Too Gutsy

I took Zach for a walk in the woods Sunday and found an enormous hollow oak tree on it's side.  He actually fit into the log and wanted to crawl through it.  I was struck at the willingness to jump in and do things that I wouldn't want to do, but part of that is the lack of experience of childhood.  Who's to say our fears and aversions are right?  I try to remember to error on the side of letting him live his life and not be a paranoid helicopter parent.

We went to the Elk Enclosure and were putting carrots through the fence to the young bull elk.  It was cold and Zach got bored quickly.  "I'm through with the elk" he said, announcing his desire to move on.

This morning, it was about 23°F and I was trying to get him dressed.  As usual, he saw the situation as a game where baby tries to run away and daddy struggles (hilariously, to him) to put on the clothes!  I hate it, but it's hard to get mad because he's giggling like a little crazy man and having a blast.  So this morning, I got his PJ shirt off, and couldn't get the day shirt on.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana without a shirt?"  No! He let me put the shirt on.  I got his PJ bottoms off and he was naked, but he wouldn't let me put his underware on.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana with your potty pee hanging out?" No! He let me put his underware on.  Pants proved to be more difficult.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana without pants?"  "I don't wanna wear pants!  I wanna wear shorts!"  Explaining to Zach that it was cold out didn't make a dent.  Maybe he had to experience the cold to understand.  OK, shorts on and out the door (he had a coat and shoes on).  I had his long pants ready, but every time I asked if he wanted them on, he said no.  We got all the way to Kidz Kabana without him caving in.  I understand three things: 1) the lesson was mine 2) when you don't have to spend much time outside, it's not that tough to wear shorts for the time it takes to get in the car and for the car to warm up 3) maybe he's just tougher than I thought.

I explained that it was a lesson that backfired and left him at Kidz Kabana in shorts.  We'll see what he's wearing when it's time to pick him up.

OUT OF PICTURE SPACE!

I tried to post another blog entry from the Colorado vacation and got a disturbing message.

I have used up my free picture space!  So now, I plan on making a little self published book, then purging the older entries off the web.

The book will probably be Animal Tales 1, pulling all the old entries from back to the first entry about my Visitor Snake on June 5, 2007, 5½ years ago to however long it takes to fill up a little book.  Since the first entry, we've been on many vacations and welcomed Zach into the world, so a lot has changed.

Unfortunately, one change that may have hastened this delay in the standard was the purchasing of a new camera at the beginning of the vacation.  The picture file size jumped up and I wonder if it was a coincidence that the end of the available space hit at about that time.  The quality of the photos went up, so it was more tempting for me to put more photos in, too.

So it's time to dial back, do a little written entries with no pics for a while, and then get back on track after I put together my book project.

Thanks for watching.

Crested Butte Quarters

We took a vacation without reserving a place to stay in advance.  While driving out to Colorado, while still in Kansas, we got on the phone and started calling around.  Without a computer with a big screen, we were unable to see what we were getting into.  The Real Estate companies in Crested Butte also made arrangements for rentals of cabins and other properties.  Labor Day weekend is apparently when summer ends and there are not near as many tourists, because we had a lot of choices.  It was also considered off-season, so we didn't have to pay peak skiing season or peak summer vacation prices.  Sometimes it pays to wing it.

 View to the South

 View to the East

 Our Cabin (with south facing deck).

View out the living room window to the East.

First View of the Mountains

We did the regular game on the way to out to Colorado to try to see the mountains as far out as we could.  Sometimes you see them 20 or 30 miles out, but this time, the haze was thick and we did not see them until we were almost in Colorado Springs.  We were expecting to see a huge burned area when we entered the city from the huge wild fires this summer, but the fire must not have been anywhere near our route.

Kansas Homestead

After spending part of the summer searching for the remnants of old homestead era houses around home and finding mostly foundations and filled in cisterns if I was lucky, it was interesting to see a very old house mostly intact on the Kansas plains.

