A Camping We Did Go

I'm finally feeling up to reporting on our "much looked forward to" camping trip in our new Retro camper over Labor Day weekend.

My bed is the permanent one that is a daybed during the daytime. I share this space with Brave Heart, a Care Lion. I got the retro fabrics with just a touch of lizard. Right outside of the window, at the head of the bed, is a fantastic view of Lake Creek.

Although I didn't have the curtains all completed (I had to order more fabric) we put up the ones

we had, loaded up and went up to Lake Creek Campground on the side of the Sangre de Christo mountains around noon on Friday. We found a great site for our camper and son Greg's tent, and another site for other son, Doug, across and down the road (I do mean down literally). Greg, Mandy and Evan joined us a couple of hours later and we set up the camp kitchen and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery. Doug and Jennie would come up on Saturday morning.

Joe's bed makes up where the table stands in the daytime. He got the southwestern lizards.

It rained so hard and long that evening, that we cooked the hamburgers and ate in the camper. That is the best benefit of a camper; when tent camping we couldn't cook inside the tent.

We were tired from all the packing and unpacking and settled into our camper bunks early. Joe woke me up between 3 and 3:30 am with chest pains and very high blood pressure. I had my ever present medical emergency kit and gave him 3 nitro tablets at 5 minute intervals; I had him drink a bottle of water, in case it was altitude sickness; and then put him on my oxygen, while I switched to my shoulder pack. I had slogged thru the wet vegetation to wake Greg and while I nursed, he called 911 on his cell phone. Thank God we had service. I was amazed at how fast they got an ambulance to us to take him down to the hospital in Canon City; Greg followed them

down and I stayed in the camper with the children.

The grate was so uneven the guys had to put flat rocks under the pans to keep them from sliding off.

Joe went thru the usual tests and was kept over Saturday night. Doug and Jennie went to the hospital before coming up to the campground with Greg on Saturday afternoon. They brought their new 3 month old Pug, Cooper (short for Mini Cooper). Joe insisted that we all camp that night, since we were already set up. Luckily the tests found no indication of a heart attack, so he was released on Sunday and Greg picked him up and brought him up to camp with us for Sunday night. Needless to say, we all enjoyed Sunday night, with him, a lot more than Saturday night, without him, and worrying about what the doctors would decide.

Joe said he felt all right and went right back to work on Monday. The Stress Echo Cardiogram he had this Friday found nothing wrong with his heart. So the doctors think it was a combination of indigestion complicated by high altitude. Joe had so looked forward to camping since we weren't able to go for the 4th of July, as we usually do, and then had this happen.

I told Joe we needed to have an exorcism for the camper, since I went to the hospital the first time we stayed in it, and he was hospitalized the second time. We need to find out if the precious owner sold it because it was inhabited by bad spirits. This is all said with tongue firmly in cheek. We still love that little camper and Mandy came home with us and is sleeping in it in our back yard. It makes a great guest house for the grandkids. They even make s'mores on the gas stove burner.

In spite of everything, we enjoyed the lovely landscape of the Wet Mountain Valley and the Sangre de Christos; and ate great meals prepared on the campfire by our sons and daughter-in-law. Jennie even bakes biscuits in a Dutch Oven with coals from the fire. And I learned to appreciate our kids even more than before. I don't know what I'd have done if they hadn't been there with me during this time.

What do teenage girls do on camping trips? They text their friends when they aren't collecting flowers, acorns, leaves and berries to decorate the picnic table.

What do kindergarten boys do on a camping trip? What don't they do, I have multitudes of cute photos! Here he is in Cooper's portable kennel with Cooper's bone.

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

The early color of the sunset from the Village Inn Parking Lot in Canon City. This is Fremont Peak; can you see the sleeping indian that the early settlers saw in the shape of this mountain?


We are taking off for the campground first thing in the morning and will meet son, Greg with Mandy and Evan, and son, Doug, with Jennie, there. I am so excited to get to go camping, even tho I've had to trade my tent for a camper. The pillowcases are all made, and half of the curtains are ready to hang (we'll have to do that at the campground, tomorrow, since we ran out of time today); I have enough to cover the windows flat, without any gathers, those will wait for the other half of the curtains to be finished. At least we will have privacy and color, instead of the hodge podge in there now. I've ended up having to buy bits of fabric here and there, where I could still find it available. I didn't remember at the beginning that I needed to do two lengths for each window and when I needed more fabric, the original quilt shop was out. I finally got all the fabric at three different places online and locally.



In the few minutes it took to drive to the top of the hill, east of Canon City on US Highway 50,
the color became this brilliant.


These are some photos I've taken in the last few days, ending with a spectacular sunset this evening as we drove home from Canon City, after shopping for groceries and supplies, and having skillet dinners at the Village Inn.



