A Perfect Day Trip With Carrie

 Such a decision to make on where to go on a day trip with friend Carrie from Pueblo!!  We both finally decided that we would just head to Buena Vista with a trip up Cottonwood Pass AND a stop at Cottonwood Lake - and it turned out to be one perfect day!

Carrie arrived by 8:00am and we were soon on the road!  We made a quick stop at Wilkerson Pass to walk up the path and the leaves were beautiful there!!  Right then we knew we picked a great day!

When we reached Buena Vista, we decided to go ahead and eat an early lunch so we stopped at Jan's and ate - always good and always pretty darn quick!

And then we headed up Cottonwood Pass!!  The leaves were magnificient!

We stopped several times and then turned around and headed back down!  Took the turnoff to Cottonwood Lake and although very bumpy, the road was lined with beautiful aspen trees!

I don't ever remember being at this lake before - it's not very large at all but extremely beautiful!

And then we headed down to a private lake - luckily the gate was open 1/2 way so we went in and parked just so we could take a few pictures!

And last but not least, Carrie took this picture of me on the pass!

A wonderful day with one last look at all the leaves!

September Photo Dump

 It was SO SAD to see September gone - my favorite month always goes WAY too fast!

So here's a few random photos that didn't make the blog!

I needed a new fall decoration for the top of my cupboard and I LOVE the one I got!

Joleen was in for 4 nights one week in September!  She flew in from KS this time so I picked her up at the Co. Springs airport!  One night we had her son Zach, grandson Trent and friend Lindsay over for dinner!

Kylan and Irene were over one evening and they made a cabbage dish in the oven - I can't say I would ever make it but they enjoyed it!

Jessi gave me a gift when we were up that way - a plug in mat that keeps food warm!  I'm SURE it's supposed to be used to put hot food out of the oven on to stay warm but I have been using it daily for my OWN use!!        I'm a very slow eater and even though I use place mats on the granite, my food is always stone cold by the time I'm done eating (high elevation cools the food much faster!)   So now I just plug in my mat a few minutes before it's time to eat and it keeps my food nice and warm till I'm done eating!!  It's perfect - thanks Jessi!

Glenn has been bringing in tomatoes from the garden to eat so we've had plenty of BLT's lately - this one reminded me of a heart!

THE FINAL DUCK WAS FINALLY FOUND ON OUR FALL CAMPING TRIP!!!   Remember when we came home from Mexico in 2024 and the girls had hidden 100 tiny ducks all over our house!!!  Well, Glenn discovered the final one when we were camping - he opened up the match box that I had put in the camper from the house and there was the LAST little duck!!!!  Gosh, it only took us 1 1/2 years to find it!!!

And that's it for September - on to October!

Fall Trip - Sargents

 We headed out after breakfast and only had about 45 minutes to get to Sargents - since we were only staying the 1 night, we just parked the 5th wheel in an open area right off a main road - easy set up and easy to get out the next day!  While we were setting up, Brad went by (son-in-law) who was over there hunting!  We waved and he turned around and came back to visit with us!

After a quick lunch, we headed out to the aspens!  Sargents has always been one of my favorite places to take pictures and this year was no exception!  Between our first day there and the next morning of ATVing till about noon, I got all the pictures I needed and was smiling from ear to ear!

When we would climb up high, it was really hard to capture the beauty that far away but at least the pictures show all the "gold" on the hillsides of the mountains!

As we came into my favorite spot which seems to go on and on with the aspens, I got out and just walked so I could just snap and snap pics!

One of my photographer friends told  me that to get the PERFECT picture, you might possibly have to take up to 375 pictures!!!  THE ONE BELOW IS THE PERFECT ONE I TOOK!!!!  And you can bet I will be blowing this picture up to put on my wall!  I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!

What a joy it was to ride around in those mountains and see all the beauty!!  But it was time to head back home on Friday and this was Marshall Pass as we drove by!

What a wonderful fall trip to both places - a fall I won't soon forget!

