I like this place. Cherry Creek State Park is an oasis right next to Denver, in Aurora. It’s a few thousand acres of land and reservoir with bike trails, camping, wildlife, and yet very convenient to everything that the Denver area offers. Beautiful landscape. This is sort of Denver’s version of Central Park in Manhattan.

It’s odd to be able to hear the I-225 highway just outside the park, but in here see mule deer and great horned owls. We spotted both last night on our half-hour walk before sunset. I’ve never seen a great horned owl before, and its gentle hooting reminded me that I heard one in the pre-dawn hours the night before when we were camped in Nebraska. For me, that’s the best possible sound to hear outside my window in the night. I love owls.

Mule deer, on the other hand, strike me as sort of ugly. But they were thrillling to Eleanor and Emma anyway. And in this park, they are nearly tame. You can see them everywhere, and they don’t run away at the sight of humans.

It’s also peculiar to me to encounter a state park with full-hookup campsites. In Vermont, none of the state parks even have electricity. Here, the campsites are paved with pink concrete pull-throughs, and as a result it attracts the biggest of the big 5th wheels and Class A motorhomes. With our 30-foot Airstream we look positively tiny.

Today I must be realistic and work a full day, and probably also Saturday. Fortunately, we have excellent Internet and cell phone service here, and the post office is just 5 miles away. It’s a good spot to catch up on work.

If the weather holds (meaning, no snowstorms) we will stay through Halloween. We have friends all over this area and relatives in Colorado Springs. The time will pass quickly.

Where should we make our next stop? We need to be in Eugene OR by Nov 10, but between Nov 1 and Nov 10 our time is our own. We need a nice place to stop, with electricity, and relatively safe from snowstorms, between here and Eugene. Any suggestions?