Lifes a beach....or is it a blizzard?

We were off work on Tuesday and it was nice when we stepped outside at 10 am. Approx 60 degrees.
We ran down to the mall to walk around. The local news said the temp was supposed to drop throughout the day and start to snow that evening. We were out all day, and around 3 we went back to the hotel. Bonnie still had a desire to do more shopping (I did not) so she dropped me off and ran to the local goodwill.

Bonnie is off to the goodwill!!

Around 6 I stepped out and took a picture of the lot.....no snow yet, but it was raining a little.

Where's the snow?

another weather misdiagnosed

Then around 6:30 it turned to a sleet like rain. We stayed inside and watched X factor. Around we went back outside and the snow was starting to build up. It was about 9 pm.

Well finally....there's a little snow

Yup...It is snowing

We went back in and Bonnie laid down to sleep, while I got online to play a bit of facebook poker. My mother was online so I chatted with her for a while. She wanted to see how the snowstorm was doing, so I stepped back outside to take another  picture to measure the progress of mother nature.

Now it is really coming down!

This could be a good old fashioned snow storm

where are my ski's?

After a little more poker, it was off to bed. We arose around 8 in the morning and we stepped out to see the
snow amounts....

somebody shovelled already

8 to 10 inches

lot o snow

Bonnie hasn't seen this white stuff for a couple of years

So that was the excitement from wintery Colorado...Only 3 more days and we are off to Iowa!!! 

Oct 24th

Well I am supposedly done the 29th....I hope. I now remember why I retired in the first place. Anyways I have been busy working for the last bunch of days, and last Tues, Wen and Thursday in Denver for meetings. So Friday we went garage sailing....We got a couple of thing, but not alot of good finds. After about 20 garage sales we were getting hungry, but couldn't decide where to eat. So I headed the 26 miles up the mountain to Estes Park. May as well have some ambiance with our lunch, after all, how often will we get to go to Estes Park for lunch? The day was beautiful, and as soon as we got up there we found a herd of elk grazing right in town. We stopped and took a few pictures of them.

A herd of elk

They are on the banks of a mountain stream

Very pretty view

We then went over to our little cafe in Estes called Molly B's.....We like that place.

Getting ready to eat some lunch...at Molly B's

View of Estes Park from the cafe

After lunch we headed down to do a little shopping. The downtown is very quaint and just a cool place.

Love this little downtown

Then we went back to check out the Elk herd. We wanted to get a few better pictures, so we went to a better area for viewing and took some more pictures.

Bull

he's looking aggravated

he is rounding up his harem

This picture is of the Stanley Hotel. Stephen King stayed here late one fall. While there, this place inspired him to write a book called The Shining. It was made into a movie of the same name starring Jack Nicholson.

The famous Stanley House

 It was getting late in the afternoon so we started down the mountain before it got to dark. This picture is of the Big Thompson Canyon, you have to go through to get up or down from Estes. The drive is quite spectacular.

Big Thompson Canyon

 The next day was Sat and I had to work at 1 in the afternoon. We decided to go garage sailing again to see if we could find any treasures. Much better day. We found 2 coach purses and 2 laptops along with a variety of other treasures.

Here is the spot we found the coach purses

 I went to work with a smile on my face and satisfaction in my heart. I love finding treasures. Around 6:30 I stepped outside to smoke and saw the sun setting behind the Rocky's....Very fitting end to a good day!

The end of a good day

I got home and we decided to go out to eat a late diner, we headed to historic downtown Loveland and found a place called the Black Steer. We went out to the back for a smoke while waiting for diner and I laughed when I saw the patio.

Still laughing at this

 Only a few more days before we head for Iowa to say our farewells before heading to Florida. See ya all soon! And remember.....Life really is good!

Cheyenne (Not the Indians, The city)

We left to go up to Cheyenne around 8:30 in the morning. It is about an hour or so from where our extended stay hotel is located. As we were leaving the motel,just out the front door, there was a fox walking past our motel. I ran back inside and grabbed the camera and took a couple of pictures.

