Sept 23, 2013 Ouray, CO

We visited Ouray last year during August and fell in love with this little mining town.  It was one of those places where we came in, intending to stay a night or two and ended up staying a week.  Since it was the tail end of summer, just one or two aspen were beginning to change their colors so we wanted to come back here in the fall to see all the golden trees and Ouray put on the colors in style. 

This is the road into Ouray.  That torrential rain yesterday translated into snow in the mountains surrounding the town.  We weren’t sure there wasn’t going to be snow in the town itself, but the white stuff stayed higher up.

 

 

We got set up at the little RV park right here in town, and then headed up the Million Dollar Highway to check out the mountains, and quickly ran into lots of vibrant color.

 

 

 

The sky could hardly be a deeper blue!

 

 

 

This is what the locals call a Red, White and Blue shot – the blue of the sky, white of the fresh snow and the red of the mountain showing through.

One of the places we visited last summer was the Yankee Girl mine.  The road (red mud) looked a little too sketchy to attempt today, but the shot of the mine structure from across the valley was pretty with the snow and changing trees.  Maybe tomorrow or the next day it will dry out enough to tackle.

 

The aspen speak for themselves!

After we drove back down the mountains, we took ourselves over to the hot springs in town and had a good, hot soaking.  I’ll have to take the camera there tomorrow.  Now we’re all warm and melty and ready for bed!

Sept 22, 2013 Montrose, CO

So, where are we now?  We left home on Sept 18 and traveled all the way to Sparks, NV, just about a hundred miles over the mountains.  From there we went on to Ely.  We’ve been through Ely several times but never spent much time there.  Usually we go on to Great Basin National Park, but this time we decided to check out the Ely Northern Nevada Railway.  It was the railway built to carry the gold, silver and copper ore during the peak of the mining in that part of Nevada.

   The main railway is no longer in use except for short steam excursions, but the museum there has saved the depot and the buildings as well as having a large repair/rebuilding facility there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How does a place like this find the people who know how to work on these monsters?  Looking at them was all well and good, but we had to take a ride, so we bought our tickets for the 4:30 trip.

Since it was still early in the day, we drove out to the Ward Charcoal Ovens State Park.  Every publicity photo of Ely has the ovens in it.  They were built to make charcoal to use in processing the ore for the mines in the mountains nearby.  It takes 35 cords of wood to fill each oven, and a week to burn it down to charcoal.  At 5 acres of wood per oven, it didn’t take long to totally denude the surrounding mountains of the cedar and pinion forest.

 

 

 

 

The ovens were pretty impressive and still in good repair.  They obviously are used by the cattle to get out of the rain, so watching where we put our feet was important!

We headed back to the train station to catch the steam train.  It went out to the copper mine, now in operation again, and back to Ely.  Cinders and ashes – you can always expect to be washing those out of your hair and clothes when a steam engine is pulling the train!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we drove to Salina, Utah.  We were planning to go on to Green River, but the wind was horrible and even trading off driving duty, we were both tired so we quit at Salina.  The town’s claim to fame is Mom’s Café, which made an entry in the book, Eat Your Way Across The USA, so we had dinner there, and I have to say it may not be fancy, but it still lives up to its reputation, especially the pie!

So today, the 22nd, we were going to stop in Grand Junction, and after a full day of driving in the pouring rain, we got there to find there was not an spot in any RV park to be had.  Seems there was a big wine festival over the weekend and no one wanted to leave today because of the bad weather.  So now we’re in Montrose, 60 miles farther down the road.  The good news is that tomorrow we only have about 30 miles to get to Ouray! 

Summer with the kids–part III

While we were in Florence we, of course, had to ride on the sand dunes, so we found a place that gave rides on a big dune buggy.  Micah was fascinated with the fact that it used airplane tires.  It was a nice enough ride, but as we were slowly traversing the dunes, a sand rail with a few passengers went whizzing by us and in unison, the kids pointed and proclaimed, “I want to ride on THAT!!”  So we did. 

The kids were lucky -

they had on helmets so they got minimal sand in their hair.  I spent the next week washing it out of mine, and over a week later when we delivered them to their mom, she commented on the sand that was still embedded in their ears.  It was worth every grain to have the fun of ripping over those dunes at what seemed to be 70 mph.  It wasn’t a slow traverse in any sense of the word!

