Last day here in Colorado for a while. Finished packing for the canoe trip this afternoon and then got the gear and canoe loaded onto and into the van this evening. We will be taking two vehicles this time "since" there are only two of us going. We'll drop my truck off at the take out at Robinson's Bridge, (Kipp State Park), on the Missouri River and then take the van on into Fort Benton Montana where we will put in on Wednesday morning. Would rather not take two vehicles of course, but you do need a way to get back to the put in once the trip is over and walking the 150+ miles back isn't much of an option. In the past we have hired a shuttle service out of Fort Benton to run it for us, but this year they wanted $300 bucks plus gas money. So we will just do it ourselves this time. It's a good thing we both like to drive because it will be a 14-16 hour day tomorrow.

   We did take some time off this afternoon to go meet George for a 'boys night out movie'. We saw the film 'Savages' about a Mexican drug cartel trying to move in on some pot growers in southern California. A very interesting film really, with several well known actors and actresses in it, but extremely violent during most of it. Nice to see George again of course and always fun going over to eat afterwards. Pretty much everyone knows us over at Red Robin now, from the waitress, Emily, on up to the manager, Nick, so we just walk in and our drinks and food magically appears without us even looking at a menu anymore.

   Raining again here this evening and it is really cooling things down. It sounds nice in the leaves outside and once in a while you can hear some distant thunder. Need to get some sleep though, it will be a long, long day tomorrow. Won't be doing any up dates on the blog until we get back next Thursday or Friday as I don't plan on taking the lap top with me. Hope all of you are doing well and  that you will check in again about 10 days from now. I know I'll have a ton of photo's to go through by that time. Bye!

    A nice day here in Colorado. Pretty much finished up packing for the river trip that is happening in two days. Had to go pick up a cheap long sleeved shirt just in case the bugs are real bad or the sun gets to be to much. Also had to pick up a towel to take along, one that was a dark color and one that I won't feel bad about throwing away or using as rags at the end of the trip. Over the years I've just learned that there are a few things that you take on river trips, white socks being one of them, that will never, ever be clean again no matter how many times you wash them.

    Met my friend Joe over at Englewood High School this afternoon for their summer theatre production of 'Any Thing Goes'. It has been a very long time since I had seen this particular play, but the music is always good and the cast did a very good job of it. In this type of school production most of the lead parts are played by adults or older teens with younger kids filling in a lot of the lesser roles and the chorus. In this case there were about 40 kids in the cast who were from about 12 years old down to around 5. All of them did a great job of looking cute and when they did their little tap dance routine to the title song it was just so-o-o fun.

    Joe and I were talking about the play later as we were having some dinner together, and we both agreed that it was a fun play to watch and that everyone did a good job of it even if it wasn't of a real high caliber. Over the years I've kind of gotten to the point where I think almost every play has at least some redeeming value to it. (I would never make a good film or theatre critic). My thought is that as long as the people on stage are singing and acting better than I could in the same role, then it is good enough at least for me to watch and applaud. Of course this sets the bar pretty low at times since I don't sing and never tried acting, but that's okay. It is still a lot of fun.

    Only one more day to go before Tom and I take off for Montana and I am starting to get excited about it. I love the outdoors and being on the river, but I'm really excited about being on the move and seeing new things and having new experiences again. Also looking forward to seeing how Tom and I handle being in a canoe together for 8 days on the river. We have been on many, many, many river trips together, but it has been a very long time since it was just us together in one boat. I'm hoping 18.5' of canoe is going to be long enough to keep us both sane. One thing for sure, it will give us a good indication as to whether or not we are compatible enough to do another long trip together again. We have talked for many years about doing the whole Missouri River again in a couple of years. That's over 2,100 miles and at least 60 days worth of togetherness. Guess we will just have to wait and see.

   Spent several hours yesterday afternoon showing my Mom photo's from my last trips. The ones to Chadron, San Diego and the long one to the south east.  She is doing okay now and seems to have settled into life at the assisted living place she is now living in. I don't think she excepts it any better now than she did before, but is now more resigned to living there as even she knows there won't be any way to go back to the old place and live on her own again. On the good side though, she is still living in her own apartment and she has many of the more important things she wanted around her. I think she misses the clutter though, and the feeling of independence she had even though she was nearly a prisoner in her own house in many ways.

   She enjoyed looking at the pictures from Chadron and San Diego and got a kick out of some of the ones I took on my road trip. We only looked at some of the high lights of it, with more than 2,000 pictures, viewing them all wasn't an option. Will go and visit her again once I'm back from my trip to Montana, and probably at least once more before I take off for good in September. The relationship is still a little strained, but we both seem to be working at making it better again. I hope so any way.

