We returned home from Colorado Springs feeling like we left our hearts. Although we are back to our familiar corners where we can stretch out our giant paws and scratch our furniture and not worry about the mess we make, Cam and I feel like we belonged more to Colorado Springs. We’ve returned to Sacramento only to breathe unhealthy air and suffer sniffles and sneezes throughout the day. We’re back to endure eternal rush hour in sweltering heat and rude drivers on the verge of road rage.
If you have never been to Colorado Springs, consider this a giant billboard urging you to visit. The mountains are so close, you can see them while lying flat on the ground. The occasional rains on the mountains brings such cool breezes, there is no need for A.C. If you are an avid cyclist, Colorado is probably the best place to bike. Parts of the interstate even have dedicated bike-lanes!! If you have ten things to do at ten different places, you can get them done in one day and still have time to do ten more. That’s because there’s practically no traffic there – the highways are big and wide with multiple lanes and so few cars. You can drive from metropolitan high rises to rustic old western saloons within 30 minutes. And the air is so clean. Cam’s persistent dry cough disappeared within a couple days of getting there, and my mysterious throat allergy mysteriously vanished. But the thing I love the most about Colorado is the beauty of it all. There are rocks there that are so red and orange you wonder if some interplanetary traveler put them there.
But, like all things in life…there is an existing dark side to this bright colorful state. Within its square boundaries, Colorado houses many gun-toting, NRA-touting, Bush-loving, right-wing conservative yahoos. It is a red state afterall. With 9 electoral votes, it has voted for the RED team 9 times out of the past 10 presidential elections. Certainly, it is a foreboding state for a blue girl like me. But for this coming election, polls say it is neither blue nor red. In fact it is a swing-state WHITE (why not purple???) Maybe Cam and I should go there to tip the balance a little. Cam did suggest that the next time we visit, we should go to James Dobson’s Focus on the Family Visitor Center and post Obama/Biden stickers on the bathroom stalls.
It really doesn’t matter to us that Colorado is red or blue or purple. What matters is that there are so many things there that we love. And as we got ready to leave, we often wondered why we couldn’t just stay.
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