Blossoms @ MindSay

Have been getting some hiking in every day for the past 3 days- feels good - like training for the daily hikes in Yellowstone in just a few short weeks.

Friday we took the entire core (70+ kids) down 6 1/2 miles of the Monument Canyon trail in Colorado National Monument. With bus schedules dictating our day ... and a return trip to the "bus barn" after leaving the school, to trade buses as something was broken and the first bus could not make the trip up into the Monument.... we had a mere 3 1/2 hours to make the entire trek . . . a process I lovingly call the "death march". It turned out to be a great day, though... the kids were all troopers and I think most if not all of them had some fun! Here are a few being eaten by FROG ROCK! LOL!

 


Yesterday I grabbed a friend who was with me when we missed a cache.... ended up on a trail way above the desired location... so, looking down on it some weeks ago, we pledged to return.... Turned out to be "Mike the Headless Chicken" Days in Fruita so the area was alive... and there was a "Hike for Mike" event going on in the very same area we were headed for. We discovered that the Mike this event was dedicated to was a fellow science teacher that died while on a field trip with students - hiking to Delicate Arch a couple of years ago. The proceeds will be used to help fund the extension of our riverfront trail - hopefully from one end of the valley to the other someday! After we went and retrieved the cache... I dug in my pocket and found enough to sponsor myself in the hike... seemed like a fitting memorial and a good cause! Today I called another friend (don't want to burn out hiking buddies!).. and off we went to walk down a streambed strewn with petroglyphs (technically pictographs, I believe)... headed to the Colorado River. A little over 2 miles each way.. and such a beautiful day! The cactus are just starting to bloom. So nice

She found the first stage of this multi-cache!



The Indian Paintbrush is in bloom- this is one of the largest clumps I have ever seen!
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Above.... look deep under the overhang to see the pictographs
and the claret cup cacti are just beginning to open up... my favorite!


Prickly pear cactus blossoms and yucca blooms in background

More pictographs...

No picture of the final adventure... there was another geocache just across the road when we got back to the parking area... so I headed over to grab it. Finding it under the juniper tree was no problem.. a large cookie tin covered with rocks. I moved the camo and reached for the can when the bright pattern of yellow and black caught my eye from under the can. Three coils of a snake, about and inch in diameter, were visible - it never moved, but I was frozen in my tracks... pretty sure I wasn't brave enough to continue retrieving ... and then replacing the can. But a bit hesitant to replace the camo, also. Finally I decided it was happy where it was and would allow me to push the rocks up around the can. I'll save signing THAT log for another day!

After a pretty intense wind and rainstorm over the weekend, and higher than average rainfalls this winter, the sun is out and the sky has wonderful cloud formations, above my flowering plum tree.

I turned into an apple blossom fairy yesterday.  Besides finally finding my perfect green nail polish and taking the perfect spring photos of them next to clovers and lilacs, it was a very blah day.  But I made the most of things by taking long walks along the river.  While I was taking the pix of me in the apple tree, an elderly neighbor who owned the apple tree yelled out, "Get out of here, Weirdo!"  When I explained to him that I was only taking photos of his beautifully blossomed apple tree, he just gave me a strange look.  I think he was more the weirdo than I was.

 

Later today, I changed my nail color to "cherry sparkle" (from a vintage 80's bottle of polish I found) and took pix of my nails sparkling next to some very purple petunias.  I might make a new blog header from some of these...

 

I want to visit my mother in the home today but my brother hasn't been answering his phone lately.  He's been a bit cranky.  He yelled at me yesterday for trying to call him while he took my nephews out to see Spiderman 3, but since he didn't come by, how else am I do reach him?  Oh, well.  I hope things will be better later.  For now, since it's a bit damp today, I am going to work on my website.

going into the city to commune with nature for a bit.  sounds paradoxical (is that the right usage of the word??)....anyways the cherry blossoms are in full bloom at the moment.  i'll go enjoy it where the crowds are least and maybe even climb the tree when no one's looking.  don't tell the park police.  . 

then afterwards........go shopping for my trip to FL.  my friend says i need to go in style if i'm going to such a trendy place.  HAH.  the last thing i care about is style right now.  but i guess i could acquire some more 'cute' clothes.  and get rid of some of my homely articles of clothing. 

it'd be unwise to quit. to not go into work tomorrow or ever again.  but i am dying to do just that.  haha ...like in the movie Office Space, I am so DONE!   the nice pay and benefits only help me so much when i don't feel like i am living at all.  i'll have more drive to earn a living if i'm doing something i care about right?  and where i am not constantly beaten down by insecure evil managers. 

my life needs to change now.  staying on this road will drive me into the ground soon enough.  action.  change.  it's possibly the most effective thing one can do but damnnnnnn it took me long enough to be ready for it. 

space ship living.... hmmmm    i guess someone out there thinks that's appropriate for this post.

Where to begin? Hmmm... there seems to be a sweet melancholy over mindsay with Vi gone. I will miss her, and hopefully she knows this. I hope that her holiday will go well....

Life brings us a lot of ups and downs, twists and turns...and all we can do is accept the fact that these are life lessons to us...no more, no less. The only individual justification is that there are so many ways that things can touch us... why is it that most people have to learn from experience... why can't an individual accept the knoweledge of someone who has lost everything because of a mistake...
living and learning...
we are all just children in this...
you may be 50 and still figuring out life...for it holds many punches.
I may be 31 but I hold a lifetime of knoweledge...experience alone has aged me decades. What is smart of me, is I know the journey is not over...there are so many more experiences out there for me, so many more years of education...for it is never truly over...and maybe by the end, I will be valedictorian and victorious.