Lovely Autumn Day

I had a full day Saturday and am taking it easy today to recuperate. It was one of those gorgeous warm, blue sky days but the winds were blowing very hard. I drove Amber and her mom, Valerie, to Colorado Springs for Amber's interview with the People to People Youth
Ambassador program. We are very proud that Amber was nominated to be a member of a trip to Washington D. C. , Spain, France and Italy next summer, especially since there has never been a Florence High School student involved in the program. The interview was held at the East Library on the far side of Colorado Springs from us.

While we were waiting for Amber, I discovered an interesting quilt hanging with a display of art works displayed in the hall. I had to take a photo for future reference, since it looked like a fun quilt to make. Now we wait to see if Amber is accepted into the program. If she is, I'll be blogging more about the program, since we will be doing fund raising for her plane fare and tuition.





Since it was such a beautiful day, on the way home I meandered through the local countryside to take Autumn color photos.

This area was one of the first agricultural areas east of the mountains in Colorado when the Pikes Peak or Bust gold rush was going on. Vegetables and fruits were grown along the Arkansas River here to supply the miners in the Leadville area, and later the Cripple Creek and Victor area. My father tells me that during the 1930s the road between Florence and Canon City was lined with Coal Mines and orchards. Canon City still holds their Blossom Festival each Spring and yesterday was the annual Apple Day in Penrose. Here is a photo of apples at the Colon Orchard [Colon as in Christopher Colon (Columbus). There is a large population of Italians who came here in the early days to be coal miners.]



Here is a pumpkin patch across the road from the apple orchard with the Wet Mountains in the distance. The patch was surrounded with large sunflowers, which are now dried up.








Here is a fall display at the Di Nardo brothers' cider stand in Canon City. There are several woodworkers in the area who carve these sculptures with chain saws, to sell to the tourists.

The Virginia Creeper vines along the fencerows are turning red, I especially like the way they look when they grow up a tree and the red contrasts with the still green leaves.

The Cottonwoods along the Arkansas River are beginning to turn yellow. This photo was taken at the River Walk.

Many of the local farmers and ranchers have their own arenas for practicing calf roping. This is the arena on one of the Adamic family's farms along MacKenzie Boulevard. [We also have a Slav population were originally coal miners. In addition we have many Hispanic locals, some of whom have been in the area since the Arkansas River was the northern border of Mexico. There is also a population of Cornish and Welch former miners. By now these populations are so intermarried that there are some really interesting genealogies to be traced. One of the humerous things this has led to, in my opinion, were the Italian chicken Calzones smothered in Hispanic green chili that used to be a special at a local Italian restaurant that has, sob!, since closed.

After I got home in the late afternoon, Joe and I drove to my folk's home in Fowler to visit my cousin Frankie and his family, and Aunt Lucy from Albuquerque, who stopped to visit on their way to Denver to visit another of our cousins, who is fighting cancer. Aunt Lucy was taking a nap when I took this photo, so I didn't get a picture of her. Young Zack is wearing his treasured vintage Broncos shirt, he and I are avid Broncos fans. Liz is a Dallas Cowboys fan and Valerie is for the San Francisco Forty Niners. Frankie, who is named for my Dad, says he roots for whoever can beat the Cowboys, which is his way of teasing his wife, Liz.

They traveled in Alaska this past summer and Valerie and I discovered that we both love the books about Alaska by Sue Henry.