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Bev's Journal A New Page |
| 21 July 2003 Grape Creek RV Park Westcliffe, CO The town held its annual rodeo this past weekend – the Westcliffe Stampede. My first rodeo, but hopefully not the last. They have a lot of cowgirls participating these days - not just in barrel racing (which is traditionally a women's event) but in calf roping and other stuff that used to be just guys. Those girls can sure ride - makes me jealous - I did a little barrel racing when I was learning to ride, but no way could I gallop as fast as those girls (not and stay on anyway!) One of my favorite events was something they call ‘mutton-busting’ – it’s mainly for little kids, but can be hysterically funny. They put a rope bridle on a sheep, and then a little kid on the sheep’s back – kind of like bronco-busting for babies. One of the kids came out of the shoot riding backwards – he had a pretty good ride, too! |
| 16 July 2003 Grape Creek RV Park Westcliffe, CO We have decided to stay here for at least a month to check out Westcliffe and environs. The phone is being connected Friday – hooray! Finally, reliable internet access! Westcliffe is a town of about 700, situated in a county with a population of just 4000. For such a small town, Westcliffe has many amenities – a full-size grocery store, health food store, about a dozen restaurants, hardware store, and surprisingly, a performing arts center, the Jones theatre, which features not only first-run movies, but live theatre, both imported and homegrown. The town is situated in the Wet Mountain Valley, with the Wet Mts. on the east and the Sangre de Cristo range on the west—beautiful doesn’t begin to describe it. Outisde of town, the land is mostly large cattle ranches, although there are some smaller spreads. People here appear to be very motivated to preserve the character of the valley, and not let those large ranches get split up into ‘ranchettes’ when the ranchers get too old to carry on, and have no offspring interested in keeping up the family ranch. A number of these ranches have been bought up by a land conservancy outfit to prevent this from happening. A lot of the valley at the southern and eastern edges is part of the San Isabel National Forest. There’s even a wolf sanctuary somewhere up here. There’s no fast food in the valley, no chain stores, but a lot of homegrown businesses. We like the philosophy of the folks here. |
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| Sangre de Cristo Mountains, near Westcliffe, Colorado |
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| Sheriff Jobe and his posse leading the Westcliffe Stampede parade |