Fall Trip - Pitkin

 It's my FAVORITE trip in Colorado - the annual fall trip to see the leaves!  I thought and thought about where I wanted to go - and with the weathermen saying it was going to be an early fall, I was just hesitant to book a cabin anywhere as sometimes we actually miss the fall colors because you have to book so far ahead!  So I FINALLY decided that this year we would just camp - and that way we could go when the colors were perfect - and that's exactly what happened!

We left on a Tuesday morning, headed for Pitkin - it's one of my favorite spots although not Glenns' because the road to get there is SO bumpy!  But oh well!!  We do have a favorite wilderness spot so we parked the 5th wheel and unloaded the razor to check and see if it was available - of course it wasn't!  But that didn't bother me because I LOVE the campground in Pitkin - they have wonderful drive through spots so there's plenty of room and there were only 2 campers when we arrived!  Spot #8 has always been taken when we've been there in the past but it was open this year so that's where we went!

The only bad thing about the campground is it is set in SO many trees, that not a lot of sun even comes through during the day so it is colder there - unfortunately not long after we arrived, it started raining - so Glenn took a nap and I hunkered down with my kindle and we were both happy!  A little later we headed out, all bundled up as it was darn chilly out!

As it was still rather dreary out, I waited to take pictures the next day!

It was DARN COLD that night and the furnace ran a lot - but we stayed toasty warm and ran the generator in the morning to charge the batteries up!  And then we were off to see the leaves!

I can't tell you how many pictures I took and then deleted because I had SO MANY!!  But I just couldn't stop snapping them as it was so beautiful out!

We saw more orange aspens this year than we ever have!!  And oh gosh, they were so pretty!

What's a camping trip without seeing a moose?????  Always special in my book!

It was a fantastic day of riding through the leaves!!!  And a nice evening, although very cold again!

We took a walk down to the stream the next morning before packing up and heading to Sargents for the 2nd 1/2 of our fall trip!

Bear Encounters!

 I can't forget to post the bear pictures!  During the first week of September, we must have been camping or something because I checked the camera one morning and this is what I found!

This is on our front porch and if I would have been sitting at my computer, this bear would have been about 4 feet away!!!!!!!  We have large windows in our office that look out on this porch!

Apparently he was looking for a hummingbird feeder and thought the flower planter was it!  I am VERY good about bringing in the feeder every evening as it hangs out in the tree in front of the porch!

The bear hasn't been back - which is a good thing!!

Black Light Wrestling

 Saturday morning we were up bright and early once again to get Parker to Denver for the Cosmic Clash Blacklight Wrestling tournament!!  He has been practicing a lot during the summer months and even though the wrestling season has not started at his school, his coach was taking a few of the wrestlers to the tournament!  It was an open competition, not school related!

Jill and I headed out early to take Parker and Glenn and Robby followed just a little later!  We packed a lunch and had our phones charged!!  Traffic wasn't bad till we got into Denver and found the spot where it was being held - oh my gosh - the people and the cars!!!!!!  We were lucky and got into a parking lot right across from the stadium so that was good!!!  But the line to get in was ridiculous so we dropped Parker off and then parked and stood in line for quite a while!

I had NO IDEA what to expect but soon found out once we got in the door!  Seating was all around the stadium and there were about 24 wrestling mats on the floor!!  We found some seats and immediately tried to get our phones on their website!!  But with around 1200 wrestlers in the house along with all of their families, the phones just didn't work very well!

You can tell by the picture of the two of us that it was rather dark in there - loud music was playing - and the entire floor where the wrestlers were practicing was dark with the crazy colored black lights doing their thing!!

Here's a pic of what the floor looks like!  And yes, it was hard to actually see the wrestlers!!

We were panicking because we just couldn't get the phones to work well and that's how you know WHERE and WHEN the kids would wrestle!!  Finally Jill went outside to get some service and we figured out where Parker would wrestle first!!  Unfortunately he lost his first match! He's the one with the white tape on his leg!

