Way behind on the blog; last auto-tour/lunch trip before bail-out.

 Well, around mid-Sept we were getting ready to think about winterizing Rocky and heading back east before any cold/wet weather could move in to bug us. You may remember that last year it rained on our day of departure making the last minute pulling in of the slide-out, locking all the storage chests/bins, putting up of flower pots and firepits, and all the other assorted chores a pain. 

But before all that happened we decided to take a lunch outing up the canyon (west) to see if there was any snow up at Cameron Pass. We'd been getting mid-30's at our elevation (7200') at night and thought there might be a chance. We had a great time at first until we came upon the dreaded road work. Out west, (and up north), they try to fit all the road work in before the snow flies, and Hwy 14 was no exception. Milling up the old road surface and repaving - whew! After about a 15 minute lay-up, the "follow me" guy showed up and we were past. While we waited, I jumped out and grabbed a couple of pics of the river, which really looked great.

There was a small stand of birch being lit-up by the slanting sunlight so I took a couple of shots of them too.

(taken from the car right before the
convoy got underway.)

When you head west out of the canyon you are heading up into the North Park area, where cattle ranching and agriculture reign supreme. We saw a cool-looking group of cowboys on horseback meeting up in the pasture before getting to it. I was too slow on the uptake to get any shots. Also slews of both firewood stockpiles and stuffed hay barns and roly-poly bales out in the fields. The "business" of fall was upon us. Quintessential North Park, where they were not in favor of the reintroduction of wolves!

The whole pasture was pretty densely-packed with cattle,
this is just a small sniglet out the window.

I have so many great hay bale shots I don't know
which ones to pick. I guess if you have to
winter-over a herd you'd best be prepared. 
Love those long, wide open views!!

We saw the beginning's of some fall color as we headed towards Walden, CO.  We (the Boss) decided he wasn't going back the way we came so we headed up and around through Wyoming to come in the back way.

Here's a great shot of what I'd say was some "premo" land for some  industrious farming/ranching folks, right on the river and beautiful scenery. Bet it's pretty in the wintertime, long way to the grocery store though, 45mins-1hr?

So pretty, I think this was near about at the stateline WY/CO.

Miles of dirt roads, wide vistas, hay bales and old, deserted properties. This was by our lunch spot, which was, BTW, beside a river and in the shade. A lonely-looking spot in a really pretty location. (What was the back-story?, inquiring minds want to know).

The last long leg of the journey was coming in through the thick forests that encompass Deadman Road west of Red Feather Lakes. It's a long, dirt road through the woods. We saw deer in the road, lots of deadfall and eventually, quite a few people enjoying dispersed camping opportunities. 

Not the best shot, we stopped way early and this is zoomed in.

Here's the route as shown on the car's nav system. See all the squiggles, yeah, a long road!

A fairly exhausting day followed up by hot showers, drinks and dinner. A good adventure for sure. Just a week or 10 days later a fire broke out along the eastern edge of the Deadman Road forested area, north of Red Feather Lakes by Crystal Lakes, human started 😢. They got it under control quite quickly ad I think it was contained at about 138 acres.

That's it for now, but look for more "catch-up" posts detailing our trip back east and to current times.

Thanks for stopping by! 🥰

More summer fun w/Hiking, Crafting and Cooking

 Summer is sliding on by pretty quickly. We've been out here in the Poudre River Canyon for 2½ months now and it won't be all that long before we are packing up to head back home to FL. 

It has been a really nice summer with quite cooperative weather; not too many hot days and enough rain to keep the grasses and wildflowers green and happy.  Some years with scarce rainfall the canyon terrain gets dried out and turns brownish golden. It certainly makes for a prettier drive into town when it's green, the rock formations stand out more and look more dramatic.

So far on our drives through the canyon we've seen deer (a group of 4) and big horn sheep (group of 4). It's always startling to come around a corner and there they are - yikes! Many times oncoming traffic will flash their headlights in warning, super helpful, nobody needs any drama!

