Aspen Day 2

Today we had reservations to go to the Maroon Bells.  When we looked out this morning, the sky was covered with clouds - not a good sign. We got ready and headed to the Maroon Bells Shuttle to arrive by 9am.  The sky was starting to clear which was a good sign.  By the time we arrived at the Bells, the sky was solid blue!   The wind was calm and the temperature quite moderate. 

The one disappointment was the water level in the lake.  With the the rain and snowfall last winter I hoped it would have recovered, but it seemed to be lower than ever.   The old beaver lodge is now high and dry, but the industrious creatures have built a new one well out into the lake. Mary and I walked around past the old beaver lodge, then back to the log jam where we took a break to enjoy the sunshine and the view.  As we waited for the bus, I took the bottom right photo, our last view this year of these magnificent mountains.

This evening we had a Ron Matthews concert. Ron opened with a lengthy medley of at least seven John Denver songs strung together, starting and ending with Mary's favorite Heart to Heart, which he has sung for her every year.  The medly was very impressive.  Ron was accompanied by Paul Swanton.  Ron did a full 1 1/2 hour first set. Near the end of that set he had his brother Dave come up and play; first Dave and his wife, Sarah, gave a quick preview of their Saturday guitar and cello concert, then Dave sang a song with Ron.  Ron sang all of John Denver's Alaska songs and included many from some of John's specials that had not been performed before at Aspen.  

Tomorrow we have a concert by Ellen Stapenhorst in the afternoon and a Mack Bailey/Chris Nole concert in the evening at the Wheeler Opera House. 

Aspen Day 1

We had a very lovely day today.  Sunny and blue sky, but a bit chilly.  The 1 hour drive to Aspen went well.  Mary got a great picture of Mt Sopris.  We got to Aspen and our AirBnB condo OK, and moved our luggage in before heading to the Meet and Greet.  

The Meet and Greet was pretty well attended, with one big surprise - close to half the crowd were first time attendees!   Mary visited with many friends and acquaintances.  Even Jim Horn came this year!  I got my picture taken with Jim next to the rock with his favorite JD song and we had a nice chat about his career and experience with John Denver. 

After that we walked back to our condo and got unpacked.  We then headed out to the campfire cookout on the road to the Maroon Bells.  We roasted hot dogs over an open fire and visited with a lot of people, some old acquaintances and quite a few new ones.

So tonight we are getting caught up and preparing for visiting the Maroon Bells tomorrow morning, with a concert in the evening. 

Traveling to Aspen

We are on our way to Aspen for the 26th memorial celebration of the passing of John Denver.  Mary counted that this is her 16th time and it's my 12th.  Our trip began with a flight to Denver, pickup a rental car, then drive to Glenwood Springs for dinner at the Glenwood Canyon Brewpub. I loved coming here because they had a reasonably priced menu and my favorite beer, Hanging Lake Honey Ale; make that had my favorite beer.   They changed the name of the beer to Hanging Lake Light Lager and it was a disappointment, lacking that sweet kick from the honey, so they just lost a customer.  

On our way we here we headed west on I-70, driving through the Rockies, and in one snowstorm, plus Glenwood Canyon, to reach our destination.   You can see the snow in the picture on the left.  Glenwood Canyon was as impressive as always. I recall hearing that the road was closed for a while over the summer due to rock slides.  You can see evidence of that in the picture on the right.

Not much else to say.  Tomorrow we head to Aspen to move into our AirBnB and go to Meet and Greet.  

Wisconsin Vacation Complete

We had a busy, and rather long, day on Friday.  We had a lot of time to get to our ferry in the evening so we took our time and added a few extra activities.  The day started with some shopping in Sturgeon Bay then we walked out by the bay to view the water.  This is a resort town with a nice 4 block long restored downtown area filled with shops and restaurants.

Next, since we were going past Green Bay, Lambeau field called to us.  

As we drove to the stadium, the street we were on had some cute "No parking on Packer Game Day" signs. While Mary was taking this picture of the stadium, some players crossed the street in front of us, walking from the practice facility to the main stadium!  Very cool!

