Saturday, July 31, 2021

My Deer Friends







One morning I raised the shade on a side window of my home to see two deer relaxing in the shade--a  yearling buck and a yearling doe.  I thought it was unusual to see them together, even if they were birth mates, as by their second year of life they usually separate and follow their own sex.




They came to the same spot almost every morning!  
Some days the doe hid under a pine tree to sleep.



The first velvety antlers were growing for the buck...he will rub off the velvet when they are fully grown.




 

The doe looks a little thin but she is always chewing her cud when I see her so she was obviously finding enough food in the wild, including some of my flowers!



She also enjoys drinking from my birdbath and enjoying the shade in my yard every morning. 

The Denver area has been breaking 145-year-old heat records this summer with some days over 100 degrees, so I think the heat has been stressful to them.



The buck has also been enjoying napping in the shade every morning.  

I love their visits but make sure to just observe them from my window.  


I was told by a friend on Facebook that since they are becoming frequent 

visitors I should give them names...do you have any suggestions?


You can also find me on


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Sunday, July 25, 2021

The Georgetown Loop Railroad





Nestled in the Colorado mountains, near the upper end of Clear Creek Valley, at an elevation of 8,530 feet (2,600 m) is the narrow gauge Georgetown Loop RailroadThis spectacular stretch of 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge railroad, built by the Georgetown, Breckenridge, and Leadville Railway was completed in 1884 and considered an engineering marvel for its time. The thriving mining towns of Georgetown and Silver Plume lie 2 miles (3.2 km) apart in the steep, narrow canyon in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver. Engineers designed a corkscrew route that traveled nearly twice that distance to connect them, slowly gaining more than 600 feet (183 m) in elevation. The route included horseshoe curves, grades of up to 4%, and four bridges that cross Clear Creek, including the massive 95-foot (29 m) high Devil's Gate High Bridge, seen in the upper right portion of the photo collage above.




Originally part of the larger line of the Colorado Central Railroad constructed in the 1870s and 1880s, in the wake of the Colorado Gold Rush, this line was also used extensively during the silver boom of the 1880s to haul silver ore from the mines at Silver Plume. In 1893, the Colorado and Southern Railway took over the line and operated it for passengers and freight until 1938.  Ridership declined with the use of automobiles and the train line was closed and dismantled in 1939. Fortunately, the Colorado Historical Society gained ownership of the land and rebuilt and restored the railway in the 1980s to operate during summer months as a tourist railroad, carrying passengers.


Please click on to enlarge

More of the history of the railroad can be read on the placard above.

This was our third time riding the railroad. We first rode it in the fall of 2015 and that blog post can be read on this link.  We took our grandsons on the Georgetown Loop two years ago, and this weekend we took our two granddaughters.  All children seem to enjoy train rides and I think I enjoy it even more than they do!  My husband and I decided the next time we ride the Georgetown Loop Railroad we are going to add on a tour of the Lebanon Silver Minewhich can be accessed by a stop midway on the train line.



As you can see on the video above the train moves slowly and carefully when it is crossing the high Devil's Gate trestle.   The video link is here to watch it on YouTube if you are unable to view it above.



The train ride is about an hour and a half long...



...and passes such beautiful Colorado scenery! 

Our granddaughters enjoyed the ride very much and we loved spending this special time with them. As you can see in the photo collage above Clear Creek was running full. If you'd like to see two videos of the water flow in the creek click here to go to my Mille Fiori Favoriti Facebook page where I posted the videos. Make sure to have the video sound turned on in the videos to hear the rushing water! It was so refreshing. The weather in Georgetown was cooler than where we live on the front range and we enjoyed the break from the excessive 90 temperatures we've been having this summer.


I hope everyone is having a good summer and staying healthy and happy! Please remember that my e-mail blog notification will be going away soon if you have signed up to be notified on new blog posts that way.  The Feedburner free email service is discontinuing soon and I have not decided on a new email blog notification service.  You can follow me on Bloglovin as an alternative, or follow my blog's Facebook page as I post new blog posts there. Thanks so much!


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Sunday, July 18, 2021

A Wildflower Walk Along the Red Rocks






I am fortunate to live in a beautiful area in Colorado located along the Front Range that still has open space parks nearby in which to walk. Although I blogged about trails in this park herehere, and hereevery season brings new views and this summer has been a particularly good wildflower season.



South Valley Park is 995 acres and contains 8 miles of trails, all of which wind around beautiful ancient red rock formations.



The park has excellent examples of both the Lyons and Fountain rock formations.  Hard to believe these formations were formed 250 million years ago! More than 7 millennia before Egypt's pyramids were built, human hunter-gatherers lived in this area as 10,000-year-old flecks of charcoal and a Folsom-style spear point have been found in the park during archeological digs.



The rocks are large and impressive...



...and the pastoral foothill scenery makes one feel far from civilization.


