Splendor - Erich

There is a game called Splendor in which you are a gem merchant and you are trying to attract nobles. Our family would play that game and I would never win.

We took a car trip to San Diego and we brought along three games: a deck of cards to play Pitch, the game Pandemic, and Splendor. But since the other games started with p we said we brought along Pitch, Pandemic, and Plendor. And while on that trip, I dominated at the game. I can't win Splendor, but at Plendor I am unbeatable.

That was a very drawn out way to get to the topic of splendor. Not the game but the awe inspiring beauty. We have just spent several days in western Colorado surrounded by splendor.

The west slope of the Rockies, the canyons along the Gunnison and Colorado Rivers, the roads through the Colorado National Monument; every view is a spectacle. At one point while looking across the valley at the plateau topped mountains, Syarra declared those were not mountains but a painting. They are that majestic and artistic.

In the distance, does that not look painted?

 My brother, Adam, came to Grand Junction to visit. We went out in his truck and drove into public lands with petroglyphs and narrow canyons. You can see the stripes of each separate sedimentary layer in the different kinds of sandstone. Sometimes the canyon walls look like bubbles burst out of them. Sometimes you see fallen rocks and you can make out the gaps in the cliffs where that boulder fell from who knows how many millennia ago. Tectonic activity and erosion shaped this land, continue to shape it in patterns that would take lifetimes to observe.

Proof of Adam

And it is out there, public, we are all welcome to visit. You don't have to go to a national park to see some of the wonders. There is magnificence within striking distance and often you are the only ones there. The American West is beautiful.

Spectacle and Splendor

 In the midst of all that, I think I finally won at splendor.