Next we headed toward Milwaukee, but decided to check out the Concordia Wisconsin (Mequon) campus.  It is a very pretty campus, sitting right on Lake Michigan.  The one striking feature is the cliff overlooking the lake.  This picture hardly does it justice, as it looks down the cliff toward the lake.  

After taking a driving tour of some very pretty Milwaukee and suburban streets, we arrived at the Lake Express Ferry dock. We were originally booked on the Badger, but two weeks before our trip it suffered a major failure that has knocked it our for the season.  Even though we arrived in plenty of time, I ended up being the second last car loaded onto the ship, as you can see from this picture.

We arrived in Muskegon at 10:30 p.m. but did not arrive at our hotel until nearly 11:30, to wrap up our long day.  

Now we are home, unpacking and getting back to our regular schedule. 

Convention is over, Now it's Vacation time!

 It's been a rather long week, attending a very intense convention from 8-6 Monday - Wednesday and 8-11:30 today. So that is why there have not been any blog posts for the past few days.  The delegates accomplished quite a bit of work during this week, electing 62 positions and passing 87 resolutions including several fairly controversial ones.  As you can see in this picture, I had a front row seat, right in front of the podium.  But Mary and I are now on a short 2 day vacation so I'm back to blogging.  

After the convention we headed north to Door County, Wisconsin.  This county sits northeast of Green Bay on a peninsula into Lake Michigan.  It's quite the tourist area, comparable to Mackinaw City, MI and Blowing Rock, NC 

My sister had visited here before and highly recommended eating at Al Johnson's a Swedish restaurant with a grass roof.  They have goats to keep the roof "mowed", but none were out while we were there.   We enjoyed our Swedish dinners.

After that we drove to the top of the peninsula and Mary took these pictures of Lake Michigan and Sturgeon Bay.  This truly is a beautiful area! 

Tomorrow we will do some more sightseeing before taking a car-ferry back to Michigan, then driving home on Saturday.

Visiting Milwaukee for a convention

 I'm not sure how often I'll post since most days will be attending to the business of the LCMS Convention to which I'm a delegate. 

On Saturday we drove to Findlay, OH for Katie's graduation with her Doctor of Ministry degree from Winebrenner Seminary.  It was quite the accomplishment for her, the culmination of 3 years of hard work, with the last 2 doing the research and writing her doctoral thesis. Since her goal is to be a professor, now she just needs to be assigned few Greek or Hebrew courses to teach!

After her party we headed for Milwaukee  to attend the convention.  We had a stopover in Warsaw IN.  I was pleasantly surprised how easily we passed through Chicago.   There was no traffic congestion, and cars were zipping around like crazy.  

I got to the convention and registered before the major business starting Sunday afternoon.  What a blessing it was to conduct the church business in this forum!  

The next three days are all convention.  Thursday noon we head north to visit Door County Wisconsin which sits on a peninsula into Lake Michigan before heading home.  

Day 7 - Train to Denver Part II

After a good night's' sleep, it's time to post about the rest of our train trip. Here's a picture of the train waiting at Glenwood Springs station.  After the town of Dotsero, the train headed north to follow the Colorado River as opposed to I-70 which heads east to Vail and the Eisenhower tunnel.  So this was all new scenery to us.

We passed through three interesting canyons, Burns, Gore and Byers, with the most impressive one being Gore Canyon.  Here are several pictures showing the canyons.   We saw a number of rafters on the river as we went past, but many of the rapids in the upper stretches of the river were too severe for rafting, like the bottom left picture.

You can see some of the whitewater in these pictures.  I especially like the one on the bottom right which shows three tunnels that we are about to transit. (The first tunnel can be hard to see since train engine is just entering it.)

This is just a small sample of the beautiful scenery we experienced.  

We did see some wildlife on this day.  Mary got this picture of a dad eagle and and eaglet in the nest.  She also got this one of a mom and baby elk.

So now we are waiting to head to the airport for our flight home.  I'm planning one more post as an overview of the entire trip.  It's been an interesting 8 days!