Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 After we visited Bear Lake, we drove the Trail Ridge Road, which leads up out of the tree line into the tundra.  The visitor center up there is at 11,796 ft.  I didn't get a picture of the actual visitor center; if you want you can Google it and see.  It was jam-packed with tourists; we had to drive around the parking lot a couple of times to get a place to park.   But the views of the alpine tundra were spectacular:   The vegetation up on the tundra is all quite stunted; any grass, shrubs or flowers are quite short due to the winds up there.   In the distance in the above photo you might be able to discern dark little dots.  Those are members of the elk herd.  Apparently they are able to get enough nourishment up on the tundra and they appear to enjoy hanging out there; even though the lines of tourists gawking at them from cars must be annoying. We did our own gawking and then moved on.   After we came down from the tundra we looked for a picnic area, ate a late lunch and then w

 If you have ever gone on vacation to a National Park you know what I mean when I say it can be overwhelming.  You want to take pictures of everything, but then when you go back and look at your pictures you realize that there is no way to actually capture the magnitude of the grandeur of what you saw.   But I attempted to do so, simply to capture proof positive that we were there.  Mostly I got pictures of Ellen at these places, for a record of her travels as much as anything else.   Here is a picture looking across the valley toward the mountains; taken from our KOA cabin there at the edge of Estes Park.  The body of water there, which you can only see a sliver of, is actually Estes Lake, across the road from us.  We never did manage to get over to see it; but it is fairly extensive.  Maybe next time we will make time to see it.     When we finally got into the park there were so many lovely views it was difficult to choose which to stop at and take photos of.  I tried to be sequenti

 Here in the middle of my vacation posts I am going to insert this random piece of advice.  This actually comes from Gary.  I think he did this off and on back in the day when he was driving the school bus on field trips for the kids. When you need to use a restroom while traveling, try to schedule your breaks in towns where there is a court house.  These are public buildings, with public access and public restrooms.   Here is the Huerfano County Courthouse in Walsenburg, CO.   Walsenburg was the first stop of the last leg of our Colorado trip before we headed through Kansas.  At the edge of town we gassed up, but the lines in the restrooms were super long.  We all figured the bathrooms there would be fairly gross, plus COVID infections are on the rise.  So we piled back in the car and Gary went looking to see if there was a courthouse in town. Bingo. The officer manning the metal detector was away, but the sign said to come on in; so we did.  The facilities were quite nice, there were

 Our second day found us at our main destination; Estes Park, Colorado.  It pretty much serves as the base camp for the Rocky Mountain National Park, so many of you have probably been there. Since it is hugely a tourist town it was right up Ellen's alley, with streets of shops and restaurants and all sorts of activities going on.    We stayed at the KOA there, which is located, I believe, at the south end of Estes Park.  Our Kabin was quite close to the main entrance and to the main KOA lodge, or store, or whatever they call it.     It was handy to the showers as well, which was really nice since we stayed at this location for 2 nights.  As I stated before, it was here that I realized that the memory foam mattresses and I do NOT get along.  For some reason it puts me at an awkward angle and makes my back hurt like crazy.  I'd take forever to get in a halfway decent position to sleep and then wake up with my back aching.    So I snagged Gary's air mattress and sleeping bag a

Any vacation starts with travel and lodging necessities, of course.  We chose  to use the car for traveling, and that involved finding somewhere to sleep at night.  Gail, Gary's sister, and their mother Elna, had done considerable traveling by car for years, and had always used KOA Kabins.  We elected to do the same; and since we split the costs for the whole vacation two ways, it was more affordable, and much more enjoyable than either tent camping or just using a motel. But this, of course, necessitated packing sheets and pillows for 4.  Along with our food cooler and other storage box of kitchen items, this pretty much filled the trunk. Since we planned and booked this vacation almost last minute we ended up with the very last basic kabin at each campsite. Which was fine; it was what we would have chosen anyway.  This is what the basic model looks like inside;   There is a bunk bed set, a double bed, usually some sort of table and chair, a porch swing, a picnic table and a barbe

 For this particular vacation we traveled across a couple of states.  We did not, however, take Sunny the RV.  Due to our unfamiliarity with his inner workings, we were a bit leery of taking Sunny on such a long trip, so we took the Impala and camped at various KOA Kabins along the route. On our last night away from home we stayed in a motel in Pratt KS.  It was nice, though not as fun as a KOA. But more on that later. This mode of travel involved packing for four; all of our own bedding; pillows, sheets and blankets, into the trunk of the car, along with all the luggage, picnic supplies and other varied camping items.  Setting up and breaking down camp was a bit involved since we only stayed at one KOA for 2 days, but we got into a routine and made it work. We brought the biggest part of our food prepared beforehand; hamburgers, pulled barbecue chicken, lunch meat, condiments...and the like, so that we wouldn't have to do much food prep on the go, or spend much money or time in d

 Yes. You read that correctly. The entire Howard family picked up their lives and fled the Midwest drought for a well-deserved vacation in slightly cooler climes. We had a wonderful time and many laughs and adventures.   As I organize pictures and thoughts I am going to make various blog posts about it here for your entertainment.   Stay tuned...

 The dairy cows are gone but the fields remain, as does the grass in the fields.  There is yet money in the fields in random different sources; two of those being seed and hay.  Gary does have a seed harvester; however it is having technical difficulties, so he did hay in a couple of fields.   It was a super wet spring and has been followed by horrible drought conditions, but the grass in the creek bottoms made some nice hay.      We will probably use this hay for our beef heifers this winter, and if we have any left over we will sell some.  If the drought breaks and we get rain early this fall in time for the grass to resume growing we could get a potential second cutting, or first cutting off of what went dry before he could hay it.  We are praying that will be so.  Many farmers are already feeding hay to their herds and are desperate for anything they can use to feed.  In fact, many farmers are culling their herds quite sharply in order to be able to feed what few animals they keep.

 After months of deliberation, soul-searching, and world wide web searching we got an RV.  Since Gary is no longer tied to the dairy we decided we wanted to take real vacations from time to time.   Gary did quite a bit of shopping around before he found an RV in Illinois.  The we bought it from is a vlogger who did a sort of van life and traveled around the US.  She had decided to settle down.  But she had documented all of her journeys in this RV that she had named; "Sunny."  She had taken great care of Sunny, as had the owners before her, so he is in great shape for having so many years on him.  Her YouTube Channel is "REDheaded Writing Hood," and you can go there and find Sunny's earlier adventures.  I am not a vlogger, and have no desire to be one, but I shall continue the story of his adventures here on this blog.  We took Sunny for a maiden voyage, as it were, to Bennett Spring State Park here in Missouri, maybe a 20 drive from us.  The 4 of us went; Gary,

 Last month we said goodbye to our little milk tank; which was actually larger than the tank Gary had before we got married. Actually Gary had this little tank on the front of the trailer here, installed in 2005, the year after we got married. The tank is headed; along with the other on here as well as more that they were going to pick up, to Mexico.  The two guys who picked it up were from Mexico and drive around the US picking up milk tanks to take back down there.  We weren't able to clarify if the dairy industry in Mexico is actually expanding over all, or if they are just upgrading the dairies that they already have down there.     Now Gary has milk tank room of the milk barn as his work shop.