   Went and watched the new Bat Man movie then afterwards. Had hoped to be joined in this endeavor by a friend of mine, but he needed to work so it was a solo event for me. An interesting movie that continued the story set up in the first two movies. This may actually end the Bat Man part of the story but set up future stories, and movies, featuring 'Robin' and 'Cat Women'.

    Speaking of Cat Women; Anne Hathaway certainly looks good in skin tight black Lycra and there is of course that element of fantasy that most men have of falling for the beautiful bad girl who can kick the s**t out of you when you get out of line.... That's not me of course..... I liked the movie overall, not great by any means, but certainly entertaining and it even had a decent plot to it. Not something that every boys night out movie has, or needs.

    Joe did meet me for dinner later on in the early evening. I had used up about an hour and a half after the movie and before meeting him in doing the grocery shopping for my breakfast and lunches for the river trip. Tom and I will do all of our dinners as a shared meal, but for the others we are on our own to provide what food we want to eat. We have been doing it this way on river trips for many, many years now and it seems to work out much better than trying to fix 3 meals a day for everybody on the trip. For one thing, that method produces way to much food, but it is also hard to get a consensus of meals that everyone wants to eat and fix and then clean up after. This way you can do what ever you want for two meals, make them as elaborate as you want, or not, and no one will really care. I'm afraid I fall into that group of people were 'easier is better'. People laugh at my pop tarts and canned fruit in the morning and more canned stuff for lunch. But for me it is easy, it usually involves nothing more than a p-48 can opener, a spoon, knife and maybe a tortilla or piece of bread. My meals also seldom need to be kept cool. So while some people might shudder at the thought of canned ravioli or smoked oyster sandwiches, I figure it's good enough for the week I'll be on the river. Plus.... there's a reason why I'm usually the first one packed up and ready to go in the morning and after lunch.

   But I digress; Joe and I met for Mexican food at this kind of dive'y place off south Federal Boulevard at 6:00. Not a lot of ambiance to the place, but the food is good and the price is very reasonable. Always good to catch up with what friends have been up to and Joe seems to have been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. He works for himself as an all around handy man kind of guy and has been staying pretty busy redoing bathrooms and kitchens, painting and just about anything else you could ever need a guy to do. Had hoped he would go on to contra dancing with me after dinner, but he begged off with the excuse of being to tired. He did mention a play this Sunday at the Englewood High School, so I hope to meet him and a couple of his friends there for that. Those types of plays are always such fun to see.

    Dancing last night was pretty good. A band from down south in Pueblo, Nimble Fingers, came up to play for us. Lots of new beginners and even a couple of people who didn't speak English. It's all good though and it seemed like everyone was having a good time. I do miss dancing at 3-day or weekend dances though. It is so nice to walk into a dance hall and know that the caliber of dancer is going to be high, the band(s) will sound wonderful and the caller(s) will have fun and challenging dances for you. Looks like I won't be attending another one of those though for at least another 2 months so what there is will have to do.

    Had to drive up to Longmont this morning and visit the trailer and my storage unit. Went to pick up the last few items I still needed for the river trip. Pretty much found everything I needed to including clothes, paddles, tent, sleeping bag and pad. The only thing I couldn't find was my light weight long sleeved shirt. I know it's in storage somewhere, but who knows where. Will either go buy a cheap new one on Monday or head to the ARC store and pick up a cheap used one. Either way works for me.

    Got back late this afternoon and sorted stuff out a bit. Tom and Donna went off to play a round of golf with a good neighbor friend of theirs, Steph. They gave me a call after they had finished and I met them over at yet another Mexican restaurant for yet another round of Mexican food and margaritas. A very pleasurable evening of conversation with them all. We all seem to get along well and all have enough mutual interests that conversation never lags. Tonight the topic was trips down the Grand Canyon so that was fun to hear about every ones impressions. Looking forward to that trip through the canyon myself in about a month.

   So here are, what I think will be, some final pictures from my trip to Chadron Nebraska. In this case they are critter pictures of the long horn cattle herd they have out at Fort Robinson State Park as well as some of the bison herd they have there also.

One of the few, my nephew says only, herd of genetically pure long horn cattle in the country. They have at least several hundred of these that they keep and breed every year.

Lots of different variation in coloring and in horn length and shape. This bit of herd was cows and new born, this year, calf's. I don't think it would be wise to get between this mother and her baby. From all accounts they are able to pretty much fend for themselves against most predators.

