Wednesday, November 26, 2008

We are related to an Olympic champion!


Our niece, Olivia, is the 2008 Iowa State Special Olympics Bowling Champion - age 8-11. Here she is with her mom (Andrea's sister) Adriene.

Big horn sheep sighting!

Okay, I'm back folks. A couple of weeks ago, my buddy from Grad school, Larry, and his wife Mary came out to Colorado for a quick weekend off. They needed a break and she was way way interested in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park (the hotel The Shining was filmed in), so they made arrangements and came out to stay a night. We picked them up the second day, and took them through Rocky Mountain National Park a bit. We did pretty well in RMNP, seeing some stray elk and one pretty big herd before leaving. We also took a nice walk around Bear Lake, where some industrious kid left us little tiny snowmen in pairs every so often along the trail, usually on the benches.

Now, I have to explain something about seeing wildlife up there. Usually, you will drive along, and you will notice 1 or more cars pulled over, their occupants apparently looking at trees on the side of the road; they're actually looking at deer or elk or whatever among the trees, and it's one of the best ways to spot wildlife. In the 4+ years we've been out here, we've stopped many times with the others, to see everything from deer and elk to voles (they're small rodents--think big mice--can't believe they stopped for them!). I've always thought it would be cool to be the one who actually was the first to spot the living animals myself.

So after we left RMNP, we were driving back down to Estes on a road that's on the side of a valley made by a creek flowing along down about 40 feet below and to the right, with houses interspersed on the hillside among the trees. I happened to see a bunch of white butts walking away along the edge of the creek. But the trees and houses kept anyone else from seeing them. Well, when I was growing up, the rule was that at least 2 people had to see the animals for them to be part of the 'official' count, so I demanded that we turn around and go back, as I needed verification. I didn't know what I'd seen exactly anyway, after all, there are a lot of animals with white butts out there. So we came back a ways, and stopped ahead of the way they had been headed, so as to meet them as they came. Larry and I got out and walked over on the side of the road to a driveway that went down to the creek. When we got there, we were face to face with a small herd of bighorn sheep coming up the drive! So I took a few pictures before any other cars came by, and some after. We tried to signal the first cars to slow down, and the very first one looked at me like I was an alien and had a sign "Will abduct you for food" or something. Well, he came pretty close to having a bighorn co-pilot after narrowly missing one in the road. I tried to tell him, didn't I?!!? I creeped closer, eventually getting within about 30 feet of them. The alpha male gave me a look and snorted at me, so I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and backed slowly away. The encounter lasted about 10 minutes, and they ended up climbing the hill on the side of the road away from the creek and slipped into the woods.


I was first to see them!!! And the several other cars who saw them stopped after I got pictures myself!! Not that I'm excited about it or anything.......... ;-)

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Do you own a crockpot?

We own two - medium and large. Dan and I both love using them - especially in the fall and winter when a hot homemade meal is that much better. Well, my friends, have I got a blog for you to check out. Stephanie is the author of (and chief cook for) "A Year of CrockPotting" I haven't tried any of her recipes yet but they look and sound delicious. And she does a great job of tagging her recipes so you can search by crockpot size and by recipe type/ingredient - see the index on the left side of her page. Today she featured John McCain's Crockpot rib recipe - tomorrow she will post Barack Obama's chili recipe.