An Autumn Drive part 3

A Surprising Park

After saying goodbye to the Stanley and leaving Estes Park we started the winding journey through the Big Thompson Canyon towards home.  Right at the outskirts of Estes Park and just about the time we started thinking about having lunch little raindrops began hitting the windshield.  Since it looked like a little storm, we decided to drive and when we were out of the storm we would stop and have lunch.  We'd packed a picnic and wanted to enjoy it outside, rather than enduring it inside the car.  We wound our way through the Big Thompson Canyon... I took a couple of pictures, unfortunately none of them turned out...

About 40 miles later... we were in Longmont and it finally stopped raining.  As we were driving down the main drag I spied a large grassy area... it looked a likely spot so we doubled back.  The park we had stumbled across was Roosevelt Park and in all honesty it was THE BEST PARK EVER! 

(Sweetheart?)

As are most parents, I am a play park connoisseur.  I like the parks that have the newer equipment...easy for the kids to play on and much safer.  Most of the parks in my area suck as far as set up.  Usually there is a bunch of blind spots where you can't see all your kids playing, so you have to march around the equipment like a demented sentry to keep all the kids in view and make sure the little ones aren't trying to kill themselves...or each other...or some stranger's kid...  This park however was set up perfectly, there really wasn't a bad vantage point. 

(Climbing 4th of July)

It was kind of shaped like a butterfly, all the climbing stuff was located in the middle with 2 twisty slides, one on either end.  The equipment was flat enough that you could see either side from the ends and from straight on you could see both slides as well as the swings in the background.  As a bonus, a kid would really have to try hard to fall, there weren't many areas where a little one could take a nose dive off the equipment.  It was a great park for one parent to be able to watch several kids... which was good for Chris!  Whoever designed this playground had been to a park with kids they cared about. 

(Peace)

Wha...?  Good for Chris?... you might be asking.  Oh hell yeah, I was off doing my own thing and Chris and the kids were on their own.  Attached to the park was a wonderful Rose Memorial Garden for Veterans.  Normally I think of a Rose garden as being a tragedy of some struggling bushes on the edge of the lawn that  have been forgotten.  I don't know if it's because there is a senior center right there or if they just have well trained park personnel; whatever the reason these roses were well taken care of and very healthy.  The blooms were huge, the leaves glossy and green and many of the roses were taller than me.  It was beautiful and the smell... heavenly. 

(Pink Peace)

(Sterling Silver)

Just for the record, I am not a huge fan of the rose bush, I think they are kind of ugly plants.  Very leggy, tall and then they have large flowers located only at the top ... makes them look kind of unbalanced... bunch of green at the bottom and topped with blossoms only at the top.  Plus, I like a tight planting and roses need room to breath or they end up with all kind of health problems. And then there's the care.... roses need some.  The pruning, fertilizing, pruning, watering, disease control, insect control, winterizing, pruning ritual starts to break me down really fast.

But on Sunday, I was sure excited to see so many rose bushes in one place.  It really brought back some memories. 

For years and years I worked in and managed different greenhouses learning all about plants, their care and how to grow them.  I've missed it, and I think that contributed to my excitement.  I actually wished I had some pruners on me since some of the bushes had flowers that were faded... plus a bouquet would have been a great souvenir of the trip.  I'm pretty sure the parks dept would have frowned on random strangers doing some pruning, but eh... how much jail time would I get for that offense?  In the end, I realized I liked my freedom so instead I snapped a bunch of pictures rather than stealing a big bouquet.  A couple of years ago I probably could have told you the names of all of the roses, but now I only know a few off the top of my head.  The garden had the bushes all labeled and the smart person would have snapped pictures of the name before or after each blossom... but I took the pictures (and not the aforementioned smarty pants.)

At a certain point, I had to give up on the photographs... not because I had enough pictures of roses (strange phrase enough and pictures... individually they make sense, put them together and ???)  but, because the battery in my camera was dying.  I didn't bring any extras batteries so... I sat down and had a lovely lunch with the family.   Soon after it started to get really hot as the clouds cleared off  so we decided to head home.  All in all it was a great adventure, we had a lot of fun and I got a lot of great pictures out of the trip. 

Thanks for coming along!!

An Autumn Drive Part 2...

