One of the things that I love about Colorado are the ubiquitous "Share the Road" signs, reminding drivers and cyclists to play nice with each other. (We could have used a few of those signs in Brussels, although I suspect that the Belgians would have ignored them.)

Hikers, cyclists, and horse riders also share many of the dirt and paved trails out here, generally with good humor and manners worthy of 18th century European aristocrats. ("You first." "No, no, you. Please, I insist." "Why, thank you. Enjoy this beautiful day.")

When we hike at the base of the mountains, as we did yesterday, we sometimes see signs such as this one:

Which is how we found ourselves sharing the trail--which, after all, crossed their grazing lands--with a small herd of cattle. Hana completely ignored the cows--even the huge black one, who trotted right out in front of the dog's nose--and they paid no attention to her. Apparently even the livestock in Colorado are easygoing about sharing open space.

On a related note: Hana and I recently spotted some livestock just off the paved trail that winds through our neighborhood. I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, but sure enough, there they were, a trio that I can't stop thinking of as "Llamas for Obama."

Being flatlanders, we were awestruck by the tiny figures inching up the canyon walls. (When the only thing you ever "climbed" in Michigan was Sleeping Bear Dune, and your two-year-old son went up and down it twice in one morning, you realize that there is climbing, and there is CLIMBING.)

Eldorado Canyon also offers a bit of historical color. In the early 20th century, a luxury hotel perched at the edge of one of the cliffs. Although Crags Hotel burned to the ground less than five years after it opened, you can still see the skeleton of the main fireplace. You'll also see a lot of hikers standing around that fireplace scratching their heads, trying to figure out how anyone ever managed to haul guests and their luggage, much less building supplies, up the mountain.

More pictures from Eldorado Canyon:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/EldoradoCanyon

Given the price of gas, we were thrilled to discover White Ranch Park, just 20 minutes from home. From it, we could see downtown Denver (below), and, with binoculars, the distinctive roof of the Denver International Airport, which is about 35 miles away.

And it wasn't all about the panoramic views. Recent rains finally brought out a dizzing array of wildflowers.






High above the ranches in the foothills, a lone white horse grazed, like a creature from a fairy tale.

On an unseasonably hot Sunday morning, we hiked at Pella Crossing, near the town of Hygiene, once the home of a TB sanitarium. The "lakes" promised in our hiking guide proved to be smallish ponds (at least to our Great Lakes State eyes), but the view of Long's Peak, the only "fourteener"* in Rocky Mountain National Park, made up for the lack of scenery on the ground.

*"Fourteener" is a mountaineering term for peaks above 14,000 feet.

Walking our pack o' hounds at Michigan's Maybury State Park, we'd snort with laughter when we saw perfectly able-bodied people using trekking poles to traverse the flat, small (1,000 acres) park. "Must be training for Everest," we'd snicker.

Flash forward to Mother's Day 2008 in Rocky Mountain National Park: If someone had been hawking trekking poles on the trail to Dream Lake, we'd have overpaid for them in an instant.

We're still getting acclimated to the Colorado weather and topography. Temperatures swing 30-40 degrees from one day to the next. Even though we can see the snow on the biggest peaks from here in Arvada, well, I guessed we thought we wouldn't be up that high any time soon.

Things were pretty dry in the foothills of the park, where the mule deer, looking bedraggled in the transition from winter to summer coats, were grazing. Tourists were jumping out of their SUVs in T-shirts.

We'd decided to hike in to Dream Lake, elevation 9,900 feet. It's apparently a popular trail in the summer, but on Sunday, most tourists pulled up to the trailhead, saw the snowpack, and opted to just walk the few hundred feet to Bear Lake for their photo ops. (Note: Many tourists weren't dressed even for summer hiking; in the windy trailhead parking lot, one middle-aged woman with an updo kept moaning, "I just know I'm going to lose my hairpiece . . .")

Gillettes are hardy souls, though, and, by God, if, in the comfort of the foothills, we said were going to hike to Dream Lake, then we would do it, snowpack or no snowpack. The views were more than worth the effort. But trekking poles don't look nearly so silly in the Rockies as they do in suburban Detroit and would have made the going easier on the narrow spots with steep drop-offs. And those cool, high-tech snow shoes might have kept me from stepping knee-deep in snow when I moved aside to let some climbers pass us. I'm not sure we'll be pairing snow shoes with shorts, though, as one young fashion-conscious couple we passed did.

After living among the wondrous architectural diversity of Ixelles, it's been incredibly depressing to return to endless suburbs of identical homes and ubiquitous strip malls.

Fortunately for my sanity, the absence of man-made beauty is offset by natural beauty that is ridiculously easy to come by. The Denver metro area is blessed with miles of interconnecting trails through its urban neighborhoods and suburbs; the trails are bordered by green space, some of it substantial. We're two blocks from the Ralston Creek Trail. In our neighborhood, the creek opens into a small pond that attracts the usual mallards and Canadian geese, as well as more exotic passersby. A lone female bufflehead recently spent a few days there, looking like a stuffed toy among the bigger mallards. At dusk last night, a huge northern goshawk made us jump when it landed in a tree right in front of us as we were walking Hana. (We told her that the hawk had targeted her for dinner.)

For serious hiking, we can be in the Flatirons in less than half an hour. We haven't managed to spot a whole lot of wildlife there yet, although the Black Angus babies tottering around the nearby grazing fields on their spindly legs are way too adorable to end up as hamburger. At least the wildflowers are beginning to show themselves in the Flatirons, like this early--and, as of Sunday, only--bloomer in a huge field of wild iris, plants that are perfect miniatures of the iris in my Northville garden.