Road Trip with friends!

Awesome week!  I had decided to close my shop for the next two weeks, so I went with two of my new-found friends on a road trip through Colorado.  Lori and Sami had been coming into my shop now for months and they are always taking road trips, so I told them I would love to join them sometime.   They are such fun-loving, enjoyable people – such a riot!  So we cooked up this idea and since William had to work this week, we took off Tuesday morning heading down hwy 50 out of Pueblo for Florence, Canyon City, Selida, over Monarch Pass, Blue Mesa Canyon, and Cimarron – we ended up staying in a cabin in this most wonderful, green valley called “Peaceful Valley Campground” – a beautiful creek running through it – we had a campfire and cooked hot dogs and smores.  Great time.  We originally were going to take another day to go around through Aspen and Buena Vista and come back through Colorado Springs, but we ran out of money …. so we just retraced our steps and had another wonderful day going through art galleries and antique stores. 

I found Florence and Selida to be the nicest places – Florence is full of antique stores stuffed with the most awesome antiques.  Tons of old-fashioned tools (of which I’m trying to collect) and everything the pioneers came out here with – more so than I’ve ever seen anywhere else in this country (and I’ve been to a lot of antique stores!).  Selida is full of art galleries – the most awesome artwork!  Not only that, but both Florence and Selida  (even Canyon City had a few great ones – including an old Abbey built in 1922-24? that was incredible!) were full of the most wonderful old buildings – the architecture was awesome, but what made it all better, is that people care about their old buildings here and actually fixed/painted them up in period colors, etc.  Block after block of awesome!

A fun day out!

Wow, what a month it’s been.   My studio has been so busy lately with all the kids coming in and preparing for the music and art festival – I’ve hardly had time to rest!  Such drama with the kids – constant fighting between one in particular and everyone else, I had to totally kick her out for the summer – she even threw a tantrum in here, throwing stuff around, sprinkling glitter everywhere; her sisters even showed up and tried to get her to come home and she locked herself in the bathroom – quite an ordeal!   I'm here for the kids to talk to, to have something to do,  to have fun, but not for discipline!

I finally got my taxes done a couple weeks ago and Fri. a small refund came in – what awesome timing.  We were able to get caught up on the bills, get some maintenance done on the car (soooo needed!),  AND go to a Brian Duncan concert this weekend in Pueblo.  We’ve been so busy lately AND so broke, we haven’t gone out for a very long time – so we took the day and ‘experienced’ Pueblo, CO.  What a cool river walk we found in the old section of town.  We had a great restful experience walking around town, looking at some antique stores, sitting by the river, people watching, etc.  We even saw a green man walking around – very weird!  We asked him what he was up to and he only mimed “I don’t know” with his shoulder shrug – or maybe it was “who knows.”

We met up with some friends for dinner at a most wonderful Italian restaurant there on the river.  Then we walked over to the gazebo for the concert – great time overall!