holidays

Saturday morning in Estes Park – on a holiday weekend.

September 28, 2009

Estes Park — September 5, 2009

Estes Park has long been a tourist destination. The Stanley Hotel opened in 1909 and was built at at a cost of half a million dollars. The publicity from the hotel’s construction resulted in a boom for the fledgling resort industry.

My first visit to Estes Park was in 1957, on an camping trip with my grandparents and uncle. I was 5 years old and don’t really remember much of the trip. The next time I visited was in the early 90s with my wife and two daughters.

While the town doesn’t seem to have changed much since that visit, it underwent a major reconstruction after it was heavily damaged from flood waters caused by the 1982 collapse of a man-made dam in Rocky Mountain National Park.

We spent most of Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend exploring the arts and craft fair and the shops in town. Besides ice cream, we each bought a hat and Karen got a new purse as an early birthday present.

(click on any of the following photos to view a larger image.)

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Commentary and images from the road

image and information from September 5, 2009

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

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On the road again — in Colorado

August 30, 2009

My anticipated “weekend” away from work is being extended by a planned 3 week vacation.

We are currently camped at a KOA in La Junta, Colorado. Yesterday, we camped at Sandy Cove Corps of Engineers campground on Canton Lake in Oklahoma.

Tomorrow we will be traveling on for a week in the Rocky Mountain National Park area. We’ll be camped in the park for four days. When we reserved our campsite for the park, there was nothing available for the Labor Day weekend, so we made reservations at the Estes Park KOA. We prefer to have spots reserved for holiday weekends rather than trying to find a campsite when there will likely be a lot of other people camping.

After Labor Day, though, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding a place to camp.

We will be traveling on Labor Day, though…, and will probably be traveling I40, which brings back memories of another Labor Day on I40.

In 2001, we were headed from Steamboat Springs to Estes Park and decided to go by way of Golden to see a quilt exhibit. We didn’t even think about the fact that there would be heavy, heavy traffic heading from the mountains back to the cities.

We ended up in a traffic jam backed up for miles.

Fortunately, this time, we’ll be heading away from the cities, going west.

Here are a few photos from yesterday at Canton Lake:

Canton Lake, Oklahoma, from Sandy Cove
sunflower at Canton Lake, Oklahoma - Sandy Cove Core of Engineers campground and beach
The following “drawing” of boys at play in Lake Canton was rendered from a photograph using Corel Paintshop Pro Photo X2.
A drawing rendered from a photo of boys at play in Lake Canton, Oklahoma
jet ski on Lake Canton in glare of setting sun, Oklahoma

While I will be “off-line” and away fro the internet until Friday, there will continue to be daily posts that have been “pre-published.”

I plan to have more photos to share later in the week.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

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Three Images for Independence Day

July 4, 2009

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These images were taken in July 2001 on the tour ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty — two weeks after the 4th of July holiday and less than two months before that terrible day in September.

The top image is, of course, the Statue of Liberty. The second is the main building of the Ellis Island immigration station and the last is of the unbroken skyline of Manhattan Island from the tour ferry.

The photos were taken with our first digital camera, a Sony Mavica, 0.8 megapixel camera that saved images on a 3.5 inch floppy disk!

We stayed home all day — so far — and I worked on my landscaping project. Tonight, providing the weather allows, we’ll be driving down into the valley to see the fireworks. We haven’t gone to a 4th of July fireworks display since 1995 in Jackson, Wyoming, the same day we saw fresh snow in Yellowstone National Park.