The Grandkids Found Us

This week has been busy between working our normal days and visiting with our daughter, Kelly's, family on our days off. They arrived in Grandby, Colorado, for a vacation on Saturday.

They were excited to visit us here at the Refuge to see where we are living. Shawn's reaction was "Wow, this place is really out there." We walked the Nature Trail in hopes of seeing a moose.
After looking around the Refuge, we drove to Steamboat Springs for lunch. After lunch we walked around the Yampa River Botanical Garden enjoying all the native trees and flowers. It is a short drive out of town to the trail head for Fish Creek Falls. This is a short mile long trail to the falls overlook. We finished the day by walking around the downtown area and visiting some of the small shops in Steamboat. Of course, we stopped at our favorite candy shop, Fuzzywigs, and everyone got a little bag of their favorite candy assortment. You talk about being a "Kid in a Candy Shop". This place has it all.

Tuesday morning we met them in Grandby for a day of fun at Winter Park. There is a chairlift, alpine slide, zipline, mini-golf, bungi jump, maze, and rock climbing. The kids favorite was the alpine slide. I think we rode it 7 times, each time faster.

Finishing Up at Arapho

The time has flown by with only a couple of weeks left to work. We plan to leave for Missouri right after Labor Day. In Missouri we are scheduled to attend the week-long 2012 ESCAPEE Escapade in Sedalia and do some sight seeing around Kansas City and Branson. This will be our first Escapade and look forward to seeing what that is all about.

This summer has been very enjoyable and interesting. Our prior year of experience here was helpful, since the refuge had a large turnover in staff during the winter months. We were able to use our new ATV training for various projects such as fencing, veg sampling, water flume signage and boundary sign maintenance. We also have been using our skills with the Trimble GPS using ArcPad for mapping an invasive species, yellow toadflax, and plotting points for signs and gates on refuge property in Colorado and Wyoming. One day we even mapped White Tail Prairie Dog colonies using the Trimble on ATVs.

Ongoing biweekly duties include, filling the brochure racks and downloading the data from the four vehicle counters around the refuge, monitoring lake levels by taking piezometer readings, counting cows to insure ranchers are not overgrazing leased areas and maintaining a half mile nature walk by mowing and cleaning information signs.

Celebrating 35th Wedding Anniversary

We celebrated our 35th Wedding Anniversary, by driving the highest road in North America. Mount Evans, one of the fourteeners in Colorado, at 14,130 feet. We experienced our first snow of the season, when an afternoon storm blew in.

We chose to have an early dinner at The Peck House, the oldest active hotel in the state of Colorado. It is located just north of I-70 on US 40 in the small town of Empire.


Kurt enjoyed a very special oyster and beef pie made using a very old recipe. Virginia savored a strip steak done to perfection. We received a complimentary dessert in honor of our special day.
As we were leaving, our waitress noticed the Texas logo on our charge card. We learned she was a former school teacher from Plano East High School, in north Texas. It sure is a small world.

www.thepeckhouse.com/

Trip to Wyoming and the Tea Kettle Ranch B & B

After church on Sunday, July 22, we continued north to the "Oregon Trail Historic Byway" along US 26.



Our first stop was at the Oregon Trail Ruts, just south of Guernsey. Although many remnants of the trail can be seen in Wyoming, the Oregon trail tracks here are notable because they were cut into the sandstone. A short trail leads to the deep gorges cut by the wheels of thousands of wagons.







Just down the road from the Trail Ruts is Register Cliff.


This is a sandstone precipice raising 100 feet from the valley floor of the North Platte River, it is one of the three main sights along the Oregon Trail where emigrants left their inscriptions, still visible today.


HISTORIC FORT LARAMIE

The best stop was at Historic Fort Laramie. The fort was started in June, 1834, when fur traders built a small stockaded post. The fort was abandoned in 1890, the year Wyoming gained statehood.

During its 56 years of service it became a haven for gold seekers and emigrants, a station for the Pony Express and a military post during the Plains Indian Wars.



TEA KETTLE RANCH BED & BREAKFAST



Calvin and Isabel were wonderful hosts. They welcomed us into their beautifully decorated ranch house, 12 miles north of Torrington.
The home is located on top of a plateau overlooking tens of thousands of acres of ranch land. We enjoyed the long view and the sunset from a rear facing deck just outside our bedroom.

CHEYENNE FRONTIER DAYS


The next morning we headed south to Cheyenne for a day at Frontier Days and "The Daddy of 'Em All" Rodeo.





