Up earlier than usual, but there was a lot to be done so there was no laying around in bed this morning. Finished up washing the clothes and laid all of my stuff out on the bed. I'm glad there have been so many river trips over the years as it helps to know what will be needed and what won't. It also helps that Tom has a great list compiled that is always available to look at.

 

    Tom, Donna, Rhonda and I met up with George and Marge over at Three Margaritas for lunch this afternoon. We had a great time talking to each other over good Mexican food and gallons of ice tea. A very pleasant couple of hours of talking before heading off to run a few last minute errands. Basically I had to go get a small bottle of bug spray and a couple cases of beer. Pretty much done with packing everything now, or at least I hope so. We will be leaving tomorrow around noon time and going only as far as Green River Utah. It was our idea to get at least half way there in case we ran into construction along the way or maybe car trouble. Hopefully it will all come off without a hitch.

 

   We meet everyone else, there are 26 of us, as well as the people from the outfitter, on Friday night for a short meeting about the trip. On Saturday we all hop on a bus for the put in point and the adventure will begin sometime that afternoon. Boy am I excited!

 

Here are a few more pictures of the boathouse down at Washington Park. Sorry for the delay, but there are still problems with up loading pictures for some reason.

A view of the west facade showing the door where we use to move boats in and out of the building. The upper connection for the new handicap ramp is now located on this side as well as two real bathrooms with sinks, toilets and hand dryers that really work.
 



A view of the new handicap on the west side of the boathouse.



Every Thursday during the summer, for the past 42 years, 'Sugar', Sukar Basinov, (probably not the correct spelling), has been coming down to the park to hold free folk dancing from 7:30 to 10:00 at night. This is still very early in the evening, most people don't show up until after 8:00-8:30.
 

Another view of a few of the dancers in the park. On a good night 50-60 people will show up and have a couple of hours of fun. I can remember crowds of 150-200 back in the late 70's and early 80's. Back before video games and 150 channels of TV.
 

A closer view of some of the building details.

 

42 years ago 'Sugar' showed up with a beat up old card table, record player and stack of folk dancing records and started playing and teaching any one walking by who wanted to join in. I had been boating all day when I heard the music and poked my head around the corner. Not sure why I, as a 13 year old boy, decided to try it, but I was hooked at that point. A life long love of dancing was born that day and continues even now.



Sugar has slowed down somewhat, but he still comes most nights and acts as the ambassador of dance that he is. A truly remarkable person since he gets no pay for doing this. His smile will be even bigger next week when his new dentures are suppose to be done.

 

The front facade of the Rec Center just up the hill from the lake and the boathouse. My first job was here back in the early 70's. A family friend, JoAnn D. hired me on as a summer pool attendant at the ripe age of 15 1/2. By fall I was 16 and a full timer. I worked here for a little more than 5 years ending up as a lifeguard in the winter and teaching canoeing and sailing in the summer. I still can't believe that they actually paid me for doing something I would of actually paid them to do. That idea never came up thankfully.

 

Sunsets over the lake were always beautiful. This year they are even more colorful because of all the smoke from the forest fires that are burning west of here.

It was a wonderful sunset.

 

The only thing missing are canoes and sailboats on the lake.

 

This is most likely the last post I'll be doing until I get back from my trip down the Grand Canyon. That should be sometime around the 7th or 8th of September. Have fun and I hope you all come back and visit the site at that time. If all goes well there will be a few photo's some time soon after that date.

 

 

 

   Another nice day here in Colorado. My friends let me sleep a bit late this morning and then we all set over breakfast and read the local news. Not much in it on a Tuesday, and certainly not much of interest, except for the comics of course. It is always worth while to take a peek at them.

    Being Tuesday it was a 'Boys Night Out' movie day. We don't always do a movie on Tuesday, but it is the day we prefer to go if we can. Today's movie was the 'Expendibles 2', certainly not an award winning movie in any way, but a good choice for a boys night out. Basically it was lots of gratuitous violence perpetrated by all the big names in this type of movie genera, Willis, Stallone, Arnie, (I'm not even going to try and spell his last name), and all the rest. Just enough plot to hold the movie together but not enough to interfere with any fight or chase scene that the director thinks might be fun to film. That being said, it was still a fun afternoon out.

