The first thing people in Houston would ask when we told them we were moving to Colorado, more specifically, to Salida, is why?

Texans are plenty familiar with CO.  Exhibit A:  Any ski resort in Summit County from December to March.  But Salida?  Not so much.  Mountain bikers know it because of the riding.  Fishermen and rafters know it for the river.  But beyond that rather small community of outdoor enthusiasts, Salida is fairly unknown outside the state.

Many of my co-workers in Houston couldn’t fathom moving from the city to a small town.  What will you do?   Won’t you be bored?   Houston is great for what it is, a big, sprawling, diverse stew of a city.   Like most big cities on any given day it has more to offer than you can possibly take in.  Want tacos for breakfast, barbeque for lunch, sushi for dinner?  No problem.  Baseball game Friday, concert Saturday, modern art Sunday?  Yep.  I’ve made some good friends and had some great times in Houston.

Also, I’ve noticed many people in the south are really funny when it comes to winter.  It seems like most people in Houston are either transplants from the Northeast or the Midwest who left because of the cold, gray winters or they’re native southerners who’d seen pictures and heard stories of those Northeast/Midwest winters and want nothing to do with them.  To the typical southerner, winter is a time of dread.  The dark, the cold, the snow.  Oh horror!  Why would anyone intentionally subject themselves to that?

Please, Brer Fox, please don’t throw me into the briar patch…

So after 30 plus years of life in urban Texas I realized I’d had enough.  Enough of the heat, the humidity, the traffic, the sprawl.   And hurricanes.   Seriously, fuck hurricanes.   Weather that will drown you or rip the roof off your house is God’s way of saying, maybe you should live somewhere else.

Over the years, Ms. Seeking and I noticed that we spent most of our vacations in the mountains, ski trips in the winter, hiking and biking trips in the summer.  We visited mountain towns all over the Western U.S.  After a few years we began to think, what are we doing?  If this is what we like, why don’t we just move here?

I grew up just 50 miles down the river so basically Salida is like coming home, but better.   Sometimes you have to leave a place to really appreciate it.   There are a lot of great mountain towns in Colorado but Salida feels just right personally in terms of size, climate and easy access to year-round outdoor activities.   What sealed the deal, was the fact that when Ms. Seeking saw it she fell in love immediately.  That made the choice easy.

Ultimately, it came down to this:  the things I most love to do, I can’t do in Houston.   And with nothing tying us there anymore it was time to load up the wagon and get the hell out of Dodge.  While we won’t be having sushi for dinner anymore there are plenty of compensating benefits, like for instance, the view.  It’s right there, outside the window as well as on this homepage.

There’s a classic mountain river, the Arkansas, complete with kayak course, right downtown.

And a downtown that’s pretty sweet in its own right.

Including, three bike shops within two blocks of each other…

At least four brew pubs.  The number seems to  change every time I check.

A craft bakery.

A distillery which, I kid you not, is owned by the mayor…

And a luthier for all your stringed instrument needs.

So don’t worry about us.   I think we’ll be just fine.