It's one of my favorite John Denver songs, "Back Home Again". Matter of fact it's one of my all time from anyone favorite songs and I am back home again after a trip to visit with my Dad, The Colonel. It was emotionally and physically tough but oh so very worth while.
When I originally purchased my flight tickets, the best I could get on the return 3 hour flight was a center seat in a packed plane. After the stresses and strains of the past week, I decided to try for an upgrade to first class using some accumulated frequent flyer miles. It was a small Airbus plane with only eight first class seats and I didn't think my chances were good. The fact that it was a very early Saturday morning flight helped and I scored. It was a nice way to begin to unwind from the previous week.
I had decided several days ago that when I got home I was going to take a few days and head up into the mountains for some fishing and gold panning to complete the unwind process. Right now my plans are to leave here Monday morning and to camp along the Arkansas River in the vicinity of Buena Vista for one to two nights. I'll then head back towards the Denver area and stop at Tarryall Reservoir for a couple of nights. A key part of the plan is to be headed back or be back in the Denver area before the hordes attack the mountains for the 4th of July weekend.
Sounds like a plan to me....stay tuned.
Thanks for visiting.
I left the Denver area Monday morning and had a fairly uneventful trip to Columbus, GA to visit with The Colonel for a few days. The weather here is downright oppressive compared to Rocky Mountain Front Range weather I left. Temps in the middle 90's with humidity at the same level. Don't know how I survived all those years in this part of the country. I guess my years in Colorado have thinned my blood too much.
The Colonel fell and broke his hip about a month ago and after an operation he was admitted into the skilled nursing care facility at the same location as he has his assisted living apartment. He will not be able to return to that apartment until he recovers sufficiently to ambulate and transfer himself from walker/wheelchair to bed or a chair. That may take months from what I've seen the last few days.
He also suffers from bouts of confusion where he doesn't seem to understand his situation and why he is not back in his assisted living apartment. I judge this to be more a function of his age, which will be 90 in less than a month, than to his hip condition. Either way it is difficult to watch one's own father in this condition.
I had planned to take him out away from the facility for lunch or dinner or just about anywhere just for a change for him. Given his current physical condition however, I don't feel comfortable in doing this by myself.
I'll be returning to the Denver area on Saturday.
Thanks for visiting.
We miss you.
....is now someone else's wife. Which is a good thing. Now, not only do I still have "Daddy's Little Girl" but I also now have a son.
I have been blessed with two wonderful daughters but I did not, until this time have a son. I am excited. My new son is a great guy who loves my daughter and they both have a bright future ahead of them both.
The story......Thursday morning The Bride and me, The Emmer and my mother in law S. flew from Denver to San Jose and then drove to Monterey to the site of the joyful occasion. The event was held at the Monterey Plaza Hotel, an absolutely perfect place for a picture book wedding. It's located on Cannery Row made famous by the book of the same name by John Steinbeck. The weather was perfect, everything went off without a hitch and you now have a his-self that is just full of himself with the warm glow of family and happiness.
The wedding was on Saturday so on Friday the his-self side of the family went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This is a world class facility for sure. We spent 4-5 hours there and just barely scratched the surface of what we could have experienced. With our party were The Bride's, brother's children and they were in kiddie overload with all they could see and touch. The picture to the right shows my niece K, The Emmer and Daddy's Little Girl, CaJenn.
The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring Cannery Row. A couple of weeks ago I did a "Recent Read" post on Steinbecks "Travels With Charley". I now have another Steinbeck book to read..."Cannery Row". The history is fascinating and I'm sure since I've now visited the place, I'll really enjoy the book.
Late Friday afternoon was the rehearsal and it was at this point that everything really sunk in on his-self. I have to admit that I got a bit misty eyed...several times...as I finally faced the happy reality of the event.
The rehearsal dinner was at Latitudes Restaurant at Lover's Point in Pacific Grove. Tell me, could there be any better place for this event than "Lover's Point". My new son's family did themselves proud and we had a memorable evening getting to know everyone in each other's extended family.
Saturday, day was a blur of activity, most of which I was not involved in until the actual ceremony which started at 6 pm. The wedding was held on the plaza over the Bay of Monterey at high tide. Winds were calm with just a little cooling breeze. The bride was as beautiful a woman as I have ever seen and the groom was as made for her as she was for he.
The reception was held at the hotel just inside from the site of the wedding and the new family bonds just continued to grow and get strong.
I do not yet have any really good pictures of the actual wedding or reception to post because I purposefully did not bring my camera. I wanted to enjoy the fullness of the moment and let the professional photographers take care of recording the history. Hopefully in about 3 weeks I will have some great photos to post.
Sunday, the happy new couple departed for their honeymoon on Fiji. I guess they have gotten there by now? I don't even know what or how to say anything about that. It's way out of my league. The Bride and I spent our honeymoon at Hilton Head Island.........My new son has class.
