Two Old Women

Several years ago, my dearest BFF loaned me this book:

She had read it, and in the two old women saw the two of us, compadres to the end. We easily identified ourselves in the story, and the similarities to our real life friendship. With only each other, we could conquer everything- the elements; family who abandoned us; wolves, even.

Recently, I re-read the book again, and found a completely different story. Oh, I still believe that with the help of my precious friend I can conquer many things. But the story of the two old women, abandoned by their tribe when resources became scarce, resonated greatly with a different tune now.

As we age, we begin to receive special considerations and respect for our age. When the young ones do things for us-cook, clean, run errands, bring gifts- we feel loved, cherished, and honored as senior members of the tribe.

But as the old women found out, too much of letting others 'honor' them led to forgetting many subsistence and self-sufficiency skills, which had to be painfully dredged from memory to survive when they were left on their own.

As the women struggled to find food and shelter, they became more and more resilient, more aware, more capable, more confident, and less frail, weak, or old-feeling.

This made me realize that I can not let age or 'this stage of life' rob me of my independence, my abilities, my energy, or my drive. The best way to nurture and protect those properties will be to stay as active as I possibly can, both mentally and physically.

All the more reason now to get out and hike, bike, kayak, canoe, backpack, snorkel, rollerblade, beat the hubby at Scrabble, and ~shudder~ think about skydiving. Old age is going to have to look very hard to find me.

        Happy Trails, and may finding adventure never grow old!

Back to the Babble

Well, we've all survived a hospital stay, 115 degree heat index, a phone repair that took 7 days, and Ash Kitty's epic crash into the cat door that was locked shut. I think I might have just found my first gray hair. Oh no, wait, that's just sheetrock dust. Never mind.
After all that excitement, it's good to sit quietly, sip some cool carrot lemonade (sounds awful, tastes great; don't judge), watch Ash Kitty walk around shaking his head, and think of cooler times, just a few days past.
After rafting, the girls and I tried to pack an infinite number of things into a finite space. We drove to the Royal Gorge. I did not encourage my children to break the rules and climb on the rocks to look down. I did not, however, ahem, discourage my children's love of exploration...

Daughter #1 saw the Gorge from the bottom earlier in the day, as she was navigating the Class IV rapids. After that, everything else looks pretty tame.

Because we wanted the trip to be something for everyone, the next stop was for me, The Mom. The Queen Bee. The Life Giver. The one behind the wheel that said "we're stopping here."

Rocks. A fabulous rock shop. Who else do you know would drive 12 hours to look at rocks? Well, my niece Karen the Geologist would... but I think she gets paid to do that.
Did you hear the one about the hunter who filled his deer tags for the season?  Yeah, it was a peridot.
Know what you call a military man in the ocean? Aquamarine.

Rock humor. Only special people have it. Would you believe I actually stay awake at night thinking this stuff up? Somewhere, my niece is giggling, even if you aren't.

Gems, geodes, rocks, glass. After I got my mineral fix we went on to an activity chosen by The Whee.

Horseback riding up the mountain. Since Daughter #1's allergy to horses makes her have Linda Blair moments, just the Whee and I went. The Whee said this is my regular station in life- always ridin' someone's butt...

With a great deal of effort, I refrained from spooking her horse.

And last, and in the mind of some of our group, almost the least- Seven Falls. I remembered them as much bigger. D #1 said she'd been hosed. It was our final stop in the land of wonder.

And then we dropped an exhausted Whee with her Grandmother, Aunt, Uncle and a slew of cousins to visit for a couple of weeks, and D#1 and I headed home.

The drive home gave us some girl time to discuss life matters; important stuff like "why does the washer only eat socks from the good pairs?"
As an aside, let me mention here that if you are driving from Denver to OKC, stay on the interstate, far away from state highways. It will save you two hours and an expensive conversation the CHP. That's all I have to say about that.

 Happy Trails, and may your adventures be infinitely satisfying!

We interrupt this regularly written drivel

Sorry, folks, just when I think I have it all together, someone moves the... A bird in the hand is worth twelve bucks-

Eesh- I'm a little worn. I'm interrupting the quacking about Colorado because I've spent a few days at the hospital, but not for me. No panic, all is well. Or at least getting better.

