Jean's Garden and Kayak

Jean loves gardening and enjoys kayaking on local lakes and flat rivers.

This is Jean on the lake at a nearby state park.

 This is a portion of what her garden yielded in the past 2 weeks:

More Colorado Summer 2013

I got to do some cycling in and around Fort Collins. It is a bike friendly town with bike paths that actually get you some place and lots of real bike lanes on the streets. Nearby is the Poudre River Canyon with some astounding rock formations and other scenery and which leads into the northeast corner of Rocky Mountain National Park. I took a 12 mile hike there and while impressive, it is no match for the Collegiate Peaks.

Fort Collins and the rest of Northern Colorado near the Rockies is full of small breweries of which we have sampled  a few. One evening, we met Jean's cousin Jo Ann, and her husband Joe ( nice folks) at the Pump House in Longmont. We had a good meal and a lot of fun. Here is a picture top row left to right, me Daniel, Joe; bottom row l to r Jean Jo Annn.

Colorado Visit Summer 2013

Just got back from Colorado Tuesday night. Twelve days of visiting my son Daniel, hiking and cycling. I started off with a trip to the Collegiate Peaks with Daniel and his friend Lauren. I made it up to Elkhead Pass at 13,200 but was too beat by altitude to follow Daniel to the top of Mt. Belford at 14,100'. I'll have to go back since he said the views were incredible, far better than the already great views from the pass. The next day we waked around Winfield, an abandoned mining town near the Collegiate Peaks. Here are some photos from Winfield:

While they look pretty impressive from the valleys, the mountains are far more impressive when seen from the peaks and high passes. To quote I believe, from John Muir " go to the mountains and get their glad tidings.

Birthday Ride and Brownie Month

Yesterday, to celebrate my birthday, I rode from here to the top of Mount Greylock and back. It was a tough ride, over 8 hours, to cover 90 miles and more than a mile and half of vertical. It was worth it because I learned some thing very important. At the top of Mt. Greylock is an old inn known as Bascomb Lodge. I went in in to get some food for the ride back and there, posted on their menu board for all to see was the announcement that AUGUST IS BROWNIE MONTH. It's good to see that people do know what is important after all. Are you reading this Miss Kim?

Grand daughter and Esperanza Spalding Concert

Last Sunday my wife and I volunteered for the Esperanza Spalding concert at Tanglewood. We took our grand daughter Audrey, and her friend, Lilly as guests. Audrey is talented, intelligent, attractive, and has a fine character, and is many ways a typical early teen, for better or worse. On the other hand, I describe Lilly as the grand daughter I could never be good enough to deserve. The only thing one could do to improve Lilly is to make her twins.

Here's a photo of the three lovely ladies I was with, from left to right, Jean, Audrey, Lilly:

The concert was interesting. The group has lots of talent but the music was too abstract and wandering for my taste and the lyrics were generally pretty lightweight.