This is the reflection of the sunset on a thunderhead East of Canon City.








The herd of llamas [just some of our "native" fauna] on Department of Corrections land [state and federal prisons are the biggest employers in Fremont County, around 10 state prisons, and a Federal 4 prison complex; including the Administrative Max Prison that holds the worst of the worst, such as the original World Trade Center bombers, the Unabomber, Gotti, and the Oklahoma CityFederal Building bombers, until one was taken elsewhere for his execution. I can see the lights of this complex from my kitchen window, about a mile away to the south], north of Florence. Note the green grass, the first we've seen all spring and summer. Up till the 5th of August this all looked like dead straw. Hooray for the Monsoons!



Here is more green prairie off to the Wet Mountains in the South. That dark greenery, down in the Arkansas River Valley, is Florence. See how we snuggle down between the bluffs. The deciduous trees of the prairie grow only in the river and creek valleys. Those dirt mounds are prairie dog holes. I could hear them barking alarms while I took the photos, but couldn't get any pictures of them.




I was happily surprised that I had walked over 5000 steps today, the most I've been able to do since the first mini stroke in July. That could explain why I am so tired and need to get to bed so I can get up early in the morning.

Hope you all have great weekends!

You Can't Keep A Good Granny Down

Our month long heat wave finally gave way to 3 days of cooler, wet, Monsoon here in Florence. It helps me and my dry, suffering garden feel better. I managed to walk around Toad Haven, without falling down,with the help of my gorgeous Aspen walking stick, handmade for me by granddaughter Mandy. I took lots of photos and even got to pick some ripe tomatoes, eggplant, squash, cucumbers and lettuces. The Romaine lettuce was great as the base of a lemon- dill tuna salad.


Thanks to Dave and Carl, the yardmen who I finally gave up and hired to help me when I couldn't get out to the garden this past month, the worst of the weeds and elm seedlings are gone and I can sit and admire and enjoy the garden without feeling overwhelmed by the work that needed to be done.


It's wonderful to be happy and hopeful again instead of so beat down as I have been. Hopefully, this weak, shaky body will be able to come back from the terrible punishment it has had, due to medication side effects, the past 15 months. I have lost 30 pounds and my clothes are beginning to hang on me. Ain't it Wonderful! Now only 65 more pounds to go. It is much easier now, to not want to gobble the junk I had been stuffing down. I think I was craving more energy and, somehow, thought that more food would help. Of course, it didn't.

I even managed to drive to Canon City today to shop at the health food store and City Market for a few things, and drove home the back way and took lots more photos of the refreshed countrside and the fantastic monsoon thunderheads in the sky. By the time I got home and carried the 2 bags of groceries in, I was shaking and had to collapse to recuperate a while, but it was worth it.

Before the "you know what" hit the fan in early July, Joe and I purchased a vintage, small travel trailer from a neighbor. It is so old it actually has real wood paneling, instead of pressed board or
plastic. Outside it is white with a retro turquoise band around it. June's fat quarters packet of the month from Grandma's Attic Quilting consisted of lovely retro looking turquoise, brown and
cream prints that I thought would be perfect as curtains and pillows for a refurbished camper, so I ordered enough to replace the odds and ends that the fisherman who owned it before scrounged up to cover the windows. Now I have to get Joe to tear out the hideous orange shag carpet and put down something more suitable. As soon as I feel up to sewing again, I will turn that little camper into the cutest thing you've ever seen. [The camper was where I was sleeping the night I had the first mini stroke; and I reveled in the luxury of a bed instead of a camp cot in a tent, even though it wasn't very attractive, yet.]

Maybe we will be able to go camping in the mountains with some of our kids over Labor Day weekend. It's wonderful to be human again, even if tottering!

The first landscape is of a great thunderhead building over Pikes Peak with Castle Rock (next to the Arkansas River) in the foreground. This photo was taken from the back road into Florence from Canon City.

The second landscape is of Florence, down in the River valley, behind the Southfield Coal Mine sign. This bluff has been mined out underneath the ground. We no longer have an active coal mine in the area because the cost of underground mining is prohibitive and we don't want open pits. Wyoming can have all the open pit coal mines they want out in all that empty land. For 150 years good quality coal has been mined in this area and we still have retired miners with Black Lung disease.

You really need to click these landscapes, to enlarge them, to really get an idea of what you are looking at.

The not so great side of the August Monsoons is that there is quite a bit of flash flooding and lightning along the whole front range corridor. On Wednesday, lightning hit the 90 year old steeple of the Catholic Cathedral in Pueblo and started a fire. They are now in the process of determining whether it can be repaired or will have to be removed. I'm hoping they can save it as it is a beautiful, historic feature of Pueblo.