   Dinner over at the Red Robin afterwards. Emily still knows our drink and meal orders and half the other staff seem to now know us and stop by to see what movie we have just seen. Sure hope they aren't basing their movie going picks on our recommendations.

   Moved back over to Tom and Donna's this evening in preparation for our departure on Thursday. I still need to do most of my packing for the trip, but the camera case is now taken care of and after a load or two of laundry I'll get the water proof bags packed and ready to go.

   Have been having some problems up loading pictures the last couple of days. I thought it might be the WiFi signal over at G&M's, but it doesn't seem to be working any better over here either. So here are a few of the pictures I took over at the Boathouse at Washington Park, here in Denver. I'll try to load more as I get to them.

A view looking across the lake at the boathouse. I pretty much grew up on, and in, this lake during my teen years. My 1st real job was at the city Rec Center located just behind the boathouse. I started at 15 1/2 yrs old as a pool attendant and ended up as a full time lifeguard teaching swimming and lifesaving.

My best friend, Tom, started the boating program here on the lake when I was 13. From then on I was down here most days and sometimes half the night. I ended up teaching canoeing and sailing lessons with him once I was hired on at the rec center. It is still hard to believe that I got to spend all day out here on the water all summer long.... and they even paid me to do it. What a great way to grow up.

It still looks pretty much as it did way back then in the 70's. They rehabbed it last year, fixing plumbing, electrical and structural problems as well as adding a handicap ramp up to the top floor. I miss spending so much time down here in such a carefree manner, but what I really miss is seeing all the canoes and sailboats on the lake in the afternoon and evening. It was a pretty special time.

East facade.

North facade facing the lake. I spent many a day here teaching paddle strokes and sail theory to kids and adults. If you were 12 or older and could pass a 10 minute float test you could get 2 hours of lessons a day, for two weeks, for the grand total of $3. (Including book and Red Cross card)



Another view of the east side. I like all the details that are on the building. The ceramic tile, dentil mouldings and eave brackets. You don't see much of that any more.

 


Another view.

     Very busy day running errands, meeting friends and family. It just never seems like enough time for doing everything, even when one is retired like I am.

    Started out by calling up an old co-worker at the Division of Wildlife and setting up a lunch date with her and who ever else wanted to come. Turned out that she was the only one who could make it, but that is okay because the truth is that other than one other guy there, I don't really know many people working there anymore. Most of them have retired and moved on to other lives also.

   Went and picked my friend up and we went over to a local Thai-Viet hole-in-the-wall kind of place we knew, because I was craving a Vietnamese noodle bowl for some reason, and they have great ones there. We ate and talked for over an hour catching up with what was new with both of us. Mostly I let her vent because working for the state, or most government agencies, these days just isn't very enjoyable any more. It's sad these days, when I worked there we had so many dedicated people who had been with the agency for 25-45 years, not because they needed to be, but because they believed in what they were doing and were good at it. I don't know about other agencies but more than 80% of the people with 20 years or more in retired before I did or soon afterward. Some people might think it's a good thing to clean out that much 'old wood'. But we lost so much institutional knowledge with them that the agency won't recover for a very long time. Kind of sad.

   Her 'kidlet' is doing well though, now in 9th grade and playing volleyball and doing all those school type things. Also; lot's of reminiscing done today of course and it was good to catch up on all the other people whom are still in the area but that I don't hear about any more.

    After lunch it was a quick stop at some friends house in Westminster to pick up some DVD's I'd loaned them last year before I left. Then it was on to the Arvada Center to exchange some theatre tickets. Decided to change the tickets for the 1st play of this season from my usual date, the 29th, to the 11th of September so that I would get to see at least one of the 7 plays I had payed for. I've been a season member there for 15 years now so I still buy tickets for the whole year so that I don't lose my seats, even though I haven't had a chance to see many shows there for the past 3 years. So this year I'll at least get to see this first one and then maybe the last one of the series, which will be next July sometime.

