June 24-29, 2023 Fort Collins, Colorado

 High of 86 and sunny.

John BBQed some yummy chicken and we had a dinner party in the back yard for Larry, Dave, Clair, John and Jenny. Great to visit with them. The next day I went to Denver to attend the annual picnic of the Glass Artist of Colorado. We had a taco bar and everyone brought a side dish. It was held in the lovely home of Deb, our president. Thanks Deb. It was good to see everyone.

Some more of the Colorado Glass Artists annual picnic. Sunset over dinner on our deck when I got home. 

Sunset over Old Town Square Fort Collins tonight with a half moon. Huge thunderheads to the east during sunset. 

I spent the day at my brothers. Still cleaning out the condo and the cars. The 1998 Cadillac De Ville Concours of his I am selling. It looks phenomenal for being 25 years old. The 2018 Ford Escape I am also selling. 

Gave away some more furniture today. The furniture is about all that is left. John and I are going to do a few more van loads of what will fit and take to donate.  Monday I have some removers coming to take it all away then to clean the carpets. Biking around McMurry ponds. 

Finally caught the deer for a photo. I think it lives here, I have seen it before. The river is dropping. Low enough that people are surfing the wave in the water park. 

Sun coming through the clouds. The river today is below 500 feet.  John and I call this the fish bridge- it has big metal fish art on it. 

Dark clouds, bus sunshine where I am biking today.

The flowers in our front garden, larkspur, yarrow and coreopsis, and my bike on the sidewalk. Tomatoes turning red in my garden already. I only planted the tomatoes two weeks ago-- of course I paid a fortune for big plants with green tomatoes on them. Yellow asters, wild rose, yellow lilies in our garden, purple flowers, sunflowers and moss campion. We spent the day cleaning out the condo. I bought John dinner at Jay's Bistro tonight as a thank you. There was live piano music, I love piano music. 

We sat outside, the evening was lovely. We could still hear the piano there. Cool artistic lights outside the restaurant. 

June 17-22, 2023 Fort Collins, Colorado

 75 and partly sunny. 

John came down to my brother's condo today with his van and loaded up all the donation items I had ready and took them to the Goodwill. Then he came back and loaded up all the trash and we went to the dump. The countryside is soooo green. 

Loveland lake as we drove through Loveland. John tossing a box into the dump. I had never been to the dump, so that was fun. It was very muddy and they were only letting 4 wheel drives in, which we were. 

When we got back to Fort Collins I noticed that it had hailed. Of course just the day after I planted my garden. But the garden survived.  I took a bike ride along the river. It is really high. The guage in town, the water park is raging. A stand up paddle boarder trying out one of the waves. Play it safe, river conditions are fast, cold and dangerous. Experience and specialized gear needed. 

Flowers and very green grass along the bike path. I took John out to dinner as a thank you for helping me today. It was lovely. This is our view of sunset from our table. 

Lake Ridge Condo Association dedicated this flower garden to my brother Jerry. Really sweet. Made me cry. 

Sunset from Jerry's condo. Cleaning out my brothers condo. This is part of the most recent pile of items to donate. Making progress. 

85 and mostly sunny. A beautiful day. And a high ozone alert day. We drove down to my brother's condo to continue cleaning it out. The view of the mountains was kind of weird, you could see the snow on top, but the mountains themselves kind of blending with the sky- so it looked like floating snow. Hard to tell in this photo tho. We made amazing progress on the clean out. About the only thing left is the furniture and the exercise equipment. Hopefully some charity (like Goodwill) will pick it all up for them to sell. 

Saw this 6 door GMC truck go by pulling a beautiful long Airstream Trailer. I cooked John a lovely dinner of left over fajitas on our deck for dinner. 

John took me out to dinner at a new restaurant in Old Town. We had mostly appetizers. We sat inside near the open door to the patio, it was raining.  Sunset on the way home. 

Beautiful day for a bike ride. The bike path. Of course as soon as I put the camera away a deer walked by. Sunset from our deck during dinner. 

Jenny and Larry are visiting. They went kayaking yesterday and today. I am too much of a wimp to boat the white water that they like. The river is still up to 1500 CFS in town. 

Nice waves along the bike path. The grasses are waist deep high and covered with pollen, Very pretty. Milk weed and blanket flower. 

June 12,-16 2023 Fort Bridger to Rawlins, Wyoming to Fort Collins, Colorado

 High of 64. Sunny, then cloudy, windy and raining.

Storm clouds, spring green grass and cows just before the Wyoming border. We are now camped at the Fort Bridger RV park. Beautiful place with grass and trees. Only drove 3 hours today. 

Lilacs are in bloom. I love the smell. Pasture with golden banner and wild iris. 

Wild iris and shooting stars, if our dogs don't like you, we probably won't either, welcome to Wyoming. Wild iris and shooting starts and old cabin.

Blacksmith shop, Jim Bridger statue and the Orange and Black $1 camping cabins. 

Fort Bridger historic monument. I finished this basket today. It is made with dyed and natural pine needles, polyester thread glass beads and the center is a fossilized fish from WY that my friend Pam gave me. 7 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 1 1/2.

Another 3 hour drive today to Rawlins, WY. We are at Western Hills Campground. The beautiful house is for sale! $699,000, 7,990 sq feet. 

John took me out to dinner at the Aspen House restaurant. It was in a lovely old redone house and the food was excellent. It is still our anniversary season. John humor: Cow drifts behind the Cow fences. Keeps them from blowing onto  the highway.

We made it back to Colorado. It is very green in Colorado from all the rain.

The deadbolt on the garage door at the house was frozen so we could not get into the garage to unload from the bus. John tried picking the lock. Then called a locksmith who drilled out the deadbolt. Behind him is a pile of things from the car to take into the garage. And the AC/ furnace system is broken and it getting replaced on Monday. Other than that it is good to be here. The rain clouds parted a tiny bit for sunset. 

I planted my garden. I spent an ungodly amount for big basil and tomato plants. I am planting late and would love to harvest some before we leave, hopefully early fall. The 4 on the left are the new plants. The two scrawny ones on the right are the basil plants we had on the bus. They had some kind of affliction and were sickly. I planted them hopefully far enough away from the new ones so it does not spread. Maybe they will recover and grow now that they are in the ground. I have spent most of the last two days working on the estate and cleaning out my brother's condo. Still a long way to go, but making progress. 

I got back to Fort Collins late last evening, through lots of rain. The clouds looked kind of like sunset. Not this nice, but the camera made it look good.