Aug 9 & 10, 2011 Rocky Mountain Trip

It's time to head south so back in the car. Our destination was Santa Fe for the night so we could attend a mountain man trade fair. Since we've been out here I've been reading about these guys and thinking about putting a costume together. The trade fair was smaller than expected but there was some really neat stuff. Betsy walked around The Plaza which has to be one of the best people watching venues in all of the U.S.

From Santa Fe we put the pedal to the metal and drove straight home. We found that without the trailer we could cover more territory, but the motels really drove the cost up. Lesson learned--slower is cheaper.

The pictures are of some of the animals we saw along the way. I always look for buffalo wherever we travel and found these guys in NM. Seeing the bull elk was a fantastic sight. And the horses were just outside Como, CO.

Notice the red Indian Paintbrush in the foreground and the mountains in the back. Thanks to John and Elaine & Kay and Ernie for all their hospitality. Next trip is in a couple of weeks to Utah where Betsy will take 3 days of pastel instruction. Stay tuned.

Aug 6-7-8, 2011 Rocky Mtn Summer Trip

Back to John & Elaine's in Littleton for the weekend. Had such a great time last weekend we'll just do it again.

We arrived at their house, jumped out of our vehicle, threw our stuff in the guest room, jumped into their car and headed to a Parisian antique/fair which had a lot of unusual stuff. And we even ran into a huge tent sale at the Coleman Camping Store. What could be better? Well, we had a outdoors sunset dinner with The Circle. From our vantage point high above Castle Rock we could look to the north and see Longs Peak, to the west there was Mt. Evans, and to the south was Pikes Peak. The sunset was awesome. Sunday we ask if we could go downtown since we've never been to the city of Denver proper. It was really hopping as the Rockies were playing. We also visited Rockmount Shirt Co. Up until his death the CEO of the company was the oldest CEO in the U.S. at something like 106 years. He was also the person who started putting pearl snaps instead of buttons on western shirts. Very neat shop. Elaine showed us her high school which was absolutely huge. Looked more like a small college campus than a high school. For lunch we went into McCormicks and ordered everything on the appetiser menu and shared. And we even found an antique store.

July 30-Aug 5, 2011 Rocky Mtn Summer Trip

From Las Vegas, NM we headed north into Colorado and stopped in Trinidad to see the AR Mitchell museum. Mitchell was a western artist that did many of the book covers for the cowboy dime novels and western themed magazines. I enjoyed the cowboy art and artifacts on display and they also had several paintings of current artists on display. Betsy knew most of the artists, and I even knew one or two! We spent the weekend with John and Elaine and met our Denver friends aka The Circle. Betsy and I are currently probationary members of this group. I'm fairly certain that Betsy would be voted in on the first ballot. I think it might take a few ballots with much armtwisting and outright bribes for me to be accepted. After a weekend that went all to fast we headed to Estes Park to meet up with Kay and Ernie. The following day we took a hike in the park to Gem Lake. We all looked up the trail and here came a woman Ranger and 3 llama's as pack animals. She told us they use the llama's to pack supplies up to the lake and take the trash down. The llama's also serve has vegetation clippers since they eat the little branches that might hang over the trail. Pretty cool. The next day we all hiked to Dream Lake which is just plain spectacular. The following day we went off on our own and found Betsy a valley stream

with the majestic Rocky Mountains in the background to sketch. Our last night there we attended a Michael Martin Murphy concert and enjoyed his show very much. If you like cowboy/western music you'll like him.

He told a great John Wayne quote--"Life's tough. It's tougher if you're stupid." Amen, brother. What a great visit.

July 27--29, 2011 Rocky Mtn Summer Trip

The last couple of days we've had g'son James visiting and we've been very busy with activities geared to a 5 year old. We swam often, which he enjoys. And we visited Tumacacori Mission which is south of Tubac. We've started James on the Junior Ranger programs at many of the parks we visit. He enjoys it and we learn new things too. The next day we visited Colossal Cave Park which is on the southeast side of Tucson. We, of course, took the cave tour which was really interesting. James was a little bit shaky at first, but he soon got into being in a real cave. I had told him I was pretty sure that cave bears were inside so that probably accounts for his anxiety. In addition to the cave we also visited an old cattle ranch which was an outpost of the Empire Cattle Ranch some 50 miles away. I think his favorite part was the ice cream treat after passing his latest Jr. Ranger test. July 28th we all loaded up and we took James home. We continued our trip through Payson, to Holbrook on I-40 and then east. This is the first trip in a long time without Starship Avion since we'll be staying with Cousin John in Littleton and then in one of the cabins on the Miller property with old friends Kay and Ernie.

After a long drive we made it to Gallup and stayed the night in a motel. The following day we found a couple of trading posts that were open early and browsed through the Native American jewelry. Betsy found a couple of small items and then we hit the road again. From Gallup we flew east through Albuquerque to Hwy 14 which is known as The Turquoise Trail which went to Santa Fe. On the way we stopped in Madrid and Cerrillos which was our reason for doing that particular road. Cerrillos, for hundreds of years has had turquoise mining. Cerrillos turquoise is a very distinctive green blue color. Our final destination that day was Las Vegas, NM which we had briefly visited about 12 years ago. I thought it was a neat town then and have been waiting to get back there. Everywhere you looked something was named after the Rough Riders of the Spanish-American War. We finally ask what the deal was and learned that several men from the area were recruited for that unit since they new horses and how to shoot. We found a couple of antique stores, drove through the old historic residential center and even found an old Fred Harvey hotel down by the depot. A busy couple of days.