Summer trips

These photos are out of order. They are from our trip to the Tulsa Zoo on Friday. I forgot to include them when I was uploading photos. After I had the words in, I tried to add the photos. Unfortunately, when I try to move them down the line to their correct place, the screen won't scroll. It's too much work to move, scroll down, move, scroll down, etc. for each photo, so I'm leaving them here!

Our thanks to Jeff and Melanie for letting us party in their room.

Okay. So now that summer is almost over, figuratively speaking, and all the trips are finished, it's time for a recap of what has happened and where we've been. I've been remiss in keeping things current, so we're playing catch-up.

Memorial Day -

We introduced Melanie to the cabin and took Grandad back for the first time in two years. We had a fun time. Temperatures were perfect. Cool breezes. Barbecue on the grill. Watermelon rind chucking contest off the back deck. Meeting Grandad's neighbors. Singing, Phase 10 and reading. Some repair work on the trail. A little fishing. Watching the beavers in the lake.

Logan -

End of June. Dad's SARE meeting this year was at our old hometown. We flew in and spent two & half days during some of the hottest part of the month. Fun tours including sheep training, organic veggies, and coyote behavior studies. A nice, long visit with Elizabeth, talking and taking photos in southern Cache Valley. A brief tour of our homes in River Heights. They're still there, but the raspberry bushes are gone from the green house with the ditch and sheep in the back.

Pre-Tulsa-
Dad and I spent four day driving out to Tulsa. Kind of a "real" vacation. We drove through northern NM, via Albuquerque, Taos, past Philmont to Raton, Clayton, to Black Mesa B&B near Kenton, OK. We stopped at Elizabethtown (a ghost town) and Capulin, a volcano, and saw lots of wide open emptiness.

Our bed & breakfast place was a refurbished ranch headquarters built about 100 years ago. Has a beautiful view of the mesa from the front porch. It is totally away from any kind of town. No lights at night. Lots of quiet, rocking chairs, wind blowing, deer, antelope, two kittens, two huge dogs and no cell service. The landlords were friendly, the food was good, and it rained. We did have a good laugh over the directions to see dinosaur footprints and the 3-corners monument. They consisted of the following: "The first cedar tree on the right after the Black Mesa parking area, turn right. You'll see a place where lots of people have parked. The dinosaur footprints are there." and "Follow the road until the pavement ends. That's the state line with Colorado. Take the first road to the left. Go down two cattle guards. The monument is at the 2nd cattle guard." The directions worked!

That really is a dinosaur footprint under Dad's hat. The rock it's in is covered with a layer of sand.

Cimarron County Museum

Cimarron County, the westernmost of Oklahoma, has a cool museum andf one real claim to fame. There is no stoplight anywhere in the county. We drove from Kenton to Tulsa on Thursday to begin the festivities there.

Tulsa-

Dad's last official meeting with NACAA. We're so glad everyone was able to come and play with us. I know it's stressful to travel, deal with hotel rooms and kids, and then all the activities that are part of the annual AM/PIC, but we loved seeing you all and playing with the grandkids and talking and singing and everything else. The pictures will give just a taste of everything (pun intended).

Blue Belle Ice Cream

Belgian Chocolate Store

Dad and the playful puppies.

Wednesday's family tour - barbecue sauce, big mansion, Pawnee Bill's smaller place.

Dinner and playtime!

Thursday morning and playing in the water park.

We headed home Saturday, July 17. We pulled into the cabin about 10:30 pm. We were up and on the road again by 6:30 am on Sunday. We did take time to sit on the porch and enjoy the cool bnreeze and water the lilacs. We I guess I should say "I", wanted to be home on Sunday since it was our ward's first sunday in our new building. Dad was kind enough to humor me. Thought: Dad and I are TOO OLD for L-O-N-G road trips. The fourteen (I think) hours from Tulsa to White Mountain Lake were too much. Six or seven hours is much nicer.

Boulder, CO-

Yearbook summer camp. Beautiful campus and buildings and mountains. Lots of information and new ideas about running yearbook class and new design ideas. I thook 3 students, including Camille Gibson Ashcroft, and they are ready for the new year. I have never seen a place as agressively pro-recycle and conservation-minded as CU campus. We had lots of fun with squirrels and I even saw two raccoons one evening next to the dorms. No AC made it somewhat miserable in the dorms, but my bed was right next to the window and things cooled down at night.

Just for Jacob.

So the trips are over for now and we're back home and getting ready for another school year. Matt is finishing his summer classes. Dad is sorting through lots of papers and the phone isn't ringing quite as much and he isn't talking to his email as much either. Lots of fun. Lots of memories.

Spring is sprung

It's Spring! Better look fast because it will be gone in a couple of weeks. We're already seeing afternoon temps in the mid-80's. The climbing roses we planted on the arch have bloomed. They have a light fragrance and look so pretty. Everything else is growing. Dad says there will be a good crop of apricots if the birds don't get them and they don't fall off.

Grandad said it couldn't be Easter without doing eggs so he and Dad did the honors.

Part of Spring is the Spring Board meeting for NACAA. This year was our last one and it was held in San Antonio during the last week of March. We got to go on a tour and I explored downtown San Antonio by trolley and on foot. We walked a good section of the River Walk and saw some historical sites. This is the Navarro House. Part of it is built of adobe and part of caliche blocks. Built in 1850 something. Very simple, very nice.

Dad at the Governor's Mansion, unfortunately closed for renovations.

Our tour took us south of San Antonio to two ranches. One ranch was over a hundred years old and still run by the same family. Part of it was still a cow/calf operation and the other part was a wild-life hunting range, wild life being deer, wild hogs, and a variety of birds. The other ranch is dedicated to breeding "true" long-horn cattle and run by the Detmer family of BYU fame.

This horse pestered anyone standing close to the fence to "pet me, pet me!" And this is a long-horn, in case you couldn't tell.

The trophy room at the wild-life range.

Okay, all you rock people. The storage for fodder for the cow/calf operation was in a BIG hole dug out of the hillside. This is what we saw inside. You can see the layers from the plants and soil on top down to the limestone underneath. Or caliche. Dad would know which.

This is the ranch house for cow-calf set-up. It was built in the 1850's of limestone quarried on the ranch. The owners just finished remodeling and restoring the building. Very beautiful with big windows to catch the breeze. Big old live oaks around the fence for shade. Love the porch.

I shall miss the trips, the places we've been, and the people we met. Spring Board has taken us to Myrtle Beach, SC, Corpus Christi, TX, Albuquerque, NM and now San Antonio. Fun times.