Our 2011 Christmas Card

We spent a good portion of the beginning of 2011 working on organizing the house after the move from Virginia. One of the things we chose to do was to replace the 30 year old boiler in the basement. Nothing was wrong with it, but Denver can get cold, and we did not want a 30 years old boiler failing mid-winter. We selected a woman from our rodeo assoication who has her own plumbing company to do the job. And a good job she did. We did many other improvements to the house and property as you will soon see. In April 2011, we flew to Florida to visit Frank's sister near Tampa, then crossed the state for the Florida rodeo in Ft Lauderdale. These photos are of a small botantical garden in St Petersburg, Florida.

Back home, we started a few home improvements. The pergula (a word Tom did not know before) at the entrance to our home was original, the wood was rotting and the paint was pealing. We had the top rails replaced with plactic which will never need painting. There are some photos of a late spring snow storm that came in from the mountains, as well as some trees being removed in prepration for building our new trailer pad.

We had a trailer pad of concrete built, which is 12 feet wide by 60 feet long, plus an asphalt entrance to the street. We also had our contractor Mark replace the fluorescent lights in the kitchen with incandescent ones. The ever watchful dog is Coal, who belongs to one of the contractors. He is part of the contractor team, and gets paid in delicious foods. Coal got his name of Coal because as a pup his owner asked him repeatedly what should he be called. And at every question, the pup would go retrieve a piece of charcoal and bring it to his owner. Thus his name of Coal.

The contractors were Mark, owner of the company, his brother Dan, along with hired hand Nick. They were here one day when it rained and our roof began to leak so Mark fixed it. The roof is cement shake shingles. Here are some scenes of the trailer pad being constructed.

In May we took the trailer out and headed for the Oklahoma rodeo. As we got nearer to Oklahoma City, the sky kept turning darker shades of black. Frank pulled off the road and we waited in a Wal Mart parking lot for about 30 minutes, and that may have saved us our lives. That day we were within 15 minutes of being dead-center in two killer tornadoes.

While we were on the Ohlahoma trip, the work at home continued. We had the garage finished off inside, and painted. We also had a string of bushes removed from the north end of the hoouse, and replaced with three different sizes of rock. As we age, we find rocks easier to maintain than plants. We also placed river rock around the trailer pad which looks great.

The weather here at 6,400 feet can often change quickly and can be dramatic. Also shown is the almost completed trailer pad. Our property has three additional concrete pads. The larger one had an aluminum cover which we wanted moved to a smaller pad, so we could have a shed built on the larger pad to store tools and gasoline.

Frank's brother and sister-in-law came to visit in July and Frank took them to the top of Pikes Peak about 45 miles away. The later shots are from an approaching storm at the house and their visit to Lookout Mountain west of Denver.

On top of Lookout Mountain is the grave of Bill Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. There is also the Buffalo Bill museum which is maintained by the local park system. Of interest are the commemoritive boots made about 10 years ago for a special event. They were made by the same bootmaker here in Denver who made Frank's boots. His name is Hutch, and he does excellent work.

Frank's sister Sallie came to visit from Florida and on a very hot 100 degree day we visited the Denver Botanical Gardens.

Sallie is a big baseball fan and wanted to go see the Denver Rockies play a game. So she and Frank went one evening. Both seemed to enjoy the game. Frank spent most of the evening playing with his camera attempting to capture the ball in mid flight. If you look closely you can see the ball in most of these photos.

We seem to have quite a few rabbits on the property and other wildlife nearby. Also shown was a quick roadside picnic during a ride into the mountains one Sunday afternoon.

Frank's newest hobby is collecting antique 1970's Western Electric phones and installing them in the house and trailer. Here we see 2 very rare 2 line phones and a couple of office phones. In front of the computer monitor you can see the microphone part of a 4a style speaker phone like the one used in the TV series Charlie's Angels.

We took the trailer to Kansas for their rodeo and an RV rally with folks who own rigs made by Ameri-Camp. On this trip we were gone seven weeks. Tom is standing next ot some unusal rocks left behind from when Kansas was an inland sea.,

Here is the boyhood home of Walter Chrysler.

While in Kansas we visited the barbed wire museum.

We visited Kansas Underground Salt Museum. An elevator takes you down about 160 feet into the salt caves. There are over 150 miles of tunnels carved out of the salt. The salt from this mine is primarly used for treating roads during snow storms. It was a great place to visit. They even have a small railroad down there.

Next stop on our touring of Kansas was another visit to Big Brutus.

In eastern Kansas is the old Fort Scott, part of the National Park System.

While in Kansas we camped near a Corps of Engineers lake. There was a beuatiful sunset that evening.

We attended an RV rally in Abilene, Kansas with other RVers who either own or previously owned the same RV make as our trailer....Ameri-Camp. The first night of the rally was trip on a dinner train.

Another event that the rally had was a tour of a local RV producer who only makes high end RVs. Some of their RVs cost close to half a million dollars.