Chatfield Camping & Bosque del Oso

Our Circle The Wagons campout with The Circle was a success. Nothing spectacular but a low key fun time. We all arrived Friday afternoon and after setting up camp, (see photo above) we all got together for libations and a grilled dinner.
Since I have not had the chance to use the grill that came with my trailer, I volunteered my grill as the official cooker. I must say that I wasn’t very impressed and am thinking that I may just go back to my portable Coleman grill for future trips. I do like the fact that the trailer grill taps into the onboard propane supply so I don’t have to worry about bringing…or keeping up with a separate fuel supply but overall it was a pain to set up and I don’t think it cooked very evenly.
The highlight of the weekend, as far as I was concerned, was the Saturday afternoon/evening festivities. As I mentioned in a previous post, The Bride had already volunteered our trailer for the gathering spot since it was the biggest. She also volunteered to be the dinner hostess and provide the main course…made from scratch lasagna.
To get us all in the mood for Italian food we watched the movie, The Big Night before dinner. It’s a great movie that revolves around one terrific made from scratch, authentic as it comes, Italian dinner.
After watching the movie I think our guests had pretty high expectations for dinner and they weren’t disappointed. Maybe it wasn’t as fancy as the dinner in the movie but everyone enjoyed it. 
Sunday was a lazy morning and we got together late for a group brunch before we tore down camp and headed home. This will be our last Circle The Wagons trip for a little over a month. In July we have already planned two events in the mountains. More on that later.
The Bride and I are feverishly trying to empty cabinets in preparation for the contractor to start installing granite countertops and a new backsplash in our kitchen.
I say feverishly because on Friday we’re headed to Trinidad Lake State Park, just west of Trinidad, CO and about 200 miles from here. That will be our base while we do volunteer work for the Colorado Division of Wildlife at the Bosque del Oso Wildlife Area. We will return late Sunday afternoon and finish up preparations for the contractor then.
It should take the contractor about a week to do all the work and him done or not, I head out for a Forest Service gig a week from this Sunday. Busy, busy, busy….but more on that later too.
Thanks for visiting.

Spring Has Sprung…For Now

Ah, the sound of songbirds early in the morning. Buds on the trees. Daffodils breaking through the soil….These are all signs of Spring but nothing is more telling about the departure of Old Man Winter and the arrival of that sweet nymph of Spring than the relative position of my snow blower and lawn mower in the garage.

The picture in the upper left shows the lawn mower promoted to a position of prominence in the front of my garage whilst the snow blower is now relegated to a back corner along with the snow shovels. If that is not a sure sign of spring, I don’t know what is.

Oh, we may still get some snow but my experience is that anything we get now will either not stick to paved surfaces or if it does it will melt in a couple of hours. If I weren’t reasonably sure of this, the lawn mower would never have been moved to the front of the garage.

Speaking of the lawn mower, I have to give credit where credit is due. This piece of Sears/Craftsman machinery is about 16 years old now. Unlike children of the same age, it has never been to the lawn mower doctor. It hasn’t had an accident or been pulled over by the police. It’s appetite is downright bulimic. The only thing it consumes besides some of my time, is a tiny amount of gasoline and in those sixteen years, about one quart of oil! To top it all off, it responds to me without argument in no more that two pulls of the starter cord…..every time, for sixteen years. If children could only be like this lawn mower, the world would be a far better place!!!

Even though spring has sprung life is not all green grass and daffodils. There’s still some iffy weather to contend with and unfortunately we will have some of that this weekend, just in time to threaten The Circle’s first Circle The Wagons camping trip. From this weeks highs in the 70’s with brilliant skies, we will descend into the low 60’s with rain.

The good news is that the campground is just minutes from the house at Chatfield State Park. Too Tall-Two Timing, Guitar and myself, his-self, made reservations for camping over a month ago. We knew the weather could be iffy but we decided that if nothing else we would watch movies, have some great dinners and conversation and generally chill out.

Since my trailer is the largest, The Bride and I will host the main dinner on Saturday night. The Bride has chosen an Italian theme for the dinner and we may precede the dinner with a showing of one of my favorite movies, The Big Night. It’s a relatively unknown film but is a great story and contains wonderful Italian music from the 1950’s. It should certainly get us in the mood for some Italian food. Check back next week for a report on our adventure.

Here’s some other signs of the springing of Spring in my yard today…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for visiting.

You Know It's Time to Retire When....

I had a medical appointment today that precluded my going into work. Just routine stuff but it gave me a chance also to catch up on some chores. One of the items on my list was a haircut.

I come from a military background and have always worn my hair short. I just feel more comfortable that way. It's also way easier to take care of. Right after I got out of the Army I decided to let my hair grow to the fashionable length of the times..1972. I tried it for about six months and just couldn't stand it. It felt creepy. It took time away from more important things. It was definitely not me, so I cut it and have worn it pretty short ever since.

But, I digress. So, this afternoon I went for a hair cut. After describing the type of cut I wanted the barber-ess tried to strike up a conversation. "Do you still work?" she said........................

Now, I could take that statement and launch into an entertaining soliloquy on how deflating that was. I could compare it to some great put downs and just have all kinds of fun with it. As much fun as that might be, I really didn't think of that at all. What I thought was, "Unfortunately yes. For 648 more days, yes I still work." The very next thing I thought is if this person has to ask, I really should be. The third reaction was really a sense of I am where I want to be. I'm looking forward to retirement and sometimes people just confirm that by asking "Do you still work?".