A close up, or at least close enough, view of one of the many bison out at Fort Rob. This one was rolling around taking a dust bath in his wallow. We stayed in the truck with it in gear the whole time. I wasn't too worried, but I've actually seen these things run before.... and you can't run fast enough to stay ahead of them.

Another view. This one isn't all that big, maybe 1,200-1,400 pounds in all. Some of the bigger bulls will weigh more than a ton and stand 6 feet tall at the shoulder.

He-she? seemed pretty content to lay there in the dust in the heat of the day. It was about 107 degrees out that day.

There were maybe 200 bison in view while we were in this area. I believe they have more than a 1,000 total in the State Park. Sure is neat to see them all out like this.

   A nice warm and sunny day here in beautiful Colorado. It is truly a wonderful place to be all the time, but summer is always the best time to be here. Spent yesterday running errands and doing laundry. My friends are just great when it comes to putting up with me at times. They also have this awesome washer and dryer they let me use. Bet you never expected to hear a guy gush over how great laundry products are, but these machines are amazing. Very low water and no agitator thingy in the middle. Still have no idea how it works, but my clothes have never been cleaner. Got all my regular dud's done yesterday and got a start on all my bedding, including stuff like the bedspread, blankets and mattress cover that don't get done every 2-3 weeks like everything else. Still a couple of pillows to do and then I'm done.

   Lots of errands to run yesterday. Got my voter registration status updated again to make sure the idiot guy in charge of voter registration in Colorado didn't decide to drop me off the list since I didn't vote in last springs special election. Seems they are looking for excuses to do that everywhere anymore so it pays to check your status every once in a while. Also found out that I could sign up to have my 'mail in ballot' sent directly to me via email. Much easier than having to have my friends forward my mail to me at some, as yet unknown, location so that I can do my civic duty. Will still have to print it off and mail it in, but this is a big step forward. Now if I could only fill it out and email it back it would be even better.

   Also made a couple calls to the Colorado DMV and may have found the answer to my truck and trailer registration renewal. The problem where they are due in December and January and I and the vehicles are somewhere in the SE United States. The voice on the phone said that I could go and have the truck 'smogged' while I'm here in Colorado and then mail the certificate in with my renewal notice when it comes due. Didn't sound like something that would work at first, but evidently thousands of collage students and military people do it all the time, so I guess we will see when it comes due.

    Had drinks and dinner with a couple friends here in Denver then last night. Good time there with lots of good conversation. They are thinking of going on the road also, once they both retire, so they were interested in any information that I might share with them. Certainly have many opinions on the subject now that I've been doing it for nearly 4 years. Still, a lot of what they need to do will come down to  their own personnel preferences. I think there was enough info there to give them a start at least, so maybe they won't make some of the same mistakes I did.

    Folk dancing in Washington Park then last night. Beautiful evening with just a hint of a breeze off the lake and a half moon peeking in and out of the clouds. Always fun to dance down there and see some of my old friends. I need to go down to the park at some point and take some new pictures of the place where I pretty much grew up. Sure spent a lot of my youth hanging out there at the boat house and the Rec Center. It certainly had a big influence on my life since leaving there.

    Off to visit my Mom this afternoon for a bit. Will take the computer so she can see a few pictures from this last years road trip. Looking forward to seeing and talking to her again.

   Plans for dinner with another friend, Joe, this evening and then I think I talked him into going to the contra dance with me here in Denver tonight. He use to go quite often, but gave it up after a while for some reason. Not sure what the problem was since he was actually a decent dancer and had all the other requirements for men.... be warm blooded, be breathing and have a 'Y' chromosome. I think he might of disregarded my best advice for him the first couple of times and actually thought having a women ask you to dance meant something other than.... she wants to dance and needs a partner of some kind in order to get in there. As they say in Contra: You meet, you line up, you dance, you fall in love, you break up, and then you go and do it all over again. It's a good system.

One final note; finally passed the 1,000 page view mark on this blog yesterday. Certainly not burning up the blog-o-sphere with my literary prowess, but that was never the intent so I'm pretty happy with where this is now.

    Back in beautiful Colorado again after a long, weary drive out of Nebraska this morning and afternoon. A bit of wind to contend with for most of the time and that always makes life more difficult. Got into Longmont around 2:00 a.m. though and drove over to the local 'Discount Tire' store to get a couple of new tires put on the trailer before putting her back into storage. Had replaced the other two a couple of weeks ago so I now have all new tires, including the spare, for my next trip in September. Will need to get 4 new tires on the truck also, but plan to hold off on those until I'm back from my canoe trip to Montana.