I had never been to anything like this!  I DID enjoy watching the wrestlers but would NOT ever go to a blacklight competition again - just too hard to see and soon my head was pounding from the lights and the music!

On Parker's second match, he pinned the guy - HOORAY!!!  That was exciting!!

But Parker lost his next match so by that point, he was done!

Glenn and I were thrilled to get to see Parker wrestle as his season is always during our Mexico Trip - Robby does send us videos of the matches which we truly appreciate but it's tough not to ever get to see him wrestle in person so this tournament was perfect!!

By the end, I was more than ready to get out of that place and into the sunshine!!  We had brought our car so we could head right home - Gwyn actually had a softball game in Denver that we had considered earlier going to but with my pounding headache and being gone for 5 days, I was ready to just head home!  But what a great 5 day trip we had!

Rocky Mountain National Park

 RMNP has been on my bucket list for YEARS!!  Yes, we go to Estes Park to celebrate Christmas every year BUT that's in the middle of winter and not the best time to go there!  Last year we had planned to go up there to see the leaves but it just never happened!

So when we were planning our 5 day stay between Denver and Ft. Collins, I figured that Friday would be the perfect day to go since Jill and Robby would both be working!  I immediately checked the "Timed Permit" rules as I had to idea if we could even get in!  But I was glad to read that if you enter the park BEFORE 9:00am or AFTER 3:00pm you don't need a timed entry - that was a relief since the timed entries for our day had been taken a month ago!  BUT they would release a few more the night before at 7:00pm - I wasn't too concerned about going in early as we were planning on leaving Jill's about 6:30 anyways and it was just an hour to get there - BUT I really did want to get a timed entry for one of the best roads in the park which is Bear Lake Road!    This road has a couple of lakes and more leaves to see!

Luckily we were back from the ball game by that time so I got set up on Jill's computer - we could see there were 38 permits that were going to be released right at 7:00 so I was ready - and at 7:00 I clicked the button to get the permit and they were all gone already - WOW - apparently they clicked their computers a 1/2 second before I did!!  Oh well, at least we would get to see the rest of the park!

We headed out on time and stopped in Loveland at Scooters for breakfast sandwiches and coffee to go with a picnic lunch packed in the back!

Entry was easy - we have the "free" senior park pass so it didn't cost anything to get in which was nice!

Right away, we saw a herd of elk - a LOT of people were stopped looking at them so we pulled to the side and got out!  Not a new sight to us but I'm sure visitors that have never seen elk were thrilled to see them!  There was a bull there also who I captured after we went a ways further!

One of the beautiful views as we climbed in elevation!

Here's the bull elk - and we even got to hear him bugle !

We did go to Trail Ridge Road and this one way road turned to gravel soon after we got on it!

Outstanding views when we got high enough to see this grove of orange aspens! 

On the way down we stopped at Lake Irene and walked down to it!  Very pretty!

We had a picnic at the stop for this lake as they had picnic tables available!  It was cool out so we had worn our sweatshirts most of the time!

On the way out of the park, we stopped at one of the Visitor Centers and I got my Christmas ornament of the park!   And my thoughts on the park:  It IS a beautiful national park but I do have to admit that the views and things we saw were no different that what we see everytime we ATV in the mountains!  Once again, I'm sure the out of state visitors are absolutely enthralled to see these sights because they don't see them on a daily basis like we do - we are so blessed to live in the mountains!

As soon as we got out of the park, we called Eric Lass (son of our good friends Dick and Jane) as him and his partner Jessi run a horseback riding company - Jessi's family has been doing this for 50 years!!  They are based in eastern Iowa where the horses are during the winter and they haul them out here late spring when the tourist season starts!  And lucky for them, their place is right on the edge of RMNP so the trails they use are all in the park!  We enjoyed seeing their home in Estes Park AND the riding stables!

Then it was back to Ft. Collins - Jill prepared yummy tacos for dinner and we all enjoyed the evening - Jill, Aleah and I actually ran out later to DQ to get treats for everyone!