Karen and Jeff's World

On Friday, August 19, 2011, a fire started just southwest of Monument, CO. It was near the north end of the US Air Force Academy and at the edge of the Pike National Forest. The pictures are when the fire was about 45 acres. The fire grew to about 100 acres. No structures were damaged. The fire climbed the mountain towards the National Forest away from the city. We could easily see the smoke from our deck. We couldn’t see the fire itself because there is a building in the way. The Forest Service close several roads west of the fire because that was the direction the fire was headed and they thought people might try to head down the roads and get trapped by the fire.

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On July 16th, we assisted Big Mountain Adventure put on an adventure race near Woodland Park, CO. We got to supervise the sling-shot challenge. Racers had to use a sling-shot and try to hit some plastic containers hanging from a rope about 20 feet away. We had a lot of time sitting around waiting for the racers to show up. Jeff and Karen got in some practice with the sling-shots while waiting. If the racers didn’t hit the containers they had to carry a team mate (or a heavy backpack) down the road a bit and a back. Jeff tried out the back pack before the racers came. It was pretty heavy and took him 4 minutes to walk out and back.

On Sunday Anita came over and we went out to breakfast with Todd, then we came back to Karen’s parents’ house and Johnny, Amanda and John came over for the afternoon.

After Amanda’s graduation, John, Amanda and Johnny came over to Karen’s parents’ house for a party and to visit.

Back in May we went to Kansas for Amanda and John’s graduations from Kansas University. John decided not to go through the ceremony because his PhD advisor was out of town. Amanda had a nice ceremony. It was just the School of Journalism so there wasn’t a huge mass of graduates.

Here are Karen’s photos from our trip to Bishop Castle. Jeff’s photos are in this post.

You know if I didn’t wait so long to get the pictures posted, I might have something more interesting things to say about the photographs and trip. Sorry about the lack of information.

Back in April we took a trip down to Bishop Castle to see what’s new since the last time we were there. The main thing that’s different is the wall that’s going up around the castle. As always, the castle is a fun photographic journey. There is so much to view and it’s always new.

Back in April we took a trip up to Denver to attend the TEDx MileHigh conference. TEDx conferences are independently organized events along the same themes as the main TED. For those that don’t know TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. TED uses the tagline: “Ideas worth spreading.” TED has grown from a small invitation only event in Monterey, CA to a world-wide event and numerous independently organized events. Anyway. The event was lots of fun and very inspiring. We didn’t get many pictures, mainly because we were too busy paying attention to the speakers.

We decided to go back to the Cripple Creek Ice Festival on February 12th and stay at the  Whispering Pines Bed and Breakfast. This is a nice B&B that is on a hilltop outside of town. The location provides a very quiet atmosphere and some terrific views.

Peggy and Mark were great hosts (as usual, this was our second time), and Peggy made a very nice breakfast (Peaches and Cream French Toast).

Pictures of the Ice Festival are at: Cripple Creek Ice Festival 2011.

Here’s a link to a pano from the deck.

We had some time to kill before checking into our B&B while staying in Cripple Creek for its annual Ice Festival on February 12th, and decided to trek the 7 miles to Victor to check it out. Victor is an old mining town west of Colorado Springs (Cripple Creek is as well). Unfortunately, time and the economy have not be kind to Victor. There are about 500 residents today. Many of the homes we saw were for sale, and many store fronts were vacant. We did go into a really nice little antique shop. You can stroll around downtown Victor in about 10 minutes. There’s only about 4 blocks to downtown.