"Peerless Estes! That miniature world wilderness of wonder and delight! Set apart for the tired brain and careworn wreck from the sepulchers of business activity! A sweet paradise nestled amidst the encircling snow-capped peaks whose somber heads rise far above the habitat of microbe and parasite. Those silent peaks silhouetted against an ethereal dome of deepest blue or blackest star-bespangled canopy of night! The mountain air of Estes; the elixir compounded by nature for reinvigorating battling civilization! "This enchanted arena, which pen fails adequately to drape in poetical luxury, was dedicated for combats between rest and toil, health and sickness, vitality and decay. The angler revels in luxury with the numbers of easily accessible pools, riffles, meadows, cañons, the most distant an hour's drive and the majority but ten minutes' walk. Occasionally deer may be seen and the 'Big Horn' come down their aerial stairway from the clouds to lick from the alkali waters in Horseshoe. Wait until you see the chattering magpie, with its bronze equipment and saucy manners. The foe of this long-tailed, noisy inhabitant is a blue jay (the one James Whitcomb Riley calls the 'bird with soldier clothes.') Hours may be spent witnessing the strategy, diplomacy, anger, spite and vindictiveness waged by these bird robbers and desperadoes, for both are notorious house breakers, murderers and thieves in bird land, as well as clever in appropriating kitchen supplies which they surreptitiously seize when opportunity is presented. "In Estes a Sabbath quiet broods at all times, broken only by the swish of the angler's rod, the merry peal of frightened laughter as some maiden lands her first trout, or the crunching of horses' hoofs in the hard gravel roads as a pleasure party clatters by. Children romp and play without fear of mosquitoes or snakes, troublesome poisonous insects being banished as thoroughly as if destroyed by some mysterious necromancer. "Where in all the world can the lover go"-- "Stop, Jack, look into the depth of my eyes and skip those charming nooks, bowers and rock girt dens where so many rehearse the preliminary episode which leads to the altar. I know that by heart; skip the 'lover' pages and read about the coach ride from Lyons, for we will get to Lyons Friday, won't we?" So after a glass of water, an orange and readjusting of pillows, Jack picked up his book again. "The ride from Lyons is so fraught with surprises that one becomes distracted. Situated as it is in a veritable fiery furnace of red, rough, ragged precipices, monuments of the eruptive age when volcanoes vomited billowy lava over the face of the earth, Lyons is the antithesis of what the traveler expected at the end of a tortuously curved railroad track, over which the 'mixed' train of freight and disgruntled humanity has been jerked, jostled and jumped along for about three hours, covering forty miles.