Spring Ride on Spring Creek Trail

Tuesday, June 4th, was a perfect day for our extended family group to ride the Spring Creek Trail in Ft. Collins.  It got to only 71 degrees, about 35 degrees cooler than Phoenix weather.  There were 10 of us, including Kim's parents, her brother Jay and his son Eli.  Lots of bikes to unload in the parking lot!

Ready to ride!  You can see that Nate had his special orange biking "outfit" and his favorite soccer socks!

Our group wound up in 2 sections: the faster group with Jay, Tatum, Eli and Nate and the much slower group who was following Ella.  She wanted to be the leader (normal for a 6 year old).  Many stops for water and rest were taken since it was a 6 mile and mostly uphill ride to the park at the end of trail.  It took lots of coaxing along the way as she complained about being tired and her knees hurting.  It was a LOT of pedaling for her little legs on her new bike.

This is a view of the Spring Canyon Community Park, our final destination for the day.  Beautiful setting for the park which is nestled in the foothills of Ft. Collins.

Time for lunch on a grassy hill.  We all were hungry!

After lunch, the girls had a chance to play in the water fountains.  

Nate and his cousin, Eli, plan their strategy.  They were always running away from me when I had the camera in my hand!

Don, Ella and Char start out from the park and head back to the parking lot.

The kids didn't mind when we suggested that we stop at a Dairy Queen on the way back.  There was a bridge from the path over the creek that wound up at the Dairy Queen.  I bet they do a booming business in the summer.  Bikes reposed on the side of the path while DQ Blizzards, cones and smoothies were consumed.

I'm In a Fowl Mood

Yesterday, as we sat at our table in the campground at Cherry Creek, there were all sorts of birds flying around in the meadow.  Soon I realized my mission for the day was to get some good pics of them, or at least make the attempt.  Some, like the robin who wakes us up with his song every morning, are easy to take a photo of.  They stay put, even when you get fairly close.  Others, like the Western Tanager, don't stay in one place for very long and are always flying from tree to tree.

Yep, I was in a "fowl" mood.  Don't ask Don about the play on words.  He might just tell you I have other

days like this, but it is the other foul word! I digress....back to the bird pictures.

This is the beautiful Western Tanager.  When he landed in the tall grass, all you could see was his head.

 A Western Kingbird in a tree near our RV.

We saw these two Mallards when we went for a walk in the wetland area of the park.  I can just imagine one say to the other. "Hey Mack, if you look sideways at her, she sure looks a bit odd."

This little fella is a Western Wood Peewee Flycatcher. 

The Magpies are large and very aggressive birds.  They will gang up on other birds and dive bomb the squirrels.  Pretty, but dangerous if you are a fellow feathered species.

We had seen this Prairie Falcon earlier in the day when we were bike riding.  We drove back with my good camera, and he was still flying between his two favorite tall trees by the lake.  Guess the grassland between the trees must provide some good meals for him (or her).

 

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” 
― Willie Nelson

7th summer of travel

Day 1 of our 2013 summer travels:  The engine light appears on the dashboard of our Ram truck just after we crossed the border into New Mexico.  Crap!  How can that be?  We just had the truck checked out last week at the dealership in Avondale.  These newer cars and trucks are just way too complex and it could be anything from a dirty air cleaner to dozens of other things.  None the less, we make it to Albuquerque.

Day 2:  Don heads out in the morning to the local Larry Miller Dodge dealership to have the truck checked out.  The last thing we need to do is be stranded somewhere along I-25 in New Mexico with only cattle and antelope to talk to!  At first, Don calls and tells me it cost $1000 to get it fixed. While I am having a minor meltdown, he backs down and tells me it cost nothing and was under warranty.  It was an update that was needed.  For crying out loud, why couldn't they have discovered that a few days earlier when it was being worked on?   Argh...
We get a late start, and run into wind, rain, a dust storm and more pockets of showers. I am thankful it wasn't snow!  We get to Colorado Springs during the beginning of rush hour traffic and a long line of cars because of construction in that area.  That delays us even further, making us get into full blown Denver rush  traffic at 5 PM.  I got so frustrated that I timed part of it:  we went 1.5 miles in ten minutes.  The really bad part of this was the fact that we had stopped in Trinidad where I got a cup of coffee.  Even before we got to Denver, my eyeballs were turning slightly yellow and I felt every bump in the road.  Note to self: NEVER, ever do that again when the two hour maximum time limit for my bladder will commence when we are getting into a large city!  Even though we were stopping a lot, I don't think the people behind us would have liked me getting out and going back to the trailer for my much-needed pit stop.  We finally made it to Cherry Creek campground by 6:30, tired and hungry.
Day 3:
Ah, so glad to be back at Cherry Creek State Park!  It will be a good 20 degrees cooler here than at home.

We biked on some of the great trails in the park and came across a nice quiet little pond close to the large lake.

On the pond were one goose and 2 "headless" ducks.  I took several pictures of them, and each time they ducked their heads back under the water.  We both enjoy seeing the abundance of robins, water fowl, magpies and other birds in this park.  This is the reward for the 2 long days of travel. It was well worth it.

Karchner Kategories

After looking at all the pictures I took while we were camping at Karchner Caverns State Park, I realized there were several categories of groups:

First is the "Retirees", part of the RV group that were also down at Catalina State Park in January.  No longer middle-aged, we seem to have drifted into the "older generation" category without much fanfare.  I sometimes look back and wonder, "How in the world did I get this old?!"

  

The Day Trippers

 Doris, Traci and 3 of Doris' granddaughters who drove down just for the day.

