Life on the High Plains

Me and 100,000 of my closest friends showed up in Denver Civic Center Park to support the youth of this country. Here's a couple aerial shots of the crowd.  Quite impressive. People from every district in the state showed up to support our kids.   I met my good friend Scott who now lives in Denver near downtown.  We used to work together at YL and have remained friends for almost 20 years. Scott lives in one of these row houses.  It was built in 1923 and has incredible character.  Scott had some insulation put in his attic recently and while up there he found newspapers from 1923--the society page.  Really cool! We walked over to the Humble Pie on Colfax for a quick lunch.  They have savory and sweet pies.  I had the pork green chili. Then we boarded a city bus and rode it about 3 miles to the capitol  This sign exemplifies why I love Denver so much.  These are my people. People were ar...

So now that winter is coming to an end and my weekly art lessons have ended for the semester and the kitchen remodel project is almost complete what does one do with her time? 1.  Start preparing to spend four months in Yellowstone.  I learned a lot last summer on what I should have taken along and what I should have left at home.  A big box now sits in our guest room so that I can throw things in there as a I think of them.  No. 1 on the list is an electric blanket. 2.  Finish up those two paintings that were started this semester in art class.  One is from a photo that I took in Rothenberg ob der Tauber in Germany last April.  I think it's about done.  Then I was brave (or stupid) and started a portrait.  I'm not comfortable showing the whole thing yet.  It's coming along and my teacher says it looks like the subject, but I just don't know.  It still has some work that needs to be done.  It may end up in the trash bin....

On Sunday we made our way to the Paint Mines Interpretive Park near Calhan, Colorado.  This park is about 30 minutes from our house, but in the 20 years we've lived here we have never visited. It's probably only about 80 or acres or so, but were we in for a treat.  We had to make our way down from the parking lot on an unofficial trail.  We later discovered that we parked in the wrong lot.  Had we parked in the main parking lot there was a beautiful trail leading into the rock formations. This place rivals the Painted Desert, not in size, but in beauty. Plus you get to walk among the formations (which is probably not a good idea if we want to preserve it for future generations).   They did have a sign up saying it was dangerous, but what's life without a little danger? Irv is a lot my adventurous than me.  Whenever I got into a situation that required a jump or a leap to a ledge I backtracked back the way I came ...

I belong to a "Working in Yellowstone 2018" user's group on Facebook.  It keeps us up-to-date on what's going on in the park and helps prepare everyone for the season ahead. The winter season for visitors came to an end on March 2nd.  During the winter visitors can take snow mobiles or snow coaches into the park and stay at the Snow Lodge at Old Faithful.  I wanted to take that trip this year, but our kitchen remodel required us to hand around.  Irv has promised me that we can do it next winter.  I'd kind of like to have Christmas there. The annual clearing of the roads in preparation for summer started this week and the group posted some photos which I have "borrowed" for my blog. These photos are taken up near Norris which is on the north end of the Grand Loop. It's quite a process to clear all this snow.  Below is a link to a video the Park Service has made. Snow Removal Process in Yellowstone I work in the south end of ...

I've become a really bad blogger again.  I'm still disillusioned with social media.  Actually I love social media, it's just a couple "friends" that have driven me away with their inappropriate comments that embarrass me in front of my real friends. Anyway, a couple weeks ago Irv and I hit the trail on a beautiful Colorado morning.  The morning started with Maisy vomiting all over Irv in the car and I don't mean a little bit.  Who knew a little dog could throw up so much?  I was driving and pulled over as quickly as possible. The smell got to both Irv and I and we were both gagging as we tried to find something to clean it up with.  It smelled like both vomit and poop and it was horrible!  Irv's pants were soaked so we stopped at a nearby Walmart to get him some new pants.  Looking back on the whole thing it was quite comical.  Maisy felt great after emptying her stomach on Irv. Irv did a little geocaching. It's always weird looking ...