We are home now. Last night, we were with friends in Amarillo.

First, there must be dozens of different Colorado license plates. It is like residents can just design their own.

Sunday, we hiked again. This time to a waterfall of which I cannot remember the name. Also, again, we looked for and found elk. However, one cannot conclude this to be a phenomenal feat of wildlife acumen. Elk are everywhere and certainly not wary of people.

Sunday evening was spent at the cabin reading, relaxing, and more span, cheese, crackers, and marshmallows.

Monday, we left at about 9:18 Texas time just ahead of a good snow storm and travelled arriving at Amarillo at about 6:00ish.

We visited into the night with our dear friends eating some mexican food and sipping soft drinks.

Today, we made the fateful journey through the cities of "C". Claude, Clarendon, Childress, Chilicothe. Hwy 287 from Amarillo to Fort Worth I have travelled many times. Other cities, Memphis, Hedley, Vernon, Quanah, Wichita Falls.

We got home about 3:15 this afternoon. Tomorrow morning Caleb will be at football practice at 6:30. Caleb has a orthodontist appointment at 9:00. We have a parent conference with Jeb's teacher in the afternoon. Some new flooring will be delivered in the afternoon, also. I will take the car in for some brake work. Brake work that held off just long enough.

There.

Estes Park, Day Two

The kids were rustling at about 7:30, but Leslie and I camped out in bed until a little after nine.

After a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast, we make peanut butter sandwiches and Goldfish and juice bags and headed to the Bear Lake area of RMNP. If you have been here before, then you know it is a popular area of the park due to little effort = great views. However, we avoided Bear Lake and took the road less travelled, but not that less travelled on a cool morning, and headed toward our destinations of Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, and Emerald Lake.

The hike in the beginning was steep noticeably. We welcomed Jeb's desire to climb the rocks because those stops afforded us breath catching opportunities.

Nymph Lake is small, my guess is about five acres. Snow was clinging in patches big enough for the kids to throw snowballs at us and for Jeb to eat a snowball avoiding dirt and straw, we think. Nymph Lake was beautiful, but my reading indicated that Dream Lake is appropriately named so we tarried not.

About .7 tenths of a mile up from Nymph, we crossed a small log bridge and came to Dream Lake situated at 10,080 feet with Hallett's Peak in the background. Soon, we hope to post pictures. It was an outstanding location with boulders and aspens and lodgepole pines nestled against the lake enough for beauty but little enough to make exploring the water's edge easy. We did.

At this point, we made a family decision that Dream Lake would be it for this hike. This was due to the falling temps, the cloudy skies, and the sustained winds. Caleb, Leslie, and Erin headed back while Jeb and I lingered and walked to the far edge of Dream Lake for some throwing and kicking of rocks.

We ate our sandwiches and such in the Bear Lake parking lot. Sometime, I want to write about the dominance of the Goldfish cracker. They have taken over families.

On our return we made a quick cabin stop for some crucial meds and then walked the town. Here, we noticed two things interesting to us. People take their dogs everywhere and, here in Colorado, the heart of Colorado, we found two, not one, two Nebraska Cornhusker spirit/fan shops. These were permanent business establishments.

While in one arts/crafts/knife/pottery/fleece establishment, Caleb noticed a t.v. in the back with the A&M game on. It was the third quarter and close. We finished our looking and made it back to the cabin. Remember, we have two working channels. One is ESPN, just the one with the A&M game. Ch-ching.

We watched. We won. We rested about 30 minutes and have just returned from a trip in the park looking for and finding many elk and deer. Caleb and I got out for a brief jaunt to the Alluvial Fan area and heard the elk bugling which takes on an eerie quality in the twilight, in the mist, in nature, alone.

Tomorrow, we will have our own church service, hike to some falls, drive Trail Ridge Road and see what else happens.

Tonight's meal = Spam cooked over an open fire served with saltines and cheddar cheese. We would have Chips Ahoy cookies for desert but the boys ate all of them during the game. Most likely, the girls will eat left over spaghetti.

After supper, a family game of Chickenfoot.

Gone from Kind Coffee.

Wichita, Kansas to Estes Park, Colorado

Tuesday I was in California for the day. Myself along with some interested parties visited New Technology High School in Napa, California. Then, we visited the Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anahiem. Two very nice, innovative environments.

Anyway, Wednesday, after school, me and the family started out for our fall break trip. We have Friday and Monday off, but we added Thursday and Tuesday. Leaving at about 6:00, we drove Interstate 35 to Wichita, Kansas. This driving portion of the trip was mostly non-eventful other than Jeb sang a bunch of songs, we listened to favorite music selections, Leslie and Erin read, Caleb vegged. We arrived in Wichita, Kansas, after unsuccessfully locating a hotel in Wellington, Kansas. The hotel was $54.00 a night. Four of us in a beds and Jeb on the floor.

Arising the next morning, after an early morning walk and a nice breakfast continental, we left Wichita. We had the option to stick to the interstate or to take back roads. Concrete, trucks, exit signs, and speed or farms, pumpkin patches, local eateries, minnow shops and a slow jaunt. We took the latter. We have now seen Hutchinson, Great Bend, and myriad other small towns in the heart of Kansas including Russell, the home of Bob Dole.

We hooked back up to Interstate 70 travelling on fumes for quite awhile with me fearing that I had made a crucial planning mistake only to be saved by a Phillips 66. I celebrated with a Diet Coke. Caffiene Free.

Driving through eastern Colorado the one thing that was clear was that it was vastly different than the mountains. Rolling plains reminiscent of northeastern New Mexico.