Big Horn Sheep, ewe's or juveniles, heading back
out of the canyon. There were 4 in this group.

I've been mentioning the rabbits and tiny bunnies out and about, and how they've been nibbling. They have been good bunnies lately working on the dandelions and clover in the yard and leaving my flowers alone.

Headed over to a sprinkler puddle for a drink.

It seems I've gotten the "beading" bug and have been enjoying it very much. One thing I've been working on is using armature wire to sculpt flowers into which I add beading. They come out so cute, and look much better in person where you can see the sparkle & twinkling from the various colored crystal beads.

Another project (or 2) has been working with the chicken wire and bead suncatchers. I made one using a thrift store picture frame and enjoyed the process very much, however the results seemed a little stilted for me. I decided to try a few more "free-form" attempts using reclaimed deadfall branches. Here's how one such effort turned out, I like it a lot. Again, the missing sparkle factor really makes it look flat, but it's not, it's pretty lively when hanging outside with sunlight and breezes blowing.

This branch is only about 8" across, so not a huge
commitment in time spent or materials used.

As for outside activities, we went for another hike in Dadd Gulch the other day, which was a great leg-stretcher. Sometimes it seems like the hardest part is coming out of the gulch and walking down to the car parking area. If you zoom in on this pic you can see our car wa-a-y down there, lol.

It's that slightly downhill stuff that gives my hips fits. Here are a few more shots from the hike.

I get the Boss to lead the way.

I was going to try for a "wild berry" collage shot but only saw these bright red berries and didn't dare venture into the brush looking for others, can you say bears?

And some pretty purples..

I've had some nice chats with a few of my "sometime" residents. There are some really nice people in the world. I am doing a bit of crafting with one neighbor and another is from my hometown area of Rochester, NY.

Not a lot of cooking photos taken lately. I seem to get caught up in the process, then eating the results before I remember I need to take a shot of it.  One I did get was this nice-sized pan of eggplant parm I baked in the Ninja Foodi. It made 4, 2-person servings for us and 2 for my neighbor, (she takes my overage which is so nice!).

Check it out - I've already started to slice it, LOL!

One final thing, we like some of the regional bread offerings and miss them when we go back to Florida. The 2 that come to mind is Izzio's Sourdough bread (San Francisco style), and Rustik's *big* half loafs of seeds/grains. So big we always split it (how else are you going to get it into the toaster?, 😁).

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for dropping by and come again. 

A lunch trip to Dowdy Lake and a hike

A very good week was had by all, what with a picnic lunch up at Dowdy Lake to start things off and a day or so later a nice hike up the trail at Dadd Gulch. The weather has been good, but we do have serious haze over the land. No smoky smell but blue skies are non-existent right now. A view along the way, pretty, but prettier with a blue sky.

Along the way we also had to stop for these beauties, (I love any horses!). It was a fairly big herd of maybe a dozen+, including 3 foals. Some taking advantage of the shade from the trees, and some grazing. I always go to the fence line and "cluck", and use sweet, baby talk to try to engage them for their photoshoot, lol. It was pretty hot, so I only got a few raised heads and glances.

A few of the "shade seekers", including 2 of the foals.

Of the other group, I did get the attention of a foal who came up to visit with me at the fence. Poor thing was somewhat fly-bitten. I always hate that for the critters that live outdoors.

I gave a small head scratch but that's about the size of it.
Check out how hazy it is, you can barely see the mountains.

Dowdy Lakes is north of us, near Red Feather Lakes, not far as the crow flies but the winding dirt road slows things down. It's a popular campground and day use fee area ($9). It's a fairly large area with lots of picnic tables along the shoreline. A favorite of the picnicking crowd and people fishing. Also, always lots of kayakers and paddleboarders around.

We picked our spot and tucked into our grilled chicken sandwiches while checking out the lake and watching the ground squirrels (?). There were plenty of them around, some looking a lot like chipmunks and some larger and more like prairie dogs (?).