   There will be a few more things to do on the trailer before taking off again, including getting the wheel bearings serviced, or replaced, but that is just a matter of scheduling it for sometime between the Montana trip and the raft trip down the Grand Canyon. Also need to get a couple of new metal lag screws to replace the ones lost out of the right front scissor jack before it shakes loose and falls off. There always seems to be something to do, but the reality is that in the grand scheme of things, it is really pretty cheap living. My thought is to keep up with the maintenance on the truck and trailer as best I can so that a small problem doesn't turn into a major one while I'm on the road. So far that has worked out okay for me. But both the trailer and truck are starting to get older now and it is only a matter of time before something big goes wrong. Will just have to try and be ready for that when it arrives.

   Spent last night in Imperial Nebraska with one of my sisters and her husband.  They had picked up some items that had been left behind at the old family house when I left last year. Since they were selling it and trying to clear it all out it was nice that they managed to snag my stuff and hold it for me until I got back into the area. On the other hand; I would of swung past their house anyway before leaving in September. Ten months to a year is a long time to go with out seeing some of your family and friends.

   Got Esmerelda tucked away into her storage spot for the next couple of weeks and got the truck unloaded of misc. road trip stuff. It rained a little bit this afternoon in Longmont and it is pretty pleasant out right now. The sun is back out already and the temp is a very pleasant 86 degrees. A little higher humidity of course, but with temps 20 degrees cooler than the past week, and a nice breeze blowing, it feels more like a day at the beach. Not sure yet where I'll be staying tonight, but assume it will be with one of my friends here in the Denver area. It will most likely be with Tom and Donna but they are evidently out playing today so I haven't actually heard back from them yet. The back up plan is for me to be at George and Marge's instead, so I'm not worried about not having a place to stay.

  Tired tonight.... two days of driving generally does that to me. Having to fight the wind, or at least pay more attention to my driving, always makes it worse.  The trailer actually pulls very well most of the time, but add a little cross wind and it is suddenly like trying to sail a barn down the highway without a rudder. Will have a couple of days to relax and see friends and family, maybe do a movie and get some more good Mexican food. Will need to start thinking about getting ready for the canoe trip in Montana at some point. My friend Tom and I have each done it between 22 and 30 times, we just kind of lost track of how many times after awhile. It's a 150 miles long and is on the upper section of the Missouri River that contains the White Cliffs section and the Missouri Breaks section. We first did it in 1973 in 3 days time because we had no maps and had no idea where we were most of the time. Now a days we could probably do it blindfolded. Even after so many times down this section it is still brand new every time. The water level is always different, the weather changes and the people are always different also. I'm really looking forward to being back on the water again.

   Always fun to check and see 'who' has been taking a look at my ramblings. Of course the only thing I see is what country a person is from when they check out a page or two. Today someone from China checked in, the first time since the first week I went on line with this blog. So far I think I'm up to 14 different countries besides the ones from here in the U.S. This country still surpasses all the others combined, but I am often amazed at how many 'views' I get from Russia and other European countries. Welcome to you all.

    I was up and about way to early this morning. My nephew, Brian, promised to take me fishing if I'd get up before it got to hot outside. So with only 4 hours of sleep I was up and going at 5:00 a.m.  this morning. We headed over to 'Soldier Creek' north of Fort Robinson. The creek is only about 3'-4' wide at the widest points, but it holds an amazing number of really nice fish in the 8"-24" range. I know.... seems hard to believe, but I've seen pictures of fish Brian has caught out of here before. The largest one we caught today was a 15" brookie that I pulled out. Not a huge fish, but heavy and very nice for a Brook Trout. All in all I think I caught about 20 fish total, and Brian maybe 25-30. We didn't keep anything today, way to hot to keep anything in the heat, plus I really didn't want to bother cooking anything tonight in the heat. We had a really fun time though, even if Brian did find a couple of ticks crawling on him. Nothing on me that I could find, but will check again one more time tonight before hitting the rack. I hate ticks, they're creepy!

    We were done fishing by 11:00 as the temperature was nearly 100 degrees again, and we didn't pack in nearly enough water to stay out much longer. A nice walk out of there of about a mile, so we didn't fish very far today. We came on into Chadron then and had lunch at a local cafe here. I ordered what I thought would be a pretty standard hamburger, but turned out to be about a half of a cow. It was no wonder that I needed to head back to the trailer after that and take a nap, even if it was to hot to really sleep well.

    Up again around 4:30 and took a nice cool shower before heading back into town for one last visit with the kids. Going to miss hanging out with Aubree and Rykin, they are certainly cute kids.

