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Colorado’s Seasonal Transformation
While working in the Aurora, Colorado area, I discovered the Star K Ranch open space park. The name “Star K” comes from what the property used to be called, the “Stark Ranch”, owned by the Stark family. In fact the old family ranch house how houses the Morrison Nature Center. The park provides a curated…
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Exploring Colorado Hinterlands
In September and October of 2019 I was in the Aurora, Colorado area for work. Some of that time required me staying in town over weekends, so during that time I explored places in the Colorado hinterlands that one might overlook. One such place is the Paint Mines Interpretive Park, about an hour and a…
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Hiking the Great Wall (Day 2)
I woke up for the second day of hiking the Great Wall to a very warm, wet day. The rain was steady and drenching as we drove to the trailhead on highway X516, between Caozhazi and Hualougou, about mile due east as the crow flies from the Jinshanling Great Wall Tourist Area. This tourist area…
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Hiking the Great Wall (Day 1)
The real reason for my trip to Beijing was not to bicycle around the city – that was an artifact of scheduling constraints for what I really wanted to do: hike a remote section of the Great Wall of China. Note that I said “a remote section”; what I wanted to avoid was the Badaling…
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Bicycling in Beijing (day 2)
Into the Hutong My second day of Bicycling in Beijing was mostly through the back streets and alleys that make up the Beijing Hutong. Like my first day of bicycle touring in Beijing, I met my guide at the subway station. Today, my guide was “Emma” whose Chinese name is Xing Xing meaning “stars”. Here…