Other odds and ends....The Bride is still in California. Since I have the day off, I was going to take The Emmer out to dinner after she got off work. She called a little while ago to say that she is having to work a double shift again so dinner is out. I think I'll order in some Chinese food that she can have when she gets home. She really likes that, so it will still be a treat of sorts for her.

We had our first snow of the season yesterday. It started at about 8am and continued off and on most of the day. Because the temperature was hovering on freezing we only accumulated about 3 inches. The temperature went up in the afternoon and the streets were dry by sundown. There's only a little left on the lawn right now. Gotta love this Colorado weather.

The weather was a good reason to work some more on my slide scanning project and I spent most of the day doing so. I culled through quite a number of slides and ended up scanning about 75. Not bad work for one day. I still have quite a number to go through.

Among the pictures I scanned are the two ships you see in this post. The first is the General William O. Darby. A converted troop transport ship that took my parents and our family from New York to Livorno, Italy in 1956. The ship had an interesting history as you can see from the link. The accommodations were spartan even for families. No one today would pay for a cruise on this type of ship.

The second ship is the SS Constitution....not "Old Ironsides" but the pride of the American luxury fleet in 1950. This was the ship we returned from Italy to New York City on in 1959. It was still very much the posh way to travel between Europe and the US at the time. In the 1950s it was still not common for families to fly to Europe. The military operated their troop/family transport service but they still had to ship a number of families to and from Europe by private steamship service. We were very lucky, indeed, to be able to experience the last of the American luxury liners on the European run.

Sadly, the SS Constitution went to a watery grave in 1997 when she sank while being towed to an Asian "chop shop" that was to scrap her.

The final picture is one of my mother and father on-board the Constitution. I remember the journey quite clearly even the part in which we sailed through the tail end of a hurricane just before getting to the states. I think I can still feel the pitching and rolling....as luxurious as the ships were in those days they just didn't have the stabilizing gear that modern ships have. It was a rough ride and I stayed sick for days.

Thanks for visiting.

Mom's Hail Marys

This week business once again takes me to the Providence RI area. The trip here and the trip back takes a whole day traveling, each way, because there are no direct flights and I have to connect in Chicago. So it’s a whole day sitting on an airplane or waiting for an airplane. I normally use this time to do “recreational” reading….non-business related reading that is.

I’m currently reading “If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name” by Heather Lende. The author is a social columnist and obituary writer for a small local newspaper in Haines, Alaska. I got it because I was looking for a good…but easy read as a counterpoint to my normal western history readings.

It is a good read and easy as well, but it had an unexpected consequence for me. Some of the chapters describe the obituaries, no not the obituaries, the people the author wrote the obituaries about. Haines, Alaska is a very small town and the author knew most of the people she wrote the obituaries for. It’s soulful content. Reading it I couldn’t help thinking of the people I knew who have died.

One chapter is not about an obituary but about the Catholic Rosary. The author is not a Catholic but an Episcopalian. She somehow became interested in the Catholic Rosary and as she said, “a prayer is a prayer”. Anyhow, she describes what she learned about the Rosary and the different prayers associated with it. The Hail Mary is the most prominent of the prayers contained in the Rosary. She concluded that the Rosary is more like a “mantra” than praying to God. The simple repetition provides a meditative calmness.

I consider myself a “cultural” Catholic. I was raised in a strict Catholic household. So strict that when I struck out on my own, I ceased active participation in Catholicism….or any organized religion for that matter. My mother was a devout Catholic. She died about eight months ago. It wasn’t an easy death and I sat with her several days before she died knowing the end was near. On several occasions as I sat alone with her she would become lucid and pray the Hail Mary out loud. Even though I hadn’t said that prayer in years, I prayed out loud with her. I think it helped her in the “mantra” sort of way the author described. I thought of her as I read the book and wept a little.

I don’t want this post to be a sad thing however, remembering is a good thing. Someone said that you live as long as you are remembered. So to balance things off here’s a good remembrance. The picture below shows my mother and her four boys in St. Marks Plaza in Venice, Italy in about 1958. I was about 11 years old at the time. I’m the one on the right with the camera bag. My older brother stands to the left of my mother and my next younger brother squats to the left of him.

You will note this brother (referred to by the whole family as “The Rotten One” even today) is staring intently at my mother and older brother who have pigeons eating from their hands. Either my older brother or I had just bet him twenty-five cents that he couldn’t catch a pigeon. “The Rotten One” is kinda like “Mikey” of commercial fame. When you wanted to get someone to try something you always asked/told/bet “Mikey” because “Mikey will eat ANYTHING!” So too with “The Rotten One”.

Shortly after this picture was taken, “The Rotten One” figured out that if you put the feed in your hand and got the pigeon to perch on your hand and were quick enough with your hand, you could grab the pigeon by the feet.

Pigeons thusly grabbed…with wings and head free can make a tremendous racket while spreading a lot of feathers and pigeon poop. We know this first hand (pun intended).

In 1958 Americans were still the heroes of the free world. We were loved and respected especially in Italy. The ugly American had not yet matured….but he was right there with a pigeon in his hand. I’m sure my mother said a Hail Mary for “The Rotten One” that day.

Thanks for visiting.