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.