HawkQuest in Golden, Colorado

My husband and I met friends in Golden, Colorado the last Sunday in July to go out for brunch and stroll around the town.  It happened to be the last day of the Buffalo Bill Day celebration.  Buffalo Bill Days are Golden’s annual salute to William F. Cody, who is buried atop Lookout Mountain in Golden.  I blogged about his grave a few years ago on this post.  It is among the most visited tourist attractions in Colorado!

Buffalo Bill Days featured a western weekend filled with the “Best of the West” parade, mutton bustin’, firefighters’ pancake breakfast, car show, arts and crafts, live music, kids’ games, and more. The original event dates back to the 1940s as a trail ride up to Buffalo Bill’s gravesite and now is an annual event.

In summer, as one drives into Golden's main street, a familiar sight to see is people carrying floatation tubes of all colors and shapes.

They are all headed to Clear Creek, which runs through the middle of Golden to float down a portion of the creek.  We like to stand on the bridge and watch them all float by or walk on a trail that runs alongside the creek to do the same

A short YouTube of some tubers floating down Clear Creek.

After brunch, we all went over to Parfet Park in town to visit the Arts and Crafts market vendors that were there for the Buffalo Days celebration.

In addition to the Arts and Crafts vendors' booth, the park had a stage where different groups performed all weekend, there were rides for children, the local Coors factory had a beer garden set up, and food vendors were available.

My favorite booth on display for Buffalo Bill Days, however, was this educational display and program for HawkQuest.  

HawkQuest is a Colorado nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)3 charitable organization. HawkQuest's approach is for education in classrooms and lecture halls, and is participatory, allowing the audience to experience HawkQuest's eagles, owls, falcons, and hawks at close range. The raptors in their care were injured and unable to be released back into the wild, or they were given up from private owners and sanctuaries.

HawkQuest has thirty-five different raptors, representing twenty-one different species. They had four raptors on display in their booth and gave explanations about each of them, as well as their mission statement and requests for donations, along with merchandise for sale. After seeing the program we were happy to make a donation!

These were the four raptors that Hawk Quest had on display at the celebration. The descriptions I've included under each photo are from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.

American Kestral

"Petite falcon roughly the same size as Mourning Dove, but with a larger head and wider tail. In flight, note long, narrow wings and square-tipped tail. Often seen perched on telephone wires, along roadsides, in open country with short vegetation and few trees. From a perch or hovering, they usually drop to the ground to snatch small mammals and insects. Nests in cavities. Widespread across the Americas."

Barn Owl

"Medium-sized owl with a heart-shaped facial disc and deep dark eyes; the only Tyto owl present throughout much of its range. Varies across a wide global range, but always note white-and-black speckling on the upper parts, beautiful gray-and-tawny wings, and a large round head. The color of the facial disc and underparts varies from pure white to rusty orange. Hunts primarily rodents in open areas by night, foraging with a slow and buoyant flight. Roosts in old buildings, tree hollows, caves, and nest boxes by day. Its call is a bone-chilling, rising shriek."

 Harris Hawk

"Dark hawk found in deserts and scrubby open woodland. Brown overall with bright rufous shoulders and thighs. Tail black with white tip and white base. Immatures have variable white markings on the underparts. Unique among raptors for its social behavior; nests and hunts in groups. Feeds on mammals."

Bald Eagle

"Majestic adults have a blackish-brown body with white head and tail. Several stages of immature plumages aren't quite as majestic, from fully dark brown to messy and mottled with large patches of white. Look especially for white mottling on the belly of immatures. Scavenges and hunts near bodies of water. Soars with wings flat, like a large, dark plank. The Head appears large in flight; and projects far in front of the wings. Surprisingly weak-sounding vocalization is a series of high-pitched whistles.

The bald eagle was the star of the show!  

She was a rescue from Alaska and had an injured wing that had healed but prevented her from flying well enough to hunt.  During most of the lecture she was wearing a hood, but her handler took it off and allowed her to stretch her wings for the audience. 

The bald eagle is Alaska’s largest resident bird of prey with a wing span of up to 7.5 feet (2.3 m) and weight between 8 to 14 pounds (3.6 – 6.4 kg). Found only in North America, bald eagles are more abundant in Alaska than anywhere else in the United States. The Alaska population is estimated at 30,000 birds. 

