Spent most of the day running here and there doing those kinds of errands that have to be done, but aren't all that much fun or interesting. Headed first to The Arvada Center to exchange some theatre tickets for the play Camelot, which I had for later on this month. Needed to change them for tickets on the 10th instead, since I wasn't going to be around after the 11th. Almost got there, but as I pulled off the highway, a truck pulled up next to me and the guy in it informed me that my right rear tire was nearly flat. Pulling into the next available parking lot I got out and took a look at it and sure enough, it was pretty darn low. Still full enough though to get me over to a local restaurant where I met up with my friends, Maggie and Paul, for some lunch. You guessed it, Mexican food again, the special tamale plate at Luna's. A little place over by their house.

  Once done with lunch we went on over to Paul and Maggie's house so they could show me how the remodel work on their kitchen was going. I had a small part in designing a new beam and support system for them that allowed them to remove a support post from one corner of their cabinets and open up that whole side to their living room  area. Turned out much nicer than I thought it would actually, and so far no cracks have showed up in the new dry wall to tell me that things are starting to move in ways that they shouldn't.

    From their house I headed back over to the Arvada Center and got my tickets exchanged for some new ones. The new seats aren't quite as nice as my usual one's, but there really isn't a bad seat in that theatre, so it will work out fine.

    Once done at the theatre it was off to find the closest air hose around. Got the tire pumped back up and will monitor it for the next couple of days to see if has a leak or needs to be taken in to check for a nail or something like that. I'm hoping it was just a very slow leak that I didn't notice.... though I'm usually pretty observant about things like that. In the meantime I headed north towards Longmont and more errands.

   First on the list was to drop off all of my bedding and towels that I had washed this last week. Went ahead and made the bed up even though the interior temperature of the trailer had to be well over 100 degrees. I was sweating pretty good by the time it was all finished, but now I'll at least have a nice bed to sleep in when I get back on the road again.

    Also removed the model train layout I worked on all of last year while on the road. Got all of the track laid and wired up and a bare minimum of landscaping done, so it was as finished as much as I wanted to do at this time. So it went with me in the truck and I dropped it off at the storage unit where it will live until I grow tired of this kind of travel and find someplace more permanent to live in. I should mention however, that I will be laying up a new smaller and narrower track layout this year, just so I have something to run a few trains back and forth on. 'Boy's and their Toys'.

    One piece of bad news during all of this running around. Had been rolling the truck windows down whenever I would stop, in order to keep the interior cooler than if it was all sealed up. During one of those periods I rolled all 4 windows down, but when it came to rolling them back up, the one window that hadn't had the window regulator, the piece that moves the glass up and down, failed to go back up like it should. So now, every one of the windows of my 'FORD F-150' have now failed. I have heard that this is a really, really common problem with these trucks. Even the newer one's. Why, do you ask, would the Ford Company not find a fix for something that they knew was a problem? ..... So the first two windows that failed on my truck I had replaced at the dealership at the price of $450 +/- per each. So tell me what incentive do they have to fix this problem considering they probably make $250-$300 profit on each one that breaks. I will be looking for another replacement part for this window when I get the chance, and hope to have it replaced by the time I leave again. Last time the part cost me about $150 and took me, who had never done one before, about an hour and a half to take out the old one and install the new one. Thankfully you can find almost anything you need on YouTube, so I'll be set.

    Picked up my mail, what little there was, after that and then headed on back to Denver for the evening. Played ball with Rhodie for quite a while this evening, but I think she could of played all night if she hadn't been getting hungry for dinner also. Worked on other photo's this evening while watching a neat PBS special on bird flight on the TV. Makes me wonder how they got some of the shots of birds in flight that they had. Really cool stuff.

   Headed over to the Ford Dealership early tomorrow morning for a major tune-up on all of it's more important components. Will try to get there as close to 7:00 a.m. as I can, which means actually getting up around 6:00. Really not looking forward to that, so I better go to bed pretty quickly here. There are more photo's from the canoe trip posted below. There will only be a few more days of photo's from that trip before moving on to other trips I took over the summer, so enjoy.

Missouri River Trip in Montana - August 2013

Day 5 and we are headed out on another day of paddling. Love the reflections at this time of the morning when everything is so calm.

Entering a new section of the river corridor where volcanic extrusions are more common. In this case there appears to have been a crack in the overlaying layer of sandstone which liquid magma flowed up into and solidified. Now that the overburden is starting to erode the 'volcanic dike' is starting to appear. In some cases these formations look like stone walls that were hand laid by people. You might also be able to see some small ripples on the water surface where that harder stone wall runs under the river and up the other side. Being harder rock than the sandstone, it erodes much slower and therefore causes more disturbances under the water where it acts like a small dam. Wherever this occurred along the river you would also find some of the larger 'rapids'. Not much to look at now in these days of dam controlled rivers. But I guess they use to cause a lot of havoc in the days of the steamship trade.

I noticed this little critter fluttering in the river waiting to become fish food. After rescuing it from it's soggy demise it fluttered it's wings for a little bit, cleaned it's eyes off with it's front legs and then took off to go catch more skeeters. A very good deed indeed. 

 

Either Pilot Rock or Eagle Rock, not really sure which right now.

 

The river has now cut deep enough that the white cliffs that were at shoreline level 15 miles upstream are now several hundred feet above the rivers edge. They look to me like rows of stone buildings in ancient Greece or Rome.

Coming around a bend in the river, 'Hole in the Wall' comes into view. We will be taking a hike to see it up closer.

John and Caroline are really beginning to paddle like a team at this point. They performed a great landing and didn't even come close to upsetting the boat.

Tom and Donna with a beautiful rock outcropping in the background.

Dandelion dreams. 



Heading up the trail towards Hole in the Wall.

Lot's of cool sandstone formations or Hoodoo's.

Every where you look it beautiful.

Looking at Hole in the Wall from the top side.

Looking at Hole in the Wall from the downstream side.

Look close. That's Steph and me in the hole after climbing up that little sandstone 'chimney' right below where we are sitting. A very nice view from up there.



More hoodoo's.

 

Tom playing one of his Native American flutes. He's really quite good at it, and it sounds wonderful in this kind of setting.

Steph.... disappearing down the rabbit hole. There were a couple of places on the climb that were a bit of a scramble.



Heading on down the river towards our next campsite. By late afternoon there will only be a few final white cliff outcroppings and they will be high up and away from the river.