 

The "Pushy" Group....especially when it come to making one of the people from group 1 catch up to the rest of us.

The Hikers                                                                                                                                (including a person whom I shall not name, but HAD to apply Chapstick when I was taking the picture.

.

The Rock Stars

One of the Tree Climbers.

The Thinkers

 (i.e."Do you think it will work out if I do this with my new smart phone??")

The Lunch Group

The Encouragers

These people can be spotted when they do a thumbs up signal.

The Advisor

The Karchner Tram Driver 

(Yes, that is Jerry who volunteers at Karchner)

                                                                                   The Cavern Tourists

The Grill Master/Drink Toaster

 

And finally, the Birthday Guy!

Tombstone Trip

What is there to see in Tombstone?  Not much, unless you have a fat wallet and are willing to part with a substantial part of your money.  The main street is filled with characters in western garb and period costumes, all hawking their wares.  Not a single blank is fired in your proximity unless you have paid admission to one of their staged and over-priced gunfights that take place in a walled in arena.   Still, we went there because our granddaughter, Kyla, wanted to go there.  If you're a grandparent, you understand why we drove there.  At least it was a short distance from the campground.

First on the agenda: a chance to have a picture taken as a "real" cowboy and cowgirl".  The outfits were a "one size fits all" and no changing room was needed.  Simple and quick.

Kyla stopped under the guy who was just "hanging around".  When it is windy, I hear he is a real swinger.......

The weather was warm and sunny as Gary, Sherry and Kyla walked up and down the main street.

Best buy of the day was at the ice cream shop.  They were selling huge cones for only $2.00.  We all bought a cone.  As you can see, Kyla had chocolate.  She gets more bang for her buck because she wears her ice cream, as well as eats it.  It took numerous napkins to get her face completely cleaned up.

 Of course, no trip to Tombstone is complete without a stop at Boot Hill.  Admission is still free there.  Amazing in this day and age.

Kyla checked out many different graves, but was especially interested in the women that were buried there.  It's an interesting place, and it even has a section for the Chinese immigrants that settled in the area.

Catalina Camping

Does it seem odd to you that ten normal people in their sound minds would opt to camp in Tucson during the month of January?  When the temps were expected to be in the low teens in the morning?  Well, I have to admit it that we were asking ourselves the same question on Monday and Tuesday when it was very cold and windy.  But, we had made our reservations months ago, and all of us were too stubborn or too cheap (maybe both) to back out. 

Here is part of our caravan pulling into the campground on Monday, Jan. 14th: Jerry & Sandy, Norm and Landi, followed by Doris and Gary in their coach.  I had to be quick to get this picture since Don had just pulled into our site and I was jumping out of the truck so I could capture the moment (without getting run over).

On Monday and Tuesday, it was way too cold to hike, bike or even sit outside by the RVs.  We hooked up to electricity and our little heater ran constantly until Wednesday afternoon.  We even managed to squeeze all ten of us into our 5th wheel trailer on Monday night for spaghetti dinner and then in Jerry and Sandy's trailer on Tuesday for chili.  We were quite cozy those two afternoons, but it worked.  None of us missed a bite, even if we didn't have a table to sit at.

By Weds. morning, a bunch of us were on our bikes, ready for more than exercising just our arm muscles so we could put food into our mouths.

 Above is a picture of Norm and Landi on their personal "Tour de Tucson".  Doris caught up with the rest of us later down the road.  The weather wasn't too bad as long as we bundled up and had gloves on.

What else did we do?  Jerry had built a corn hole game board, so there were games going on the next few days.  Jerry just stood back and let me attempt to get one of those bags into the hole.  I know why now he was so relaxed....he is an excellent player and he had no worries that I would beat him!

 Sandy stood aside while Doris showed off her form.  Never mind that she was going over the imaginary foul line.  At least there is no buzzer or light that goes off if we went beyond the line!

It's Gary vs Gary here.  Gary MacFarlane looks like he is trying to tell his partner where he wants the bag to go.  I can't remember whether Don or Jerry was his partner or who won.  At least all of us were getting some form of exercise.

I think the dinner bell just rang.....you can see Gary, Don, Jerry and Gary sauntering over from their game to greet our visitors.

Thursday:  Buck, Janice, Ray and Elaine arrive for our turkey dinner.

Elaine checks out some of the food and Jerry waits behind her.  Camping doesn't always mean hamburgers or hot dogs on the grill.  We had appetizers, turkey, gravy, dressing, 2 kinds of potatoes, green bean casserole, 2 types of cranberries, rolls and two desserts!  It looked like a restaurant buffet alongside Doris and Gary's coach. 

Ray took this picture of us after our meal.  It was lovely that afternoon: warm, sunny and no wind at all.

Janice and Doris stopped for a moment to smile for me.

Elaine had baked two cakes to help Ray, Gary and Jerry celebrate their birthdays.  Looks like Jerry was trying to figure out what type of cake he was holding.

                                                                                            

On Friday, a long time friend, Nellie Galloway, came out to visit us.  Nellie had gone to grade school at Redeemer with Doris and Sandy.  Gary's family lived next door to her family when they were young. I didn't know Nellie until high school but she ended up playing the organ for our wedding!  All six of us graduated from Flowing Wells high school.  From the left: Sandy (1966), Sherry (1965), Doris (1963), me (also 1963), Nellie (1962) and Gary (1961).  Nellie recently retired and it was wonderful seeing her again after all these years.  As it turned out, this was the last time we got to see Gary before the Lord called him home.  We're grateful for all the good times we got to spend with him.