We were really impressed by HawkQuest and their effort to care for these raptors and lead educational programs about them.  If you'd like to help their educational mission you can go to their "How to Help" page on their website or visit their online gift shop which contains books, apparel, hats, notecards, etc.  They also have a Facebook Page.  If you love birds and raptors they are a wonderful organization to support!

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The Historic Manor House at Christmas

 As promised in my last post, I wanted to show a little more of the "Old Fashioned Christmas" neighborhood party that was held at a special mansion that is located in our community, called the Manor House.

Click on to enlarge

A plaque inside the house tells of its illustrious first owner, John C. Shaffer, who built the house and turned the land into an award-winning cattle ranch.

John C. Shaffer in the center surrounded by his wife, two sons, two daughters-in-law and grandchildren.  He named his ranch Ken Caryl after his sons, Kent and Carroll.

The Manor House looked very impressive from its position on the highest hill in the valley, all lit for the Christmas season.

The Manor house is now privately owned and is used primarily as an event/wedding center.  The owners opened the house to the Ken Caryl Community to see how it was decorated for Christmas and to allow for the community to gather and celebrate.

It was a very well attended event! There were food trucks outside and the bar was full of customers. Neighbors were having a good time sitting and talking.

We enjoyed seeing the beautiful decorations...

...and fine antiques.

The Manor House was also the site of frequent entertainment in the Shaffer years, and frequent guests were President Theodore Roosevelt, and President William Howard Taft, as well as industrial chieftains from around the world and celebrities of the time.

The staircase is lined with historical photographs.

 Upstairs, the crowd was thinner and we were able to enjoy a quieter conversation. Our daughter and granddaughter are in one of the photos.

This large ballroom is a recent addition to the house, and most often used for wedding ceremonies and receptions.  On this evening a band was playing music to entertain our fellow residents.

It was so nice to visit this historic home for the Christmas holiday and meet with neighbors to celebrate the season in style.  I hope it will become an annual tradition!

It would be remiss if I did not mention how sad I am for the terrible fires occurring in Australia during this their summer season, and the concurrent destruction of human life and property and wildlife. I visited Australia in 2011 and enjoyed all its beauty.  One of the highlights of my trip was visiting Taronga Zoo--click here to see that post--and where I had the chance to hold this koala bear, as well as do a "walkabout" with kangaroos. Wildfire is always a danger in the United States West, so I truly sympathize with all the people of Australia and I hope and pray all the fires will be resolved very soon!

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It Was a Very Merry Christmas, and Wishes for the New Year

Hello again, faithful readers and new friends! December came with a short "after Thanksgiving" rush to get everything prepared for Christmas, and all my thoughts about updating my blog fell by the wayside.  As you can see from the photos above we decorated as usual, although we also had to maintain the antics of two "elves on the shelf" every day as our oldest granddaughter was staying with us most of the time along with my daughter, who was recovering from heart valve surgery. Thankfully, our daughter was strong enough to return full time to her home after Christmas, and the elves will return to her home next year. Finding new situations and places for them to be every night, for our granddaughter to discover, created a lot of last-minute sneaking downstairs in the wee hours for us (smile). In case you don't know the legend behind the elves, click here.

There is also a photo of my husband in the collage above, pressing cooked potatoes as we prepared one of our favorite holiday traditional treats--savory Italian zeppole. You can see how we make these every year on this blog post: click here.

I was also busy baking the traditional Christmas cookies that my family enjoys every year, as well as a few Nordic Ware holiday pan pumpkin cakes.  You can find some of my cookie recipes here and the pumpkin bread recipe here.  This year I had extra fig, date, and nut filling leftover from making cookies and added it to the pumpkin bread dough. It made the cakes really extra moist delicious!  

As always, we hosted our traditional Italian Christmas Eve Fish Feast. My husband's family always made at least 13 different fish, so I follow suit.  My daughter helped me this year and it was so nice spending that time together. Everyone takes home a tray of leftovers and nothing goes to waste! This year my son's in-laws, including his sister-in-law and her family, were our guests.

Our four grand blessings!

Of course, we also had lots of fun all month! We made a gingerbread house, visited Santa Claus at a party at our neighborhood ranch house, went to a drive-through at a nearby "Christmas in Color" light show, and continued to move those pesky elves around the house!

We took a horse and carriage ride around our neighborhood...

