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!

A Nature Walk by the Platte River

Labor Day weekend the girls stayed the night with Didi, so after dropping them off we decided to check out a local park located by the Platte River.  It had some nice playground equipment, but even better it had lots of nature to check out and vandalize.   So we went on an impromptu nature hike... otherwise known as a search and destroy mission for preschoolers.

Lucas and Dee Dee found all kinds of interesting things to look at, touch, taste (not really, but they sure thought about it!) and smell.   Dee Dee found a great mushroom (probably poisonous) that she pointed out to Lucas.  (Unfortunately...the mushroom didn't survive the discovery.) 

There were really great seed pods to check out. Some of these fluffy seeds even survived the encounter!

We saw thousands of these luscious, yummy looking Clematis berries (we called them.. Stop-Don't-Eat-That!!-They're-Dirty-And-Will-Kill-You-Berries... I'm not sure what the scientific name is for them)

A terrifying frog... although it wasn't nearly as horrifying as the dragonflies, those things are beyond mind blowing scary!

Whats a nature hike without some tree climbing?  They even posed for a little bit... before they we were off to check out everything else nature had to offer that day. 

Lucas did take a second to have a quiet moment on the banks of the Platte. I can almost hear him thinking, "If I'm really fast, I bet could be in the water before daddy can catch me.." It didn't happen, but not for a lack of trying on Lukey's part!

I visited the DNC and you won't believe who I saw....

On Sunday we decided to take the kids downtown to see what was happening with the DNC. And, to do some sightseeing that we'd been putting off for a while. I thought it was kind of important for the kids to witness a tiny piece of history...even if its just seeing the banners and the preparation for the convention. After all, we probably won't get back downtown during the week... the girls have school, Chris works, I can't parallel park (an important skill to have when visiting downtown). Plus it sounds like a total nightmare to go there ...by myself, with 2 three year olds in tow. It would be kind of hard to dodge protesters and the police when you are tripping over a couple of preschoolers!

While in the area we visited the historic Union Station, I had never been and it was actually kind of interesting to walk around inside the building. The kids loved the huge seats inside the station and it had some great echos when you use your outside voices! Outside they have a train exhibit that was very interesting to visit.

All the banners and flags made the downtown area look very festive and patriotic. We visited with some of the delegates as we rode the shuttle down the 16th Street Mall. The kids thought the bus ride was GREAT... I thought it was kind of like being in the second ring of Hell. I guess it just depends on your perspective.

There were TONS of police officers in the area, it should have been scary to see the number of officers we did. Instead it made me feel safe, it helped that all the officers were very nice and many were posing for pictures. At one point I had all the guys on this car waving... of course that pic turned out blurry... so use your imagination!

We were even lucky enough to see some peaceful protesters. The girls (especially Taylor) loved the fact that all of CodePink were wearing bright pink. I thought it was nice they got to see a group exercising their First Amendment Rights in a non-threatening way.

Oh yeah...as far as who I saw... lots of nice people but no one famous...

MADE YOU LOOK! HAHAHAHAHA

Our Balloon Festival Adventure in Pictures

The 9th Annual Rocky Mountain Balloon Festival

We were up at 4 AM and at the festival before dawn; there before many of the balloons arrived. Luckily for us... the kids were still energetic enough to dance the dawn into existence.

Just before the sun broke the horizon, the participants of the festival arrived and began their preparations for the launch.

The gondolas were laid down on their sides and the balloons were filled with heated air.

The inside of a balloon as it was being filled with air.

At daybreak many of the balloons were finally full and buoyant enough to rise gracefully into the sky.

Despite the early start the kids had fun, although Dee Dee thought it was a little loud.

It was amazing to be so close to these giants as they were filled with heated air and allowed to float off the ground.

As the sun rose in the sky so did all the balloons... decorating the sky like dangling Christmas ornaments.

This was a perfect and beautiful way to spend a crisp morning in the Rockies.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds-and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence.

Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air...

John Gillespie Magee (1922-1941)