Quite a Weekend!

After finishing the first week of a new school year, we spent most of the weekend attending various events for David's 4o-year FHS reunion. Yes, it has been 40 years, although that does not sound possible! I could say that there were lots of "old people" there, but I guess that would include David and I, too. David enjoyed visiting with some people he hadn't seen since high school and others that he hadn't seen since the last reunion, 10 years ago. I even knew a few of his old high school classmates, especially ones that live in Fayetteville. I talked with Matthew's 4th grade teacher, Jane Arnold, who is the wife of David's classmate, Vance Arnold. I also visited with his classmate, Nancy Ballard, who was Lisa's 4th grade teacher.

Even though the weekend was pretty well filled with just reunion activities, we managed to add more to our schedule on Sunday by having James, Allison, and Jesse over for lunch and visiting. Then, on Sunday evening, we attended a Sunday School class "movie night" party at the Gordon's house. It is a good thing that I didn't really have any schoolwork to accomplish because there would have been no place to fit it into the schedule.

Here are some pictures I took Sunday afternoon of Jesse: (No one at the reunion or Sunday School party was cute enough to warrant any pictures, but it is hard to compete with a grandbaby!)

Here you can see Jesse's two bottom teeth.

He is about to get the hang of crawling, but still has a little work to do to totally figure it out.

I love this upside down shot!

After Jesse's afternoon nap, we went swimming. He especially enjoying splashing in the little pool, but he wanted to climb all around in the pool, so we had to keep a hand on him.

James showed us how Jesse likes to "ride the horse," but his favorite way is to ride "like the cowboy rides," as seen below.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

On our way home from Pagosa Springs, we drove a little bit out of the way to the north in order to visit Great Sand Dunes National Park.

As we began to see the dunes from a distance, they just looked like large sandpiles at the base of the mountains, but the closer we got, the bigger they looked.

Now we were close enough to get a better idea of the size of the dunes!

We wore shoes and socks to protect our feet from the hot sand.

We did not go all the way to the top since we were on a fairly tight time schedule. It was a long way to the top!

It was a little scary watching children and teenagers turning handsprings down the steep sides of the dunes. One girl laid very still for a couple of minutes after doing this, and all of us who was watching her were getting concerned that she was hurt. About the time people began yelling to her, she got up and walked back up the slope to do it again.

We were only at the National Park for two hours or so, and on our way out of the park we stopped to take some last looks at the dunes and the surrounding scenery.

I used my zoom lens to take some close-up shots of the distant mountains and dunes, and also to take a few pictures of nearby horses as they were grazing.

Continental Divide Trail

After leaving Treasure Falls, at the base of Wolf Creek Pass, we drove on to the pass where the Continental Divide crosses the highway. From there, we drove up a gravel road to an overlook.

We talked to a man who had just ridden his bike all the way from Pagosa Springs, up the mountain, and to this overlook. He asked us to take his picture and then offered to take a picture of us.

Near the overlook was a trailhead for where the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) heads towards Silverton. Of course, we didn't hike nearly as far as Silverton, but we did hike an hour or so down the trial before we turned around.

The wildflowers were beautiful!

A couple of guys on horses passed us on the trail. Not long after that, we began hearing the distant rumble of thunder, and the sky began growing darker. We increased our pace until I had to slow down, but we hurried back to the car as quickly as we could.