Seth's Cross Country Meet

Seth is running cross country again this year, and last Friday at the Liberty Bell meet in Littleton, CO he turned in a personal best time of 21 minutes for 5K distance. Here he is at the start, mid-race and at the end. At the beginning he is about 2/3rds the way back in the crowd on the side closest to the camera. You can see his very bright green bandana headband flash by. At the end I love his dry heaves once he's crossed the finish line.

Platte River Fun on Labor Day Monday

Well last night we had Allie and James and their gang, and Seth's friend Chris who has stayed with us this weekend while his folks were at a family wedding in Oregon, over for dinner. After telling Allie & James about our fun hike on Saturday, they decided to spend the night and check it out on Monday. So up we went. The first little glitch was that we found out their jogging stroller tire had a hole in. After that, we pretty much knew we weren't goig too far up the canyon. We ended up just walking a half mile in and found a shady little picnic spot that ended up having LOTS of poison ivy. I think we were able to stay out of it. The river was right behind our shady glen, which made for some brief, cool fun. Now that we know all the things to think about, maybe we'll bring bikes up in about four weeks and go further in.

There is a bike rental place at the parking lot. This looked fun but too much work!

Our shady spot for lunch :)

I remember my boy scout handbook rhyme about poison ivy: "leaflets three, let it be". I wasn't sure this was poison ivy but it sure looked it. Melissa claims to have seen it and was pretty sure. This was growing all around our picnic area.

When I got home I looked it up and now I'm even more sure. What do you think?

Ben eating a yummy plum. They had wild, natural plums that were the size of big grapes. We ate some and they were yummy!

What is the use of being by a river if you can't play in it? It was pretty cold though. Probably about 45 degrees.

Melissa and Bryson went wading in a really shallow spot.

Marie has become very brave as she's gotten older and will do things her siblings won't even consider. She waded out into the river to join Melissa and Bryson.

Everyone is getting their shoes back on for the hike home

Labor Day Paradise: 20 minutes from home

Someone left a Saturday edition of the "Rocky Mountain Post" on our driveway, and there in the outdoor section was a section all about the "Yellow Brick Road" of Colorado's Front Range. Waterton Canyon is literally no more than 20-25 minutes away, and really is a great place for fishing, hiking & biking. On the spur-of-the-moment yesterday morning, I asked Jane, Jarom and Melissa if they wanted to go for a hike along the South Platte River and they all thought it sounded like a great idea. The morning started out really clear and cool, but warmed up as the day progressed. We ended up hiking about five miles round trip, and really got some ideas for future day trips. The trail goes along the South Platte River as it leaves the mountains, and from all accounts (and from what we could see) is pretty good for fishing. We'll have give it a try soon!

This spillway is from an aquaduct that supplies water from the Platte River to the greater Denver metro area.

Bryson LOVES rocks, and during a break insisted on grabbing a few from the road

A little video from the trip. Sorry about the cheesy music track. I was trying out Microsoft's new free movie maker program. Its actually really easy to use and has some pretty cool features such as being able to rotate a video. You can download it free from http://download.live.com/moviemaker .