   Will be heading back to my sisters place tomorrow night to pick up a few things they didn't get to bring up to me this week, since the kids won't be moving into their new home for at least a couple more weeks. It'll be good to see them again one last time this trip also. From there it will be on back to Longmont, Colorado to tuck Esmerelda back into her storage spot until I get back from my river trip in Montana. It has been a wonderful couple of weeks up here visiting with my family and friends. As always the plays were wonderful and it is always fun to hang out with my nephews. They keep me kind of young with some of their antics.

Here are a couple pictures from the drive around the Nebraska Forest the other day with Brian.

A fine group of mule deer bucks. There are actually 9 in this group, but the others were outside this view.

As you can see there are some rather nice racks in this bunch. Especially when you consider that they still have nearly another two months to grow before the velvet dries up and they start rubbing it off. I think they need to learn how to 'run' a little better by then also. Mule deer aren't the 'smartest bulbs in the pack', which may be why the white tale deer are starting to take over most of their territory. They sure are pretty though.

   Over 105 degrees once again today. There was a little rain last night over some of the surrounding area. It was a welcome relief to the areas that received some moisture, but the lightning that came with it also managed to spark several fires around the Chadron area. As far as I know all of those were found and extinguished before they became very big, but there are still several east of here near the town of Valentine that are still out of control. One prairie fire had consumed more than 100,000 acres, (140 square miles +/-), by yesterday evening.

    Spent a lot of yesterday afternoon in the air conditioned coolness of McDonald's and will most likely do the same thing for a lot of this afternoon. Not really what I prefer to do, but it is amazing how uncomfortable it is outside in the heat. It would be a lot better if I was on a river trip somewhere. At least then you could get into the water and cool down.

    My nephew, Brian, and I decided to take a drive along the 'Nebraska Forest', west of Chadron yesterday evening. We saw tons of deer of course and many, many, turkeys out hunting grasshoppers and seeds. The little one's all seem to be big enough to fly somewhat now so they have a better chance to survive from now on. We continued our drive on over to the east side of Chadron later in the evening while it was starting to rain a bit. Lot's more deer of course, a few antelope, but only one elk for the evening.

   Brian and his girlfriend Liz invited me over for pizza and beer after our drive. Two of my favorite food groups, so that was a no brainer. I spent the rest of the evening, until it cooled down enough to sleep, loading up some music files for Brian from my collection. Turns out he kind of likes some of the Contra music I had on the stereo on our drive. He also seemed to be somewhat impressed with a couple bands that I showed him on some youtube videos.

    In the meantime; here are a bunch of pictures from our visit to the 'Museum of the Fur Trade' a couple of days ago when Marge and George were still with me. This museum explores the whole world wide fur trade rather than just the 'Mountain Man' years that many feel are the most important and romantic era. This is maybe the 5th time I've visited here and it just never grows old. There is always something new to see and in this case there were several new displays to look at and read about.

Some of the tools of the trade. Guns of course for hunting food, protection against wild people and animals and a few other tools. The map in the upper right corner is what was really interesting to me. It shows the English held fur trading forts in red and the French in blue untill after the French-American war.

Some additional tools, but in this case what caught my eye was the material in the far corner that looks like a stick with rope wrapped around it. What it is really is 'twist tobacco'. Used as a trade good, it was much easier to transport in this form than it was to transport loose leaf tobacco.

On the right are a few leg hold traps used for fur bearing animals such as beaver, mink, badger etc. The fork looking things on the wall are sturgeon spear points and the metal basket thing on the left was used to hold lit pine knots to attract fish at night.

A display showcasing the beaver, one of the animals most associated  with the fur trade. A unique animal on it's own, it has developed many anatomical traits that make it suited for the life it lives.

A new diorama showing a bunch of French Voyagers packing a load of trade goods into the wilderness of Canada and Northern U.S. via canoe. This shows a larger, but by no means largest, canoes used in the fur trade. Heavily loaded some of these boats could carry as much as 8,000 lbs of goods and people.

Some of the equipment used in the Alaskan fur trade including both American and Russian rifles. The boat models show Eskimo badarika's and kayaks. On the walls are pelts of sea otter, beaver and ?. The metal piece on the bottom shelf is a Russian tea samovar.

A display showing some of the many types and colors of trade beads. Many were some form of glass bead, though a few were also ceramic. They were highly prized by many indigenous people and though we sometimes question the idea of trading highly valued furs for 'cheap' beads, we (me), often forget that such thoughts come only from our sense of what is valuable.

A display from the far north of Canada and Alaska. On the wall are models of several types of Ulu (sp), knives. The basic butchering knife of some tribes. On the main wall is a white fox fur, polar bear and on top, a waterproof coat made out of the intestines of seals. Made and sold by the thousands to Russian traders for use by their crews. I wonder what one of those would of smelled like once it was wet.

