April visit with my sis

Mandy and I visited my big sis in Arcata in April. We had a relatively low-key visit, but we did a lot of fun things. I booked an early morning flight, thinking specifically of having a late breakfast at Big Blue Cafe, yum, love that place! We went for lots of long walks in the cool moist beautiful redwood forests. We met her friend for a nice dinner at Plaza Grill. We had a very special dinner at Larrupin Cafe, a really delightful place just a short drive north of Arcata in Trinidad. We watched some DVDs and streaming shows, in front of her wood-burning fireplace. She made toasted bagels with Albacore, cream cheese, and capers, a snack she introduced me to, that has become one of my favorites over the years. Her dogs and Mandy got along well enough, all of them snuggling up with us on her new reclining couch.

Spoofed call (not) from Xcel

While I was walking this morning, I received a phone call, supposedly from the Xcel Energy Outage number I have in my contacts. The person (I think it was a person, but it might have been synthesized) calling tried to inform me (they knew my name) that there was a power disconnection order for my home address. I interrupted them to ask what city they were calling from, and they wouldn’t tell me. When I persisted, they ended the call. I think that they were hoping to rattle me enough, that I would allow them to give me a way to send them money, to avoid having my power disconnected.

It really bothers me, that any jerk with the right technology can fake their caller ID to look like it’s coming from a legitimate source.

I’m glad that some of our legislators are working towards updating the technology, so the phone companies might some day have the tools they need to prevent spoofed calls. BTW, I did call Xcel to verify there is no such disconnection order in place.

I thought my friends might appreciate this idea I had, that if you ask the caller what city they’re calling from, it forces them to come up with an answer that you might be able to easily cross-check.

Y’all be careful out there!

January visit with Dad!

We visited Dad and Adele in Florida, in mid-January. We thought a side benefit would be leaving frigid Colorado weather, and enjoying warm Florida weather, but they were having a cold snap, with temperatures down in the 40s. We had to delay our trip by a week, as we both got sick a few days before we were supposed to leave. I was disappointed to be reminded of just how very expensive it is, to change our flight and rental car reservations. We could've taken three trips, for the escalated price of this one. Heavy sigh...

We had an early morning flight, so we were up at O'Dark-30, catching a ride to the airport. Even with the TSA starting to take sick days because of the government shutdown, the bag-check and security lines weren't too bad at DIA, and it wasn't long before we were having a delicious breakfast at my favorite airport restaurant, Pour La France on Concourse B.


Pretty view of broken clouds, above an airliner getting ready to go. I always get excited before a trip, and the various airport scenes always seem to captivate me.

I've always loved flying over clouds. Although it was especially fun to be doing it myself, when I was flying a lot, I'll take it any way I can get it.


Enjoying the beautiful landscaping in Adele's neighborhood, during an early afternoon walk. We tried to get out for walks as often as we could.


Visiting with Dad and Adele at her house. Her place is so beautiful, and she keeps it so clean.


We took Dad and Adele out for a delicious dinner at the Waterway Cafe, one of my favorite places for dinner in the Palm Beach Gardens area. We wandered out onto the dock, to enjoy the view of the Intracoastal Waterway, and found this beautiful view.


Group picture at our table inside Waterway Cafe.


There were so many beautiful sunset views from Adele's back yard!


Dad is listening intently to some well-intended advice. He's a good sport, and tries hard to understand and allow people to voice their own opinions, no matter how wrong we are.


We took a few walks around Adele's neighborhood. Here's the view from the back of the newly redesigned clubhouse.








I really enjoy the landscaping around Adele's neighborhood, as we walk around. This beautiful fountain with palm trees and other greenery, is right at the entrance to her cul-de-sac. It's also one of my favorite pictures of the two of us :-)







We had coffee and conversation at Adele's house almost every morning. I found a box of Entenmann's Crumb Coffee Cake at the Publix grocery store nearby, and Dad and I snacked on a piece of that with our coffee, every day. Yum!









The Fort Lauderdale airport terminals have been under construction and renovation for the past few years. Our terminal looked nice, and had fairly efficient passenger flow, although we did have to backtrack once, after checking a bag.






Pretty sunset view, as we're descending into Denver.












Some interesting lights on Concourse B, reflecting on the ice on the ground, as we're approaching our gate in Denver.

Christmas with family!

We visited my little sister's family, on the central California coast, for Christmas! It was a fun visit. We only stayed for a week, and it seemed to hurry by so fast, it hardly felt like we'd gotten off the plane, before we were getting back on another one to head home.