I'll tell you more in the next post.
Thanks for visiting.
There hasn't been much to report about the activities of The Circle lately but this weekend we decided to get together for a picnic dinner and a hike in Roxborough State Park. I guess my post about Checking the Bloom had piqued their interest. Guitar and Pic-E had been there before but K and Too Tall, Two Timing had not and I was anxious to show them this little jewel
Sunday afternoon we all gathered at a picnic area a mile or so outside of the State Park. Strange as it seems this State Park has no facilities for picnicking? Chicken salad, quesadillas, pork and beans, layered green 
salad and margarita pie all washed down with a little bit of Framboise Lambic. My mouth is watering again from just thinking about it. A perfect dinner for the June afternoon of the year. If this is how the rest of June is going to go, I'm really excited.
After a very relaxing outdoor dinner where we all had the chance to catch up on the events of the last couple of weeks, we packed up and headed for Roxborough. I was about 6:30 by this time, cooling off with a nice little breeze....things are really going our way! The park is open until 9pm and I didn't expect that there would be many people there on a Sunday afternoon. I was correct and we pretty well had the place to ourselves.
We decided to take the Fountain Valley Trail. A 2.2 mile loop (hence the post title "Circle for The Circle") which I think gives a good overview of the park. It was also a perfect way to work off the daiquiri pie we has just eaten!
I was surprised at how many more wildflowers had bloomed since I was there just 3 days ago. It's still no where near bloom but things are beginning to "bust out"
About a third of the way into the loop, the ladies who were walking ahead of the men, stopped and pointed ahead. There on the trail was a black fox. Now I've seen a lot of red foxes before but had never seen a black fox. I tried to get a picture but he hopped into the brush before I could. Then as we were talking about how cool that was, he came back out of the brush and stared at us for a few seconds before disappearing again. Seems he was as curious about us as we were of him.
The rest of the hike was much less eventful....thank goodness. That's an odd statement you say? Well, in this case "discretion is the better part of valor". When we got back to the ranger station a little while later, the ranger said that a momma black bear and her cub had been spotted on the trail we were on, just a little bit before we finished the hike.
The ranger also said that he had seen the black fox only once and it is a rare sighting so we felt pretty lucky.
By about 8:30 we were headed home. A great gathering of The Circle with great food, great friends and a most enjoyable nature walk.
Thanks for visiting.
It's starting to get awfully close. #1 daughter, CaJenn, will be getting married a week from Saturday. That's her in the picture above and her husband to be. I have not chosen a moniker for him just yet....Hmm, any suggestions CaJenn??
Both sides of the family are excited and are looking forward to the event. These are two fine young people and we know they will be very happy together.
The Bride and I and The Emmer and The Brides mother "S" will be flying from Denver to San Jose next Thursday. The wedding itself will be in Monterey, CA but San Jose was as close as we could get with a direct flight. From there we will meet up with The Bride's brother and family and drive to Monterey.
I've been pretty successful in putting everything related to the wedding out of my mind and letting the ladies of both families do all the heavy lifting. I can't put it out of my mind any longer and I'm now counting days and having good wishes along with everyone else.
I'm sure there will be many stories to relate about the event in....eleven days!
Thanks for visiting.
What is this? Am I stuck on three days and two nights? I came up short one night again, but the good thing is...So What? Conditions turned less than ideal so I headed home on a Thursday. On the way back into the Denver metro area I saw lots of folks headed up....into the snow. Bound and determined to use all of their Memorial Day weekend come hell or high water, or whatev
er. A smile spread over my face as I headed down into more reasonable weather.
The picture at the top of the post was taken about 5 miles from my campsite at about 9 am this morning. Three days and two nights provided plenty of "decompression", mountain fix, and just plain good times to last for a while. The picture to the right shows what my campsite looked like on Tuesday afternoon...What a great place.
I was about 200' from the lake. One other camper in the small campground. Camping was FREE. Temperature was in the upper 70's. Can it get any better than that?
Well, I was there to find out, because a big activity on my list was fishing. Could I have all of this good stuff and catch fish too? I guess the "his self" mojo was working because I didn't have any problem catching fish. There is a four fish limit on trout at this reservoir and I had that filled within the first hour and a half. Nothing spectacular but plenty of fun with 10-12" rainbow and Snake River cutthroat trout. After I had my limit I continued to fish and release everything I caught. I probably caught 10 or 11 fish that afternoon.
Because it was proving to be so easy, I even bent the barbs down on my hooks to make it more difficult. That solved my problem big time. Once I did that, I still had numerous "fish on" but failed to land a one. Wednesday was not as easy but I still caught my limit and then some when I went back to standard barbed hooks.
