Gail’s cousin, a Colorado native, extended the gracious invitation over dinner on Thursday to drive us up into the mountains. Gail accepted and it was settled that he would pick Gail and I up at 6:30am on Saturday.
We headed up I70 to Mount Evans (a 14000 peak) with great anticipation. On the way out, we spied 4 cow elk out on a hillside. Very exciting. The route our guide took was popular with weekend bikers, so we passed many a folk peddling hard to their destination. Clouds were threatening, and our guide was concerned we would not have a good view. However, the weather held and while not ‘crystal clear’ spectacular, it was still awe inspiring. We huffed and puffed our way up to the very tippy-top and spent quite a bit of time marveling at the view. A treat indeed for this “flat-lander”.
On our return trip, our gracious guide decided we needed to see Red Rocks amphitheater and so took us down and around a different way than whence we came. What and incredibly cool drive. I would dearly have loved to have spent a whole day climbing around the mountains, hiking and picnicking and exploring. I will have to make a point of coming back.
Anyway, Red Rocks is a well known natural amphitheater that performers of all varieties have been visiting for decades. I would love sometime to actually hear a performance here, with the lights of Denver off in the distance in the evening. Our guide said it is quite worth it.
The afternoon was spent back at the convention (it’s what I was there for after all!) and attended:
Charles Stross Reads
He selected bits from his forthcoming book, Saturns Children. His late-period-Heinlein-tribute. That didn’t take the full time so I bipped into:
Rick Sternback’s (Artist GoH) Slideshow. I stuck around for:
Best Convention Panel Ever
Survey says if you put these people on a panel, you don’t need to do anything else. It was Connie Willis, Joe Haldeman and Mike Resnick. And one other fellow who I don’t remember. While I don’t know if it was necessarily the best panel ever, it was pretty darn good.
Choosing Religion as a Setting for a Novel
“Using religionas a defining element in world building. Integrating it into a believable belief system. Using it as a key element of a story.” I chose this panel because I thought the panel members would be interesting, however, this ended up in the room “of hard hearing”, the questions posed to the panel were bleh and I fell asleep. I was tired...
After this I met up with Gail and we had dinner at the Rialto Café. This was recommended, but I think we were disappointed (and super tired). Prices ranged from reasonable (for a BLT) to rather steep for an entre. From here we met up with Phyllis and found a seat for the Hugo awards. I’ll post those separately tomorrow.
Day 4 - exhilarating, tiring.
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The other fellow was David Zindell, I believe.
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