...plus attended an "Old Fashioned Christmas" holiday open house at the beautiful 100 years plus Manor House that is located in our community. I have more photos to show, and an interesting history to tell about this house, that I'll share in my next post.

I wish you all a Healthy and Happy New Year, and a new decade! 2020!

Do you make resolutions or chose a special word to define what you hope for in the new year? My word is "health."

More than ever this year, we have learned the expression "health is wealth" to be true and we hope all the health challenges that my family faced will be behind us.  We hope to improve our health as much as possible this year and to be even more grateful for each new day.

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Skagway, Alaska and the Yukon, Canada

Skagway, Alaska, is located at the northernmost point of the Inside Passage in Southeast Alaska. It's home to many gold-rush-era buildings that have been preserved as part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. The streets are lined with wooden boardwalks and colorful, restored buildings, looking much as they did over 100 years ago. When our cruise ship docked in the Skagway port for the day we had an opportunity to walk around this charming little touristy town before our bus excursion into the Yukon region of Canada began.

Double click on the map to enlarge to its fullest to see the gold rush trails in the small box.

The Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896 when gold was found in the Klondike region of Canada's Yukon Territory. On July 29, 1897, the steamer Queen brought the first boatload of prospectors to Skagway. More ships brought thousands of hopeful miners, called "Stampeders," into the new towns of Skagway and Dyea, where they prepared for the 600-mile journey to the goldfields in the Yukon region of Canada.

To prevent mass starvation in the remote Yukon Territory, the Canadian government required every stampeder to bring a year's supply of goods with him before crossing the border. Chilkoot Pass, a high mountain pass through the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains in the U.S. state of Alaska and British Columbia, Canada, was the first route the Stampeders used, and as you can see in the vintage photos above, the men carried their heavy loads of supplies on their backs. As the gold rush progressed, three aerial tramways and several surface hoists were constructed and operated briefly over the pass. 

When the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad was built and connected Skagway with Whitehorse, Canada, the Chilkoot Pass route fell out of favor with miners.

A view of the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad from the Klondike Highway. The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad runs past the famously steep Chilkoot Trail and offers sweeping mountain views during its climb toward Canada. 

As we walked around Skagway we saw many tourist souvenir type shops, but we did learn of a few historic places. The "haunted" Golden North Hotel--seen in the center of the top collage photo above--is the oldest hotel in Alaska. We also learned that the Arctic Brotherhood Hall--the building on the extreme right in the lower photo above-- was built in 1899, and has more than 8,883 driftwood sticks nailed to its facade, is thought to be the most photographed building in Alaska! The club was formed by a group of gold prospectors who arrived in Skagway from the City of Seattle ocean steamer, to set off for the Klondike gold fields seeking fortune. The club was a place for miners to connect and look out for each other.

The Red Onion Saloon was built in 1897 and operated as a saloon, dance hall and one of the finest bordellos in Skagway. It is now a bar, restaurant, and museum, with also a "haunted" history. Tours of the saloon by "good time girls" are available for $10

When on a cruise, one has to plan day excursions in advance, especially if you don't want to be closed out of a popular one. When my husband and I looked at the available excursions for our ship's day stop in Skagway, Alaska, we decided to pick an eight-hour bus ride tour of the Canadian Yukon, instead of staying in town or riding the White Pass Railroad.

I was excited to see this legendary part of Canada--the historic land of the Klondike Gold Rush, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the land of rugged natural beauty and wilderness.  Another influence for me was my love of the book Mrs. Mike that I read as a young adult.  I remembered it was the most thrilling and poignant book I ever read at that time of my life, and it made me hope to be able to see the wilderness of western Canada someday. I had visited Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in Alberta, Canada a few years ago--click here to read that post--and now I was excited to see a small part of the Yukon.

We began the bus ride in Skagway to Carcross, on the Klondike Highway.  The highway links the Alaskan coastal town of Skagway to Yukon's Dawson City. Its route somewhat parallels the route used by prospectors in the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush.

The weather was overcast and misty. That seems to be fairly common for Alaska in the month of June.

We passed waterfalls that ran down the entire mountain...

...and emptied into the beautiful winding river.

At one point we're excited to see a moose running across the river! Can you spy him in the photos above?  Click on the collage to enlarge it for a bigger view.

We saw beautiful vistas during the drive ...

