Life on the High Plains

If you came across this wooden box what would you think of it? Before my dad moved into assisted living this summer we had a talk about what needed to be saved from his house before we cleared it out.  He told me about this wooden box that has been sitting on the shelves in the storage room for the last 33 years.  Actually, this box has been around since before I was born. I hope I get this story right--I'm not quite sure of the years.  My parents were up in South Dakota in the 1950s.  The egg market was in a slump at the time and eggs were only 15 cents per dozen.  Mom and Dad wanted to take some eggs back home to Coyote, New Mexico.  How to transport them? This is an old egg crate that belonged to my dad's grandparents--my great grandparents.  They filled it with eggs and drove them all the way home to New Mexico without any breakage. It was fun digging through the layers in the bottom of the box.  They don't make thing...

This was our destination:  Ptarmigan Lake (do you know how to pronounce Ptarmigan?) 6.6 mile out and back hike starting at an elevation of 10,770 feet.  Trail was rated moderate. This was the first of two huge boulder fields that we had to cross. I will tell you this is one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen.  I was just hoping and praying that a earthquake wouldn't occur while we were out in the middle of the field. The picture might give you a little better perspective of the size of the second boulder field we crossed.  > Up, up, up we went.  It took almost three hours to reach the summit, mainly because we had to stop and breathe every few feet because the oxygen was mighty scarce. This was the lower lake.  I thought it was quite beautiful, but we had another half mile and the steepest part of the hike to go before we reached Lake Ptarmigan. There's always time to stop and smell the ...

Finally! We got to take the new camper on its first "real" camping trip. To me, real camping is done in a picturesque, quiet, remote location.  Forest Service campgrounds are the best.  I don't care for camping in those huge, commercialized campgrounds where your camper is five feet from the neighbor.  We loaded up and drove about 2 1/2 hours west of Colorado Springs to the Buena Vista/Collegiate Peaks area.  Lucky for Irv that I reserved us a pull-through site so he didn't have to back the beast into a spot. We even did a great job of getting the beast level, both front to back and side to side. Notice the trees and seclusion?  I was in heaven! Plenty of room for the slide-out. Okay, now for the real truth.  As much as I like seclusion, I also like to have a little electricity for the essentials--microwave, hair dryer, but mainly to charge the battery.  Why do we need a battery?  Mainly to keep the hea...

Maybe, just maybe life is getting back to normal.  Whatever "normal" is. I've been on the go this summer...Tulsa, Phoenix, Montreal, Park City, Idaho, Wichita, camping, craft shows..plus a full-time job as an IT Manager, 4-H State Conference, and now the awards for the State Fair 4-H Horse Show.  It has been exhausting and I mean really exhausting.  This was my first free weekend in weeks.  The house got a thorough cleaning, the barn got a thorough cleaning, and I almost got to take a Sunday afternoon nap.  I thought as I got older my life would slow down a bit, but the opposite is happening--I'm not complaining though. I need to learn to say no sometimes.  It's hard.  I'm not really sure I know how to sit around and do nothing and if someone gives me a task to do, I get it done.  I went to the doctor to get some help with the exhaustion last week and after two days I'm already feeling like I'm rebounding. So, I'm a sentimental person and wh...