Why the title?

"Pioneers take the arrows"

Oh, wait. I should be upbeat and taking arrows doesn't sound like an upbeat thing to say.

So, let me amend that statement.

It was courage and vision that led the pioneers to leave behind a comfortable, settled life and trek West to begin a new life in a new place. Many of those from the East that went West found a strength within themselves that they didn't see while they were in their old life. Instead of being one of those that just kind of went along with the others in the old life, they became leaders and visionaries in their new lives.

The sentiments of that last paragraph come from a favorite author, Louis L'Amour, in many of his books. So, I can't really say that it is an original thought from me. However, what he said is truthful.

Welcome to being a pioneer. Look ahead and ignore the "barking dogs" that give you negative opinions and comments. Louis L'Amour also spoke of the barking dogs.

In some of his stories, it was usually a father or older man telling a young boy how it was that when the Westward bound Conestoga wagons rolled through towns, the dogs came out to bark at them. His character then told the young listener that the barking didn't stop the wagons from going on to their destinations.

Following the advice of the Louis L'Amour characters, may we all forge ahead with our plans, after carefully considering all consequences and leave the "barkers" behind.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Vacation Update

The vacation to Colorado started on Friday, October 7 with us leaving Oklahoma City at roughly 9:00pm and arriving at Canon City, Colorado at about 10:00am the next morning. Yep, it was an all-nighter with only about a 1 hour stop for a short nap. Our son, Eric, and I switched off on driving.

While we were actually about a week late for the best autumn colors, they still weren’t bad, and some of the trees at the lower elevations were actually at a good stage. Roxie, Jo’s sister, spoke of the description of mountains in fall where it appears that they are on fire. That is because many aspens will turn colors with the leaves at the tops of the trees being red and the lower leaves being yellow. When they are “blanketed” across the mountain’s sides, the leaves seem to give the effect of fire.

While we saw aspens with red tops, they were not blanketing an area, so we didn’t have the same effect as Roxie saw the week before. However, as I mentioned, we still got to see some great colors in the trees as well as quite a bit of snow at higher elevations and sheltered places.

On our first day there at Canon City, as far as sight-seeing, we only went out of town a ways to the Royal Gorge. This is a sight that Eric has never seen. There was also another sight that we saw that even I have never seen. How is this for an RV?

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In addition to the mention of snow, in all the years that we have traveled to the Colorado areas, we’ve never been there this late in the year. Thus, we have never seen the Spanish Peaks in SW Colorado with snow on them. So it was a real treat to view this image between Trinidad and Walsenburg, Colorado. Needless to say, even without seeing the autumn colors yet, I was getting excited.

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After that first day of arrival on the 8th, our week had four days of driving around different areas of Colorado taking pictures and seeing the sights. We have always had the good fortune of having relatives that love to take us around to see all the sights. So, I must offer my sincere thanks to our hosts, Roxie and Richard, with special thanks to Richard for doing all the driving and stopping when we wished.

Since it is fairly late right now, having had a busy day of preparing the Mobile Suites for our trip on Monday to the SOITC Central Region rally in Grove, Oklahoma, I will not write much, but I will promise more to come in the days to come as I give “reviews” of what it was we got to see.

So, until I have the time to really do any writing, all I can do is tease with a photo or two. Since I took over 2500 photos in the last week, all you will get to see are a few of them anyway. I just hope I pick some good ones to show you.

So, here is a bit of color:

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And, a critter or two:

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So, until I have better opportunities to write, I’ll just have to tease.  I’m still trying to decide whether to write entries for each day, of for each excursion area where we went.  Likely, it will be the latter as it will be easier to cover what we did and saw.

So, please stay tuned, and I really hope it is worth the wait.

2 comments:

  1. TERRY - IT LOOKS LIKE YOU GUYS ARE HAVING A WONDERFUL TIME AND SUCH BEAUTIFUL SCENERY - NICE COLOR IN THE ASPENS! ENJOY!
    IF YOU CHECK IN ON RVDREAMS, YOU'LL SEE THAT WE ORDERED OUR 31 FOOT NEXUS CLASS C MOTOR HOME WITH DELIVERY IN EARLY MARCH - WOO-HOO!!!
    WE ALSO ORDER A 2012 HONDA FIT AS OUR MINI COOPER WOULD HAVE TO BE TOWED WITH A DOLLY AND THAT IS TOO MUCH OF A HEADACHE AS WELL AS THERE ARE NOT THAT MANY MINI DEALERS AROUND FOR SERVICE. SOOOOOO GOODBYE MINI!

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  2. Terry - I found your "driving/turning etc" comments on RVDREAMS to be of interest. I will be driving a 31' Class C with no experience driving anything that long ever before. I wonder if you could email me sort of a right turn/left turn guide for driving dumnmies (me)
    How far into a turn should you go - tail swing hazards to avoid etc. Turning right or turning left will not be anything like I do now in our Mini-cooper!!!!!
    We will have a BU camera as well as walkie talkies with my DW as a spotter, so I feel comfortable with backing up - but turning right & left YIKES!!!! :>)

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