Thursday, July 31, 2014

The Lees Come To Visit

We’ve been looking so much forward to the visit of Sandy and Charles. They spent a week with us including going with Jim on his family’s annual 4-wheel drive to Ouray. 

They stayed right next to us at Chapman Campground

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We ate out every day starting with breakfast at Campus Café and laughing at Sandy and her surprise at the size of their cinnamon rolls.

 

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We went to Cavillo’s and El Charro for dinners and Ef’s the last morning for breakfast. 

 

 

One of their favorites was dinner at Rialto Bistro for marvelous Italian food.

Lees Visit

One day we drove up to Creede to meet Debbie and Jim Elliott (met at Betty’s RV Park) for lunch at Kip’s Grill.

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While there Jim’s brother, Don, messaged that he was at Creede’s Fire Department  underground facility and for us to come by to show The Lees. This facility was blasted out of the mountain by miners with each truck bay cut out of the center entry. It is very unique and one of a kind.

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I particularly like this photo I took of Don making a phone call.

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While in Creede we decided to drive the Bachelor Loop with it’s remaining mining scenery.

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I particularly like this shot of Creede from up high.

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Four-wheeling isn’t a favorite of mine, so I stayed home and watched the dogs while everyone else drove to Ouray on Friday. Poncho and Bella were cute together.

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Here are some photos Jim took during their 4-wheeling trip. The scenery was beautiful with the flowers all in bloom even with parts still having snow on the ground.
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I particularly liked this photo of the blooming flowers.

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They all enjoyed themselves even though I don’t know how Sandy could tell as Jim said she was always taking photos from the front seat….Charles was in the back holding on.

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When they returned I helped mark up Charles’ Survival shirt with all the passes they had traveled over.

 

 

The next night Don and his wife Debbie had us all over for a steak dinner.  It was so good I even ate some steak. 

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Sandy was kind enough to take a photo of the three brothers and their wives.

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Soon it was time to say good-bye to The Lees, much to our sorrow.  As soon as they hooked up Poncho broke loose and jumped in their truck.  The heck with us…..Poncho was all ready to leave and go with them.

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Sandy giving Poncho a treat to get him out of their truck
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Saying a final goodbye to Poncho
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Final wave goodbye
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Empty spot next to us now…lonesome…miss them already.

We so enjoy The Lees and hope to see them in the future.

Remember, you are loved.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Birthday Weekend-2014

We started Friday morning with Jim making breakfast on the disco and having Heinz and Angela join us – we were both staying at Highway Springs Campground in South Fork.

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Finally mastered the time-delay feature on the camera

For many years now my BFF, Salai, and I celebrate our birthdays together as they are only a day apart.  For the last seven years Salai would come to South Fork where we were camphosting and, leaving Jim to take care of things, we went to Creede to shop and have lunch.

This year we decided to stay in South Fork for our celebration.

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First I gave Salai a cowl I knitted for her…her colors.

 

 

 

 

 

We tried to go to the Three Barrel Brewery in Del Norte but they close from 2-4 p.m. (wish they didn’t do that), so we decided to go back to South Fork and eat at Old Firehouse.  We knew we wanted dessert, so we split a burger with sweet potato fries. And then…tada…hot fudge sundae.

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We checked out a couple of stores and actually found some very nice yarn.  So we had a good day together! 

Jim cooked Cajun pork roast in the Dutch oven so we had pulled pork sandwiches with baked beans for dinner with Angela bringing out a homemade baked cherry cheesecake as our birthday “cake”.

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I made Salai close her eyes and open her mouth, while I filled it with Reddi Whip…one o my favorite things to do! We called it a night after dinner and Salai returned to Alamosa.

Saturday Jim and I walked around Logger Days, where guys and gals compete in various logging skills. There was also a midway with vendors and food trucks.

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The competition was exciting to watch.

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Take a look at the size of that saw!!!
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Sawed a slice in seconds!
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Throwing a hatchet…he got the bulls eye
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Chain saw slice…quick.
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Click to enlarge—look at the teeth on this saw
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It only took them a couple of seconds to saw off a slice of this aspen log.

This guy was the craziest … run up an elevated log stuck in the ground at an angle WHILE carrying a running chain saw!!! Crazy….. Then he has to balance himself while he cuts off a specific length of the end of the long.  He didn’t make it…poor guy.

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It was fun watching the competitions as we’ve always been working as camphosts the last seven summers and couldn’t take off that much time to watch it all…so it was fun.

That night I dressed up and Jim came out looking sharp and along with Heinz and Angela we went to The Rockaway for dinner there in South Fork. Angela and I convinced our men to go for the 22-24 oz. prime rib dinner while I had the shrimp scampi and Angela had the beef liver.

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It was a very, very nice day with Jim writing me a very sweet “love” letter that I cried over.  So here we are all dressed up for my birthday photo.

July 19, 2014

Sorry for this long blog, but I have been enjoying my weekend and not worrying about being current with the blog.  It was a good weekend with activities, good friends and great food.

Remember, you are loved.