WE'RE ON THE ROAD AGAIN: August 1-11: Visiting cousins Sue and Deb in Colorado

On August 1 we drove to Boyd Lake State Park in Loveland, CO. To our amazement this lake was in the middle of suburbia. Looking around and talking with people we found out that the housing around here has sprung up within the last five years. So five years ago, Boyd Lake State Park was out in the middle of farm land and now it is suburbia. Ah well, times they do change.

Loveland is about 20 miles from Greeley, Co. We spent a week with Sue and Deb

before their trip to Europe. We spent a couple of days with them siteseeing but, truth be told, we spent more time shopping. Barb and I are starting to get ready for our Alaska trip and we realized that there were several things we did not have...............like rain gear and warm clothing. Our T-shirts and shorts and sandals just would not make it in Alaska. Sue and Deb had been to Alaska and advised us as to what we would need. So REI and Sportsmans Warehouse saw a lot of the four of us during these few days.

We did do some great siteseeing too. Loveland calls itself the sculpture capital of the world, or some such title like that. Anyway, there are sculptures all over town from the parks to corners to banks to roundabouts to everywhere. We went to the sculpture park and were amazed at how wonderful it was. Below are just a few examples.

We also took a drive into the mountains towards Estes Park. It was a beautiful day, the sky was clear and rivers were flowing. We stopped to take pictures several places and then had lunch at this lodge at the end of a dead end road, high in the hills overlooking Estes Park. Bald Pate Inn is one of Sue and Deb's favorite restuarants and we can understand why. They have exceptional homemade foods consisting of

salads and soups...........and of course deserts. The owner of Bald Pate Inn collects keys from all over the world going back many years. He has a whole room displaying these keys with tags identifying who gave them to him and where they were from. It was fascinating to look around to see them.

We spent some time visiting other family members. Barb's cousins Bob and Mary and Opal Faye live in the area and we went to visit them also.

Bob and Mary prepared a wonderful dinner for us.

After Sue and Deb left, we decided to do some of our own searching for sculptures. There were two we had read about that were in off the beaten path locations and one in particular that had been written up in the New York Times. Apparently the civic minded citizens of Loveland were very distressed about the nudity in this one sculpture. The directions for finding it were written in the newspaper and when we followed the directions we ended up at a dead end...........guess they really did not want us to find it. But we perservered and found an alternate route that went around the dead end. And we found it! And then we had to figure out how to take a picture.........you see, it was in the center of a roundabout.....and there was no place to pull over and traffic was heavy. So you wonder what Linda did...........she first just kept driving around the roundabout and took pictures as she was driving. But that was not good enough, so she just stopped in the middle of the road around the roundabout and figured the cars could go around her too. They were not happy and some folks were waving a finger at us; wonder what that meant! And so we got some good pictures. The intention of putting a controversial sculpture in such a place might have been meant to discourage photos, but that was a ridiculous idea. And that is my political statement of the day!!!! See what you think of the sculpture.

We also went to see the less controversial sculpture that was at the recreational center of town. It was a water sculpture; if you look closely you will see water spraying out of the arms at the top as it spins around. A really great place for kids and adults alike to keep cool during this hot weather.