Wyoming Christmas – Day 8

Christmas Day started out beautiful but cold.

 The trees at the park across the street were covered with hoar frost or, as some people call it, rime ice. We took the dogs out for a walk and so that I could take some pictures. I’ve never seen anything quite as gorgeous as these white trees against the beautiful blue sky.

 My nephew Joe has just accepted a new job in the suburbs of Denver. They, however, weren’t going to be in their new house until the Monday after Christmas so we (actually Amanda and Evan) invited Joe, Kim, Max, Ali and Chris up for Christmas dinner. Who wants to spend Christmas day in a hotel??

Dinner was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. Unfortunately, someone didn’t think to bring the oil (we were frying the turkey) into the house to keep it from freezing. This was the solution to thaw it out so we could get to cooking. We finally ate about 3:00 p.m. and it was great food shared with family. All in all a very nice day.

Wyoming Christmas – Day 7

It’s Christmas Eve and we had no particular plans. After breakfast all six of us and the four dogs went for a walk at the park across the street. It was so pretty. Here are some pictures taken during that walk:

 Hall, Sara, Amanda and Moose
 Spring Creek which runs into Huck Finn Pond
 That’s the sun trying to burn its way through the fog.

 Evan walking one dog going one way and another going the other way.
 Bubba has loved running and jumping through the snow.

 Hall and Sara
 Evan, Amanda, Moose and Molly
 Molly and Bubba
 Trying to get everyone together for the group shot.
 The final group shot.
 Sara, Hall, Evan, Amanda, Molly and Moose
Some kind of berries on a frozen tree.

Wyoming Christmas – Day 6

Sara and Hall flew into Denver and Evan drove down to pick them up. Tommy, Amanda and I drove from Laramie and met them in Ft. Collins.

Our first stop was for lunch at CooperSmith’s Pub & Brewing at Old Town Square.

After lunch we walked down the street a bit to Equinox for our first beer tasting. Some people in our party liked these beers, not me. We actually left some beer for the people sitting at the table next to us.

Our next stop was at Odell Brewing Co. I knew that I’d like this place because they brew Easy Street Wheat beer. I found another beer of theirs that I liked–90 Shilling.

This is one of the samplers that we got at Odell. Notice the Easy Street glass is empty–Sara and I shared that one.

Sara’s contemplating on which beer to try next. One that she tried, as did we all, and hated was the “beet beer”. I don’t remember the name, but believe me it was nasty.

Then it was off to New Belgium Brewery for our tour. My favorite here was Fat Tire–no surprise to me as we’ve had this before. It is much better on draught than in a bottle though. In the past year or so they have expanded the areas to which they ship. Luckily, Georgia is one of the areas so now we don’t have to wait till we head west to get it. Another beer that was very unusual but that we all liked (including Amanda who is a beer hater) was La Folie. When our tour guide was describing the different beers, she said this one was very pungent much like a sour patch candy at first taste. She was so right and it was good although I don’t think that I could drink much of it at any one time.

 I wondered about the wisdom of putting people who had been drinking beer down a slide. But it was very tight–so much so that my shoes kept hitting the side of the slide and slowing me down (maybe not a bad thing).

Tommy and I left the kids at New Belgium and headed home. On the drive from Ft. Collins to Laramie via Hwy. 287 we traveled through desert………

 
into the snow of the mountains.

It was a fun day and Tommy and I were glad to have all the kids together with us.

Wyoming Christmas – Day 5

The above two pictures are what our morning looked like. I know that snow is a pain for some, but I think it’s absolutely beautiful!

Tommy and I went for a drive out Snowy Range Road. Look closely at this first picture–do you see any road?

I had told Tommy I wanted to go back and get another picture of this gate. Last year while we were here for Christmas we had found this gate at Lake Allsop. There was a man out on the middle of the lake ice fishing. We watched him for a bit and while I was looking around I saw this gate. I don’t know why I like it, but I do. So we had to go again this year. Unfortunately, the snow was so deep into the parking area, we couldn’t drive the truck in. I hopped out and walked down to it to get some pictures.

One of our Photography Club topics for competition this year is Fences & Gates. There are two different fences in this picture, the far one being a snow fence. Tommy stopped the truck so I could get out and take some shots. I walked about 100 feet up to the barbed wire fence and sometimes sunk up to my knees in the snow.

The road back into town. That’s Laramie straight ahead–you can just see the trees in the distance.

This is one of my favorite “buildings” in Wyoming. After a couple years of trying to find out what it is/was (I thought it was an abandoned church), I finally found someone who knew. The Betrothed’s House

The Episcopalian’s win! They have the most beautiful church doors!! Actually, the whole church is gorgeous. One of these days I’d really like to go inside and see if the inside is as pretty as the outside.

Wyoming Christmas – Day 4, More Pictures

Amanda and I decided that we still needed to do some shopping so we headed to WalMart. Those of you who are used to dealing with snow will probably laugh, but it’s so much fun for me to get out and see the good–the beauty of all the white; the bad–my truck is dirty, dirty, dirty; and the ugly–the slush you have to walk through in the parking lot–of living with snow.

This is the back of my truck. Notice how the snow is all the way up to the window?