My mom had surgery that had been scheduled for a while. It all went well. This is good.

She was doing much better than expected. This is good.

She had funny, kind, wonderful nurses. This is good.

Then she stopped doing so well. In fact, she got really, really, unwell. This is bad.

She had nurses who jumped all over the problem, and doctors that showed up to assist. This is good.

She's doing mu-u-u-u-ch better. This is good.

She has had the cutest male nurses in the world. This is very good.

She hates hospital food. This is bad.

It's still 105 degrees outside. It's like, 34 in her room. I saw penguins under her bed. This is good/bad/confusing.

She still has sweet, caring, knowledgeable nurses. This is good.

She will be out soon. This is very good.

And then our regularly scheduled babble will return. This is good/bad/filling up precious cyber real estate.

Hittin' the waves

The second day of our "Conquering Colorado" tour was by far the most exciting. We started our day with whitewater rafting. No, actually we started the day kind of tired and draggy. Can you tell?

Before I babble another word, I want to say 'kudos' to the folks at Royal Gorge Rafting. This was about the most fun I've ever had legally. Great equipment, great folks, great stretch of river.

This was some of the best whitewater I've been on in a long time. When we got off the water my first act was to call Philoboy and say "bring the boats and come NOW." Sadly, he didn't. His loss.

Daughter #1 took the Royal Gorge stretch of the river, Class III and IV.  It was only the second day that this stretch had been open. The water has been too high and fast (from snow melt) in the Gorge to safely raft. Needless to say, she was excited about the adrenaline possibilities! When she was finished she was seeking more thrills. My adrenaline junky...

The Whee and I took the Bighorn Sheep canyon stretch of river; a section with Class II and III rapids. It was her first time on white water.  This is where she discovers that it's not a float trip.

And this is where she discovers that the water was cold.

And this is where she discovered she needed to hang onto the raft!

And this is where she decided she was ready for Class IV.

We were all ready to turn around and do it again, on faster water. But, in lieu of more whitewater, we settled for burgers at the Whitewater Grill. All that adrenaline works up an appetite!

And makes you  ready for the next big adventure! More thrills!  More spills!  More fries....

    Happy Trails, and may you be splashed with adventure!

She'll be comin' round the mountain

You really can't go to the Colorado Springs area without going up Pikes Peak. Well, you could, but you shouldn't. There's some sort of law about that.

The girls and I took the tram up. That tram's been chugging up the mountain since before I was born, and I can tell ya, that's a long time!

Philoboy and I drove up the Peak a few years ago. There's no pavement. There's no guardrails. It was really windy. My truck kept moving closer to the edge. It's the only time I can remember seeing Philo white-knuckled.

It was kinda nice to sit back and let the cogs do all the work. You can look around and not worry about veering off the road and plunging 12,000 feet to your death. You can talk to the person beside you and they won't say, between gritted teeth, "I'm trying to drive up a mountain with no guardrails. Shut up."  Not that I know anyone who would say that. I'm just sayin'...

We saw a lot of yellow-bellied marmots. These are not to be confused with a white-bellied mama, or a lily-livered mutha. One guy shouted "beaver!" He's more than a little confused.

The top, the top!!!

We scrambled off to grab our Pikes Peak donut and wolf them down before the return trip.

This was the peak experience of our day (sorry, I'm out of poor pun medication), and the coldest of the trip. A lovely 46 degrees. I did not ONE time say to my girls, as they shivered and quivered and begged me to hurry with the pictures: "I told you to bring a heavy coat." Not ONE time. Maybe not JUST one time. heheh  Not that I get a lot of satisfaction from being right. I do, however, get tremendous satisfaction from saying "you should have listened to your mother."

  Happy Trails, and may all your adventures be hard to top!

A big hole in the ground

The girls and I tried to pack as many activites as we could into our three-day blast of Colorado. We especially looked for things that were cool, both in the sense of wonder and in temperature.

Cave of the Winds counted as both.

It was the only time we saw a bear the whole trip, sadly enough. You'll notice which one is being eaten by the bear, and which one is grinning at the fact her sister is being eaten by a bear...