... of White Pass, British Columbia, the Yukon, and Lake Bennett. Our bus driver, who was also our tour guide, was very informative and told us interesting stories about the Yukon as she drove and at each stop along the way.  Bove Island in Tagish Lake can be seen in the photo above.

We stopped at the Carcross Desert. It is often considered the smallest desert in the world. The Carcross Desert measures approximately 1 square mile (2.6 km2), or 640 acres. 

We also made a stop at Emerald Lake.  The color derives from light reflecting off white deposits of marl, a mixture of clay and calcium carbonate, at the bottom of the shallow waters. The high concentration of calcium carbonate in the water here comes from limestone gravels eroded from the nearby mountains and deposited here 14,000 years ago by the glaciers of the last ice age.

We visited the Yukon Suspension Bridge, which is 200 ft (60.96 meters) long and stretches 57 ft (17.36 meters) over raging rapids on the Tutshi River Canyon.

Along with the spectacular views at this location, there were trails, an outdoor museum, a restaurant, and shops located at the bridge site.

My husband fit right in with this vintage photo of Royal Canadian Mounties that was part of the outdoor museum! The North-West Mounted Police maintained peace and order in the Yukon and protected the gold seekers from themselves.

Our next stop was at the Caribou Crossing Trading Post where there was an Alaskan Husky Dog training camp! These are the breed of dogs that are trained to pull dog sleds over the heavy snows of winter, and also to race in the Iditarod.

There were adorable new puppies and star athlete dogs to view!

Please double click on the photo to enlarge to read

Some interesting information about Alaskan Husky Dogs on these placards.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Museum is also located at this site. It commemorates the role that the Mounties played in the developing Yukon with interesting exhibits.

We learned what it took to manage this vast and environmentally unforgiving terrain. It certainly reminded me of what I read in my favorite novel, Mrs. Mike.

Taxidermy creatures of Yukon animals in realistic poses, both from the past and the present, were also on display.  These were just a small portion of what we saw.

The scenery at the trading post was also very impressive!

Next, we drove into the town of Carcross, also know as Caribou Crossing

We unboarded the bus at Carcross Commons where 18 artisans’ boutiques, a restaurant, a coffee shop, and a playground are located. The Commons also hosts the Skookum Jim’s House, which is currently home for Parks Canada – Chilkoot office and a Mac Bride Museum exhibition about the Gold Rush.

Examples of Tagish First Nation (CTFN) totems.  Totem poles have deep meaning to the Carcross-Tagish people, representing clan stories and accomplishments.

 Please click on to enlarge photo

St. Saviour’s Anglican Church was founded in 1904. In 1903, St. Saviour church saw the foundation of the Chooutla Residential School, the largest residential school in the Yukon.

In the upper right of the photo collage is the Carcross Learning Centre, which showcases art, culture, and history of the community and the Carcross/Tagish First Nation people. It exists to help users learn and understand the culture of the Inland Tlingit and Tagish peoples' way of life. This multi-purpose facility also serves as a central gathering place for the Community.

The Matthew Watson General Store is the oldest store operated in the Yukon. Established during the Gold Rush, the original two sections building was moved to Carcross in 1909.

On our ride back to Skagway, Alaska, we again passed by beautiful scenery.

Our bus driver made a bouquet of wildflowers that she picked at each stop along the way of our tour and placed them on her dashboard.  The dandelion flowers we saw in the Yukon were the largest I ever saw!  We had about an hour before we had to return to our cruise ship for its sail away from Skagway, so my husband and I stopped in at The Skagway Brewery to try their Spruce Tip Blonde Ale Beer.  We heard so much about spruce tip beer all through our Alaska voyage, from most of our tour bus drivers, and we were curious to try it. 

Spruce beer is a beverage flavored with the buds, needles, or essence of spruce trees. Using evergreen needles to create beverages originated with the Indigenous peoples of North America who used the drink as a cure for scurvy during the winter months when fresh fruits were not available, as the fresh shoots of many spruces and pines are a natural source of vitamin C.  The Skagway Brewery beer was very refreshing and had a nice citrus taste.

I know this was a very long post--thanks so much for reading it and allowing me to re-live our wonderful day in Skagway and a portion of the Canadian Yukon.  My next post will visit Juneau-the capital of Alaska.  I hope you will return next week!

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