We were lucky enough to hit Denver at rush hour, but we made it through unharmed and on to Boulder. Caleb was reminded of his last visit to Boulder which was at last year's Aggie football game. Well, the campus was nice.

We stopped at a place Leslie and I had visited before. The Pearl Street Mall. Got out. Dropped some change in the meter. And walked. Stretched our legs. Found a great shop called "Into The Wind" and ate at Old Chicago Pizza.

We didn't have a place to stay so we started asking around and found that there were no beds available or they wanted $100 for us to sleep. That ain't happening. We called Motel 6's 800 number and located one of their enterprises on Federal Avenue in Denver. It was a rather seedy part of town but the room was $45.00. We slept just as good. The ESPN was just as good. We woke up and wrestled on the beds, packed, and headed north to Estes Park.

We immediately went to the Beaver Meadows Visitors Center and asked some critical questions. Where could we see Elk? What were the best hikes for our needs (kids, animals, scenery, not too long)? What else should we see? We got our info, bought a book, watched a 30 minute film on the park, and went to find our cabin.

Located via the internet, I had settled on Whispering Pines Cottages partly due to the price, $110 a night, and because they had an opening that would accommodate five people. One never knows exactly what one is getting from internet pictures. We drove past Lake Estes, Mall Road, bunches of motels and bears carved from logs and drove up on our place. The owners are very nice, the cabin has a deck, is modestly decorated and is nestled on the Big Thompson River which, by the way, is a great name for a river.

After unloading we were off to the Fern Lake Trailhead off of Bear Lake Road near Moraine Park. The intention was not to get to the lake but to get a series of rocks and caves to explore and to get to The Pool, a rather interesting section of the Big Thompson. We accomplished our purpose with wild abandon. Jumping rivers, skipping rocks, exploring little holes in the walls, and Jeb falling into the river - twice. Juice bags was the reward at The Pool, our furthermost destination and peanut butter crackers when we arrived back at the car.

In the car, we looked for elk and found some within a mile or so. We got out and left the road and everyone else and walked through the meadow for a closer look. Leslie and Erin turned back after a little while. Me and the boys ventured on jumping two little creeks. We had great views of bulls and cows.

Other Eld were seen in Upper Beaver Meadows and in town.

Tonight it was spaghetti we made, peaches we brought, raspberry tea we mixed, and marshmallows roasted over a fire pit next to the cabin.

We have a t.v. in the cabin. No cable. It gets four channels, Mrs Owner said. Two are fuzzy enough not to make out. One is CBS. The other is ESPN. Sweet. College Game Day next to the Big Thompson in freezing weather.

Tomorrow it is Bierstadt, Nymph, Dream, and Emerald Lakes, I think.

I do not have time to check this for grammar and spelling. Gotta go.

Windham Hill is a music company, label, specializing in what is commonly known as New Age. I'm not sure about the New Age tag. Artists are William Ackerman (last post), George Winston, Michael Hedges, Scott Cossu, some others. Ackerman started the label. He and the others mentioned have moved on. They are the old guys.

Ackerman is a guitarist, carpenter, apple grower near Middlebury, Vermont, in a small township name Windham. I imagine there is a hill nearby.

We were in that area once. There is a store there that was the "model" for a Norman Rockwell painting called "Shuffleton's Barbershop." A painting given as a gift to Leslie by her brother Barry and hanging tonight over our fireplace. We found the store front.

We also found a sign to what once was a home of Robert Frost. We stopped, walked back in a direction on a trail and came upon a house, at that time in some disrepair but lately resurrected by some writer's group and The National Park Service. We walked around the house through tall grass. Saw a screened in porch that surely was used as a writing area.

George Winston's best album is one called "December" and the best song on it is "Thanksgiving." Other albums are Forest, Winter into Spring, Autumn. For Scott Cossu stuff, he teamed up with a gentleman by the name of Eugene Friesen for an album titled "Reunion."

A Robert Frost poem you should read: Two Tramps in Mud Time.

I wrote last on September 10th, I think.

So, a catch-up.

I painted myself red and black for FWC's first annual homecoming parade.

Caleb is now as tall as I am.

Jeb likes to sing church songs. "I am not afraid of 10,000's of people..."

Chainsaw's are magnificent tools.

We have two field mice in an aquarium. We found the field mice underneath a woodpile. They do eat cheese.

We are going to Iowa for our fall break. What is in Iowa? We don't know, yet. We have never been so we will go. What I know is there? Covered bridges, a town named Pella, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, some Lewis & Clark stuff. If we get really ambitious, and bored with Herbert, etc., we might travel over into Minnesota just to say we did.

We have dismantled the sandbox in the backyard. Time goes by. No one was interested any longer in sand play.

Fresca deserves a second try.

Teaching Hebrews Wednesday evenings. Better. Nearness. Counterfeit. Access. New.

William Ackerman albums in order of preference based on how the album title sounds and the best sounding corresponding song title on each:

1. Conferring With The Moon/Conferring with the Moon

2. Sound Of Wind Driven Rain/Mr. Jackson's Hat

3. Imaginary Roads/The Moment in Which You Must Finally Let Go of the Tether Which Has Held Your Hope Airborne or The Prospect of Darrow's Barn and The Blossoms of an Apple Spring on Imaginary Road

4. The Opening of Doors/A Movie of a Placid Lake on a Moonless Night in September

5. It Takes A Year/The Bricklayer's Beautiful Daughter

Yo. A-town down.