Rolling Down The Road

Well, here I am in Algona... or more correctly, here we are. The first day, Janet and I biked 40 miles or so to Williams and stayed by the Boondocks,. Yesterday was another 40 miles or so to Ft Dodge and today we biked 5o miles plus to get to Algona. We have been blessed with tail winds all three days, but don't confuse that with being easy. Hills are hills and miles are miles and sore feet are sore feet. That's what's giving us both the most problem so far.... numb toes, wooded toes, cramping feet, and, at times, all of the above. Of course there's also 'bent butt, achilles tendon soreness, hip flexor problems, tired calves and thighs, and a recurring rash (on my legs- not where you're thinking!)

I have an allergy to laytex and I guess that means spandex, too. Well, there go the biking pants. I'll be wearing some cotton 3/4 pants I brought to sleep in , to bike in from now on.

Everything's going well.... we're having a great time...still talking to one another and everything. We've been spending some quality time in the hot tub everywhere we stay. It's what keeps us on the road.

Tomorrow is our longest day - 55 miles, I think, and there's some rain in the forecast, so we will be setting out earlier than usual.

Today's highlight was the two eagles we saw.

Will write more if I get the chance.

Disc Golfing, A Dangerous Sport. Really!

Marv and I have been playing disc golf since Josh introduced us to the game when he was going to ISU- 8 or 9 years now, I guess. We decided a while ago that we would see how many different states we could play in. Part of the fun of this trip was to add some more states to our list. We had 21 so far, but no western states at all, since most of our states had been added traveling (wandering) to see Matt and Kim and Benji in Virginia and to see Josh and Beth and Ava in Wisconsin.

The first course we played on this trip was in a nice, typical, park setting in the Denver area. We played with Michelle, Joan and Noah (in a back-pack). Noah carried a disc and would put it in the basket when we got real close. It's fun to introduce new people to the game and I think Michelle and Joan will try it again. We all had a good time.

The second course was Red Lodge, Montana.

In the internet, the basket on this course were discribed as being make by "restless natives". What fun! They were some of the oddest things you've ever seen. One actually looked like a real basket so we didn't bother to take a picture of that one.

This has got to be my favorite basket of all time. It's really a work of art, constructed totally of driftwood (except for the chains, of course).

We think this is meant to be a basket. At least we couldn't find anything else.

This one was gorgeous, too. Made of big chunks of wood.

The next course was going to be Casper, Wyoming, but driving there, the weather was rainy and nasty. As we pulled up, though (once we found it) it stopped raining so we decided to play. We pulled on our boots (suggested because of cactus and snakes) and st out to have fun. We forgot our camera so no pictures of this one. It was an arid setting with lots of rabbits, cactus and rocks. I filled my bags with cool stones to bring home. The second nine holes was filled with some kind of critter holes, maybe 6" in diameter and really deep. Didn't ever see anything emerge, so we don't know what lived there.

I kind of strained my back on this course. I don't know if it was the rocks or the 5 lbs. of mud I carried on each boot. I vote for the mud.

Billings, Montana was our last course. (We wandered a lot on this trip.)
It took us a bit to find this course, too. Once we found it, there was another car in the parking area, but we never did see another person there. We're thinking that this might be a course you play, maybe, once a year. It was awesome!

I always thought rock-climbing would be fun, and it is . This whole thing was climbing one rock after another.... Teeing off on top of a boulder..... baskets on top of boulders....trails through boulders....

This is generally what the area looked like.

Me, between a couple boulders.

Here's basket #7, with #8 above it in the distance. Don't look for a path - there isn't one.

Me climbing up to #8. This isn't staged at all, it's how we had to get there!

Standing by #9 basket, looking down to where we had been.

We almost didn't play #9. From a distance, it was really formidable. Looked for sure like we would lose a disc or two, if not our lives, but we had to try it. The stairs you see there kind of floated in space. I know they didn't sit on anything at their base, so they must have been connected to the rock. There was one other hole where you were supposed to tee off from the top of a boulder, but the two ladders they had there to reach the top were both rotten, and the mattress at the foot of the boulder didn't encourage me to try to climb it.

#9 basket. Can you believe this!?

We set off to play this course with no phone (the battery was down) and only half a bottle of water (stupid). Our car is parked just beyond that hill. You can barely see it. If something had happened to us we could have yelled all day and nobody would have heard us. We survived though we only played 9 holes. They were the toughest holes, though. 10 through 18 ran along the rim of the rocks, so they would have been safe unless you threw too far right.

More boulders and rocks. These rocks were too big to carry home.

#9 basket is way up there on the right.


So now it's 24 states we've played in. Who's sending us to Hawaii for our 40th anniversary? ;-)

In case you (reader) haven't noticed, I blogged 3 times today to cover our whole vacation, so don't miss the first 2 blogs, okay? Okay.

