Week 07 - A week in Colorado with family, friends, fun and football - 10-01-2006

A week in Colorado with family, friends, fun and football

We spent the entire week in Colorado. On Monday we visited with Pete's nephew Keith and his wife Sheryl. We met their son Joe also. We had dinner with them and filled each other in on the last 29 years! Other than a few short hours, we had not seen Keith since 1977 when he helped build our house. They have lived in Colorado Springs for the last 16 years.

Tuesday we spent the night in Castle Rock CO. It has a darling old town section and looks small but is really quite large. On Wednesday we headed toward Denver. When we disobeyed our GPS in Arkansas it told us to head down a road to get back on track. The 2.8 mile road got more and more narrow and the trees put dozens of scratches onto the sides of the motorhome. We found The Detail King, Terry Sherrett in Littleton, CO. He immediately came out and buffed out the scratches for an amazingly low price. Thank you, Terry. Then we headed to Lakewood to see Jeff, a close college friend.

At Jeff's we joined the Bible study as his house. It was a wonderful group. Afterwards, one couple gave us tickets to the Colorado Rockies vs Dodger baseball game. Jeff joined us for the game on Thursday afternoon. When we left the game in the sixth inning there were 24 runs, 28 hits and no errors! The Dodger had changed pitchers 6 times and the Rockies 8 times! The final was 19-11 Dodgers. Nothing boring here!

After the game Jeff gave us a tour of downtown Denver. There are some amazing buildings there. They also have a great blend of new and historic buildings.

After the game we drove to West Denver to the Red Rock Amphitheater with Jeff and his daughter Jackie. Jackie is going to school in London to study fashion design and was home for a short visit. Later Jeff took us to dinner at Red Lobster where we visited with Jeff and his son Matt. Jeff's daughter Beth was not in town during our visit.

Friday we spent the day in the Home Depot parking lot adding a couple of shelves to the motorhome. Then we drove to Eric and Lena's house in Commerce City CO. Eric is also a nephew that we have not spent appreciable time with since 1977. Eric worked with Keith and Pete's brother Mike to build our house. We had a terrific visit with Eric and Lena. We stayed up past midnight talking about God and church and family. Eric and Lena are foster parents for Issac who is 14 months and a baby girl who weighs just 8 pounds and is three months old.

Lena made a Russian meal on Friday night and got up Saturday morning to make us breakfast. They were terrific hosts as were Keith and Sheryl. We headed back to Colorado Springs to see the Air Force Academy Falcons play the New Mexico Lobos. Keith and Sheryl's daughter Sarah is a senior Cadet at the academy. The game was amazing. The pre-game included hundreds of cadets marching onto the field. Sarah was a squadron commander. Then seven Air Force members parachuted onto the field and four jets did a fly over. The half time show included a Falcon diving the stadium at the command of his trainer. Is this a great country or what?

Oh yeah, I forgot, they did play football. The Falcons beat the Lobos 24 to 7. Here is Josh Clayton sacking the Lobo's quarterback.

After the game Sarah gave us a tour of the USAFA base and the chapel.

We finished out the week in Colorado spending the night in Glenwood Springs CO. Next week on to Utah!

Hope you enjoy the pictures and thanks for reading!

Love, Pete and Ellen

Photos from Oct 2006