We can never get enough of camping in the Rockies so we planned a two week trip to New Mexico and Colorado. However we only got as far as New Mexico. We had intended to stop near Red River for a few days on the way to Colorado but we found such a nice place to camp in Carson National Forrest that we just decided to stay. So this gave us a chance for an extended exploration of the entire area. We managed to get "lost" once or twice which is always good for discovering new places. Getting lost in this part of New Mexico is really easy since most of the fire roads and jeep trails through the Indian reservations are not on any map (or the GPS either). So it was kinda fun to be blowing along at 60 MPH down a dirt road to nowhere after we missed the unmarked turn to the road around the western side of Herron Lake. Fortunately after 20 miles or so through Apache open range land our road ended up exactly where we would have wanted to be if we had known where we were (sort of, maybe, I think). I would not want to run out of gas or have a flat out there. Nothing but wild horses for 50 miles or so.

We had a great trip and we are ready to go back. We also took a few photos which you can see here

We were on our way home from MD Anderson Cancer in Houston last Friday (June 7) when I figured out that I did not have any doctor appointments for the following week. So I said to Joy, "Let's go to Colorado". So we got home, did some laundry and took off for Ouray the next morning. It was a wonderful week and the first time we have had a chance to get away in two years. We got there as spring was busting out and before the snow was gone. In fact quite a few mountain passes were still closed. A few passes have so much snow that Colorado DOT says they aren't going to open this year!

One thing brought tears to our eyes. The bad fire we were in a few years ago northwest of Creede did far more damage than we knew at the time. Basically everything is gone from Creede to Lake City on both sides of CO 149. This has always been our favorite road in North America. Now it will be another 100 years until it returns to its former glory. Very sad. On the other hand, north of Lake City the Aspens were just leafing out. We have never seen anything like the mountain sides covered in a fluorescent lime green that just looked unreal. You will see it in some of our photos. It was just amazing.

With so much snow all of the streams were running out of bank and our favorite waterfalls were just glorious. Of course this has destroyed the fly fishing and river rafting business. It will be late July before water levels are down to normal. My favorite fly fishing shop, Dan's Fly Shop, in Lake City was closed and probably won't open for a month.

Over on the other side in Ouray was pretty much the same with snow everywhere, rivers and streams out of bank and some passes impassable. But it was just beautiful and very much worth the trip. I hope you enjoy some of the photos we took on the trip which you can view here.

We have been to Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge many times and we just never get tired of it. It is a a three and a half hour drive from our home so we usually leave early enough on Saturday to be there for sunrise. The wildlife are active from just before sunrise until about 10 AM and then again from about 4PM until just after sunset.



So that leaves plenty of time to drive over to Meers for a World Famous Meersburger. This is a really unusual burger joint. The burgers are huge and they have a new one that is even more huge. They raise all of their own grass fed Texas Longhorn cattle right on the premises. They grind their beef fresh every day. Nothing is ever frozen. All of the fixin's come from local farms. They also make their own ice cream to serve with the peach cobbler. It is not humanly possible to leave this place hungry. I don't know if it was the best hamburger I ever had but it is in the top two or three.

There are numerous hotels nearby in Lawton. And there are a half dozen museums in town, on the Comanche Nation reservation and at Fort Sill. And, of course, there are a zillion casinos on the reservation as well. So there is plenty to see and do in and around the Wichita Mountains NWR and Lawton area.

A few of the many images we have taken at Wichita Mountains NWR are here.

We had a nice drive over to Winnsboro ostensibly to look for fall color but we were about a week to ten days too late for the peak. It was still a nice drive and we got to drop in on the Winnsboro Antique Car show which is a part of their annual fall festival which runs throughout the month of October. The car show was great fun and their were some unexpected beauties in the display. My favorite was a white 1946 Lincoln Continental convertible with a 3.4 liter V12 engine.




One thing that I noticed that I thought was strange was that all of the old Ford F100's had Chevy engines. So I asked one of the owners and he told me that no one uses a Ford engine because they weren't any good when new and didn't last long enough to be used in a running antique. All of the Model A Fords still use Ford engines though.

Some of our images from the car show can be found here.

Joy is compiling a cookbook to include some of the zillions of recipes she has collected over the years. Currently they occupy an overstuffed 3-inch loose leaf binder. Many of them are just cut out from various printed materials and just lay loose in the binder. Others are stuffed into image protectors. Over all it is a complete mess although Joy maintains she knows where everything is. So now it is all going into a cookbook created in iBooks. The book itself is just beautiful. Everything falls into one of several categories and it is all indexed and cross indexed so it is really easy to find anything. And when using it while cooking you just have to prop up your iPad on a kitchen counter somewhere and everything comes easily to hand. Because it is all digital it is easy to search for anything by any keyword such as a recipe name, ingredient or whatever you like.

Jambalaya

The fun part for me is that I get to take pictures of all of the dishes for the cookbook as we prepare them. I have taken over the dining room with a semi-permanent food photography setup. This makes it very easy to photograph all the dishes since my lights are already setup and adjusted correctly for food photography. The setup uses two AlienBees B800s. The key light is a 36-inch softbox and the fill light is a 32-inch octabox. There is also a 36-inch white reflector in the background. This gives very uniform lighting with just a hint of a shadow for depth. I shoot tethered into my MacBook Pro sometimes but it is not really necessary since the lighting setup has been perfected through a lot of testing. All in all a fun project.