What's bigger than a French hotel room?

Yes, you guessed it...a college dorm room. But not by much. Although at one point between the roommates family and our family all squeezed in we did have 7 people moving around at once. In a French hotel at least 4 of those people would have been standing on a bed.

Well Jaimie is now offically off to university and move in day was pretty hectic. Don't know why, but all the kids have to show up at the same time, and with tiny stairways, and only one elevator getting to the 7th floor with loads of stuff was slow and tedious. I guess the engineer in me says this could have all been avoided if the spaced things out a bit over a couple of days, or even gave the kids staggered times to show up. As it was everyone came at about the same time (between 10am and 2pm) so lesson learned....show up early or late.

Jaimie is shown standing in front of Chief Washakie. Not sure what his significance is but they named the dining hall after him. Maybe he liked to eat a lot.

Major sticker shock was had at the bookstore. Four textbooks came in at the bargain basement price of only $500 dollars. Ouch!

Jaimie does have a very nice roommate, Emily Rhule, from Houston, Texas. Emily and her family had come up a bit earlier to check out Laramie. We got the girls moved in and then got together for a early dinner.

Happy Birthday Cathy

Cathy scored big on her birthday this year. She has been begging for a new patio on the front of the house for some time so we finally bit the bullet and put one in. Had to haul in a ton of Colorado Red flagstone and some sand but finally got it done.

She also wanted a porch swing. It turns out that I had built one for her about 16 years ago when we lived in Las Cruces. Then it was mounted from a beam on our enclosed backyard patio. When we moved back to Colorado we took the swing but never had a place to hang it so it been langishing in the garage for the last decade. Jaimie and I finally bought a stand for her birthday and,voila, she's very happy.

A Visitation from Michael Jackson

OK, so not really THE Michael Jackson (although the thought of his face does haunt me). Michael and Jackson are actually two separate people of the family Shannon who recently came to visit for a couple of weeks. Cathy Shannon ( a.k.a. Wolber) is one of Cathy's buddies from the good old days. The rest of her family had never been this far west, and none of the kids had ever been on an airplane so she packed them up and brought them out for a mountain adventure.

We started them out with a short backpack up Derby Creek in the Flattops Wilderness. Some enjoyed riding to the trail head in the back of the pickup. Left to right that's Terry, Lizzie, Jackson, Michael, and Cathy. I was pretty disappointed to find that the Forest Service is now allowing cattle grazing in the wilderness. You'd think that allowing an extremely invasive, and destructive species such as the domestic cow into an area that is supposed to be maintained as a pristine natural environment would be a bad idea. Check out the trail that used to be a single track and has now been churned into a 12 foot wide scar filled with 5 inches of pulverized dust. There's a rule in the wilderness that says you can't camp within 100-200 feet of a water source. I guess it's OK though for the cows to crap in every stream and spring turning every water crossing into a festering cesspool. {end rant}

Despite the forest mismanagement there seem to still be a few fish in the main stream. We had some fishing lessons in that backyard before we left, and it didn't take the kids long to start getting some bites. Lizzie caught this nice little cutthroat. Jackson really got into casting but I'm not sure he actually landed anything. We did have some altitude sickness in the group, and I guess my cooking didn't set too well either:) On returning to our cars we found that some moron had let the air out of 3 of Cathy's tires on the Prius. This put a little damper on things and required a fairly long trip to the nearest burg to look of a portable compressor. By shear luck I stopped in the Burns post office to ask for directions to the nearest filling station. Even though they were officially closed, the nice husband and wife team running the place came out from the back to help me out. Turns out the guy had a little Black and Decker fill station in his Jeep and readily lent it out no questions asked. It was a bit slow but did the trick and we were back on the road. Thanks for the loan mates!

After camping Cathy took them up to Steamboat Springs for a few days. Of course, Jaimie couldn't go without insisting an a horseback ride so the girls had a women's outing at Saddleback Ranch. The rest of their vacation was spent on a road trip through Arches, Mesa Verde, and the San Juan mountains. Thanks for the visit guys. Hope you had a good time.