Over Ophir On Our Own

We have not been hurrying out in the mornings. Today we drove over Ophir pass, and for some 20 minutes, we were the only people there. It's true. Look here.
Here is a photo Randy took using his remote control that shows the four of us, standing in the empty road at Ophir.

It was amazingly quiet up there. There was much less snow than the family reunion. With only four of us there, and all seniors, no snowballs were thrown. The marmot fussed at us...as usual. We drove past the little lake below Ophir and avoided the mosqitos. We drove over to Telluride and drove up to the base of Bridal Veil Falls. It was running strongly after an exceptionally high snowfall during the winter. In fact, the small number of four-wheelers we saw may have to do with how many trails are still closed. Here is a photo taken at the base of the falls in the mist and rain.

We visited Telluride for lunch. We wanted to drive Last Dollar Road, but it started raining. So, since Keith wasn't here to help with a new song, we avoided the muddy road.

Tonight, just as we have the last two nights, we will end with a soak in the hot tub. We start in the 105 degree pool and then cool off in the 102 degree one.

Tomorrow, maybe Imogene and then Yankee Boy Basin. We are not sure if we can pass the rocks in Imogene this year, but we will try.

An Easy(?) Day

Hey, this was supposed to be a lazy day. We ended up walking/hiking all day. I think Randy's new camera is pacing our trip. We started out downtown and did a little shopping. Randy had to buy a new tripod because he forgot his. While we were there, we hiked up to Cascade Falls. Here is GrandDad taking a photo of the water. It was flowing very nicely, it wasn't very crowded, and so we stayed quite a while.


After lunch, we went up to Box Canyon Falls. It was a little warm in the afternoon, but quite cool in near the waterfall. GrandDad, Kathie and Randy hiked on up to the High Bridge to look down on the falls. This is a shot Randy took as we entered the falls area.

The town reopened the San Juan Odyssey and so we saw it after dinner. It was fun to see, but we miss the old version. This one was on a screen and they are thinking of making a DVD of it. The old show had 5 different screens and so included a lot more images.

It looks like we will drive over Ophir tomorrow morning, lunch in Telluride, and end up on Last Dollar Road. Many of the passes remain closed due to snow, so we are having to adjust our schedule.

Getting There Is Half The Fun

We made it from PHX to Ouray in one easy trip. We made just a few stops for obvious reasons. We are staying at the Hot Tub Hotel (it's name is actually Box Canyon Lodge), but needed to stretch our legs before hot tubbing. We still don't know what we will do tomorrow, but we are OK with that. It's a vacation! It's pretty and cool here. We can hear the river outside our room.

Here is a shot along the road between Telluride and Ouray. The sunset colors caught our eyes and we had to capture it while we could.

Check back for updates later.

San Diego

We took a trip to San Diego with Carey and Leigh this week (Monday thru Thursday; came home Friday). Jay had the opportunity to join us, but chose to work instead. He's working at Kyrene schools with the group where Carey works. Paul has had a similar job in past summers.
Back to San Diego. We stayed at a hotel on the beach, but the water is too dang cold for swimming. I did get my feet wet, twice. Went to Sea World,

Wild Animal Park,


And, my (Grandad) favorite, visited the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Midway.

The last picture is sunset from our balcony on Thursday night.

disneyland and graduation stuff

Caleb graduated from high school this month. We drove up to Pahrump to help celebrate. We had never been to a home-school graduation before. It was a good time for us all. Katie and Justin drove down from Redding for the occasion, too. Caleb wore a blue cap and gown, and got lots of presents and cards. They also invited special friends from the church. There were speeches from family and friends. The ceremony was wrapped up with a Chinese dinner from a local Chinese restaurant. We took photos, a few anyway.
Sunday we all went to church. Keith, Lauri, Caleb, Dad, and I sang a cool arrangement of "Jesus Loves Me", and Kim accompanied us on the piano. We had Sunday lunch at a local country club. Katie and Justin had to leave soon after to head back for Redding. The rest of us napped. There were some activities at church that Keith and Kim had to attend later.
Monday we all packed up our cars and headed out for Disneyland! Laurie drove until we stopped for lunch, trying to get in enough hours driving to qualify for her license. We got to LA and spent the evening at the Disney Village looking and browsing in shops, then played a domino game before we went to sleep.
Tuesday we literally spent the whole day in Disneyland. Got lots of pix, and had lots of fun! But when G-dad rode Space Mountain he got "beat up" pretty bad. He was sick the whole next day, but the rest of us, being the kind of people we are, went to the California Adventure for most of the day, with a quick run over to the other park later. Thursday G-dad felt some better, and joined us for part of the day. After a good breakfast at Denny's, we all headed out for our respective homes.
We have more trips planned this summer...stay tuned for further reports!