    Met up with my sister and her partner then early this evening. Had a glass of wine at their house, checked out the latest remodelling job my sister had done... it looked great, and then went out to eat with them at the 'Saucy Noodle' down on south University. Good food, good conversation, good company.... what more can a person ask for?

    Just hanging out at George and Marge's now. It's been a long day so I suspect I'll be headed for bed pretty soon, but not before I read a few chapters in my book.

   What a wonderful day it has been today. Got up a bit late this morning; after all it was after midnight when I got home from the dance last night, so no apologies. Read the paper with George until Marge made it home from church and then the 3 of us went out for a late brunch.

    It was Marge and Georges 53rd anniversary yesterday so I took them down to 'Luciles' for a Cajun breakfast. One of my favorite restaurants, they serve breakfast and lunch with a Louisiana flair. So red beans and rice, ettouffe, gumbo.... I had one of the few meals I'd never eaten before, 'Eggs Rockefeller'. Scrambled eggs on a bed of spinach with fried oysters on top, grits, hash browns and one of their famous biscuits, a 4"x4"x2" thick monster that goes well with their homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam and apple butter. Yum!

   Spent a lot of the afternoon finishing up sorting river trip pictures, making camping reservations for a couple places in Florida that I want to be dancing near and then also signing up for, or at least downloading the registration form, for a couple of additional dance weekends that are coming up in a few months.

    Headed over to Tom and Donna's place after that to meet up with a good friend of ours. Steph had invited me out to a concert this evening featuring a group known as 'Il Divo'. I had not been aware of this group before searching youtube video's to see who they are. Essentially they are 4 opera trained tenors who Simon Cowel found and talked into forming this group that would tour and produce albums. (A boy band for adults) As one of the members said this evening their music is somewhere between opera on one end and pop on the other. What I wasn't prepared for was the sheer power of their voices and how great they sounded together.

    Singing in several languages including Spanish, French, maybe Swiss and of course English they put on an amazing show. Many of the tunes were recognisable, even if they were in a different language. But some, such as 'Don't cry for me Arginetina' and Amazing Grace you immediately knew. After singing the theme from Evita one of the guys on stage pointed out that there was a 4 year old boy in one of the first couple of rows who had been singing along with them and seemed to know all the words, So they had his mom bring him up, he was so cute in his little suit and tie, and sing along with them, and he did indeed know all the words. Even though I think he was probably closer to the age of three.

   One other thing that was of real interest to me was how much these guys were being treated like some type of rock icons. Women of all ages packed the first 6-7 rows, with only 3 or 4 guys that I could see. They were all standing up and dancing, holding up signs, handing up roses. It would of been every guys dream come true. I thought to myself that they were probably similar to what the old 'Rat Pack' were like with a little Elvis and maybe some Beatles thrown in. All in all it was a very fun concert to see and hear.

    Of course prior to the concert we also went and had some dinner. So this time it was off to 'Racines', one of my favorite local restaurants here in the Denver area. Got to sit out on the patio during a lovely evening, had a great meal and talked so long that we were almost late for the show. Luckely there were so many people still trying to get in when we arrived that the show actually started a good 15-20 mins late.

So here are the last pictures from the Missouri River trip. Days 7 and 8, August 7th and 8th.

Day 7 on the river trip and we have about 22 miles to do before the take out. The scenery is now more broken hills with pines on the top edges. Lots of elk and deer in this area though we didn't see any on this day.

Looking down river toward the east.

Time for Rhodie's breakfast and some water. She doesn't look happy here but it may be because she has already eaten all of her food.

Still some large bluffs along the river.

 

 

Coming up on one more section of bluffs. In the past we have seen whole herds of bighorn sheep right here on this bluff.

Sure enough, if you look closely just to the left of the bush in the lower right hand corner you can see the head of one large ram that was up on this ledge laying down. Tom was the first to see him and I'm surprised that my camera could pick him out at all.

Robinson's Bridge and the end of our river trip. It use to be that the take out was right here on this corner just up river of the bridge, but 20 or so years ago they put in a new boat ramp about a mile beyond the bridge so that is where we are headed. It always makes me a little sad when we finally come around that last corner and see this bridge standing there. What a great trip it has been.

