Buena Vista

We'll take the first detour on our Myeloma journey so I can tell you about our town. We came to Buena Vista in June of 2008. We immediately liked the small mountain town (pop 3,000). The first things we noticed were the beautiful scenery and the friendliness of the people.

When we arrived at Valley Mobile RV park, a man pulled in right behind our rig, pulled a window from his car and said "This fell out of your RV and I have been trying to catch you!" We looked, and sure enough, one of our windows was missing! He had seen it fall out, stopped to pick it up and followed us until we stopped. We were grateful for his kindness. Just as we were trying to figure out how to put it back in (duct tape fixes all), the workampers at the RV park came up; Don Cox said he had a pop rivet gun and proceeded to put the window back in. It worked and looked good as new. Now we had two things to be grateful for.

Buena Vista sits in the Upper Arkansas River Valley, a sheltered spot between mountain ranges, smack dab in the middle of Colorado. One side of town borders on the Arkansas River; in summer many rafters and kayakers come to enjoy the white water sports. In the photo you can see rafters in the river. Hunters, mountain bikers and hikers also frequent our area. There are ski resorts within an hours drive to the north and south. BV is 8000 ft elevation; by contrast, Denver is 5400.

We have "town deer" that live right in town. The first time we saw a doe in a front yard, we did a double take - no, it wasn't a statue. The deer are actually a bit of a nuisance but they do add to the charm of the town.

You can see a couple of the historic old buildings that are downtown. The green one is now a restaurant; the old courthouse with the cupola is now a museum. The view looks east toward the river and the hills. The awesome Collegiate Peak mountains are to the west of town.

Buena Vista is in an area called the "Banana Belt of the Rockies", so called because it usually has a mild climate. Summers have low humidity, and it always cools off at night by about 30 degrees from the daytime temperature. Winters have snow, but usually measured in inches rather than feet, and usually a light dry snow. Last year (before we came here) was an exception -- BV got hammered by 4 ft of snow. We hope that was a once in a century event. So far this year we have used a broom instead of a snowshovel.

When Doug feels up to it, we look forward to doing a bit of hiking.