The plentiful rain we received during June brought a prolific amount of wildflowers this year!



So many different varieties!


So many different colors...



 
Colorado Wildflowers is an excellent database of wildflower photos and descriptions listed by color, family, size, or keyword.



I am so fortunate to have this park just a mile away from my house! It brings us endless pleasure to be able to walk its paths and enjoy nature. 

I hope you are also having an enjoyable summer!


PS: A reminder to My Email Subscribers: beginning sometime during July 2021, the Blogger e-mail Feedburner subscription service will be turned off. Therefore, you will no longer receive emails when a new post is published at Mille Fiori Favoriti. I offer you the alternative of joining Bloglovin and subscribing to follow Mille Fiori Favoriti there. You will then receive emails when I publish a new post. Alternatively, you can also make a note of my blog's URL: https://millefiorifavoriti.blogspot.com
and then check weekly, usually on Mondays, for a new blog post. I hope you will use one of these alternatives. Thank you for reading my blog, published since 2007! I look forward to seeing all of you here at Mille Fiori Favoriti.


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Sunday, July 11, 2021

Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum


 At the end of June, my husband and I, and a few friends, visited the The Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum which is located on the former Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado. 


Transferred from the United States Air Force to a group of volunteers in 1994, Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum is located in Hangar #1 of the former Lowry Air Force Base in eastern Denver, Colorado. Today, the museum boasts more than 182,000 square feet of hangar space full of iconic aircraft, space vehicles, artifacts, military uniforms, and much more. Visitors can also experience flight simulators, discover various educational programs and participate in dozens of exciting museum-sponsored events.   This was the second time my husband and I visited the museum--see my first post about it on this link.




It's such an interesting museum, filled with both permanent and temporary exhibits, and over 50 aircraft and space vehicles.


  

We all wanted to see the 45-minute National Geographic movie that plays every hour in the museum theater called "Living In the Age of Airplanes," narrated by Harrison Ford.  The movie trailer is above, or at this link.  It really is amazing to see how humankind's ability to fly has impacted the world in such a short time!  



This example of a Kitty Hawk Multicopter looks almost like a drone, but it was able to fly one person like a helicopter and was so light it did not require a pilot's license to fly! The company no longer makes them and now wants to focus on more powerful VTOL aircraft that can travel faster and farther and with more occupants. The company already has a new design in the works called the Heaviside.  The era of "flying cars" may soon become a reality!  How much more will that change our world?



There was also a special exhibit at the museum called "All the Cosmos a Canvas--Hubble Reveals Our Beautiful Universe," comprised of these amazing Hubble telescope photos...



...including this signed photo by Loren J. Shriver, the commander of the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31) which lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Florida, on a mission to place the Hubble Space Telescope in Earth Orbit in April 1990.



Actual Star Wars movie aircraft memorabilia is a big hit at the museum, especially for children.  R2D2 actually whistled at me--the rascal!




Do you remember hearing about "The Miracle on the Hudson" years ago? A commercial passenger jet lost all its engines to bird strikes when flying out of New York's LaGuardia Airport in 2009, and the pilot was able to glide the plane down and land in the Hudson River, saving 155 passengers' lives.  Fortunately, the pilot had learned to fly a glider at the US Air Force base when he was a cadet!



Before we left the museum we stopped a moment to reflect on this stirring sculpture called "Least We Forget The Mission" which honors the more than 88,000 US airmen who died in WWII.
 
Each year, Wings Over the Rockies welcomes roughly 160,000 visitors representing all 50 U.S. states and 28-countries around the world. We certainly enjoyed our visit!

What's new around here...

Thank you to everyone who commented on the book review in my last post. It was an interesting book that made me think quite a bit about my own collections and possessions.  I think we all agree that keeping things that bring us joy in our lives is not a problem, it is only a problem when we find they lead to stress or debt, or become an obsession that we focus on more than life experiences.

We had a very Happy 4th of July...


Our son's community has an annual mini-parade each 4th of July where the residents follow emergency vehicles around the neighborhood. They then host a buffet lunch in the park, have a water splash slide, and face painting for the children, and at night there are some firework displays. Thankfully we had beautiful weather that day and enjoyed it all.

I hope you are also having an enjoyable summer!


PS: A reminder to My Email Subscribers: beginning sometime in July 2021, the Blogger e-mail Feedburner subscription service will be turned off. Therefore, you will no longer receive emails when a new post is published at Mille Fiori Favoriti. I offer you the alternative of joining Bloglovin and subscribing to follow Mille Fiori Favoriti there. You will then receive emails when I publish a new post. Alternatively, you can also make a note of my blog's URL: https://millefiorifavoriti.blogspot.com
and then check weekly, usually on Mondays, for a new blog post. I hope you will use one of these alternatives. Thank you for reading my blog, published since 2007! I look forward to seeing all of you here at Mille Fiori Favoriti.



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