Geology, hiking and music evening

We ran up to the visitor center on Grand Mesa on Sabbath afternoon to talk with ranger Mike Wiley.  We met him a couple weeks ago when he gave a geology lecture that we attended.  He has only worked with the National Forest Service a few years after 20+ years working as a geologist in Alaska. We have found that any National Forest personnel we have talked with are very pro-geocaching especially those caches that feature historical information, or take guest to little known areas of public lands, but Mike didn't know anything about the hobby/sport.  We have been wanting to set some earthcaches (where you find geological sites rather than "treasure") on Grand Mesa, which was one of the reasons we had attended his lecture.  He has gotten so interested in the idea that he has offered to identify specific geological features on the mesa AND write up the educational material to go with it.  We are blown away, but excited by the partnership.
Since we were already up there, we took an hour hike the well defined Craig's Crest trail.  Of course there was a cache set up there for us to find, it is always nice to have a little incentive and reward for exercise!

"GZ is right here" (GZ is geo-speak for the lat-long coordinates where a cache is hidden, "ground zero"

We stopped in Cedaredge as we came down the side of the mesa and joined several hundred other people with our picnic in Town Park while we all enjoyed listening to Symphony in the Park.

This is an annual affair and the ladies sell ice cream, homemade pies and root beer floats to raise money for Valley Symphony (made up of people from Delta and Montrose counties). It is a bit of a promo as well.  They have five regular concerts in the season all at the Pavilion in Montrose and I'm looking forward to attending as many of them as possible.

Sun is so far west, orchestra is nearly all in the light even though under the band stand.

We were there a little early and listened to the Symphony Chorus do some warming up and see the sound guys walking around with his iPad doing sound checks.  Karl had to go over and find out what make of equipment he was using.

Valley Symphony Chorus sang a few selections just before intermission.  I only saw four individuals that could possibly be under 55, however all those older "pipes" did an outstanding job.

Sound guy, Dave Starr, running the board via iPad during performance

 I posted some of this on Facebook. Karl's friend who did much of the consulting and work on the PA system that Karl helped install for the Thunderbird Church added a comment to my "status post" guessing what system the guy was using in the park.  When we had gotten home, Karl stayed outside to prep the pickup for our next day's adventure when I heard him talking on his cell. "How did you know I was checking out the system? Are you in the area?" and laughter.  Then I knew that Gene couldn't wait any longer to find out if his guess was correct on the system being used so had called to find out!  I poked my head out the door and told Karl to tell Gene (calling from Portland area) hello from me.