Scribble World Travel Blog

Fire Fire! 4th Of July Fire In Salida Colorado

A group of us drove to the Bonanza Ghost Town to look at historic log houses for a while, admiring an old outhouse and other still-standing log structures from the time before indoor plumbing.  Then we drove into Salida, reserved a motel for the night and picked up some beer growlers at Amica’s for the campground party later on.

We drove back to our campground near Villa Grove where friends and family were already gathering.  Steve, the family chef, worked his magic making unbelievably delicious hamburgers and brauts.

We’re getting a free history lesson now from Bruce-learning about how Britain used to send it’s convicts to the U.S. as indentured servants, but after the Revolutionary War, they needed a new place to send them.  So Britain basically founded Australia for the sake of having somewhere to send it’s convicts.  It was primarily just men at first, but then after a while, they realized they needed to get some women over there too- so they started sending their prostitutes.  Wow, problem solved!

I played lots of volleyball, badminton, more volleyball, and horseshoe too. That was fun, for a while we split our volleyball teams up-Mothers against Non-Mothers. Despite a few twisted ankles, it was a hoot.

Meanwhile, back at the canopy, Chris had just gotten up the courage to play some guitar in front of the group, which is funny, because just then we had a couple newcomers to our party-a religious couple from the countryside! The guy whipped out his acoustic guitar and began playing and singing gospel music with his lady singing along.  Chris was a good sport and played along for the fun of it, and also got the guy interested in trying out some of his stuff too (the guy only knew gospel and some of our group’s party weren’t too keen to listen to gospel all night long)…

A heated little political debate started among certain group members and the girls tried to diffuse it by singing songs… with limited success.

We drove back into town again just in time to catch the 4th of July Salida, CO fireworks show.  The show ended abruptly after accidentally setting Tenderfoot Hill on fire!  They ignored the fire for a while, but as it grew more, it was getting a little out of hand and the fire department showed up.  We suspect it was a defective firework that didn’t go out soon enough-so it fell to the ground in multiple spots, and the dry grass caught fire in few different places.  Fortunately, the Salida fire department was prepared and the fire was soon under control, but the fireworks were discontinued.  We waited around for a while, just to be sure that was all, since they kind of skipped the finale, and ended after a few minutes of lighting just one at a time.  But that’s all there was and we got up to leave before getting run over by one of the many cars now driving through the field.  No complaints though, it was an interesting experience. I’ve never seen a hill get set on fire during the 4th of July before!