Sheridan, Wyoming

The boys have been playing a great deal of mini golf and basketball, and the girls have been spending a lot of their time at the pool.  Today was a girl camp spa day and they all did their nails (because of course Rianna could not go camping with out all the paraphernalia for doing nails!!)  We all spent some time in Downtown Sheridan today shopping.  We found a very interesting store with lovely old junk and treasures (comics, Pez dispensers, knives - everything you could imagine)

  It was the first time in a long time that David really enjoyed shopping!!  He bought some 

Reichmarks (German money) from 1923 - ever the social studies teacher!!!  We can pick up teaching aids in the darndest of places!!

The kids are all camping out in a tent near our trailers and are having a great time!!  This photo is from our campfire tonight.  Hershey and Oreo are loving the extra attention, too!!

P.S.  Congrats to our friend Janie on completing step one of her San Diego dream!!!!!!!!

Budweiser Brewery Tour

We have met up with some friends here in the wilds of Colorado!!! (Actually, it was sort of planned, not a random happening)  The Aab family, plus a friend each for Jocelyn and Brandon, have been travelling for a couple of weeks, and we have managed to get together.  It has been really nice having some other adults to visit with, and having the kids out of our hair!!!

In celebration of meeting up with Karen and Ken, what else was there to do but visit a brewery!!!  There is an Anheiser-Busch facility here and they do tours!!  It was a bit bigger than the Alexander Keith's tour we did in Halifax.

The brewery is surrounded by beautiful gardens, and we got to visit some of the horses, too!  We had plenty of types of beer to sample - Budweiser even has a dessert beer now with a blueberry flavour - trying to get in on the wine market I guess!

Pike's Peak

Pike's Peak is one of the tallest mountains in Colorado, but what makes it unique is that you can drive up it - right to the top!!  You go through 5 different environmental zones, from Montane to tundra.  The park starts at 7,750 feet in elevation and the peak is at 14,110 feet.  The road isn't quite as exciting as the Mogi Dugway, which David was quite happy about - plus we didn't have the trailer attached!!

On a clear day, you can see 4 different states from the top of the mountain.

We saw this lovely little fellow on the way up.  It is a Hoary Marmot, and they are usually found 
up at the timberline.  He was just sitting at the side of the road, watching the cars go by!!  There were quite a few spots where the switchbacks are very steep, and there are no railings of course!!

The view from the top is amazing!!  This is where the woman who wrote the song, "America the Beautiful" got her inspiration.

One of the things that this moutain is most famous for is the mountain road race.  Vehicles have been racing up and down this road since the 1930's.  Sean was pretty excited about being here - just disappointed that we weren't here at the same time they were racing!

Garden of the Gods

We spent a couple of days in Colorado Springs, which is just south of Denver.  We are camping ride beside Cheyenne Mountain, which was the home for NORAD.  There are no tours of this facility anymore, but that would have been cool.

This lovely little park, Garden of the Gods is an area of really cool rock formations.  Unfortunately, about 5 minutes after we took this picture there was a huge rainstorm with lots of lightning, so we didn't get a chance to hike around and explore. You can just see a path that winds through the base of the rocks - again, that would have been cool!!

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

Sandboarding down a huge sand dune has to be one of Sean's favourite things from this trip.  This area of 30 sq. miles of sand dunes, the highest one at 750 feet tall is the largest in North America.  We chose not to climb up High Dune, though many people did.  The surface temperature of the sand was about 110 degrees, but would be closer to 140 at the top.  The hike would have taken about 2 hours, and walking up all that moving sand just to get to the top didn't seem to be that big of a deal to us!!

Instead we set up our umbrella and chairs, spent a couple hours sand boarding and tobogganing, and had a lovely picnic!  I did a nature hike with a ranger and learned all sorts of cool stuff.

We are staying in Alamorosa, Colorado, and had a lovely drive up over the Continental Divide through the mountains to arrive here - good thing we got the big truck!!

More photos of Mesa Verde

Rianna's hand fits nicely into 700 year old hand holds in the side of the cliff.

Smiles after we make it up the steep ladder to the top.

A look at rooms under the overhang.

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde

 Cliff palace is the largest single cliff dwelling community in North America.  The hike in to this area is relatively easy, but the hike out is very steep, using vertical ladders and steps from that time that were carved into the rock.

This complex has 150 rooms and 23 kivas.  A kiva is a circular room which is partly dug into the ground.  In the time of the Ancestral Puebloans, it would have been covered over by a roof made of logs and mud.  These rooms were used for ceremonies, meeting, and even living quarters in the winter.  There were also storage rooms, living areas, and open spaces.