We had a late morning flight, but with the holiday fast approaching, we wanted to be at the airport with plenty of time, so we called for an early ride. With Mandy being an in-cabin pet, they wouldn't let us check in online, so we needed to get all three of our boarding passes and check a bag, take Mandy to the pet relief area, go through security, and still have time for breakfast before boarding. It was a good thing we got there extra early, because the line to check a bag was longer than I've ever seen it. It wound all around, using up all of the normally "optional" queue space, then wandered out into the main terminal, and wrapped around two corners with a long corridor between them. United did a great job of keeping it moving, though, and it didn't feel like it took that long. The line for security wasn't so bad, since we both had our TSA Precheck clearances. Once we got to Concourse B, we had breakfast at my favorite restaurant in Denver International Airport - Pour La France!

Mandy was a super good traveler, once again. She put her head down before takeoff, and slept until after we had landed, and people were starting to get off the plane. Then she looked up inquisitively, with one of those "are we there yet?" kind of faces.








I snapped a few pictures while we were flying, but this one was the most interesting to me. The Sierra Nevada mountains had a lot of snow!







We started our visit with another of those delightful walks around Atascadero Lake near my sister's house. My grand-niece is getting to be a real "little person" with a personality of her very own. She's such a sweetie, when she wants to be!





My sister had "no room at the Inn," so I booked us a room at the Carlton Hotel in downtown Atascadero. I've been wanting to try this place. We liked it a lot! The king size bed was super comfortable, with a down quilt, and all the other amenities were very well executed. They also had done a wonderful job of decorating the hotel lobby for Christmas. Did you notice Mandy peeking out from behind the arm of the chair?



My nephew and his wife (they married last summer!) hosted a delicious Christmas Eve dinner, in their cozy basement apartment. They worked so hard to make it an amazing experience for all of us.







We spent Christmas morning opening gifts at my sister's house. Sis didn't want to be cooking breakfast that morning, before preparing her big Christmas dinner all the rest of the day, so I texted everyone before we left the hotel, and offered to bring whatever people wanted to order from the nearby Coffee Shop. Nobody responded, so I figured nobody wanted anything. At the last second, one of them asked for something, and then they started giving me everyone else's order. I think we finally got everyone covered for breakfast. About two hours later, when we were finishing up our gift-opening frenzy, everyone started announcing that Sumner wanted to know everyone's breakfast order. It turns out that it took two hours for my group text to be delivered on Christmas morning! Maybe it got delayed with all the Merry Christmas mobile phone traffic? Good to know for future holiday mornings!

We stopped by Morro Rock, the last of the Nine Sisters peaks in San Luis Obispo county. When I was in college, we used to go to Morro Rock, to try to see the Peregrine Falcons, a protected species that was known to nest there. I don't remember ever seeing them back then, but we sure got to see a lot of them on our visit this time! It was a real treat! My pictures of the falcons showed them very small and unexciting, so I'll just show you this pic of us by the Morro Bay inlet, with the harbor in the background. It's exciting to me, to know that the falcons are flying right over our heads here!

The friendly concierge offered to take this picture of the three of us travelers in the nicely decorated hotel lobby, before we flew back home. We really did enjoy our trip, and especially this place. It didn't feel so bad, having to leave my Sis's house each night, knowing we were coming back to such nice accommodations. The evening concierge took a real interest in Mandy, which made our comings and goings all the more pleasant.







Home safe and sound! Even with as much fun as we had visiting family, we were happy to get back to Littleton, and our cheerily decorated home. There were a bunch of Christmas cards waiting for me when I got home. I am glad for the real-time updates that social media like Facebook provides, but I have to say, I really *love* looking at the delightful pictures that people choose to send at the end of the year, and reading the summary notes about how they've been doing - it's one of the highlights of my year! For many years, I was too emotionally overwhelmed to send out my usual Christmas letters, or even to handle the logistics of getting some cards sent. I'm starting to perk up a little lately, and feeling like I'm able to send out a few cards, but I still get overwhelmed, when I start thinking about what to say in a holiday letter.

Hudson Gardens Lights!

We enjoyed visiting the Hudson Gardens holiday light display tonight! It was quite cold - a little below freezing - and even all bundled up, we were glad to be done, and heading off to a nice hot dinner afterwards. They don't allow dogs, so Mandy had to wait for us in her nice warm bed in the back seat of my car.

We loved this reindeer "pulling" a sleigh, with very cool sparkly stars above. Lots of people were clustered around, waiting to climb into the sleigh for a photo opportunity.

Fun series of conical tree-lights. These lights were driven in coordination with the music that was playing on loudspeakers nearby. I had to wait for awhile, to catch them all on at the same time!

Really impressive lighting on this large tall tree. This was the display farthest into the gardens. They had Santa waiting for the kids to come visit, right near this tree.

Nice perspective provided by these fence-mounted lights along one of the wide paths in the gardens.