So; while packing up I back the truck down the boat ramp and roll all the windows down to air it out and cool it down a little bit. After loading the boat and all the gear Tom and I climb in for our drive back to Fort Benton to pick up his van that we had left there. After nearly 8 days of scorching hot temps on the river we are both looking forward to turning on some air conditioning and cooling down. My window goes up, the two back ones go up, but Tom's is stuck in the down position. It appears likely that it has done just what the driver side window did a few weeks before. The window motor has stopped working and nothing we can do will allow us to roll the window up. So we drive all the way to Fort Benton with the window down and while Tom runs a couple of errands I go to the hardware store where I find a huge roll of duct tape on sale as well as a card board box they no longer needed. All I know is that I'm not driving all the way to Denver with a window rolled down, no air conditioning, no tunes and if it rains.... As you can see I made do with what I had and it worked fine to get me all the way home again.

One last picture of what my repair looked like on the inside. It was a little noisy, but not as bad as being left open. The only problem was getting the sticky, tape glue, off once I had the window fixed. You would think that for nearly $700 in repairs, not all of that was the window, the Ford dealer could at least clean the goo off. But nope, they left it on when they gave it back to me. A little 'goo off' worked wonders though.

    Sorry for the delay in getting something out. For some reason the server at my friends place just hasn't been working, so none of my pictures would load... a rather frustrating experience. Finally remembered my own WiFi signal device and turned it on instead which at least allowed me to load most of the new photo's you will see here. There are still a couple that wouldn't load up and I'm not sure why, but the majority of them are here and that is what counts.

    So going back a couple of days to what has been missed. Thursday was a day to run around and do errands. A bit of shopping, some additional truck stuff. Nothing all that important to do. Had dinner with an old friend of mine before heading off to Washington Park to do a  little folk dancing in front of the boat house. Got there a little early and took some pictures of the boat house, the lake and the rec center where I had my first job. Will post a few pictures at some point, but it may be a while. During the 70's the park is where most of my time was spent. In many ways I pretty much grew up in that park as I was often there from 7:00 in the morning until after 10:00 at night. A wonderful place to be. Filled with canoeing and sailing, swimming and other sport activities, it probably, more than anything else, determined what my later life would be like, so I'm grateful that it was a nice place to grow up in.

   Of course part of that was discovering folk dancing down there at the boat house. I can still remember the first night 'Sugar' showed up with his beat up card table, record player and stack of old folk dance records. It was nearly 42 years ago and I was 13 years old when he beckoned me up the stairs to join him and a dozen others to dance on the concrete pad in front of the building. For some reason it just seemed right, odd for a 13 year old boy, but I've danced there at least one Thursday evening during the summer since then. Lots of good memories from those summer evenings.

   Still quite a few 'old' friends from the early days and lots of more recent ones. It was a good turnout on Thursday, maybe 50-60 people. A far cry from those days before video games and 150 channels of TV when 150-200 people might pass through the park and watch or join in for a dance or two. They still do a lot of the old dances I learned long ago, but there are now plenty of new ones also. It's funny how my feet often know where to go even if my mind doesn't necessarily have a clue what the steps are. I'm finding it hard to remember old dances, or learn new ones, if you only do them a couple times a year. It is still fun though.

    Busy day yesterday. Up early and on the road before noon. Met a couple of friends for lunch over near Westminster. Good to see Maggie and Paul again even if they will be going down the Grand Canyon with me next week.

   Off to Longmont after that. First on the list was a much needed hair cut at my old regular place. Nice to go back there whenever I'm in town. They're good, cheap and fast so I'm in and out in 30 mins or less most times.

