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.