Wind Power

Here's some shots of one of the newest wind farms in the state of Kansas, just west of Abilene.

I discovered that there are 14 wind farms in Kansas right now, generating about 1.6 GW (gigawatts) with 5 more plants slated to be opened this year for an additional 1.0 GW.  That means Kansas is generating around 3 to 5% of the nation's wind energy.  This from the native tribe's area where they called themselves People of the South Wind.  That's a lot of households running on wind energy.

Abilene - A Little Slice of Paradise

While driving out to Colorado, Andrea was teasing me about my love for travel brochures and maps from Visitor's Centers.  We were looking for a place to stop and have lunch and Abilene was coming up soon.  I told her that they had a great Visitor's Center, and she thought I was joking, giving her another chance to make fun of my brochure obsession.

We did stop in downtown Abilene and found a spot of shade in the Eisenhower Boyhood Park in downtown, but it was not helpful because it was miserably hot and we were still melting in the shade.  While going back to our car, we detoured over to the Visitor's Center and stocked up on promotional pamphlets and informational flyers, as well as the mandatory State Hiway Map.  We did notice that Abilene had a trolley, perhaps even fancier than the one at Powell Gardens.

Topeka Zoo

Several years ago, they re-routed the turnpike going into the east side of Topeka and put a big new toll plaza in.  One of the prettiest farms you will ever see is about 400 yards away from this stark industrial bottleneck of traffic.  We always look over and feel sorry for the people that own this really picturesque property, that they have to put up with the ugly mess of slow moving trucks and cars.  The other way to look at it is that these people made this little spot of heaven on earth, and it's so much more pleasant to look at than the tail lights of the car in front of you.

Snail's Eye View

This was shot while right under theNew Paseo Bridge aka the Christopher S. Bond Bridge

Zachers the Flash

Everything else is a blur when Zach gets going.

Chapel Views

There were many compelling views of the Chapel through the summer.

For some reason, Zach was always so excited when we got to the Chapel.  He would take his shoes off and run around.  I like the fact that his feet are both off the ground.

 His favorite thing to do at the Chapel was to take off his shoes and socks and soak his legs in the cool pool at the bottom of the fountain.

 He loved to stand in the middle of the huge window and look out on the lake.

 Climbing the walls of the fountain was a especially fun.

I always loved looking up at the glass in the Chapel ceiling and trying to figure out the reflections in the glass.  You could never be quite sure which was the wall or ceiling and which was the reflection.

While the land baked under this summer's drought, there were signs of the extreme conditions everywhere.

The water was so low that the cooling coils were visible in the lake.

Some of the cracks were so large, you could stick a baseball bat down the crack.

Zach was a trooper through it all.  We hiked almost every weekend and he never complained.

 The dust was pounded into a fine powder and no rain or wind disturbed the days of turkey tracks that accumulated over the weeks.

Zach enjoyed the fountain as the heat of the summer's days drove us to seek shade or water help us keep cool.

The Backside of Powell Gardens

Some of the lesser seen sides of Powell Gardens.

 The view from the Chapel.

 The lake level dropped so low that the cooling coils in the lake became visible.  The air conditioning and heating in the Chapel is supplemented by the constant temperature of the deep lake water.

 This old Army Surplus jeep is still being used in the wild back woods of the grounds.

 In the junkyard are several old displays and devices used in years past.

 I always wonder what whether this old grader would still run?

You can always see people up in the silo viewing the grounds.

Red Displays

Flowers & Bees

I noticed that various kinds of bees will not flinch when you put the camera right up next to them.

 Here's a bunch of strange white thistles I found in a field.

Hidden Homesteads

I spent most of the summer searching out old home sites.

I found them on old USGS maps from the 30s and compared them to current maps to determine that they were gone.  However, when I went out, looking for clues like old pine trees that once stood next to the houses and remnants of foundations and cisterns.  Sometimes, the building would be almost intact.

Morning Glories

We planted morning glories last year and this year, they came back as volunteers.  During the drought, they were about the only thing thriving.