All these fish were caught on #2 Mepps spinners. This is a venerable lure, invented in 1938. I have fished with this lure since the late 1950's and it is always the "go to" lure. It will catch fish when everything else fails.
While fishing occupied a lot of time, there was still time for some hiking, reading and plain old "communing with nature".
This morning broke cloudy with numerous rain/snow showers and temps in the 50's. I decided to try a little more fishing in between showers but it proved too uncomfortable...even though I caught two fish inside of 30 minutes. When it started snowing I said enough is enough, packed up and headed down to the Denver area.
Round trip for this excursion was 175 miles. 175 miles and free camping may just get a lot of workout this summer. This is a place I will definitely return to.
I was totally out of contact while I was gone. No cell coverage and absolutely no internet. When I returned I discovered that my father, The Colonel, has had some medical issues that are concerning. He fell an broke his hip on Tuesday and while at the hospital it was discovered that he had pneumonia and some heart issues as well.
Brother #1 will go to Georgia next week to be with him. If need be I will follow in June after my daughter's (Cajenn) wedding. After a good trip, this is a sobering return. It's hard to keep an old Horse Soldier down but the years are making it difficult for him. My thoughts and prayers are with him.
Thanks for visiting.
I enjoyed the Tesoro Foundation Indian Market and Powwow so much on Saturday morning that I took The Bride and The Emmer back to it on Sunday.Another perfect Colorado spring day.....almost bordering on summer because the temperature got into the 80's. The picture at the top of the post is the view from behind the performance area. A perfect setting for this type of event.
One of the organizations participating in this event was Hawk Quest. This organization provides education to the general public and especially children about hawks, eagles, owls and falcons. The bald eagle in my last post was there courtesy of Hawk Quest.
The Emmer especially enjoyed seeing the owls and the eagle that Hawk Quest had in their booth. She also had fun petting some of the local law enforcement horses.
Spring has certainly sprung. It will be very warm this week with one day edging into the low 90's. That had prompted me to decide to slip away into the mountains for a couple days of fishing. The plan is to leave tomorrow and come back on Friday. Hopefully that way I'll avoid all the Memorial Day crowds.
My target destination this time is a small reservoir about 50 miles from here. Tarryall Reservoir is at about 8800 feet elevation so it should be nice and cool. The reservoir was drained a couple of years ago but the Department of Wildlife has been aggressively stocking the lake with rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout.
The Tarryall was named by miners. After discovering placer gold the creek in 1859, they named it "Tarryall" as a place to stay awhile. After all, they were finding lots of nuggets, many the size of peas. Their less fortunate comrades, arriving later, were angered by the possessiveness of the original group and nicknamed the area "Graball". These less-fortunate miners moved on to settle in Fairplay, named to suggest a more reasonable place than Tarryall.
Anyway, that's the plan. Color me "gone fishin".
Thanks for visiting.
Travels with Charley: In Search of America - John Steinbeck....an RV book and a Nobel Prize for literature all at once? How can you go wrong? Where did I go wrong in not reading this 1961 masterpiece long before now? Maybe it was a good thing because at this stage in my life I can really enjoy and appreciate the content.
The content gives you the hilarious and the soul searching cultural introspection all in a relatively short 210 pages. Steinbeck was in his late fifties when he began a cross country trip with his dog Charley and a three quarter ton truck and camper. The camper was named "Rocinante" which was the name of Don Quitoxe's steadfast horse. After many years of international travel and the high life of an important author, Steinbeck felt he may have lost touch with his countrymen. This trip was an effort to reconnect. Early on in the trip Steinbeck states that "We do not take a trip: the trip takes us.", and so it is he travels across the country recording his travels and observations. Most are not planned by him, they are controlled by the trip.
The two constants are his steed Rocinante and his standard poodle, Charley. Steinbeck waxes eloquent and hilarious when describing the character and foibles of his very French poodle. I was in literal stitches as he described showing his companion a redwood forest for the first time.
"Now there is not any question that Charley was rapidly becoming a tree expert of enormous background. He could probably get a job as a consultant with the Davies people. But from the first I had withheld from him any information about the giant redwoods."
"After this experience he might be translated mystically to another plane of existence, to anther dimension, just as the redwoods seem to be out of time and out of our ordinary thinking. The experience might even drive him mad."
In the true French manner however, Charley barely acknowledged these giants at all and Steinbeck mused that if he thought Charley did it to make a joke he would kill him.
About his own ability to navigate he was also eloquent in his lack of ability...
"I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found..."
It's not all lighthearted travel commentary however. Steinbeck visits New Orleans in the midst of a particularly nasty episode in the desegregation of the public schools in that area. In this arena his writing becomes darker. It is equally as eloquent, but darker. He states his opinions and beliefs but steers clear of offering solutions to society's problems.
This was a delightful read, totally deserving of the praise of the many people and institutions that have done so.
Thanks for visiting.
