Buffalo Bill

In North Platte, NE we bought a book for Rebecca about Buffalo Bill and we also brought with us the D'aulaire's children's biography. She was fascinated with all the adventures he had and that it was true. He seemed to weave in and out of so much of the areas history from Pony Express, to the Railroad, to his traveling show that stopped in both our hometowns of Evansville, IN and Charlotte, NC once upon a time. Obviously, we had to visit his grave and museum.

The drive up Lookout Mountain is very, very, curvy.

Rebecca Oakley

Rope 'em cowgirl

Little dude

He wasn't interested in getting on the horse he liked the little cow "just my size" he said.

Heartbreaker....am I right?

By the time we got to the museum she had finished her books about Bill and we were working on reading Annie Oakley's bio.....the west has so many great imagination stirring tales!

Some of Cody's actual duds.

Mountain top grill and gift shop.

What a beautiful place to be buried!

The official monument.

Our First Blizzard

   The weather predictions out in Colorado seem to underestimate snow predictions. Growing up in the midwest and the south I'm used to the weathermen getting everyone whipped into a frenzy with their apocalyptic warnings and then we just get a little dusting. Not so in Colorado. They began predicting a blizzard with 8-10 inches of snow....by the end of this storm we had 24 INCHES OF SNOW in Centennial. Denver airport was shutdown and leaving our hotel room meant risking your next on the stairs, because with that much snow there are not stairs, its just a big slope of snow. It was really, really cool! LOL We enjoyed the novelty and kept the fire going strong in the fireplace. Incredibly, by the next day we were able to get out and drive to the theater. We wouldn't have gone far, but it was amazing how quickly the DOT got the roads cleared. By the end of the week most of the snow was gone and spring weather returned. I kept thinking I'd eventually pack up the snow stuff and send it home ahead of us, but spring and winter play a long game of tug of war in Denver.

Yesterday we played in the creek and this morning the snow was coming down over an inch and hour. Oh, and that is a full size privacy fence!

The kids did not get tired of the snow at all, each and every time they showed the same amount of  enthusiasm. 

Castlewood Canyon

Castlewood Canyon was something we stumbled on one afternoon. What a happy accident! The Lucas homestead ruins were so much fun for the kids to climb on and imagine the life of the family and where things would have been in the home. The home was built sometimes between 1880-1910 by the Lucas'. They outgrew the first wooden home they built (8 children)....its around somewhere, but we didn't go down the trail far enough. The house was abandoned around 1940 when the then widowed Mrs. Lucas moved into Denver. This concrete home and some of the barns foundations kept us busy a while. Next we hiked Cave Trail that goes straight up into the rocky side of the canyon and its full of nooks and crannies to hide and play in. After we came down from the caves we followed a path above the creek to the falls and played in the water there. With all the warnings of snow in the forecast I wanted us to get as much outdoor time on this beautiful afternoon as we could. 5 hrs and 2.7  miles worth of hiking to be exact.

Heading up the stairs along Cave Trail....its a lot of stairs!

Isaiah was such a trooper, no complaints about the amount of walking or the rough ground.

Isaiah also kept a sharp eye on the map for us.

Our first view of the falls. We could hear them from a ways off, but never thought we'd actually see them. They were hidden down in the canyon.

I wish we had a creek in our yard. All three of them like the water so much!

Levi turned into a little geologist on our trip. He was always finding "gold" and "rubies" and "diamonds", better known as mica, granite, and quartz..... how exciting childhood is!