Saturday, February 16, 2008

Valentine's Day

These are the beautiful lilies Mike got me for Valentine's Day. I love getting flowers at school on this day and making all the other women jealous!

Trip to Gateway, CO and around...

This is on C-141 (state highway) just off hwy 50 by Grand Junction. This is about 4o miles from Gateway.

I just had to get out of the car at some point and climb some rocks. It was hard, so I just posed. Mike actually did climb the rock I have my hand on.


The saddest part about this beautiful place were all the glass bottles inconsiderate people had left or thrown.

He actually looks like he knows what he's doing. :)

Yet another boulder Mike felt like climbing.

Mike took this picture from the top of the boulder he was climbing in the last picture.

We wanted to badly see some bighorn sheep. This female mountain sheep was on the side of the road. That was all we saw the whole day.

Heading into Gateway. Look closely and you can see some snow -covered mountains far away in Utah.


This incredible rockface stands tall above Gateway.
The man who owns the Discovery Channel bought Gateway. This is part of his contribution to improving the town. The buildings he built really are fantastic.

Holy moly! You can finally see a perspective of how large the rock faces are. It looked very Arizona-ish.

This is a great shot of the Delores Canyon. It was like being in a big bowl.

The road could get very close to the edge of the cliff along the Delores River. There are so many mines in this section of Colorado.

Another magnificent rock face. That's our car.

I actually spotted this photogenic picture. Mike was just checking out the view on the edge of an 800-foot cliff.

What beautiful country! I fall in love with this state more and more every day!

Here I am, reading the sign about the hanging flume that the old miners used to transport water. If you want to see the hanging flume, come and visit us to see for yourself!

Don't the mountains in the very back look like part of the sky?

Okay, what in the world is that? This thing scared me to death. It's some alien bull. Mike seems to think it's a Watoosee Buffalo. You can see the mountains of Utah behind him. This was taken on a farm just outside Norwood.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Lake City Balloon Festival Feb. 9, 2008

Mike and I went to a hot air balloon festival in Lake City. Lake City has an elevation of 8,700 feet, approximately. The hot air balloons were on a large lake (Lake San Christobal) outside the city, at an elevation of just over 9,000 feet. They had nine balloons there, but the most exciting part was yet to come!



I got to ride in one of the hot air balloons! When we decided to go with some of the people from our church, I had no idea that we would be able to ride in them. Unfortunately, because of that, we didn't bring enough money to pay for both Mike and I to go. So my wonderful, unselfish husband let me go.







I was beyond excited!






















I got some great shots from the balloon while I was riding it. It was so smooth and I and the two other women who were riding with me got the longest ride of the day, about 25 minutes. I would guess we were about 700 feet above the ground at our highest point.







Another balloon in the air.


One of the other ladies in the balloon was nice enough to take this picture of me.


Three of the balloons landing on the lake after giving their rides to other passengers. You can kind of see the snowmobiles that would ride out to the balloons, catch them and then tow them back to their starting point where they could pick up some more passengers.


This was the balloon I rode in. It looks like it's landing on the mountains, but it's an optical illusion

Mike loved this balloon because of the black flags decorating it.

You can see most of the balloons behind us. The lake had about 3 feet of snow on it.


Mike, trying out some snowshoes that he borrowed from a lady from our church. He was quite good at it. He didn't even need the poles. He just posed with them.