For those suffering from excessive heat this time of year... might I suggest a trip to the mountains of Colorado? This was taken the day before they got another snow storm!
San Juan Mountains, Colorado
And if you don't go for the weather, perhaps the scenery...
Ouray, Colorado
San Juan Mountains, Colorado
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado
"Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain." ~ Jack Kerouac
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Day 6
My next stop was just a few hours north, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Unfortunately, they were all booked up for camping, so I stayed at the local KOA, which consists of a bunch of people sitting outside their camper, watching you. I booked here specifically because they had a pool, which is really great physical therapy for most people with a connective tissue disorder. So far on this trip, my health has held up generally well; I definitely can attribute being able to do this at all to a medication I got on in May. For the last few years, I have been on any number of pain medicines and have had absolutely none of them be affective whatsoever (I’m lookin’ at you, emergency room morphine!) I may as well have been eating Smarties. This isn’t all together uncommon with hEDS/HSD; most people either have absorbency/metabolism issues that render certain medicines useless, and/or they are prescribed ineffective medicines because a lot of doctors know very little about it. This medicine that’s made a world of difference for me, unfortunately has some draw backs/side effects that can be devastating at times. In fact, just a few weeks ago they landed me in the emergency room where they told me I had a viral infection in my abdomen or bowels and couldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t for another week my PCP casually and easily knew it was a side effect of my new meds. Honestly, I can’t get off of them at this point. This trip wouldn’t be possible. Do you choose evil or some evil?
So, these few days of the trip have been like Fear and Loathing in Colorado; driving around poppin’ anti-diarrheal and pain meds, swerving around suicidal marmots. Black Canyon of the Gunnison surprised me – it is stunning! Deep and dark, it’s narrow at the bottom, jagged throughout, and wide at the top. The sound of the river from the rim is impressive knowing you’re thousands of feet above it. The walls fall an average of 95 feet per mile, meaning at the bottom, where the Gunnison River cuts through creating the canyon, the walls at The Narrows are only 40 feet wide. This dramatic canyon is a hidden gem of the park service. I heard a ranger say she hopes it stay that way, and I couldn’t agree more.
Shout out to Ranger Randy, who I spoke with for a while. He’s worked at over 20 parks in his time and was just as friendly as can be. I love meeting a ranger who really, truly cares about what they do. With Randy, I earned my Junior Ranger Badge!
This one is dedicated to Husband, who doesn’t like to be on the internet. We are coming up on our anniversary of 20 years together, 15 years married. He has unabashedly supported my fundraiser; in fact, pretty much unabashedly supports everything I do (except that time he didn’t think I could build a full blown Skeksis Halloween costume from The Dark Crystal in 21 days. Ha, proved ya wrong, buuuuddy. Don’t tell me what I can’t do!). So, thanks for being the very best thing in the world and being the most massive support through this rocky chronic illness journey I’ve been on. I literally couldn’t have done it without you.
I did a few hikes to various over looks, but it was getting hot so I couldn’t do longer hikes. Heat intolerance is a real jerk. But the views were amazing!
Since I couldn’t do any long hikes in the heat, I decided to head to the Museum of the Mountain West down the road, outside of the park. When Richard Fike was just 4 years old, he collected his first memorabilia; a clock which you can see at the museum. When he was only 8, he opened his first museum in his parent’s guest room.
He continued gathering artifacts as he became an archeologist focusing on items excavated from outhouses. This was interesting because I’ve studied the Wild West and the Victorian Age a lot as an author, and I never considered how people threw things away; I assumed they burned them, but many just through stuff into the outhouse pit.
His extreme and unmatched dedication to collecting is beyond evident in his museum, founded in 1997. The indoor portion is impeccable; a collection like nothing I’ve seen, and painstakingly detailed in its exhibition. I’ve always wanted a pair of Victorian shoes, and I suppose I’ve never been able to find any because Fike has them all in his museum.
There is a massive outdoor portion akin to Old Trail Town and Four Mile Town, though of higher quality. The saloon is a standout room, as well as the house.
Thanks to modern medicine, I decided I should try to get one more Junior Ranger badge in at Curecanti National Recreation Area, east of the canyon. The Gunnison River cuts through creating manmade lakes backed by painted desert hills and pinnacles. The ranger there was the opposite of Ranger Randy, and my badge will have to be mailed to me.
Preemptively, I dedicate this badge we can’t quite see yet to the donors who have chosen to remain anonymous. You may be strangers, you may be people close to me that I love dearly, but you have really accounted for so much of my total so far. Thank you, for your kindness that goes silent through the wires. The Ehlers-Danlos Society recently made a $400,000 donation to fund the genetic research for hEDS. When I saw that, that’s when I knew I wanted to try to raise funds for them somehow; to be a part of the most historic move for this condition. There are 13 types of EDS, and Hypermobile type (hEDS/HSD) is the ONLY one without an understood genetic marker. This research, being done in the Carolina’s, has cracked the edge of the code for the first time in history. This means with more funding and research the genetic markers can be found to detect it as early as in the womb. People will not have to wait 50 years for a diagnosis anymore! So, anonymous donors, your money is SO important to reducing future suffering.
Thank you, everyone. Talk to you soon,
Haylan
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