Yesterday We Got Gorged

This is Thursday morning, the last day of our Colorado vacation. Tomorrow we make our return trip to the blast furnace that we affectionately call Sugar Land, Texas.

I'm not sure what we have planned for today, but there has already been some real excitement! As I was sitting down to type up this installment of "The Hood" I heard some clomping sounds coming from the back patio. I turned around to see six cows staring at me through the patio windows, their noses pressed against the windows, smearing cow snot across them as they moved their heads from side to side. Greg warned us that in spite of the low voltage electric fence surrounding the house that this would probably happen. I went out and ran the cows off, resorting to throwing a few rocks at them to get the last of them to leave. I discovered that cows apparently don't really care much about being shocked by an electric fence, as evidenced by the fact that they walked right over it on their way off the property. I also discovered, however, that they do apparently mind being hit in the head with a rock the size of a baseball. Keep this in mind the next time you are shooing electricity resistant cows.

Yesterday we spent most of the day at the Royal Gorge, which is about an hour's drive from here. For those of you who don't know, the Royal Gorge is the site of the world's highest suspension bridge, which sways (literally) 1,053 feet above the surging Arkansas River. Vicki and I had been there back in 1986, and we couldn't believe how much things there have changed. Back in the day you drove up to the bridge, paid a few bucks to drive across, drove across, did a u-turn and drove back, and then left. If you so desired there was the option to buy a ticket for the tram ride across the abyss, or to take the inclined ride to the bottom of the gorge. Now the place is like a theme park, complete with a $24 admission ticket. For the price of the ticket you not only get to ride the tram and the incline (both definitely worth doing), but you also get a burro ride, a petting zoo, multiple gift shops and admission to a cheesy "mountain man" town where it seemed that most of the mountain men, and mountain women, were relaxing in the shade and trying not to make eye contact with the paying customers. Which reminds me, Royal Gorge broke our consecutive day streak of not basking in 100 degree temperatures. Our car thermometer read an even 100 when we left (although it was in the 70's within an hour or so of leaving).

After we left the Gorge we headed south, back down to Lake Isabel. Based on our observations from the previous day of so many people catching so many rainbow trout at the lake we decided that we'd try our hands at fishing. On the way to the lake we stopped at a hardware store (there are not Academy Sports and Outdoors in small town Colorado) and bought two deluxe fishing poles and two lawn chairs. When we got to the lake be bought some essential fishing tackle, some worms, and some "fire balls" which are salmon eggs that trout are supposed to really like. We made our way to the lake shore, found a spot among the fishing crowd, set up our lawn chairs, affixed a worm to one pole and a fire ball to the other and waited for the fish to show up. A picture of what we caught is shown below.

Here's Vicki at the bottom of the gorge.

Note the tram crossing high above her. Yes, we rode it.

Here's Vicki on the world's highest suspension bridge,

proudly displaying the Texas colors.

Rafters on the Arkansas River at the bottom of the gorge.

We'll definitely try this on our next trip.

Vicki at the bottom of the gorge.


Me contemplating the abyss.

Everything you could want to know about the Royal Gorge

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A picture of all the fish we caught with our Ace Hardware fishing poles.

(For the official record, Vicki actually caught one trout, but it wiggled off the hook and flipped back into the lake before we could get a picture)

On the job front, yesterday morning I had about an hour phone call with a Houston recruiter regarding an Benefits Director position with one the major hospitals in Houston. We agreed to talk more when I get home.