It's a big hole in the ground. It gets really, really, dark when they turn out the lights. I could sleep in there. I'm kinda glad, however, that I was not the one doing the first exploration. I'm directionally challenged sometimes. Except when finding my way to the fridge.

It has 'lactites, steglemites, stactites-oh, you know- those hangy down and sticky up things in caves.

         
I didn't want to leave. It was the first time in 60 days I'd been cool. They threatened to poke me with a stalactite.

      Happy Trails and may all your adventures be really cool!

A heavenly beginning

Last Thursday, Daughter#1 and I hijacked the Whee, tied her up, threw her in the car, and sped away west. That's not much of an exaggeration. We surprised her by taking her sister on our trip. Sometimes The Whee is not much on surprises. Once she got over the shock of having her evening plans rearranged, she was delighted to find that the three of us were headed to Colorado.

We didn't want to waste time on something boring like sleeping, so we drove all night to get there. I mean really, who needs to sleep?  Oh wait- I do. Desperately. Often. Sometimes several times a day. But I bypassed it for this trip.

Our cardinal adventure was Garden of the Gods. The Whee said "when you get there before the gift shop opens, you're too early."  Gift shop? What gift shop?  How can you think of gift shop when you see this?

What a great sight to start your day with.

I love these big slabs of rock. The aliens put them there, you know. They took them out of Royal Gorge, transported them by space ship, and dropped them into the Garden. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The Whee got new glasses right before we left. She said she never knew the clouds were so intricate.

I think she's contemplating how those big rocks got there. Or wondering about aliens. Or she's just scheming how to get me into the gift shop.

Happy Trails, and may you see your way clear to new adventures!

A heavenly beginning

Last Thursday, Daughter#1 and I hijacked the Whee, tied her up, threw her in the car, and sped away west. That's not much of an exaggeration. We surprised her by taking her sister on our trip. Sometimes The Whee is not much on surprises. Once she got over the shock of having her evening plans rearranged, she was delighted to find that the three of us were headed to Colorado.

We didn't want to waste time on something boring like sleeping, so we drove all night to get there. I mean really, who needs to sleep?  Oh wait- I do. Desperately. Often. Sometimes several times a day. But I bypassed it for this trip.

Our cardinal adventure was Garden of the Gods. The Whee said "when you get there before the gift shop opens, you're too early."  Gift shop? What gift shop?  How can you think of gift shop when you see this?

What a great sight to start your day with.

I love these big slabs of rock. The aliens put them there, you know. They took them out of Royal Gorge, transported them by space ship, and dropped them into the Garden. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The Whee got new glasses right before we left. She said she never knew the clouds were so intricate.

I think she's contemplating how those big rocks got there. Or wondering about aliens. Or she's just scheming how to get me into the gift shop.

Happy Trails, and may you see your way clear to new adventures!

Mission accomplished

We were not mauled by bears

The Whee was not eaten by a mountain lion

We saw a LOT of sights

I celebrated Ice Cream Day by eating all the ice cream I could hold

My girls and I have completed a whirlwind three day tour of Colorado, specifically in the Colorado Springs area. I stuffed my bag full of cool mountain air before returning, but when I opened my bag, it didn't smell like mountain air. At all.

We didn't sleep much, except in the car in between places. We had many miles to cover, and not many minutes in which to do it.

Sometimes you just need to wake up to mountains. When it's been too hot for too long, when you've had to deal with moving and packing and unpacking, and not being able to find anything you moved, when you're in the doldrums of summer, it's just good for you to see this first thing in the morning:

I'm a much nicer person when I wake up to mountains, ask anyone who's ever traveled with me. Some of them may have considered leaving me on a mountain.

Of course, I will be sharing the almost-infinite number of things we did and saw, but right now I have to wander around looking for things I can't find. And trying to remember what it is I'm looking for. I think the rapid altitude change has done serious brain damage. Perhaps some ice cream will help.

Happy Trails!