Many types of knives used in the fur trade. Romantically we picture these men as using these huge 'Bowie' style knives for everyday use, but the reality is that the knife used most often was more than likely more like the ones on the bottom shelf.

Here we see some of the types of moccasins Native Americans made and used as well as a ceremonial headdress.

A Plain Indians dress shirt and gloves as well as a leather saddle pad.

Trade blankets were traded according to size and size was shown by putting a certain number of lines, called points, on the side of every blanket. A standard men's personnel blanket was usually a 3-point blanket, a women's, 2 1/2 pts. They would go up to as much as 8 points, more than big enough to cover any King size bed today.

More Native American clothing on display.

A women's ceremonial dress with over 4,000 separate dentalia shells attached. These shells would of been traded from natives who lived along the western ocean and then transported several thousand miles inland.

A beaded shirt. This needle work was just stunning.

A birch bark trade canoe. At about 25' long it would carry 8-10 men and 2,000-3,000 lbs of trade goods and furs.

One of the last grizzly bears killed in Nebraska. When you look at the teeth and claws on this animal you feel some relief that they don't roam a lot of the country any more. On the other hand it is sad that you don't see many of these in the wild anymore outside of a couple small parks.

A smaller birch bark canoe. At about 18'-20' it is sized for 1-4 men and their gear. It still astounds me that you can actually build a well functioning and beautiful boat out of nothing but bark, tree roots and pine pitch.

A close up of one end of the larger canoe in the museum showing the detail of the stem and the attachment of the wooden gunnel's.

A diagram showing the amount of gear and trade goods that could be packed into a large canoe along with the 10-12 men who would paddle and portage it up to 2,000 miles. Most goods were packed into 90 lb packs for ease of carrying them when everything had to be portaged, carried, around river rapids and from one watershed to another. All 'voyegers' were required to sign contracts at the start of the year that, among other things, would spell out how many packs you would have to carry at every portage. I thought 90 lbs was a pretty good load to carry over a portage that could be anything from a few hundred yards to, in one case, 46 miles. So I was surprised to learn that in most cases a load consisted of at least two packs, or bales, at a time, and sometimes three. So at least 180 lbs at a time, usually more than a man of that era would actually weigh, and they would do a portage at a trot. Now these were real men.

Where the museum now is was once an actual fur trading post. Here is the original dugout where the trader and his life lived and worked out of for many years.

There has been some upkeep in the past year, the first I've actually seen done in the years I've been coming to visit. In this case someone has reapplied some new mud and grass chinking between the log walls.



Another view of some of the new chinking. This is at the point where the ceiling rafter logs tie into the top of the walls.



A small storage dugout near the main building. I like the cactus on the top of the roof. It looks neat but also keeps people and animals from walking over the top and falling through the roof at a bad time.

The back doors to the museum. I just liked the look of these doors with their hand hewn raised pine panels and the hand wrought door hinges and hardware.



   Off having too much fun the last couple of days. That, along with having a lousy Internet connection out at the State Park makes it hard to find time to write much down. Took lot's of pictures over the last couple of days though, so a few photo's will be posting in the next couple of days.

    Back tracking a bit though to Wednesday evening, my friends, George and Marge and I made it out to the Post Playhouse at Fort Robinson for another play on that night. The entertainment that evening was the play, 'Oklahoma' and it was indeed entertaining. I have been getting front row seats for the past couple of years at this play house even though I usually like to be a bit further away from the stage than that, just for the flying sweat factor alone if nothing else. In this case though the stage is small enough that it can all be seen from the front row and even though all the actors are 'miked' it helps to be able to hear them speak all of their lines as well as see all the facial expressions they have. In the case of this play that was a wonderful part of the experience as the lead actress had the most wonderfully expressive face and body language I think I've ever seen. We all remarked on it on the drive back to the trailer after the performance. Of course all of the actors were very talented and the music and singing were as good as I remembered.

    We hung out around the trailer for most of the day on Thursday. It was hot of course, 105+ degrees, in the afternoon. But we drank lots of fluids and sat in the shade talking and reading our books. It's nice that so many of my friends are retired school teachers and other professional people. Conversations can, and often are, about anything you can think of. Lot's of different view points but always stimulating.

   My nephew, Luke, and his family came out around 5:00 with the intent of swimming at the park pool. But it was closed because of to much Chlorine in the water. Rather than disappoint Aubree and Marge they decided to run back into the town pool for an hour or so while I started putting together some dinner. There are always a couple of emergency meals in the trailer so I pulled out a pound of spaghetti noodles, a jar of sauce and a bunch of left over veggies for a salad. Added a few crimeni mushrooms and a pound of andouli type sausage to the sauce, made a nice tossed salad and some garlic bread. A standard river trip meal, that always tastes good if you are hungry enough. Had a good time with the kids there, Aubree is always a joy to be around, not what you would expect from a 6 year old, and Rykin is just a kick to watch as he stares at the tree leaves and makes weird sounds.

