In Colorado for my father's memorial

Vicky and I went out a few days early.  We went with my mother, Kathy, and Tonia to visit some places that had meaning to us as a family.

First, though we went to Kathy's choir performance.  They're good!



Big Thompson Canyon, on the way to Estes Park, Colorado:

 

 In 1960, when we moved to Fort Collins, my cousin, Rick, worked here in Drake.  It was a "dude ranch" where horse rides were given to tourists.



This was the cabin in Estes Park that my parents bought in 1963 or 64.  Owned it for several years.  In 1966 my father and I drove up here once a week to work on it together.  That was after school and four hours of working at Steele's Grocery.  On the way home I slept--wonder why.

We ate a restaurant close-by to their cabin.

This was the house that my Uncle Homer and his family built and lived in for a few years in the early 1960s.  I went there often to spend time with my cousin Randy.

 This was a place where my parents frequently went to hike, west of Estes Park.

 At this spot, in the 1950s, my father was taking a movie of me when a squirrel jumped onto my shoulder.   It was on Trail Ridge Road.

My old junior high school.  Lescher Junior High.

 This gas station north of Fort Collins is where I hung out with my high school friends.  One of them worked there.

 The house on Lake Street.  We lived there from 1960 to 1967.

This was the church we went to then.  And the one where my father was Pastor and my mother was in charge of music.

 My high school, which no longer is a school:  Fort Collins High School:




By 2012 Steele's Market on Mountain Avenue had been torn down.  Now just an empty lot.

 The house on Terry Ridge Road my parents moved into in 1967.  I stayed there for one summer--1967.

One summer, in 1956, we lived in Boulder Colorado, in Chataqua Park.  This was the movie theater.

The cabin we rented;

 Then the family arrived.

And we had my father's memorial:

We celebrated Soren's birthday:

Little helping hands make our home beautiful

Dan and I decided to not add any new gardens to our yard.  We have so much we love to do together and that does NOT include weeding gardens!  Our yard is wild and beautiful and we want to keep it this way.

We already have some hosta planted in the gardens close to our home and a few years ago BV (before Vicky) Dan had made a beautiful day lily garden.  This year I planted several primroses near the hostas so we could have flowers early in the spring and we ordered dozens of day lilies to add to the lily garden.

I do love bright summer flowers so we bought several flats of flowers and then asked if our grandchildren who live close by would like to come over and plant them in our flower pots.  And they all said,”YES!”

First Marina and Stella arrived and started planting.



Stella and Marina supervised Grandpa and made sure that he hung the right basket in just the right place.




A few days later Adan and Ian arrived and planted flowers in the baskets on the vintage metal bicycle that I had given to Dan as a wedding present.




Our home is so beautiful surrounded with flowers that were planted lovingly with our grandchildren’s little helping hands!

Anniversary of our getting together

Once again, we took the dinner dance cruise out into Lake Washington.

Our first camping trip in the new camper and our first Inland Empire Bike Ride up Webber Canyon

We just HAD to try out our new camper.  So we drove it to Sportsman Park in Yakima,
WA:

It was also our first try at dropping the camper and then trying to get it back onto the pickup bed. We wanted a camper where we could do that, so we could take the pickup to hiking destinations. 



So, this was our first hike from our new camper.  It was beautiful. 

 It took us about an hour to get the camper back onto the pickup.  (addendum added years later:  We learned how to do it, and got it down to about 15 minutes).

Then we drove to an RV park, Wright's Desert Gold, in Richmond, WA, where we were going to ride the Inland Empire Bike ride.

signing up for the ride:

 

Addendum added years later  We did this ride several times over the years, and it seemed like I got a flat tire on almost all of them;  Odd because I rarely got any at other times.

 

There are two awesome features of this ride.  One is the 10 mile climb up Webber canyon.  It is simply a breathtaking experience.  

The second major feature is on top of Webber Canyon.  Horse Heaven Hills.  It is very flat, and very beautiful.  There are a number of vineyards in this area, so you can frequently find wines that state that the grapes are from Horse Heaven Hills.

Back at our camper.  VERY tired. But what a fun day.

The camper worked.  We will be able to use the camper to get us to camp spots and hiking spots.  We can't wait.