After the Rodeo we had enough time to stop for dinner at our favorite Cheyenne Restaurant, The Albany. This Restaurant has been in business since 1942. Virginia loves the prime rib sandwich and Kurt feasted on the grilled mountain trout, which are both their specialities.


http://www.albanycheyenne.com/

A Golden Day

We worked Monday through Wednesday so we could have a long 5 day weekend. Thursday, July, 19, we drove to Golden, Colorado. We took the scenic drive over Lookout Mountain, stopping at Buffalo Bill's museum and grave site.
We had a delicious lunch at the Old Capital Grill in historic downtown Golden.This was the first capitol building of the Colorado territory. The historic brick building housed the first legislature sessions when Golden was the capital in 1866.

After lunch we toured the Coors Brewing Company. This is the largest brewery on earth, with a capacity of over a million gallons a day. After the self guided tour we each sampled three beverages of our choice in the hospitality room.

Goose Banding, Rodeo and a 4th of July Hike

We accepted an invitation from the State of Colorado to help with the annual Canada Goose Banding effort at Walden Reservoir. Kayaks were used to herd over 600 geese into a corral.
This was possible due to molting season, the geese were unable to fly. The geese were then separated by banded or unbanded and goslings. The banded geese were recorded and released. The unbanded geese were sexed, banded and released.

NORTH PARK NEVER SUMMER RODEO
The girl on the right is Taylor, the Rodeo Queen. She also is one of the YCC (Youth Conservation Corp) Summer employees at the Refuge.
Don't let her girly looks fool you, she grew up here in Walden on a ranch and is a hard worker. Taylor also competes as a barrel racer in the rodeo.




In this picture of the barrel racing event you can see the smoke rising in the distance as one of the many Colorado wildfires burns. This one is in Poudre Canyon about 50 east of Walden. Poudre Canyon runs between Walden and Fort Collins.

Having received our ATV Certifications this past January, we are putting them to use in our work here at Arapaho NWR. On this particular day we were using the ATVs to haul obsolete fencing, removed by the YCC, out of the back country for recycling.

BIG CREEK FALLS HIKE
On Independence Day we took a five mile hike in the Zirkel Wilderness Area with friends and fellow volunteers, Carolyn and Wally.






The Wyoming Ground Squirrels, who live all around us, enjoy eating the spent petunia blossoms. We enjoy watching these busy little critters. Sure glad the hanging flower basket is out of their reach.



While updating our BLOG, we looked out our back window and spotted three young moose.
What a joy it is to live on a National Wildlife Refuge. We were able to take a picture of one before they ran away.

Getaway to Baldpate Inn

We left our trailer behind and took a three day/two night adventure through Rocky Mountain National Park and Boulder, Colorado.
Through the park, we shared the road with "Ride The Rockies" bike rally, made up of 2200 bicycles. Good thing it was a Thursday, so traffic wasn't too heavy. We parked our car at the Moraine Visitors Center and took the free shuttle bus to the Bear Lake Area. We hiked around Bear Lake and then to Alberta Falls. Although Rocky Mountain NP is a heavily used park, we found only a few people on the trails that day. Once we arrived at Alberta Falls we realized we had taken this same hike over 13 years ago when we visited in 1999.
Researching places to stay, we found the Baldpate Inn. This rustic lodge built in 1917 is 7 miles south of Estes Park. At over 9,000 feet elevation it is adjacent to Rocky Mountain NP and has 12 guest rooms.

Room #2 was our home for this two night getaway. We had a nice large room with a king bed, a couch, antique dresser, tables and lamps. It had a sink, but the bathroom was down the hall where there were three with old fashioned tubs and two with stall showers. We were supplied with terry cloth robes to make the journey down the hall. We were very comfortable here and slept with the windows open above a real wood burning fireplace.

The restaurant was open to the public for lunch and dinner. They offer a soup & salad bar. Each morning the guests are served a 3 course breakfast consisting of fruit with homemade muffin, quiche and bacon, followed by a homemade cinnamon pecan roll.
The Key Room contains the worlds largest key collection, with over 20,000 keys. Included in this collection is a key from Mozart's wine cellar, Westminster Abbey, the Pentagon and Frankenstein's Castle.
We were required to wear hairnets (and beard nets) while touring the Celestial Tea Company in Boulder, Colorado. After the tour we could have all you can drink, sampling their over 70 different tea products.
We also visited NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) and Leanin' Tree Museum of Western Art. These are all located in Boulder. We enjoyed The Mall, a brick paved section of Pearl Street, closed to traffic. After dinner we drove up Mount Flagstaff for a panaramic view of Boulder.
On day three we took the long drive home by going south on Scenic Hwy. 72. Great views of Long's Peak, Meeker Peak, Evan's Peak and a beautiful drive down the unpaved, "Oh, My Gawd Road" to Idahoe Springs.