   We decided to do a road trip yesterday as another day of sitting in the heat didn't really appeal to any of us. So we loaded up their van and took off heading east from Chadron to start. Not much of a town out at Hays Springs any more, but we drove down the 2 blocks of what was once it's downtown area. Headed south from there towards Alliance where we stopped and wandered around 'Car Henge' again. I had been there before of course, but they hadn't. We took a few pictures and I found a neat 'shot glass' at their gift shop there.

   On through Alliance then, with a short stop to get a cold drink with some ice in it, before continuing west and then north back towards Crawford and Fort Robinson. We had a very nice lunch there at the Post Cafe in one of the old buildings from when it had been an actual military post. I had a buffalo burger that was to die for while G&M both had a hot plate of sliced buffalo, mashed potatoes and gravy. It all looked and tasted wonderful.

    We wandered around a small museum there on the grounds next. Actually run by the university of Nebraska, it had little to do with the fort or it's history, but was actually mostly about a couple of mammoth skeletons they had excavated back in the 60's-70's. The unique thing about these two skeletons is that they had died locked together in combat with each other. One of only two known excavations of two animals dieing in battle in the whole world. A nice little museum and a cute little gift shop with really inexpensive gifts... that is if your taste runs towards rocks, gems, crystals and critter stuff.

    We wandered around the grounds for a couple of hours checking out the herd of 'Longhorn' cattle they have there as well as some of their Buffalo herd. We had stopped to check out the inside of one of the officer quarters buildings when Georges oxygen generator in the van decided to stop working. Not a good thing as he only had enough bottles of oxygen left to actually make it back to Denver if the machine wasn't working. So we were a bit screwed as far as staying out there for dinner and the start of the play as we had intended. Instead we loaded up and headed back to the campground where we hurriedly packed them up and sent them on their way back to Denver. Bummer!!!!

    Meanwhile, I had made plans for dinner with 'them' and my two nephews at the 'Ranch House' restaurant in Crawford. So I called Brian and Luke up to tell them I'd be about 10 minutes late and for them to call up any friends who would want to go to a play with us that evening. We had a wonderful dinner together and it turns out that only the 3 of us made it into the play. I turned the other two tickets into the box office though, and they did manage to sell them again, so they made a little extra money on the whole thing, which is a good thing.

    The play, 'Grease', was terrific of course. This was the second time for me to see it, but it was still a lot of fun to watch the antics on stage and listen to the music once again. I think the boys both had a good time also, this was Luke's first time to see any version of the story, so I think he was pleasantly surprised.

     Off to lunch after this and then a couple of us are going to take a drive west into the Nebraska Forest and see some of that country. It'll be pretty much new stuff for me so that will be fun. For now though, here are a couple photo's of a visitor to the trailer the other night.

This little guy evidently flew in the open door this evening when no one was looking. About 2 inches long it isn't very big yet. Was glad I spotted him/her before sitting down though. Also, the thought of this guy crawling over my face while I was asleep really creeps me out

Another view showing the front legs and their claws for catching and holding onto bugs. I am so glad these things don't grow 6 feet long. I wouldn't like the idea of being hunted down and eaten by one of these things.

A view of the classic 'preying mantis' pose. Does anyone but me see the resemblance between this bugs head and the charector 'Guido' the bounty hunter in the first Star Wars movie?

One last view. No I didn't swat him with the fly swatter. But since he didn't seem to interested in catching the flies buzzing around the trailer I did take him outside to grow up a bit bigger.

    Still extremely hot here in the Pine Ridge area of NW Nebraska. Close to 100 degrees here today and suppose to be above that tomorrow through Saturday. Thankfully the humidity is still down in the single digits, otherwise it would be near unbearable at the trailer without air conditioning. Even now it is nice to be sitting inside with ac for an hour or so.

    My friends, Marge and George are still here with me and we are having a pretty good time, even if it means not doing a whole lot of any thing. Most days we are spending around the trailer drinking copious amounts of liquids, talking and reading books and trying to stay out of the direct sun. It is actually kind of fun just hanging out with them both, besides which, with George on oxygen full time, things to do are a bit more limited.