Fox right outside our room

He has seen me....I think...His eyes are closed

His eyes are still closed..how does he know where he is going?

We got up there around 9:30 and stopped at the Wyoming Visitors Center. It had info on everything in the state. We browsed around the place, grabbing a couple of pamphlets and took off.

Here comes Bonnie, with brochures in hand.

We went downtown and browsed the shops, ate lunch and visited with some of the locals. It is a real western themed town. All the shops had some kind of west motive. All the clothing stores were western style of clothes.

Downtown Cheyenne.

We found a couple of thrift stores and spent some time browsing. I found seasons 4 and 5 of LOST and it was in blue ray so I had to buy them. I have the first three seasons down in Florida so now I only need season 6. We also found a couple of PAC Man Coffey cups. They are vintage 1980 Bally cups with the moving images on them. I cannot remember what you call it, but if you tip the cup you can see the figures moving. After shopping all day we started back toward home, but we wanted to stop at the Buffalo ranch just south of town. We had seen it on the way up, and it seemed like something that would be cool to see. It was neater than we thought. They had pens with different kinds of animals...so I took pictures of several different species....

old west simulated town (sort of)

Long haired something

Ostredge..Ostridge...ost...Well you know what they are

Alpaca, I think

Camel...Where"s the jockey?  (ok..I apologize for that comment.)

Then we took off and went to see the Buffalo on the way out. These are pretty magnificent animals. I can only imagine what the planes looked like when there were  estimated herds  of 100 million of these beasts roaming the Midwest.

Buffaloooooos

As we were driving home in the last minutes of sun, I took the pictures of the mountains...They looked surreal....I thought it would make a good picture.

Isn't that cool looking?

That's all I got....I have 2 weeks left out here..then its back to Iowa to say my goodbye's and off to Florida!! Bonnie cannot wait. And I have to admit, I am pretty excited tooo!

Boulder....

Bonnie got here on the 5th, making me very happy! I have been working every day until yesterday. So we decided to go up to Boulder and check out the "Pearl Street" thing. It is about a 45 min drive up there. We got up there around noon and we walked around for an hour, checking out the shops. It is a very unique area with a lot of street performers and homeless people. I think most of the street performers and the homeless people are the same people. After walking about, we got hungry and stopped at a little restaurant on the street.

Lunch time

While we were eating, there was this guy playing a guitar and singing, right by our table, so I took a video of him.

After lunch we walked a bit more and saw this guy....he was loud and kept calling out to people walking by to stop. He was very good at asking for tips. LOL

This guy is getting ready to get into that box

Bonnie took a picture of me as we were getting ready to take off.
The place was really a neat place to visit.

Me on pearl street

We Headed higher into the mountains, as I wanted to show Bonnie this little town I had stopped into a couple of weeks ago called Nederland. It is a very strange little town, and after I had visited it last time, my employees told me it was a old hippie town. And that describes it perfectly. Peace sign shirts and pot leaves all over the place. There is a small store there that has nothing but organic stuff in it. 

Little mountain town of Nederland

Hippie painting a picture

After leaving that place, we headed even higher up to Central City.
The Aspens are all turning yellow and are fantastic to look at.

The aspens were spectacular

It is around 9,000 ft up and the weather had been getting cooler all day as we headed up. Down in Loveland it was 72 degrees, and by the time we got up to Central City it was around 40 and looking like rain. Central city is an old mining town from the turn of the century that legalized gambling in 1990. now it is full of casinos. We had a $5.99 prime rib (yummy) and did a little gambling. (3 hours) When we left it was 10:30 in the evening and 19 degrees and snowing. The drive down was slightly scary.....We did not get back to Loveland until midnight. But it was a great day and now we have Thursday off and we are going to Cheyenne, Wyoming to check it out. It is only 45 miles from where we live in Fort Collins. I will bring my camera so I can get some good pictures. I forgot my camera for this trip and only had my phone. I will post our Wyoming trip when we get home tomorrow night.