Ken Cook Ramblings

After the great visit with my daughter's family in Jenks OK, I continued east to visit some friends outside of Hot Springs AR.  The drive was an easy ride . I am finding that the more I drive the more I like it... I have learned to relax and by this point I had over 4000 miles of experience to use.  Sheila and Terry McLarty are just fine folks... They live in a beautiful house out in the back hills around Hot Springs... It is such a peaceful remote place that requires a GPS to find.  The woods around them are so nice that you can forget the rest of the world even exist.  Terry is an avid hunter and fisherman so he is right at home out there... He is from the area, so just a natural fit. Sheila adds her charm and taste to the place and completes the picture. She is just one of those folks that does for others and is so relaxing to be around. I could just sit around and yak with those two forever. They cooked up a great supper that featured some amazing gril...

The Drive to Jenks to see Trish and her family was a haul, but with great weather...  Coming out of the Rockies it was cold with a starting temp of 32 in Fraser... Randy (Dack) told me how temperature inversion happens around the Rookies. The low areas act like a bowl and since cold air sinks it gets colder down there and warmer up on the mountains... When I crossed the continental divide (for about the 6th time) I was at about 9000 feet and it was 44 degrees... A mule deer and I tried to dance around Berthoud Falls but I missed her by 10 feet...  This was the longest day of driving, around 10 hours, so I broke it up into five gas/pee stops with Lunch at Lamar OK... I didn't know that Lamar was a big stockyard town with tons of flies.. But lunch was fine and I made it to Woodward OK at dark and just a little wet....  The reason I picked Woodward was it was the only town with a name brand hotel in the area... I wanted to be less than 4 hours from Trish's house so...

What a great visit with some old friends. I got to Laurie and Randy Dack's condo in Fraser CO,  just in time for a great lunch... They are such good people and we had a great bunch of fun. After lunch, we ran around Granby a bit and even took a tour of a grow house... A gentleman explained all the details of the science around proper agriculture, which was really pretty interesting. It was much more exact and detailed than I thought. After that we took off the to the Rocky Mountain National Park to see the Elk and boy did we hit pay dirt.. There were several groups of Elk, and while the first bunch were out in the fields..... The next group was very up close and personal...  Check out the pictures below This girl came up behind me while I was taking pictures of the bull... She had a calf but seemed to not mind me being close This is the calf with the female above who was scratching an itch There was probably around 30 females in the her...

I spent some time hiking around Fish Lake which is a peaceful place. The water is a very rich color of blue and matched well with the turning aspens.  The next morning it was time to head to Glenwood Springs and I was up early enough to catch the sunrise from my cabin window. Diversity The ride over on I-70 was full of views of the mountains and hills... It was very striking to me to see the diversity in the types of formations... There were white mountains, gray mountains, red mountains and some that were striped. There were many shades of brown along with some very dark colored hills that were almost black when the sun was low. There were massive rock formations that over time had fallen and scattered to provide even more contrast. Some mountain tops were jagged while others were rounded like the ones we see in East Tennessee. Some were flat and layered with the occasional river thrown in to add to the view. Some had lots of trees and foliage, while others only ha...