"beach" camping

This weekend I went camping with some friends at a lake outside of the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. For some reason, it took us four hours to get there. But the drive on Trail Ridge Road through the park was beautiful! We saw a large elk herd and a mama moose with baby moose:


And, also, it was raining a good portion of the day, so being in the car for so long didn't really ruin any plans.

Since we were, after all, camping at a lake, I took my suit. But, even in July, a lake at 8300 feet is quite a bit different from, say, East Lake. I chose to stay dry, but some people did brave the chilly water.

After a while, we went into Grand Lake to look around. Half of the group went off to do a hike, and the rest of us vegged with live music, beer, and chile verde at a patio restaurant.


When we all met back up at the campsite, there were some kids -- one in particular -- very insistent on hanging around, "telling jokes," and reprimanding us for "breaking laws" ... and not to mention, being quite unsafe with pokey sticks.


Sunset Point Campground lived up to its name and gave us a beautiful sunset over the lake.


We roasted hot dogs, marshmallows (S'mores!!!), and banana boats, and did some singing around the fire. We turned in pretty early, and five (out of the six pictured below) of us in one tent made for some decidedly cozy quarters, but I was warm and comfortable the whole night through, which, in my book, are two key ingredients for camping.

more kansas

Turns out, if you check your camera, you just might have more pictures than you thought. Here are a few more tidbits from our trip to KS in May.

As I mentioned, we went to Missouri for the 13-year periodical cicada emergence. In SE KS and SW MO, we saw a lot of box turtles crossing the road (so cute). On one of our trips through the area we were at, I casually noticed what I thought was a turtle crossing the road. But, that "turtle" actually caused some excitement among certain members of the crew in our van (did I mention that both sets of our parents went with us?). Brian and his dad were pretty excited about the huge tarantula that was on the road. Naturally, we turned around so it could be collected.

This beast of a spider is now living out its days in an aquarium in Brian's parents' basement. I think Brian's mom was pretty excited about that since she is the one who ended up taking care of Brian's (long-living!) last tarantula after he moved out for college. Understandably, taking care of a tarantula is especially difficult in the winter months when it is no easy task to find crickets for it to eat.

On our way back to Colorado, we drove through the craziest dust storm in western Kansas. I had never experienced anything like it.

If you can make out the elevator in this picture, it is about a mile from where we were stopped in our car. The whole town disappeared in this dust storm!

column of happiness

The other day when I opened my fridge for something, I noticed this lovely column of happiness.


freshly-brewed iced tea
red cherries
eggs from the farm

oh my goodness, i baked.

And then blogged about it! Sad to say, but I don't remember the last time I baked, except for when Brian and I baked a cake that his mom needed for work when she had spent the entire evening before car shopping with us. I was feeling the need for some baking, so last night at 11, I did it. Plus, I have a group meeting today for a class project -- perfect place to take cookies.

I made cookies that one of my classmates had provided for one of our Dx clients called Secret-Kiss Cookies. I can see on my photocopy of the recipe that it appeared in Midwest Living in October 2001.

Ingredients:
- 1 c butter, softened
- 1/2 c granulated sugar
- 1 t vanilla
- 2 c flour
- 36 milk chocolate kisses, unwrapped (my cookies must have been too big because I only got 28)
- 1 c sifted powdered sugar (I used WAY less than this, and I did not do the second rolling in powdered sugar)

Beat the butter for 30 seconds.
Beat in sugar and vanilla.
Beat in flour. If necessary, knead dough gently until it holds together.
Shape slightly rounded tablespoon of dough around each chocolate kiss to form a smooth ball. Place dough balls 1 inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake at 325* for 12 minutes or until bottoms are lightly browned.
Transfer to wire cooling rack. Cool 10 minutes.
Gently roll warm cookies in powdered sugar; cool.
Roll again in powdered sugar if desired.


The butter, sugar, vanilla, and flour. At this point, I reread the recipe about six times to make sure there are indeed no eggs in it. Nope, no eggs.

I used my small cookie scoop to scoop out dough balls onto the cookie sheet. Instead of kisses, I used milk chocolate drops, which are like large chips. I did this for the ease (no unwrapping of kisses) and because when I ate them previously, I thought the kiss overpowered the delicious dough somewhat. So I just shoved 2 drops into each scooped out dough ball and rolled the cookie between my palms. I may not have determined the perfect chocolate to dough ratio yet, but this way sure was easy.

ultrasound

I had my first ultrasound today. Sorry, no picture (and no baby, if that's what you were thinking!). I have been getting physical therapy for pain from the wreck; I actually rather like it. Today my PT did ultrasound on my back because it provides deep heat for my muscles. It was really nice -- I was kind of fighting to stay awake, haha. It was much, much more preferable to the dry needling she did at my last appointment. Now if I could just be a good patient and get back into my routine of doing my home exercises/stretches...

kansas!

This trip home was one of the most drama-filled ones ever...just a lot going on. It was still good times though. I looked through my (handful of) pictures: cats, fish, and car.


Cleo (the seven-toed cat) always likes to run into the garage as soon as the door goes up. Brian's parents have this carseat for our nephew but took it out when we were riding with them and set it on top of our freezer they are storing for us. Cleo usually thought this chair was just for her.

Cat in a basket! Love that Nibbert.

We got to see our siblings quite a bit. Mark, Emily, Brian, and I cooked lunch for mom for Mother's Day. I got to see a good number of friends! And eat A LOT of doughnuts!! :) We went fishing, and Brian's dad even caught a pretty good sized one (pictured). We came away with a large haul of fish, and had a yummy fish fry.


One goal of this trip was to see the 13-year cicadas that emerged this year. We decided to travel to SW Missouri to see them. Our plan was to camp for several days there. On our first try, though, we only got about 45 miles away.









So crummy. About 24 hours later, we had a new car, which is a definite record for us in terms of time taken to make decisions. This was not in our plan, but we are thankful that since we had to get a different car, we were able to at least upgrade the one that we lost.

AND we were able to make it to Missouri for a day trip to see the cicadas! We brought one back with us, and -- amazingly! -- it lived in our apartment for more than 3 weeks and just died yesterday evening. :(

Presumably a lot more happened during our three weeks there. It seems like forever ago now. I am in the throes of summer school and clinic. I can't believe it is nearly half done.

not fully-formed semantic network

Yesterday I went on a walk and decided to leave my walking path for a short detour through downtown -- which, of course, meant that in my two blocks there, I saw a man put his body through a toilet seat (lots of shoulder dislocating was involved), someone dressed in a shark costume fishing in the fountain, and a man put himself in a box.


On my way back home, I passed two tweens manning a lemonade stand.
"Organic lemonade! Organic lemonade!"
A woman stopped and inquired, "Oh, are you two fundraising?"
Girls: "Yes!"
Woman: "What are you fundraising for?"
Girl: "Oh, I'm just saving up!"