My, How The Time Goes By!!!

Gosh, people, I didn't realize it had been so long since we updated! We are still around, although we had a rough few weeks fighting that flu stuff that everyone had. We are fine, now, and busy. Grandad and I have only made one trip.. We went to Tombstone and Wickenburg and Karshner Caverns in January before we got that flu. The caverns were beautiful, and it was fun seeing the actual street on which the famous shootout took place in Tombstone. The museum there was in the old courthouse. It has been well kept, and in great condition, and the exhibits were interesting.
Then we came home and started the 'fight the flu bug" deal, which hung on for about 3 weeks, off and on. We were never sick enough to stay in bed, but just lay around and stared at all the junk on TV, and griped about feeling bad. No one came to see us because they all had some form of it, too.
Keith, Kim, Caleb, and Lauri came for a brief visit the week of Keith's and Carey's birthdays. We ate at Fuddruckers, and laughed and visited, and went on a geocache. That was the greatest, because we hid a special geocache for Keith's birthday with little gag gifts and cards (thanks, guys, for your participation!). We totally surprised him. He started going through the cache, and you could tell he didn't suspect a thing. Then he exclaimed, "Wait a minute! Hey, how did you guys do this?" or something like that. Then he read and reread all the cards and exclaimed over the little geocache gifts we'd all included. If you catch Randy's blogs lately, you saw some of the photos we took. Oh, the ones who were here were: G-dad, G-mom, Carey, Leigh, Paul, Jay, Randy, Kathie, Alison, Keith, Kim, Caleb, Lauri,
Since then, things have been pretty boring. Everyone went back to their homes and jobs, and nothing else exciting had happened, to speak of. Just normal everyday stuff.
We are busy planning our summer trips. We will go to Parumph and California for Caleb's graduation and celebration. We have the Walker family reunion in Shreveport in June, and also our annual early summer visit to Dallas for some time with Rick, Denise, Ben on that same trip. We are still working on the rest of the summer. Carey and Leigh want us to go on a trip with them, but we have not got that set up yet. If you have a date we need to get on our calendar, be sure to let us know!
There is no change in Neen. She just lays there on her bed or in her wheelchair. She is pretty much unresponsive to my visits, and only occasionally acknowledges that she knows I am there. Please pray for her and for us in that matter.
We put out some new plants in our yard after we got healthy again, to replace those that were killed in the late frost. It all looks so pretty. If you are looking for a nice place to visit, we offer excellent accommodations!
We love you all so much, and pray for you always. The Great-Grandparents

Sorry about that!

After we finally got past the wedding and Christmas, I thought things would slow down a bit. But we still seem pretty busy. With church and family and chorale and choir and housework and laundry..... Need I go on? Anyway, we are doing just fine. Things have settled down at church, which is good. The pastor is preaching good sermons, and our choir minister is choosing some pretty good songs. (Not at good as Chorale, but better than he used to!)
I am not teaching the women's Bible study this winter. So many of my ladies have either had to quit because of health, or other reasons that I decided to wait until nicer weather. We have had lots of rain and cold, and there are all those flu bugs and stuff going around. At our age, we seem to pick that stuff up pretty easy. But G-dad is still teaching our Sunday School class, and our attendance there is pretty consistent at 35 to 40 almost every Sunday. And we still sing in choir and Chorale.
We haven't been off on a trip since our trip to Dallas last November. So, to rectify that oversight, we are going to drive down to southeastern AZ to tour the Kartchner Caverns and maybe Tombstone. We will only be away a day or two, but winter is a better time to tour in AZ than the rest of the year which is hot! We go down there Wednesday, and come back either Thursday night or Friday, depending on what we find to do. Charly is excited to get to go back to the kennel and her friends there.
By the way, I am not complaining about being busy, just surprised. When I was a youngster, the old folks didn't do much visitiing and traveling...
We thought the Super Bowl (which was here, in case you didn't know) was a pretty good game, considering there were no Cowboys in it! We stayed home out of the cold and drizzle, and watched the whole thing on TV with Paul and Kari, eating popcorn and rice krispie treats. It was fun, but we didn't take any pictures.
To those of you who still take time to blog....thank you so much. We love reading them, and the comments, too. To those of you who don't...shame!!
We love you all, and pray for you daily. Which brings up a new topic...Kendall (now 2 months old) is having some digestive problems. The doctor is working with Kyle and Lyndsay on it, but she needs us to be praying for her.