Friday, Janet and I are leaving on our bikes for Minnesota. Hope my back is fine by then. We haven't biked hardly at all in preparation for this, but, like I told Janet yesterday, how hard can it be?

Later.

National Parks, Here We Come!

We had no sooner gone through the gate of Rocky Mountain National Park, than we saw some elk in a meadow. We're thinking they were tethered there for the tourists. Well maybe not...

As we were driving there, traffic stopped. I figured - bear on the road or something, right? Once we were stopped for a while, moving in fits and starts, we figured it wasn't that. As it turned out, Estes Park, Colorado has Scottish Days annually and it backed up traffic for 6 miles going into town.

We hadn't made any motel reservations, figuring it was pretty much off-season after Labor Day. Wrong. Every old person in the nation waits until after Labor Day to vacation, it seemed. (I know we were there) We had to search hard to find a room several days. Wednesday night we stayed in Rapid City. We decided to try a Microtel there and try to pay under $80, since we had been paying over $100. The guy at the desk said they didn't have any single rooms left except one with a hot tub, so he gave us that room for $73. Fun! We soaked.

The road out of RMNP was a beautiful drive through steep rock canyons. It was gorgeous and we didn't take picture one. Bubkis. Nada. Just take my word for it, really, really pretty.
Yellowstone Park is just awesome! No other word for it . Really other-worldly. This picture is of one of the many hot pools and the color was just that, a lovely turqouois.

This picture shows the road hanging out over thin air. We said a lot of "Oh, man!" "Oh, crap!" "Oh, God!" "Oh, no!" as we wound our way up and up and up and looked down and down and down.

Marv and I were taking pictures of each other when a young couple offered to take one of the both of us. I kiddingly told them then would have to give us their car keys to hold before I would hand over our camera to them. Later I mused that our camera would be a cheap price to pay for their Honda Element, if we were untrustworthy.

We took 5 pictures of Old Faithful and they all looked like this. The lens didn't open. Wasn't very faithful, was it?

There were signs all over to be cautious of the bears. Yeah right. There are NO bears in Yellowstone Park, or if there are they are all busy s#!$$ing in the woods. Therefore, I took a picture of the woods, figuring there was a bear in there somewhere. I had this vision of all these bears coming out of the woods after our car passed. Marv bought me necklace... a bear claw set in silver with a couple stones of turquois. It was as close as we got to a bear.

Bison, they had. Lots of bison. They're huge and they travel wherever they darnwell please.

Pretty picture

We took David Digby's GPS with us. It has a big screen and "Emily" told us where to turn. These mountain roads wound back and forth on the screen on top of each other, all most. It was wild.

It was all great fun. I was kinda tired and about to fall asleep in the car one day (I do that a lot) but couldn't picture myself sleeping through Yellowstone. I really is beautiful and makes Iowa cornfields pale in comparison. It was still wonderful to be home, though.

She did, He did

Joan and Noah, teeing off. (Noah was a pretty good putter and carrier.)

Marv and His brother, John. It was great to be able to talk with him although he told me, privately, that he would rather be beat than have to go to something like this. :-)

Marv and I just got back from a great vacation. It's been a REALLY long time since we vacationed just for the heck of it - not visiting someone, not biking somewhere, just vacationing. Well, not exactly, I guess. It was Melissa and Cory's wedding that took us to Colorado in the first place, but after that there was no agenda but to have fun.

I've decided to write several posts on this vacation. All today.

1.

Melissa and Cory got married. We were invited to the rehearsal dinner at Old Chicago on Thursday so early (4:30) on Thursday, we left for Denver. When we pulled into the parking lot at the Motel we were staying at, we were greeted by Joan (Michelle's partner) on her way to the pool. It was a great way to start the fun as we connected with Michelle, Joan and Noah a lot during the weekend. We even all went to play disc golf before the wedding on Friday. (That's Joan and Noah in the picture.)

The rehearsal supper was great - good pizza, good friends we hadn't seen for awhile, good conversation. Brenda and Jason and family (Michael, Olivia, Jack and Carter) were there. John was there. Todd and Lisa and family (Ian and Lindsay) were there. Sue and Ed were there. Jack and Bertha. Michelle, Joan and Noah. Lots of Sue's family.

The wedding the next day was lovely. A little too "women will subject themselves to men" for me, but lovely none-the-less. Jack was ring bearer, Olivia the flower girl, Michael a groomsman and Lindsay a bridesmaid. They were all so cute!

I didn't take nearly enough pictures and trying to put the ones I did take on this blog is really frustrating. It puts them in at the front of the post and adds the next one before the one before it, so they end up backwards. Hmm, let me see if I can put text between them.... It seems that I can, so with a little planning the next post will be more cohesive.