Travels
Flying out today to go home and play with our cats : ) 6 whole days in this beautiful 75/81 degree weather is making me long for home so bad. I called this place home for 48 years but this ain't home to me no more.
Time for a little Rocky Mountain High!
I love my family and friends, and miss the ocean a lot, but sure is nice to not have to fight traffic every time you go someplace.
Went to the "granddaddy of them all" the Cheyenne Frontier days rodeo yesterday. My brother Jack is out here from Texas and he loves Trisha Yearwood so we took him for his birthday present. We had standing room only seats so were only about 15 people deep from the stage. Our feet were so tired after standing for 4.5 hrs straight on the dirt infield of the track.
more pictures @
http://picasaweb.google.com/MullenPhotography/Reba_Trisha
Prior to that we SAT (thank god!) in the stands and watched the rodeo for a bit.. I got some GREAT photos of that which was surprising since we were sitting so far away in the grandstands.
Cheyenne is about 85 Miles north of us.
It was such a nice day yesterday that we went for a drive up in the mtns to see some places we haven't seen in this great state. We started off going to Loveland Pass, where I went last October and got this picture. and here's one I took yesterday. It was in the 90's in Denver and up here it was 57 degrees!
so we went there yesterday in JUNE and it was 96 down in Denver, but up @ 11,990 ft it still had ice in the lake!
There was a real nice creek with a bunch of rafters in it, so we stopped to take some pictures of them
Here is a nice one I took @ Lake Torquoise
We drove from Bryce Canyon to Arches/Moab yesterday - about 280 miles, and about 140 of them was in a severe thunderstorm. It was SOOO bad - Most of the time we were the only ones on the road. Janis was laughing as I removed my watch and took my Sidekick phone from between my legs to the center console. It was so bad at one point that we went under an underpass and stayed there for about 10-15 min as the rain and lightning was so hard.
We went to Arches last nite after we got there, but it was really cloudy since there was still rain/lightning in the air. So we changed our hotel to stay over another night so we could see it in better weather as today was supposed to be sunny out. So we got there today and spent the day checking out all the arches. In the garden of the Gods we saw two girls climbing Owl Rock. I took a lot of pictures of them which is posted here - It was real interesting watch them climb it with all the ropes and such. One girl was already on top and the other girl starting to climb it. I'd love to have seen how the first one got up w/o any of the ropes and stuff. I've never seen anyone climb in person before so it would have been interesting to see how they did it - I put a card in their car saying that I took some good pictures so if by chance they are reading this, you can contact me by the weekend as I'll be in Denver cause we're in the process of moving to our new house out there. The collage is just a sample of some of the pictures that I took of them.
Today was Bryce canyon and Zion National Park. I've never been to either, Janis has so she navigated for us. Zion has much more to see than Bryce, I'd rather fly over Zion and hike over Bryce.
I took a cool infrared of Zion though, I didnt try to take any infrared of Bryce but will try to do that tomorrow. We're here for 2 days. I didnt realize that Arches the next destination (reservations on Monday) is over 300 mi away from here, so we have 5 hr drive to get there on Monday morning. Long drives!
Here's a picture taken @ Bryce Canyon
More Bryce Canyon infrared photos are here.
Drive Through
Went out to see Jack for the weekend. First time for Janis to visit, I’d been there early to watch a hockey game there.
We went to see the mothership, AKA Dallas Cowboys stadium. It’s about 10 miles from Jack’s house, and we can see the building from the backyard!
We also went to see Dealey Plaza, where JFK was assassinated, and did a tour of the Texas Schoolbook building. Being a history buff of the assassination, it was good to finally check this off the bucket list.
On the way back from Canada, in 2004, we stopped by Dusty and Nancy Graham’s place in Sedro Wooley which is about 10 mi South of Bellingham, Washington. Dusty and I worked together at ESPD, and he was my Sergeant for most of it. Had a nice visit. He hadn’t met Janis, and I went up to see him with Jennifer way back in 1994 (?).
Panorama of Lake Whatcom, where Dusty has a house and boat.
Looking at old photos on the computer and stuff that isn’t on the blog, so thought I’d add it.
Janis and I went up the coast of California, and stopped by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. A nice aquarium, on par with Scripps down in La Jolla, What is nice about this one is that it is right on the ocean, so you get to see actual ocean life (outside of the aquarium). Love this area of CA.
Went to eat at Bubba Gum'p’s and saw Forrsst sitting on his bench