The rooms within this community were not all built at the same time, and so there are variations in architecture and style - some are absolutely smooth, some are rough rocks, some circular towers, or square.  These areas were inhabited for about 100 years, and as families moved in, they would build onto existing rooms, on different levels, like terraces.  But they all fit together as if there was a master plan.  You can still see the black marks on the rocks from their cooking fires as there has been very little disturbance in the last 700 years.

To see all these structures, built into the overhang of a cliff 300 feet above the valley floor is truly remarkable.  To imagine families trying to meet their basic needs, farmers growing crops on the mesa top, women grinding corn and weaving, children scrambling up cliff walls thatare so steep they make me shudder  - what an amazing glimpse of history!

Balcony House, Mesa Verde

Balcony House is the most inaccessible of the cliff dwellings, and getting there was quite an adventure.  It starts with a relatively easy but steep hike down the side of the canyon wall which takes us below the settlement.  Then we had to climb up a 100 foot ladder, trying not to look down the 200 or so foot drop into the valley below.  This took us to the balcony section of the structure with 5 rooms and a lovely balcony that looks out across the valley.  This was a ranger led hike, due to the difficulty of the climb, and the need to keep this area safe from an archeological standpoint, but our ranger was awesome, and explained so many things - it was extremely educational!

For the next part of the hike we had to climb another short ladder, use the hand and toe holds dug into the rock face, and slide through a narrow crack in the wall that led us to another section of the community.  Here there were more rooms and more info from the ranger.

To get to the last section we had to crawl (not so easy for bad knees Dad) through an 18 inch tunnel (again, not so good for Dad) for 12 feet (again, not so easy for claustrophobic Dad)  But again, it was so worth it!!  

The exit route from the homes followed the same route that the natives did, using another ladder, and hand and toe holds carved into the rock.  Luckily for us, there was also a safety fence at this point, and a metal chain to hold on to.  Still, it was still very freaky to look down and realize that 700 years ago, none of the security measures were there.

Between the historical value, and the adrenaline surging adventure value, I would have to put this in my top ten list of experiences!!!

Mesa Verde

Mesa Verde National Park is found near Cortez, Colorado.  It is the home of a group of cliff dwelling people, who I learned about as the Anasazi many years ago.  The term that they use now is Ancestral Pueblan, referring to the fact that these people were the ancestors of the Pueblo indians who live here now, members of the Hopi and Zuni Indian tribes.  Around the year 1300, there were more people living in this area than there are now, many of them living on top of the mesas and in the valleys.  Groups of natives began to build communities in the cliff walls.  Archeologists have a variety of theories about these people, but there is no written history, so most of it is just "theory".  These tribes would farm on the mesa top, growing crops of corn and beans, hunting deer, rabbits and other animals.  We took these photos from across the valley, which is probably three to four hundred feet deep.  The photo on the left shows green trees and scrub brush in the area that they would have farmed on top of the mesa.  They found alcoves in the cliff walls and built communities there.  In the photo on the left, right in the middle, you can see an arch in the stone.  The photo on the right is a close up of this arch, which shows the remnants of a series of structures, with 16 rooms!  It is amazing to believe that these people climbed up and down the rock face on a daily basis in order to provide their basic needs from the mesa above.  This area gets 8 or 9 feet of snow during the winters, so they had to harvest enough food, and store it, to last them through the winter.  Collection of rain water was important as there are no rivers in the immediate area.

These tribes lived, built, traded and expanded here for about 100 years.  After many years of drought the tribes moved south to New Mexico, settling in new areas, leaving the cliff dwellings abandoned.

Crash up Derby

I am trying to upload a video clip from the demolition derby - wish me luck!!

Montezuma County Fair

Y'all come down to the Montezuma County Fair! You can eat the best hand-dipped corn dogs you will ever try, ribbon fries, chili cheese baked potatoes, and funnel cakes, topped off with a cherry limeade soda!  Just don't try to count calories or stop your arteries from hardening!!

Then you can check out the 4-H auction  where you can buy a whole cow for $750.00 .  You can enter your rabbit, your pie, your quilt, your tomatoes, your painting, or your roses into the county contest.  And then at the end of the day when you have spent all your money and won your prizes, you can go to the drag racing track and watch an honest to goodness demolition derby!

I never thought that watching old clunkers
crash into each other could be so exciting, but it actually was a lot of fun.

A good day was had by all at the Montezuma County Fair!

Shiprock Mountain

The road from Monument Valley to Farmington, New Mexico is pretty uneventful, except for Shiprock mountain.  It is a volcanic mountain which rises 1400 feet above the desert floor.  It is the basis for many Navajo legends.  There are no major rock formations around it so it really stands out.  

I had to cheat a bit and take a postcard picture too as my photo did not do it justice!