Flowers, animals, and scenery from Golden Colorado

Yep, we are still here in our premier site at the Elks Lodge in Westminster, a suburb of Denver. Erwin is getting a lot of his little chores knocked off his list and I am....well what I am doing is going through our pictures and deleting the duplicates and organizing them and playing WWF and a bunch of other things too mundane to mention. Our anniversary was yesterday, Flag Day. So we celebrated by going on another long ride into the mountains. Love it! That is not a dirty camera lens. It is the smoke from Black Forest and Colorado Springs. First we went to the shrine of Mother Cabrini because I gave him the wrong turn, but it was peaceful and lots of pretty wild flowers. As we were leaving I looked down into a gorge and there was an elk. Now that was something we don't see at home. I made him stop, pull over, turn around, go back and get out with me, cross 2 lanes of traffic, take pictures, and act excited. What a guy! We went on to Lookout Mountain and talked to the docent there who told us how to get good pictures of the bison herd. Just as we were going down the mountain a deer appeared on the side of the road. Yep, she stood right by our truck and peed.A sight captured by Canon T1 Rebel in glorious color...... On we go.... up hill and down, just not over the side and no left turns Bless that old man's heart, not Erwin...the docent....we had a private viewing of the bison herd and the babies. We could not get too close and that is the strongest lens I have.

Those camel colored blobs are babies....... As we were leaving we spotted this UFO? on the side of the hill. No, it is really a $5000000 house. Whatever...........

Trip to Mt. Evans In Idaho Springs, Colorado.

Hmmmm.... It seems to have fallen to me to plan the fun things to do. I think that I will take that as a compliment! So today I was looking Denver up on the internet and came across an entry in Trip Advisor that said something to the effect: It was beautiful, but I will never do it again.................Hmmmm

I second that emotion!
AS you will see in the pictures, Mt. Evans highway is the highest paved highway in the USA. The scenery was fabulous. The drive was tense. Some of the curves were so tight our truck had to go off the road to negotiate them. This ranks right up there with our off road adventure in the Big Horn Mountains.When will he ever learn not to take my word for things?" How bad can it be, I said....hahaha No talking, just gorgeous pictures of snow...Down the mountain it is almost 100 degrees.

There were bicyclist training for a race that is held here. Crazy!

The countdown has begun

We are finally getting out of here for a while. Can you believe it? When we bought this condo our plan was to use it as a home base but basically continue our roaming lifestyle.Then somehow and I am not sure just when, life intervened. Ain't that the way it always happens? Just as you settle down to a plan, BLAM life hits you fullforce. Ours came in the form of a family member being diagnosed with Alzheimers, a child moving back home, and getting way too involved with things in this sleepy little town.( See previous post and watch your head explode as you try to figure out where my time went.)We did manage to take our camper out a couple of weekends and husband and number one son ( chronologically !!!!!!) took an epic trip to Oshkosh, Wisconsin that began with two flat tires in less than 60 miles and the saga continued.But they had a wonderful time directing traffic on the tarmac. Pretty much, we stayed right here. I became very involved in a new church and still kept up with the reading (go to ), knitting, quilting, card making and family life. Now we are ready to go in nine,count them 9, days! We are leaving on the 18th. The family will be living in our condo while we are gone. First and most fun of all we will be meeting our camping friends that we have not seen enough of in Asheville for a couple of days, just a small group, but very important to us group.Then off to Marion, NC where we will meet much larger group for a rally. There will be entertainment, good food, classes, games and just setting-around-talking fun.From there the plan gets little murky thanks to me. Each day I come up with something else I want to see or do. Can you tell I am getting excited about all this?I am not even the least bit concerned about the tires, all the packing for all four seasons, the age of our truck, our age and these dogs.I just want to see this and that and oh yeah that over there. The trip planner is doing all he can do to keep us from zigzagging and backtracking through 48 states and yet work into the plan the absolute "must sees".As it stands now we are going Texas and the Rio Grande Valley for a week, then to Fort Davis,Texas to the McDonald Observatory ( guess whose idea that is) to Estes Park in Colorado for a sheep and wool festival and somewhere ride a steam train.As I said the days and destinations are not quite clear yet. Can I narrow my list down and pair it with his? Why should I have to narrow my list? Steam trains, bah, seen one seen them all...But no it is his trip too, so some sort of compromise that works in my favor has to be worked out.Our ultimate destination is Gillette, Wyoming where we will meet a BIG group of campers for over a week at a rally.Then the slow trip back home through Oshkosh so he can direct traffic on a tarmac for a week.

May 6, 2013 Finally a few moments to think about where we have been and what we have seen and where we will go next. We have crammed a lot in the few weeks we have been gone.. Most of my time has been spent trying to figure out my camera and all the new lenses I have acquired. I love to take pictures of flowers and wildlife. I am not to keen on pictures of people. If I do take people pictures, I prefer black and white. Weird, I know.

June 11, 2013

Ok so it is a bit backward, but I want to get some of my pictures on the post even if it isn't the 11th of June.........this is the first day in about 6 weeks I have had time to think about what I wanted to write and I finally got the Smart Phone and the computer to communicate. Yay! After staying home most of the day due to the heat, we took our neighbors advice and went to the Cussler Museum.It contains about 75-80 restored automobiles owned by the author Clive Cussler. Those of us in Charleston know him as the man who raised the CSS Hunley. It is a small museum, but very interesting even for those of us that are not car buffs.The docent was very helpful.s He lifted the hood on any car we were interested in. He had worked restoring cars for Mr. Cussler for over 25 years. Things I learned: 1. Cars built in the 50's and 60's were huge.

2. Some of the car designers had to have had a great sense of humor

3. I had always thought the older cars only came in black, but not so! If you ordered a custom car and not one off the lot you had a choice of colors. Pink, cranberry and bright orange, just to name a few.

4. If the car was featured in his book, the hardback book with the car on the back cover was by the car.I had read many of his Dirk Pitt adventure novels, but I had never paid much attention to the cars. 5.No expense was spared when it came to attaching the side view mirrors.