    Time to pick up mail next and then off to Wally World to see about some 'croakies' for my sunglasses and some bug spray. Of course the trailer place called while I was in there so I cut that mission short and headed over to pick up the trailer. Only one bearing and bearing race needed replacing, and they weren't all that bad. Still, better to get it done than to end up on the side of the road somewhere. It took forever for me to get the paperwork done and get hitched up though. So it was 4:35 pm before I pulled out of their lot. Usually not a worry but I had a dinner date in Boulder with a dance friend at 5:30 so it was going to be close. I got backed into my storage spot and unhitched in what must of been record time and managed to get to where I needed to be by 5:28. A very nice meal and then on to the contra dance at the Avalon. Good turnout for the evening, 3 full lines for most of the night. The music was good and the calling was alright. Got to dance with nearly everyone I wanted to with the idea in mind that this was maybe the last time I would see some of these people at a dance.

    Will be heading for Fort Collins later today to meet up with some friends up there. They are nearing retirement and seem to think that the gypsy life sounds pretty fun so they asked if I'd come up and let them grill me about what I know... boy will that conversation be short. It should be fun though and we are all going on to the contra dance up there afterwards. So one more chance to do a contra dance until mid September at the earliest. Boy am I going to have Dancer's Withdrawal for a while.

 6th day on the Missouri River Trip, August 6, 2012.

 Morning on the river looking east towards the sun. We are starting into what is known as the Missouri Breaks section of the river. Highly eroded canyons, less vegetation with more pines and other evergreens up on the ridges.

Time to stop and play in the river. By noon the temp is around 100 degrees or more. The river feels so great at that point, and if the stop involves chasing rocks and sticks in the river, Rhodie is all for that.

A standoff in the river and a question of who is throwing and who is retrieving.

Rhodie loves to chase rocks that you throw or skip. Of course there is that problem of figuring out which rock, among thousands, is the one you threw. She never gets tired of the game though.

One of the many homestead cabins that still dot the banks along the river. Many people came and tried to make a living here in the wilds, but few were able to overcome all the hardships. It's interesting to wander around the old buildings and wonder what it must of been like wintering through a Montana blizzard or warding off an attack by the Blackfeet or Crow.

Some of the best wind yet. Steady in direction and blowing hard enough to really move the boat. Sure beats working!

A view of what the country is starting to look more and more like.

A nice grove of cottonwoods to camp in this evening. The shade is a requirement when it is so hot outside.

Another view.

Even Rhodie is dragging a bit from the heat.

Evening is finally coming and the temperature has already dropped to a more pleasant 85 degrees.

A nice walk along an old dirt road and a view back up river of the country we came through earlier.



   Went to another 'boys night out' movie this afternoon to see the newest 'Bourne' adventure. Not a bad plot, a decent back story to fill in the pieces of how it fits with the original movies and the acting  by the new guy was decent. That being said, it just wasn't as good as the originally 3 movies with Matt Damon in the title role. Not sure why that is so, but all of us that saw it seemed to agree. And again, that being said, it was still a fun movie to watch and certainly fulfilled it's job as a boys night out movie.

   Earlier this morning a guy came out and installed a new windshield in the truck. It was certainly time for a new one as there was the crack nearly the whole way across the lower windshield, the new chip right in front of the driver from a truck two weeks ago, and then several years of driving through wind storms with all the pits it produced. The guy did a good job of getting it out and the new one in, even if he managed to slice the back of his hand when the windshield shattered right in the center. Not a huge slice, but he will certainly need a couple of stitches in it to make it heal right. Good thing he had a clean compress and I had a whole roll of duck tape. We got it pulled together and the bleeding nearly stopped by the time he got the job done, with only a little help from me. The new one looks good though and it will be nice to be able to fully see again when I leave.

   So the list of things to do before taking off again is getting shorter. Still a need to get the oil changed and the truck still needs 4 new tires put on. Will probably wait until I get back from the Grand Canyon trip though. Also; still haven't heard anything from the RV place about my trailer wheel bearings. Will need to get on the phone with them tomorrow and figure out what is going on there.

   Spent a little bit of time this evening on the computer lining up some tickets to a Cirque Du Soleil show in Las Vegas for myself, Tom and Donna. We planned all along to spend a couple days there after the trip down the Grand Canyon just to see some shows and goof off. None of us really gamble that much, certainly not me anymore, (to many statistic's and other math classes in collage I think), so we needed something to occupy our time. So we will check out some other shows when we get there and I imagine we will wander around the town and stare in awe at what can be done, for good and bad, with nearly unlimited amounts of money.