The cure for road rash

At this moment my traveling companions, Daughter#1 and The Whee, are being slugs. Get up! We have mountains to climb. I find that I'm in a better frame of mind when I wake up to mountains and cool air. Our goals for today include:

Not being mauled by a bear
Not let a mountain lion eat The Whee
See all the sights in a 25 mile radius
Find a campground with showers
Climb every mountain
Ford every gorge
Take 2732 pictures

And that's the short list. Which is the only kind of list three girls under 5'2" can make. Stay tuned.

Road Rash

I have road rash. No, not the kind you get when you wreck your motorcycle because a dog ran in front of you.

I have the kind that causes itchy feet that want to hike somewhere cool. The kind of rash between your fingers because you want to be gripping the steering wheel, headed into the wild blue yonder.

Not chicken pox.
Not strep.
Not poison ivy.

The total body rash that says, "It's time to hit the road!" And the only cure is... you get the idea.

You can thank me now and later

It rained today. It rained in Oklahoma. People were standing outside gawking, asking, "what's that noise?" as the thunder rolled. People were told to go inside, away from the lightening, but still they stood under the dark clouds, heads tipped back, mouths open.

And it's all because of me. Because I was sick to death of 110 degree heat, the A/C running non-stop, all my energy sapped like a bug in a bug zapper. Wait. Maybe. I promise you, if we had stayed inside again today, it would have been another record setting, scorching, dry-up-the-horny-toads kind of day.

And because I was so sick of this non-stop round-the-clock sauna in which I live, I coughed up the big bucks to take The Whee and a friend to the local big water park. It ain't cheap, but it has a lot of water. At this point I was willing to pay big bucks for big water.

And three hours into it, after almost four straight weeks of heat and drought, as we were enjoying the first outside activity we braved all summer, the lightening cracked. The clouds swelled. The cold rain shot down. And we stood out in it, rejoicing. And proud, because we were quite sure that our venture into the outdoors, our only water park day of the entire summer, had brought on the fabulous drop in temperature, the delicious dribble down our faces.

You can thank me later. Preferably with chocolate not melted by the heat.

Too hot to fish

It's too hot to breathe. Can't believe I'm saying this, but it's too hot to fish. Too hot to eat. The cat has lost 4 pounds, and he only weighed 8 to start with.  I'm living off ice cream. I haven't lost any pounds.

It's either hot weather survival food or I'm practicing for National Ice Cream Day on July 17th. You should head straight to your local ice cream store and stock up NOW.

Oklahoma is about to set some kind of record for most consecutive days of hellish weather. And I'm using hellish in reference to the place. It's hard to imagine it could be much hotter down there than it is here.

It's sad when 85 feels cool. I am planning on running away from home with my girls to someplace where the water  doesn't feel like a sauna. Maybe someplace like this...

Snake River. I remember wishing I had a wetsuit. I quit paddling because I was frozen. I'm not really smiling, that's my teeth chattering.

Going back for another bowl of French Vanilla. Send ice please, or a ticket to Alaska.

She Who Swims with Snakes

okay, I'm finally getting back in the swing of things. The triple-digit heat has sapped my energy and fried my brain. Remember that ad about "this is your brain on drugs?"  Your brain in an Oklahoma summer resembles a rubbery hockey puck. It's not pretty, I can tell ya.

But I digress.  Let's talk about the Whee. The Whee has had the most adventures of anyone this summer, and she still has more to come. I'm living vicariously through my girls this summer.

The Whee has added scuba diving to her repertoire of activities in which she can participate.

When she did her open water dives in a private lake, there were some resident observers.  They looked like this:

Knowing my daughter's penchant for excitability, I called her over and quietly informed her of the creepy swim buddies all around her, and told her NOT TO SCREAM if she saw one. This was going to do one of two things-
-make her not scream
-make her look for the snakes and scream even louder.

Fortunately, it was a combination of the two. She was hypervigilant, moved away when she saw the slithery critters, but enjoyed way too much pointing and telling her dive friends, "there's a snake behind you."  I don't know where she gets this nefarious bent.

Add this to the list of reasons why I'm not an in-the-water person. In my book, if it slithers it dies. The Whee added this to her list of "Why I need a dive knife".

                Great, I may have just created a new shark hunter.

Happy Trails, and may all your adventures be more than you bargained for!