Nicely lit rocks at the exit, gave us a cheery attitude, as we headed off to sit by the nice warm fireplace at Panera Bread for dinner.

Cuba! exhibit at DMNS

We enjoyed our visit to the preview of the “¡Cuba!” Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. I learned a lot, reading about the history of Cuba on the various displays, and seeing the interesting representations of current and past life there. Most people know about the Cuban cigar industry, but I wasn't aware of their reputation for having so many classic old cars. They're taking the lead on urban farming, and are providing guidance to other cities around the world. They have a fantastic underwater park, Gardens of the Queen, on 850 square miles of reef south of Cuba. There were also some fascinating displays of animals that are unique to Cuba. I especially enjoyed the display of the words and works of dozens of Cuban artists. They had some touching quotes from people that migrated here, about what they wish for Cuba in the future.

We moved on to the “MindBender Mansion” exhibit sponsored by Anschutz. Lots of challenging puzzles for the enjoyment of children and adults alike. So many fun puzzles in the MindBender Mansion exhibit! Finally, an excellent series of examples for “thinking outside the box!” I've heard that phrase used inappropriately, by so many people who have no idea. I think we need to understand the box, before we start trying to think outside of it.

New word: Adduce

I learned a new word today - Adduce: To cite as an example or means of proof in an argument. The context was... [the judge rejected the government’s challenge and approved the merger with no conditions imposed, citing the government’s failure to adduce “economic evidence of any kind” and reliance on “bare conjecture” as the basis for its case.] It's fun learning new things, but I suspect I won't think to use this word any time soon.

Estes Park

Kind of a whirlwind visit to Estes Park - in and out in about 24 hours, courtesy of Jennefer’s tricky work schedule. Glad I got to meet her cousin! We went for a short walk down to Lake Estes on Friday afternoon after we got there. It was cold and windy, but we saw some beautiful views.



 

So it’s “bugling season“ in Estes Park, and apparently that means you never know when you’re going to run across a bunch of elk in town. We saw this herd just down the street from our hotel on Saturday morning.





 

We enjoyed a somewhat strenuous hike up to Kruger rock, in Hermit Park, southeast of town. There were still a few Fall colors to be seen.

There's a spectacular view from the top of the hill - of Estes Park, Lake Estes, and the surrounding area!

Visit with Sis

Mandy and I spent a fun week visiting my big sister and her dogs, cat, and chickens on the northern California coast. Such a beautiful area. Mandy was once again a great little traveling companion, taking the voyage in her regulation-size airline pet carrier in stride.

We went on lots of walks and hikes in the lush Arcata forests.

My sister has beautiful redwood forests within walking distance of her house. Such a treat.

Mandy liked exploring the forests at her own pace. I think she really enjoyed getting to explore the forest off-leash.

Three independent dogs, and three possible ways to go. It figures, that each dog would position themself at a different choice.

Hike to St Mary's Glacier

We hiked up to the ridge above Saint Mary's Glacier on Labor Day Monday. We made it up much higher than I've been able to climb here, so far! One or more, of time, weather, energy, and poor planning always seem to conspire to keep me from my goal of making it to the actual top. This time, it started to rain/snow on us. And, hey, the glacier is back! Small and separate (there are actually three small glaciers right now), but it's here. Mandy was once again our intrepid hiking guide dog. Once she realized that I wanted her in front, she did a great job leading us up the loose rocky trail. She made lots of friends, of people and other dogs.

Looking down from above St Mary's Lake, with the bottom of St. Mary's Glacier a little below us. We were about halfway up as far as we were eventually going to get.

Looking around at the height of our climb, a little above 11,000 feet, it's mostly high tundra up here

I'm always a little amazed, at how well Mandy does on our mountain hikes. She's such a little dog, but she acts like a big old mountain dog. Here she is, leading the way back down toward the upper part of the glacier. Nice view of the mountains and weather off in the distance.

Here's a striking view of another hiker looking down on the lake, from the ridge across the glacier from us, with some rain clouds in the background.

There are some interesting twisted pine trees around St Mary's Lake!

Hike from Echo Lake

Enjoyed a gorgeous hike at the beginning of the Labor Day weekend. We started from Echo Lake, tried an interesting trail that headed West away from the lake, got partway up that trail toward Chicago Lakes, and turned around at Idaho Springs Reservoir. Mandy is such a great little hiker! We saw the beginnings of some of the Fall colors that make our mountains so pretty. We finished up with dinner at BeauJo's Pizza in Idaho Springs, on our way home.






Pretty view of incoming weather while we were hiking.

Mandy had no problem leading the way on the trail. Beautiful view of the mountains off to the west of us. We didn't make it that far!

Our intrepid little hiking guide, Mandy led the way across the creek with no hesitation.