   We did go to their first play last night out at Fort Robinson. The play was 'A year with Frog and Toad'. More of a children's play, the music and dialogue still had enough in it to keep the older part of the audience interested. For me it was also fun to see how the cast and crew over came limitations and problems with the set or costuming or music. The group out there this year are just superb at working through all of those kinds of problems. Tonight we go back again for the play 'Oklahoma'. I haven't seen this play for more than 40 years so it should be fun to revisit it. Last time I saw it was when I was about 16 years old and took my first girl friend to the 'Country Dinner Playhouse' in Denver.

Here are a couple of pictures from the other night when we went out looking for critters.

A nice sunset looking out over the Pine Ridges in the area. Not as colorful as some, but still quite pretty. We were out looking for deer, elk and turkeys and saw quite a few of each.

A slightly different view of the same sunset.

One of many lonely windmills out in this country. I liked how the clouds looked at this time of the evening. It went ahead and rained about an hour later with some wonderful thunder and lightning.

Wild Morning Glory... I think! This was growing on a small shrub like plant all over the hillsides out here. About the size of a regular morning glory flower, I couldn't find it in any of my books.

    Welcome to my friends from Colorado, George and Marge, who showed up yesterday afternoon for a stay of 5 days or so. Have known this couple for more than 40 years now and in many ways they have always been a second set of parents to me. Though we generally have way too much fun together to be related.

    We got them unpacked and set up in the trailer. George is now on oxygen full time, so there are a few extra things to be done to accommodate all of that gear. but we have a system worked out now so it goes pretty fast. The trailer is pretty cozy when we are all in it together, but it works out okay for the short amount of time they will be spending with me. Normally they end up in the bedroom up front with me riding the couch for the nights they will be here. Doesn't really bother me that much since I end up taking a lot of naps there anyway, so I'm kind of use to it by now.

     We have way to much food of course because that is always the way when several friends get together for a few days. So far the only problem we have encountered is in not having enough ice cubes for all the drinks we have been consuming. I'm afraid my little fridge/freezer isn't quite up to the task of making all that much ice so quickly.

    Because of the heat, nearly 100 degree's, we decided on just a nice tossed salad with some roasted chicken on it and then some fruit salad mixed with blackberry yogurt for desert for dinner last night. Turned out to be the perfect meal with lots of ice cold kool-ade to go with it. It clouded up and rained a little bit during dinner and cooled things off a good 20 degrees or so. After eating we all hopped in the truck and I took them for a nice drive to look at all the animals I knew would be coming out at dusk to feed. Lots of turkeys and their young ones to look at and more deer than you would think possible. I reckon we saw between 200-300 all together. Lots of cute little ones with their little white tails waving and the spots still on their coats. Many of the doe's had twins this year, so it was real fun to watch a couple of them playing with each other. Boy can they run though.

    Also came across one nice group of elk out feeding on a cut alfalfa field. We counted a total of 18 over all, with most of them being cows and calf's. There were at least 3 bulls in the bunch though. Two were spikes with horns about 18"-24" tall and one 2x2 bull with antlers a little bit longer than that.

   We sat up for a little while last night and enjoyed the cool breeze and the lightning show going on off to the NE of us. Lots of good lightning and thunder to enjoy. I left the door open after going to bed and watched the 'fireworks' for a good long time before finally dropping off to sleep.

    Company means getting up earlier than usual, so it was only 8:00 when I rolled out of bed. A good breakfast and then some time just sitting and talking. I needed to come into town to get on the net so I could see about getting a couple more tickets for Fridays play for both of my nephews. I think I managed to get them reserved last night from camp, but not real sure about anything really working with the signal from out there. So I need to finish this up and get busy again before heading back to camp.

    A rare additional post for today. Had to get a few of these pictures out that I took yesterday prior to the big parade here in Chadron. This is my latest Grand Nephew, Rykin. He's about 3 months old now and cute as can be.

My newest Grand Nephew, Rykin. About 3 months old right now.

Another view of him in his bouncy chair.

The proud papa, my nephew Luke. Most people say that he and Rykin look just alike. Certainly some family resemblance going on there.

My sister Kathy, Luke's mom, and her first Grand Son.

He's just so darn cute!

I got to get in on the fun too, so here I am with my newest Grand Nephew Rykin and my Grand Niece, Aubree.

A thumb sucking photo. One that can be used against him when he gets into his teenage years and can still be embarrassed by such things.

Aubree was in a rare bad mood for most of the day. She is usually one of the happiest and best behaved kids I know. Here she is doing the 'lip' thing. Still cute though.

Such a nice life; eat, sleep, poop.... eat, sleep. Wait a minute, kind of sounds like retirement to me.

 Nothing is cuter than a baby sleeping on your shoulder. You should hear him snore.