Life on the High Plains

On my solo road trip to Arizona a couple weeks ago I made a stop at the Petrified Forest National Park.  I can remember going there as a kid and all I can recall is that it was cold and windy.  We took our kids there many years ago (before Jillian was born), but it was a drive by visit so I don't recall much about that either. As I've gotten older I've grown to appreciate more things like this and without Irv along I knew I could explore the park in-depth. I stopped at every point of interest in the park except for a couple spots when time was running out near the end of my visit.  The Painted Desert surrounds the park and it is uniquely beautiful. This is the Painted Desert Inn which is now a national landmark.  As I understand it, this building was originally constructed with petrified wood.  It's almost 100 years old and was used to as lodging for park visitors.  In the 1940s it became a Harvey House to serve food and beverage to visi...

I almost had a disaster beyond imagination this week.  In Arizona I decided to pull my laptop out and do some blogging, but I got this message: Do you know that sickening feeling when you realize you might have just lost all your pictures from Europe and Yellowstone and all the documents you've working on over the last year?  I'm a former IT professional and I know the importance of backing up data.  At work our servers were backed up to three locations every few hours.  I've been meaning to get a back up going on this laptop that I purchased in May 2016, but I'd never quite gotten around to it yet.  I'd also been meaning to transfer the photos to my google drive, but I hadn't gotten around to that either. The laptop is still under warranty, but I needed to fiddle around with the hard drive myself.  I opened up that laptop (no small feat) took out the hard drive, reseated it, checked the motherboard connection, but still no luck.  Not to wor...

I just got back from a trip to New Mexico and Arizona.  While in Albuquerque I went to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.  It had been over 40 years since I had attended this event and all I have to say about it is AMAZING!   We arrived before dawn to attend the 6:00 a.m. balloon glow.   Then at 7:00 it was time for the mass ascension.  Hundreds and hundreds of balloons of every shape and color.  Pictures cannot even begin to do justice to the beauty of this ascension.    One wave after another goes off.  Above is the Colorado balloon.     After losing my dad this year seeing the Smokey Bear balloon made me both happy and sad.      I snapped hundreds of pictures that morning.  Every time I turned around it was more and more beautiful.   It was unusually warm that morning and there was zero wind.  Those conditions made for a beautiful sight for the s...

Recently I hiked to Grouse Mountain Overlook on the backside of Pikes Peak. There was a 360 degree view of mountains from the overlook. Enjoy! Happy Skywatch Friday!

One of the things my parents taught me was to keep things cleaned out in the house.  Last year when I cleaned out my dad's house it was made easier by his lack of hoarding.  Well, to be honest my dad hoarded nails, screws, wood, metal, tools, etc. that might be needed if he needed to fix or repair something.  After his passing in August we had to clean out his apartment and it wasn't too difficult.  He knew that material possessions are just that.  When you go to heaven you can't take a single possession with you.  I think it was one of my parent's most unselfish acts to not hang onto stuff over their lifetime. So, I'm one who keeps things cleaned out too and now that I'm not working my non-hoarding is going into high gear.  With the help of my dear hubbie who has taken a few decades to realize how freeing it is to let stuff go, we cleaned out the shed the other day.  Over the summer the shed had fallen off its supports and things got jostled ...

Usually when I take a photo for Skywatch Friday it's facing west towards Pikes Peak.   Pikes Peak always provides the best sky shots, but one day last week when I was walking to the barn to feed the horses there was a great early morning sky facing eastward. The beautiful high plains of Southern Colorado! Happy Skywatch Friday!

Irv and I went on a geocaching trip yesterday.  The goal was to get more geocaches in one day than he had ever found before.  There is a road not too far from us that has geocaches every tenth of a mile or so. Irv is a happy camper when I agree to go geocaching. Most of them were located at the bottom of fence posts. He actually remembered to bring along the customized geocaching stamp I got him for his birthday. I thought I'd try to find one and luckily it was very easy to find.  Since we had rain for the last week or so the ground was soaked and so were a lot of the canisters holding the geocaching logs.  Here's Irv looking through the mud where the cache was supposed to be hidden.  I think it got washed away.  This is where we saw a snake.  Now, it was a tiny little gardener snake, but a snake is a snake and my geocaching was done for the day. Some of them were a little more clever so Irv didn't have to dig ...

On a cold, rainy day last week I asked Irv if he wanted to head over to the RV show.  Much to my surprise he said "yes"! I just like to look through the RVs and see what the latest trends are.  I was shocked when Irv made a beeline to the 5th wheels and had no interest in seeing anything smaller. Fifth wheels are spacious especially those with two slide outs in the living area. They all seem to have leather recliners and sofas and the new thing seems to be dining tables with chairs rather than the bench seats that you typically see in an RV. Irv also surprised me because he was talking like a 5th wheel might be in our future especially if I go back to Yellowstone next summer. Most of them had an island and really nice appliances including large refrigerators. One of the models we looked at had a full size bathroom with dual sinks and a soaker tub. The model above had a raised living area which I thought was kind of strange.  You...

Well, I've been home from Yellowstone and Idaho Falls for a little over a month now.  People keep asking me if I'm getting bored yet.  I even stopped by my old workplace a few days ago and they asked if I was ready to come back. Heck no. This girl has a ton of hobbies and she's enjoying working on all of them! One thing I've always wanted to do is to take a "real" art class at the Bemis School of Art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College.  This wasn't possible when I had to go to a job, but I'm enrolled now that I'm an unemployed bum. I picked up my parking pass for the college then headed into the painter's studio. It was a real studio--set up for 16 artists with the really big easels like real artists use.  The class I'm taking is "Painting with the Masters".  Each week we study an artist and then try to replicate his technique.  Amazingly enough, the first week was Van Gogh which made me...