Even in a bad year for our roses, we get an eyeful at Thornden Park

What a good year for the roses Many blooms still linger there The lawn could stand another mowin’ Funny I don’t even care As you turn to walk away As the door behind you closes The only thing I have to say It’s been a good year for the roses Sorry, George Jones and Elvis…

Sweet, a corn field reminds me to stop and linger

Lab work to prep for upcoming doc visit and breakfast with my wonderful daughter Elisabeth in Hamilton behind me. Stop at my friends’ joint in Morrisville, Dougherty Pharmacy, ahead of me. My peripheral vision grabs a familiar sight to my right. Corn’s eye-high, yes, it is. In fact, Mosher Farms is coming up at the…

You can get there from here

The 4 a.m. chirp of my cell phone alarm was a harsh wake-up call compared to the usual gotta-go meanderings of Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle. But our beloved rescue mutt was nowhere to be found in the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, dropped off the previous night at the north…

Drink, eat and be merry

To every Family Reunion there must come the Group Meal. When the destination for the vacation is a locale where nobody in the gang resides, that adds to the inherent challenges. Who likes what type of food? What time does everybody prefer to eat? (Don’t forget to factor in the time zones everybody involved started…

What’s in store for us today?

I’ve joked about the T-shirt-iness of the downtown stretch of Estes Park. Surely, the shop owners have set up racks of Rocky Mountain-loving wear daring you to plunk down your 20 bucks and call it your own. What tourist town doesn’t? Truth be known, on the grand scale of Where I’ve Been, this destination for…

Feeling at home in the blue cottage

First-timers that we were, my dear wife Karen, daughter Elisabeth, boyfriend George Three and I did not know what to expect out of anything in Estes Park. When we pulled the rented SUV into the short, weed-filled driveway of the blue cottage with the white 330 on Virginia Drive a little before check-in time that…

Everything appears to be on the up at Rocky Mountain National Park’s Alpine Ridge Trail

No Rocky Mountains, no Estes Park. No kidding. Our days in the still-quaint but bustling Colorado village for my dear wife Karen’s Family Reunion were dominated by the looming peaks that make up the Rocky Mountain National Park. In fact, even walking along the tourist-trap T-shirt shops, the window-treatments trumpeted the fact that this year…

And the valley below

We could not let me dear wife Karen’e five-day Family Reunion in Estes Park go by without heading the rented SUV back up the mountain to that pull-off on Route 36 with the big rock sign and panoramic view. Yet the two times we drove past the majestic point going back down toward the village…

There’s a lightness on the edge of town

If there was one theme that repeated itself every dang day during my dear wife Karen’s Family Reunion in Estes Park, it was: Take a Hike. So on Monday morning bright and clear, the gang that remained gathered on the Village Green with a mission to walk along the Creek Walk that at its start…

A wild time at the Denver Zoo

When my dear wife Karen put a Sunday baseball game on her Family Reunion group page on Facebook, nephew Drew from Alaska quickly indicated that he’d love to join his aunt, the Uncle from Syracuse he’d not yet met, and new cousin Elisabeth and her boyfriend George Three on the excursion to Coors Field to…