Life on the High Plains

It's been a cold, wintery, and windy few days on the high plains of Colorado.   On one of those windy days Irv went out to the pasture to dig a hole for an equine scratcher that he bought for the boys.  Of course they had to supervise his work to make sure he was doing it properly.  Jasper, the gray, has been scratching himself on anything possible and even broke a piece off the barn.  As of today, he hasn't tried the scratcher and doesn't seem to appreciate Irv's hard work. On Tuesday we had a beautiful sunny day with only a little wind so we headed back to Cheyenne Mountain State Park to explore more trails.  On this day we did the Raccoon Ridge, Acorn Alley, Bobcat Way, and Soaring Kestrel trails. It was in the 60s, the snow was melting, and it was even muddier than the week before.  Irv never misses a chance to chuck a snowball when possible. Craggy old trees (and husband). Boulders everywhere. Still some snow in the shaded areas. It was so warm th...

Yesterday we decided to head up to the hills for the Cripple Creek Ice Festival.  It's been 10 years since we last attended this event.  (Here's a link to my blog about that visit from 2013.)  We learned a valuable lesson about attending an ice festival...don't go on opening day.  Why?  Because the sculptures haven't been carved yet.  Above is one of the "quick" contests they have.  Participants are given one hour to plan and carve their entries.   On this day they were carving aliens. The kids seem to enjoy the ice slide. Lots of people and lots of food options.  One place was selling turkey legs for $22!!  Seems to me you should get more than just a leg for that amount.  As for me, you'd have to pay me to take a turkey leg.  Yuck! Lots of ice blocks sitting around  It was about 35 degrees so they shouldn't be melting anytime soon. This one is going to be a hippopotamus.  Maybe it's baby Omo from our local zoo. ...

Yesterday was quite a wintery day on the eastern plains of Colorado.  I'm not going to say it was a blizzard, but it was driving snow with wind for most of the day.   Officially I think we got somewhere around 5 inches of snow, but it's hard to tell because of the wind.  In some spots the ground is bare while in other areas there are two foot drifts.  Irv is out there snow blowing as I write this to remove the drifts on the driveway so we can eventually get the vehicles out.  Last night at 9:00 the snow plow was out with a police escort so I assume the drifting on the east-west roads was quite significant.  It's days like these that make me happy to be retired with no where to go. So a really cool thing happened in Colorado this year.  Starting on January 1st you had the option of buying a State Park Annual Pass for only $29 when you renew your vehicle registration.  We have a state park near us that we have rarely hiked at because we didn't ...