The Boss looks out onto the scene - so, so hazy 😢

Down at the other end of the lake/reservoir.

Most of the wildflowers these days tend to be either purples or yellows. I don't mind but I am sorry I missed out on wild columbines I've seen before up at Dadd Gulch. 

One of our favorite trails is Dadd Gulch. It's close by, mostly in the shade for the majority of it, there are wildflowers, and streams to be forded and cool rock formations. Plus you are in a gulch with canyon walls on both sides.

At least I didn't miss out on the Black-eyed Susan's.

A view of the gulch walls up above. The creeks didn't have a lot of water running, a mild winter with less of a snow pack perhaps.

Looking up from the trail at Dadd Gulch

Not much else going on except good living, and good eating. I made yet another batch of the blonde brownies, with lots of coconut, pecans, butterscotch chips and semi-sweet chocolate chips. I cut the 9x13 pan into tiny pieces; somewhere around 64 is what I think I got out of it. The pieces are tiny because these brownies have 1½ sticks of butter in them!

Unfortunately I forgot to take any pics. That's all I've got for you but thanks for dropping by for a visit.

Not much going on, just trucking along

 Things have been quite routine lately, and as such there's been a dearth of things to write about, but here goes.

We typically drive down the canyon and into town for a shop-up once a week. This keeps us in fresh fruits and vegetables plus our dairy & eggs - we eat well 🥭🍒🍓🍍and love our morning fruit bowl. I keep a selection of fruits all cut up and ready to pour into a bowl, but it's hard not to get carried away and end up with too much. (1st world problem I know. God is good!)

The neighbor next door has a big raspberry patch under the tongue
of his 5th wheel. Occasionally, I pick a few, lol. 😉

The roads down the canyon(s) are very pretty and offer a nice change of scenery. Here's a shot from one we took the other day.

This road comes out into the south end of town by the Horsetooth reservoir. There's always a lot of cyclists out enjoying the ups and downs of the road, especially in July with the Tour de France underway. Speaking of which, this year the coverage is on Peacock rather than on the network station. That means we have to get our news & highlights via Youtube, and only get an abbreviated look at the action and the scenery. 😢😠 Man, I hope it's not like that next year - I guess that will depend on the ratings. It's a bummer that they put the coverage on a subscription channel.

It's been a crazy cottonwood season - I thought I'd throw in a shot of a tree branch that fell down. It looks like snowflakes when the wind catches it and it gets blown around.

Cottonwood branch

I bought a big bag of Yukon gold potatoes the other day, as we use them for homefries, put them into stews and of course, make our Italian sausage and potato soup. It's a favorite combined with a small salad for a lighter supper. I thought I'd try mashing some of the cubes up then putting them flat in a baggie and freezing them. It worked out well when after a couple of weeks I got them out and made the soup, saved a lot of time/effort. I use some beef stock granules when cooking the potatoes.

I almost always have cooked, cubed pot's handy,
just add the mashed and cooked sausage, plus milk,
stock and a few more ingredients and you've got soup.

See, I told you nothing much is going on, haha. Our big excitement in the past week was a huge, intense thunderstorm with hail! Luckily, none of the hail was bigger than a good-sized pea. The ground definitely got a good soaking, but the flowers took a beating, especially the petunia's. We've thought about making a pool noodle car cover, lol, seriously!!

That was a lot of hail!

The weather otherwise has been great, quite cool in the morning's but warming up nicely. We debated taking the electric blanket off the bed but decided to wait. Last night it went down to 39° and there's more of that in the offing. I'm OK with cooler weather, we have our electric fireplace and heater for the mornings and our A/C for the afternoons, lol. At 7200' the sun gets hot and intense on a summer day.