The Stanley Hotel (part 2)

Once in Estes Park we realized that we had never toured the Stanley Hotel and it was about time that we did that. For those of you who have seen or read Stephen King's 'The Shining', the Stanley was the inspiration for the story. Here's the really disappointing part, the Stanley isn't located high up in the mountains in a desolate area above Estes Park ... its actually behind the Safeway within the city limits of Estes Park. (Sorry to be the one to burst that bubble) Even though the location is kind of disappointing the hotel itself is very large and quite grand. We walked around the entire building and looked around inside just like all the other tourists who were there. It was a lot of fun although, I had always pictured it different... more macabre somehow. (Oh yeah... there isn't a maze either... another bubble popped, oh and no living topiary...pop!) We couldn't go upstairs (guests only) and there weren't any ghosts down in the lobby (that I could see) So, I'm assuming they were all upstairs taking midday naps...thats what I would have been doing!
The Stanley has some amazing mountain views and is worth a visit just for that. Just imagine sitting on the big wrap around veranda with a view like this:

We parked around the back of the Hotel. From there you could access many of the rooms (no view, so probably the 'affordable' rooms are in the back) There were a bunch of cute little flower gardens and these cool gates located every 20 feet or so. The Hotel was really striking because of its attention to detail. Even the fire escapes had little details that made them more like works of art rather than a tedius life saving structure.

I really can't believe that it took us so many years to really look around the Stanley, but I'm glad we finally did. I think the kids even enjoyed themselves a little bit.

An Autumn Drive...Part 1

OK, since I had a lot of pictures and didn't want to overload anyone, I thought I would do this entry in the 3 parts, St. Malo, The Stanley Hotel and the Rose Garden in Longmont. This is part 1:

St. Malo

Its this time every year that I get the itch to go to the mountains and take pictures of the aspens. Its hard not to get excited with all the news reports about the aspens and how pretty they are. This year, we decided to include a visit to St Malo in the itinerary. We started off early on Sunday (not as early as I would have liked, sleeping is always nice). On our way we saw some Balloonists on a morning outing, it was a great way to start a photographic journey.

St. Malo is not far from Estes Park on Colorado Highway 7. The drive is very easy and the cute chapel perched on the out cropping of rock is beautiful any time of year, but it seems to glow in the fall. In the past, Chris and I would drive by the church and maybe stop and snap a couple of pictures from the highway. This year, we decided to stop and take in the peace and beauty of the scenic church. ... OK... mostly we stopped because Chris was going to leave the kids there. But we decided to take pictures first and abandon them later. (kidding!)

On one side of the church is a small creek that drains into a small pond. The water was so still it looked like glass and made for some beautiful Kodak moments. We hiked around the church and I took some pictures of Chris and the kids perched on the backside of the giant rock that St. Malo is built upon.

From the other side we were able to see the stained glass windows reflecting the yellow foliage in front of it. Like I said, in the fall, it almost seems to glow.

There is a new building near the old chapel where they hold retreats and the pope even stayed there when he visited Colorado in 1993. We took some pictures in front of one of the older buildings on the property. There was also a small pond with what looks like a pier below the retreat center. It amused me to think of the pope skinny dipping in the pond. (I don't know if it happened, but I'm trying to start an internet rumor.)

Since I originally said we started the trip to find some autumn gold, aspens, here are some of the pictures I took of the stands they have around St. Malo.

It was a beautiful walk around the old chapel and we all enjoyed the beauty and the exercise. We almost turned around at that point to head home, but decided to head up to Estes Park.

To be continued...

The Harvest Festival

(We attended the harvest parade several weekends ago... I'm just playing catch up)
Saturday was the 83rd annual Harvest Festival and Parade in Arvada. Its quite the event for our community. Thousands turn out every year to watch the parade, including some school friends, who we sat behind. The kids started having fun even before the parade started... they danced to the golden oldies blaring out of the loud speaker just across the street from us. They were very entertaining to watch for both us and the folks standing across the way from us.

The parade is always wonderfully traditional with lots of groups in the community involved. From the different legions to the schools to clubs, to political parties to the fire fighters and law enforcement. Its a great parade... if a little long (well over an hour this year!)

The Parade sports a boatload of high school marching bands.

The Wesernaires were a big part of the parade and I think every Westernaire from around the state showed up.

As always the El Jebel Shriners (Arabic for boys and their toys) had a huge presence. They had their small yellow cars, the big yellow cars, the clowns, the motorcycles and tons of other 'toys'. I think the Shriners made up a quarter of the parade all by themselves!

And there were lots and lots of floats with tons of candy being flung at my sugar greedy spawn.

It was a perfect parade day and as a bonus for the kids they caught so much candy from the various floats, they will be on a sugar rush that will last them until Halloween.

After the parade we started to check out the festival. Right away Taylor, Olivia, Lucas and Dee Dee wanted to visit the park where one of the banks in town sponsored a bubble maker that the kids really loved. The bubbles were generated automatically at the top of the structure and then would float down to the kids on the the cool breeze. The children had a great time trying to catch the bubbles with the other participants. In between cycles of bubbles the kids would gather under the pyramid-like structure chanting, "Bub-bles! Bub-bles! Bub-bles!" It was weird mixture of cute and creepy.

After we played with the bubbles for quite a while we decided to travel on to find more fun. The next stop was a jumping house.

One of the highlights was visiting with summer time Santa. He's on vacation this time of year, don't ya' know.

It was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time. They can't wait to do it all again next year!