Life on the High Plains

What's been going?  I've been lax about blogging because, quite frankly, I'm very disillusioned with social media lately.  Don't get me wrong, I love staying connected with friends and family, but only if they're interactive participants who don't used social media as their platform for hatred and intolerance.  I tell you, social media really shows what people are like on the inside behind their fake facades. But I'm going to keep on keeping on with what I like to do--share a little bit about myself, what's happening in my life, and what makes me happy. My little homestead on the prairie makes me happy even though there is constantly work to do.  This year was the year to have the house repainted. Have you had your house repainted lately?  Let me tell you, it is expensive.  Ours is just a simple little one story house so I can't imagine what the big houses have to pay.  We thought briefly about tackling the job ourselves, but in the end we...

On July 4th we headed out for what was to be an easy hike to Horsethief Falls.  My co-worker had told me about this trail and we wanted to check it out.  Once we parked at the trail head though, we realized we had done this trail several years ago. What the heck, we'll just go hike it again. There was a gentleman from Florida on the trail ahead of us.  At one point he waited for us to catch up and told us there was a bear up ahead.  Irv and I wasted no time in saying where, where?  We went to take a look.  As you can see, it wasn't a bear, it was an adorable marmot. Time to get the pebbles out.  The first mile is all up hill.  This trail starts at 10,000 feet so the air is quite thin. Up, up, up we go! It was a beautiful day to be in the mountains even if we couldn't breathe. After about a mile it levels out and opens up to beautiful mountain meadows. Then we came to this sign. And then anot...

We had an opportunity last weekend to take the new camper on its second adventure.  We headed off to Canon City, Colorado?  Why you ask would anyone go camping in the prison capital of the USA?  Our favorite grandson was in a sword play tournament. Irv hates having campfires.  I love campfires so I insisted on one the first night. Even Mr. Beans got into roasting some marshmallows.  He likes to burn his so it's ready quickly.  I like to slowly roast mine and then make a s'more out of it. A beer by the campfire...doesn't get better than this.  I think even Mary enjoyed it. The next morning Shiloh got up early and drove himself to the tournament grounds.  His day was filled with classes prior to the 3:00 tournament so we had some time to kill.  There was a big rock shop across from the hotel.  It had really cool stuff...we ended up going there not once, but twice. Irv got a kick out of spraying the rock w...