 

Our last stop in Oregon was Gold Beach, where we traded a ride on sand for a jet boat ride on the Rogue River.

This was the view out our front window at the RV park where we stayed.  The jet boat picked us up at the dock of the hotel next door.  The ride was pretty wild, with the guide whipping that jet boat around and getting us all wet.  We were glad it was a warm day!

 

  A mini jet boat.

Our final stop was back down in California at the Redwoods, where Micah and Indy got their ranger badges for filling out the Junior Ranger booklet.  We had fun wandering through the tall trees and exploring the fire-hollowed trees.

     

And then the trip was over and we had to deliver them back to the loving arms of their parents, just in time for Indiana to get ready for her first day of 2nd grade.

Summer with the kids: Part II

We took off up I-5 to Oregon.  Our first stop was at the Roseburg Wild Animal Safari, where Micah and Indy got to feed a real giraffe.  They had put us all in a big, open truck and we drove along until we got to the place where Mac, the giraffe, had decided to stand in the middle of the road to get his bucket full of yummy romaine leaves.  Mac’s tongue was as long as Micah’s arm!

Micah and Indy took lots of neat photos of the wild animals, in many cases just roaming around loose, doing their wild animal thing.  The fierce ones were penned up, for their safety if not for ours.

Our next stop was at Lizzie’s to visit with baby Jax, go to the zoo (we haven’t had enough of wild animals!) and to take family photos.

       

(Oh, yes, Maggie and Shane flew up to hang out with everyone for a few days.  Maybe they missed their kidlets?)

After Maggie and Shane flew home, we headed over to the coast where we made our way down the coast, starting with Astoria.

          

At the Marine Museum in Astoria.                         Romping on the beach.

Tillamook:

        

Cheese factory, watching the        Riding the Steam train                  Blue Heron Cheese Company brie getting packaged                          from Tillamook to Rock Beach        cheese.  They sampled everything

Florence:

We stayed at our favorite State Park, Carl Washburne, where we enjoyed the beach until we got blown away and frozen.  That tiny spot near the top of the picture with Micah and Gerry isn’t a dirt spot on the lens; it’s a tiny, tiny kite that Micah had a great time flying.

          

Summer 2013–Catching Up

We were home for a good part of this last summer.  I had the nasty bunion on my foot fixed, so that nailed us down for a couple of months, but it’s all good now and I can walk painlessly.

We escaped the heat of July by going over to Monterey for a week and Maggie, Shane and the kids joined us.  We enjoyed the aquarium, as we always do, and we even went to the Scottish Games at the fairground near the RV park where we stayed.  Gerry was a trooper and put up with the bagpipes as long as he could.

 

 

 

 

Indiana wanted to make a quilt, so she came to our house at the end of July and we got all the block tops made.  (I promise, it will be done by Christmas!)

We went to the State Fair, where we took the mandatory photo of child on top of golden bear, and at the end of the week Maggie and Micah joined us and the kids enjoyed visiting our friend who has his very own train in his yard.  Indy even got to drive the train!  She makes a good engineer.

              

 

Then we headed off for Oregon, Micah, Indy, Gerry, Gypsy and me!

 

(to be continued)

November 2012

We stayed in Hillsboro after Jax was born through Thanksgiving, and so we got to play with the baby a lot.  Such fun.  Maggie, Shane and the kids came for Thanksgiving to meet their new little cousin.

  Indy and Micah think Jax is pretty cute.

 

A warm baby makes such a good napping buddy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing Catch-Up - October 2012

We went down to Shane and Maggie’s house for Fleet Week to see the Blue Angels.  What we didn’t want to do was be in the city on the weekend, so we drove in on Thursday when the Angels were going to practice.  It was a hazy day but I got a shot of the planes over the Golden Gate.

We also got to watch the kids playing soccer and see Indy get her very first goal.  The Lemon Lime Ladies won their game.

 

Micah plays soccer at his pre-school and we watched him have so much fun just kicking the ball around.

 

The highlight of the month was, of course, the birth of Jax Brentnall Williams on Halloween day.  He’s our little Jax-o-lantern!

Liz did a great job with Josh’s coaching.

Proud Granddad