   The show we will see is 'Mystere', the first Cirque show ever done in LV. It was also the first of many that I have seen over the years, and it still remains my favorite one to see, although every one of them I've ever gone to is so amazing. Maybe some day I'll get a chance to see them all. We will likely see a couple other shows while there. Tom was particularly interested in seeing Celine Dion while there, but it turns out that it won't be playing during that time period. We will find something else fun to occupy our time for sure.

Here are some pictures from our 5th day on the Missouri River Trip on August 5th.

Early morning on the river and you start to see a lot of volcanic extrusions mixed in with the overlaying sandstone. Formed when molten magma was forced upwards into cracks in the overlaying rock, it then solidified in place. When the sandstone later started to erode these volcanic dikes and plugs appeared. This is 'Grand Natural Wall at river mile 56.9 left.

Eagle Rock, another volcanic plug that became a landmark along the river. It is at river mile 59.7 left.

Another volcanic plug and another famous landmark, one that I can't remember the name of right at the moment. (Just found out it is Citadel Rock). This one is just up river of  'Hole in the Wall' so I always look forward to seeing it. River mile 62 right.

Looking like some kind of castle, this formation is across the river from 'Hole in the Wall'.

Obviously this is Hole in the Wall. What is still interesting to me and my friends are that it isn't even mentioned in Lewis and Clark's journals. River mile 63.8 right.

A closer view. Normally we would spend some time and walk up to the hole. You can actually climb right up into the opening and admire the view up and down the river. Unfortunately the climb up also includes a section of trail that Rhodie can't climb so we passed up the hike this time. If you are on my fb site you can see pictures from two years ago that show this and other sections of this trip.

Looking across the river at some additional rock formations. Lewis and Clark mentioned how some of the formations reminded them of great buildings and ancient monuments. They were right.

Everywhere you look there is something interesting to see.

A 'painted lady' butterfly.

Looking down river from Hole in the Wall.

That is Dark Butte in the distance with the Arc Angel formation in front. River mile 69.5 left.

Steamboat Rock. It is said that it is named because the two columns looked like the smoke stacks on top of a steamboat. It is located just off the river at mile 69 left. It should also be noted that it is about 2,215 river miles from St Louis.

A view of Dark Butte from the down river side.

Lots of mushroom type formations. Formed when a slightly harder sandstone layer, with some additional iron content, was laid down over the more easily eroded white sandstone. The upper layer protects the underlying layer a bit and creates mushrooms.

The bridge at Judith River. Once another car ferry ran here, but the bridge was built some 30 years or so ago. (1982) The Judith River was named after a cousin of William Clark whom he later married. This whole area was important through out history as an area where natives gathered for trade and to cross the Missouri. River mile 88.0  

The Stafford Ferry, one of two that still operate along this section of the river.

Both ferry's are free, but only operate at certain times of the day and only part of the year. Obviously they close in the winter when the river freezes over. There are little push buttons on poles at either side of the river that you push to summon the operator. I would imagine that traffic is kind of light on some days.

McGarry Barr, river mile 103.2 right, our campsite for the night. A nice place to be because of the shade from the cottonwood trees. You notice that trees generally grow in a line along the river bank and while a few smaller trees may be closer to the river, larger trees are often quite a distance from the water. Turns out that when the ice on the river breaks up in the spring time it is often pushed up onto the banks on either side of the river where it scrapes off everything in it's path. If you look at the mature trees closer you can see scars where large ice floes crashed into them, but they were large enough by that time to live through it. 

Another nice view from my tent.

The bugs were pretty fierce on this evening and Rhodie was certainly taking the brunt of their bites. She had learned that if she got into the tent they couldn't get to her so she would go over and look at the door until someone would come and let her in.

We weren't quick enough for her this time so she picked the next best option. Tom finally got up and let her lay down on her pad in his tent.

Late afternoon light on the river and the view just keeps getting better. 

Looked like it might cloud up and rain a bit but it never did. The clouds that rolled through looked neat though.