to be exactly a mile high. How funny. For me, a mile high is not such an accomplishment. I was born in a hospital over 7,000 ft above sea level... or maybe a little lower or higher. I don't know the exact elevation of St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe. So when we were asked, "are you having altitude sickness" by a local who knew we were from New Mexico I had to laugh on the inside. I have never had altitude sickness...except for maybe one time when we were in Angelfire, NM, but I still blame the powdered donuts.

I have a point to prove to myself. Maybe I'm just sad that New Mexico is over-looked so many times. The truth is, much of New Mexico is covered in nice forests, maybe not Pacific Northwest forest, but great forests none-the-less. We have many tall mountains, and they are not all in the north. Sierra Blanca is in the southern part of the state and it's nearly a 12,000 ft peak. Colradoans are obsessed with their "fourteeners". Don't get me wrong, their mountains are big and impressive, but let's just consider the form of measurement the rest of the world uses for mountains. Everest is 8,848 m, McKinley is 6,194 m, Mt. Elbert (Colorado's highest) is 4,401 m and Wheeler Peak (New Mexico's highest) is 4,011 m. So our two state's highest points are both "fourthousanders". In fact, 390 metres is not that far of a distance when it comes to measuring mountains. So thanks, Colorado for attracting all of the Texans, we'll take Wolf Creek.