On the road to WalMart. Amanda was driving (she’s used to it) while I watched and held on! :)

How nice to have a Salvation Army bagpiper! He graciously posed for me and probably thought I was nuts. But I left some money in the red bucket so all’s good.

I don’t think that my WalMart has even seen a Caterpillar scraping snow.

Wyoming Christmas – Day 4

SNOW! Yippee!!
During the night Tommy got up and went outside to see the lunar eclipse. He came back in and said he couldn’t see it because of all the snow clouds. He also said that it had snowed quite a bit. Here’s what I found when I got up in the morning and let the dogs out:

When we finally got everyone up, fed and dressed we went for a walk. It was not the easiest thing considering we had one beagle and three bassets and there were only three of us (Evan was working).

 Can you see the tangled mess the dogs make? It makes for a very humorous walk.

Tommy let Bubba off his leash and he had a wonderful time running and jumping. He was so funny to watch with his ears flying.

I’d like this one for my Christmas tree. :)

I guess this is one thing you don’t mind doing if you only have to do it once a year.

All totaled, I think we got about 8″ of snow. It snowed all day long–very small flakes but it kept on coming. Fun for us. :)

Wyoming Christmas – Day 2

The day started out with us finding snow in the parking lot. As is our usual routine, we drove over to the Denny’s so I can order breakfast sandwiches to go while Tommy fills the truck with gas.

 
 When we’d accomplished that, we hit the road and headed north on I29 into Iowa and then Nebraska. We travel just a short distance in Iowa before we cross over the Missouri River. It really looked cold:
The route we normally take is Highway 2 from Nebraska City into Lincoln where we pick up I80 and head nearly straight west across Nebraska. I thought that Highway 2 might be a good place to look for barns in the snow. As I was looking on one side of the road, Tommy was looking at the other. All of a sudden he got excited about this cement truck and tried to explain what he’d seen. So we turned around and found this (some people are just so creative):
In case you can’t see it, that’s Santa at the top holding reins that go to the front of the truck. There are Christmas lights wrapped around the hopper (I think that’s what Tommy called it) and presents sliding down the chute. You’ve got to love folk art!
Heading on through Lincoln, or the suburbs of Lincoln, we finally reached I80. This is a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is the speed limit is 75; the bad thing is it’s nearly 385 miles across Nebraska. There are a few sights to see while traveling on I80–this is not one of them:
Smack in the middle of the state we were traveling in what looked like frozen fog. It didn’t really look like it was snowing, but you could see something coming down. Some of the trees along the side of the road were perfectly beautiful, but unfortunately we couldn’t stop for me to take pictures. We did get off on an exit to see if I could find some trees with the ice/snow on them. But wouldn’t you know it, the exit we took only had one tree although it had the extra red barn in the background. :)
As I was walking back to the truck, I decided I needed a picture of what we look like driving some 1500 miles. Clampetts or not??
Along I80 is this really cool museum, the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument. You enter on the north side of I80 and while looking and reading the information included there, you cross over the interstate. You then circle back around and end up where you started.
After stopping at Cabela’s in Sidney, NE we headed on into Laramie. Arrival time was about 6:45 p.m. EST. Tommy, Bubba and I were all glad to get out of the truck.

Wyoming Christmas – Day 1

We were so excited to start our trip that we were ready to go on Friday about 2:00 p.m. The truck was packed and all we had to do to get going in the morning was get up, shower, dress and put the camera bag, laptops and Bubba in the back. We left the house about 6:30 a.m. which was just a bit earlier than normal.

The obligatory pictures of the Arch in St. Louis taken from a truck going about 60 mph:

 
We saw this hot air balloon flying over Columbia, MO. It must have been really cold up in that balloon as the ground temperature was running 32-34. But the clouds behind him were awesome!

Our destination for the night was St. Joseph, MO. We were making pretty good time until we got about 15 miles south of town. It started snowing a bit and the road started freezing. Traffic slowed way down and eventually came to a full stop. Over two hours later we finally made it to our hotel–pooped and a bit stressed. While we were stopped at one point, people started getting out of their cars and talking to one another:

I never have quite understood how people get trapped in their cars during snowstorms. I thought all they had to do was keep driving. Well, now I understand a bit better. No one was moving or when we did, it was very slowly. We’re not quite sure what the hold up was–could have been the hill down then across a frozen bridge and then trying to make it up another hill. We saw no signs of an accident. The one good thing was we knew if we were stuck for a while we had a sleeping blanket, a snuggy, water, beer, Dr. Pepper and a Honey Baked Ham. We were in good shape. :)

Withdrawal

I haven’t been out to take pictures for some time now and I’m having withdrawal pains. During the spring and summer it’s easy to take photos because all I have to do is step outside and there are flowers everywhere. Right now nothing is blooming so it makes it a bit more challenging.

On another note, I have two pictures in the running for Photo of the Year for my photography club tomorrow night. I’ve posted these previously, but here they are again:

 This hawk shot was my very first First Place photo. While I do like it, mainly because of the squirrel fur hanging out of her beak, I really don’t think it has much of a chance for the Photo of the Year.

This windmill took First Place in the “Junk” competition. While I think this photo has a much better chance than my hawk, there are some really awesome pictures in the running. I’m just happy to have two of mine in the last round.