So that's about it for now, hopefully I'll have something a little more exciting, or at least more interesting, next time out. Thanks for dropping by and I hope the weather where you are is decent. There have been a lot of vicious storms and floods and stuff out there, whew! Take care and see you later. 😊☀️

Mostly just flowers, some food and some fun

 It's been a very nice couple of weeks, the weather pleasant with just a bit of rain here and there. We had a hot'ish spell requiring the A/C during the mid-afternoons. Those afternoons I used my oven to accomplish some baking tasks. One day I made baked chicken thighs with cornbread dressing - yum, and 2 more repeat dinners. Another day I tried a recipe for blonde brownies with coconut, pecans, and a scattering of both butterscotch and semi-sweet chips. Those turned out great and have filled the "no cookies left" gap nicely. 

Forgot to get any pics of all that, however, I tried a 2nd recipe for the southern biscuits with cornmeal & buttermilk I'm attempting to perfect (or at least master), and they turned out quite good; tender, moist and flavorful. Ratio of flour to cornmeal 3 to 1, I'll post the recipe on the food page at some point for reference. I used a 3" glass to cut them out so I got 6 large biscuits! We had 1 each last night with our pork & veggie stew, the Boss was effusive with his praise for both, lol. 😍

Next time I'll use a smaller glass!

Also, on the food topics, I finally decided to take a chance and test the idea of putting unwashed strawberries into a glass jar for longevity in the fridge - it works!! So cool. These strawberries have been in the fridge for at least 10 days and look at them! (I can't believe it, but I'm so glad).

These beauties looked perfect. I usually cut up half a pint at a time,
then try to use the rest before they get moldy - no more worries.

On the flower front I put together a few picture collages of some around our park.

I love seeing everything thrive around here. I have to do quite a bit of watering with the intense sun and wind drying things out, but all the plants just get bigger and prettier as the summer goes on, makes me happy!

Every year these folks go all out with a packed flower box.

In between helping rehab my neighbor's yard/garden and doing the baking etc., I'm also getting time to practice my wire weaving jewelry making. I brought all my supplies with me and usually piddle around with it in the evenings.

Necklace pendants in copper wire.

My fun neighbor Liz and I are planning on making framed, chicken wire and beads suncatchers. I'm sure you've seen them on the internet. Can't wait!

Finally, when it's real hot out we can go over to a teeny-tiny beach on the island (on the property) and stand in the freezing cold river. Usually a nice cool breeze coming off the water as well.

There are several spots to hit the river, 
can't see the miniscule beach here though.

Well, that's it for now. All's well out here and we hope you are having a great summer where ever you may be; home, abroad or just out and about. See you next time, and thanks for dropping in for a visit. 😊

Back in our "Happy Place" in Colorado

 It's so fantastic to get up in the morning and have our canyon views out the windows. That, and the cooler temps, lol. 😊 Things here @Glen Echo RV Resort are very normal. We're catching up with our neighbors and working on our yard and little gardens.

A shot of Glen Echo, with the store, restaurant and pub fronts.
The cabins, duplexes and RV/tent sites are all back behind it by
the river. It's a very nice property with a lot of handy amenities.

Spring "pop-out" lags behind up here at 7200' which is great because I get to enjoy the blooming of the apple trees, and my personal favorite, the lilacs! It doesn't last too long, but I'm so glad to catch it.

After the fruit set and matured last year
the bears raided it and cleaned it out.

Gorgeous, huge lilac bushes & they smell so good!

When we're not out walking or working outside, we're getting back into the auto-touring picnic lunch mode. So simple to make up a couple of sandwiches and grab the chips & drinks and hit the road. Right out of the gates of the park is the turn north for N CO Rd 69 which heads up towards Red Feather Lakes. There is a small corral at the corner with horses housed there occasionally. I love seeing them.

3 horses and 3 donkeys in there all together.

So, on this day we decided to head west out Hwy 14 to check out the Continental Divide and see how much snow was left up there. We stopped at the Tunnel Picnic Site first to get up close and personal with the river. It is in full spate right now, at least that's how it seems. A shot and a short video taken there.

River's really rushing.

Wow, that will almost give you a touch of vertigo watching the river gush by so fast! So further up the road we could see that there was still ice along the edges of the Joe Wright Reservoir (elev. 10150ft) which is a big fishing hotspot for grayling primarily. It's really pretty up there, but a bit of a steep path down to the water. (My knees objected to the attempt.)

Joe Wright Reservoir

The snowy peaks were starting to show as we headed up to Cameron Pass @ the Continental Divide.

Shortly after that, we headed back east, found a picnic spot and ate our lunch. It was all down hill from there, lol. Back at Rocky, we did a re-heat on a wonderful chicken, grape tomatoes, black olives & asparagus "rosa" alfredo with garlic toast. So good and so easy.

Sorry I don't have a shot of it "plated". Used some of
my Priano Rosso Pesto to enhance the homemade alfredo sauce.

So, once again, thanks for dropping by and check back in a couple of weeks for the next installment, and be sure to leave a comment. How's your summer so far? 😎

Natchez Trace State Park and Echo Bluff State Park

These activities took place around May 20th onwards and mostly catch us up. 

As we left Chattanooga and began our westward journey our first stop was the Lodge at Natchez Trace. We have found that many state parks have very nice accommodations in their Lodges, so we tend to take full advantage of them when possible.

While this Lodge is quite elderly, and is actually slated for a complete  demolition/rebuild this upcoming winter season, the property and Pin Oak Lake is just stunningly pretty. We took a 1-hour guided pontoon boat cruise with a Park Ranger and saw just how expansive the park acreage is - 48,000 acres.

Cruising on Pin Oak Lake - it was a beautiful day for it.

They have several cabins and campsites throughout the park.

Also, while the rooms might not have been up to our usual standards, the restaurant certainly made the grade. I had the best Turkey Club sandwich ever at the restaurant and the Sunday brunch was well worth the entry fee, lol. Fried catfish & chicken (of course), and all the sides, plus I had my first cornmeal biscuit with sausage gravy and it was incredible. My newest culinary quest for sure, the biscuit not the gravy.

We took our camp chairs down to the lakeside with our books and beverage and just relaxed.

Wonderful place to sit and relax in the shade.

Soon it was time to move on and so we headed to Missouri and the Ozark's. Our destination was the Echo Bluff State Park Lodge, which sits next to the Sinking Creek and is very near the Current River, popular for water activities such as kayaking etc. Very nice Lodge with wonderful rooms, ours, on the bluff side, had a nice private balcony.

(Not my picture, but thanks).

On a side note, the cicadas were in full swing all throughout the southern tier states and Missouri was no exception. We saw several trees littered with dried-up husks left behind. We took a nice auto-tour loop around and about the area which took us down to the Current River, where we saw several kayakers enjoying the day.

The surroundings with the river down below, pretty country.

A great day for it.

When we made it around to Salem we decided to stop for a late lunch at Aranda's Mexican restaurant. Wow, the food was really quite good and we ate the whole thing! No supper needed, and as there were severe storms with possible tornados and large hail due to pound the mid-west overnight, we opted to stay an extra night to let the front move on through. There was no big rush to get out to Rocky as they usually don't get the water down at our sites going until Memorial Day weekend. At 7200' they have to wait out the overnight freezes.

Our last overnight stop was in Grand Island, NE at a Comfort Inn. It was a decent hotel, and I really liked how there was a service road off to the side of the main drag which allowed easy access to fast food, gas and stores. For tired people hoping for a fast food fix and gas-up, it fit the bill nicely. No photos were taken, we were just on a mission. The prospects for the next day? 430 miles from Grand Island to Rustic, CO, and we have a time zone change in our favor. We got an early start and made it into Glen Echo RV Resort with plenty of time to get squared away for spending the night. And look at one of the glorious trees that was in full bloom!! Wowza. 😲

Well, that's the wrap for the trip. Everything inside the rig was pristine, no evidence of any interlopers of any kind - yay!  More on the next installment, and thanks for dropping by for a visit.