2000

Another enjoyable year at El Dorado Springs.    Dick continued to make it a showplace.    I think one of his most inventive jobs was this chain he put in the front of our house: 

The posts were originally at the back of the house and we didn't like them there, so he moved them to the front and then built the chain to hang inbetween.    He made the chain out of wood.     We got a lot of comments on this.    He also continued expanding the walks in the woods and built bridges over the creek.    By this time he had extended the paths into both our neighbors woods (with their permission) and we actually ended up with over two miles of trails and three bridges going over the creek.     Our neighbor actually went out and bought his own golf cart so he could take his family and visitors along the paths.    I walked them practically everyday and never tired of them.

We played a lot of golf too, very often with friends Les and Carolyn.     We would go to neighboring courses together and play too.   It was fun.   This photo was taken at our local course.

Mair visited us again in the spring and she and I took many local trips and walked every day together in the woods - lots of talking and sharing experiences.    After being separate for most of our lives, we really bonded with these visits.

Louise watched our animals while Dick and I took one trip together - we headed north and drove around Lake Superior.    It was a great trip and we both thoroughly enjoyed Mackinac Island:

Louise and I also took a trip together to Kentucky.     We were on the trail of some family history, but didn't have an awful lot of luck with that.

Our lack of 'luck' on this trip was mainly caused by being on the wrong path of an ancestor of the Craigs.     This Benjamin Craig was very interesting and we learned a whole lot about him, but unfortunately he turned out not to be one of Dick's and Louise's ancestors.     We had a lot of fun together though even being on the wrong trail.     We were both fascinated driving through the Kentucky tobacco area.     Neither one of us had seen tobacco farms before.

Our daily life was full of nature with the deer coming every day, and Dick feeding the huge catfish.    The martins in their season and the Canadian geese when they were there added to the enjoyment.    It really does stack up to being one of the best places we have lived:

This is the Purple Martin housing I was telling you about in a prior blog - I forgot I had this photo of it, with one of our daily deer below.

We started the year with a snow storm, but had a really big one just before Christmas.     I still fed the birds every day and walked down to the edge of the woods to feed the deer - it was a bit of a chore in the deep snow.

My final picture this year is another favorite of Lena.     She found herself a friend on the back of the chair.

Balance of 1999

The last year of the century!    I can remember as a child, I would think about the turn of the century and it seemed so far off, I couldn't possibly expect to see it - but here we were and still feeling we have a lot of years ahead of us.

It had already been a fun year and it continued to be that way.    We took a quick trip to Mt. Vernon for Bill and Midge Jones' 50th wedding anniversay (Debbie's parents), and then Debbie, Blake and Amber visited us for a while.  

We also attended one of the Craig family's reunion (Dick's Mom was a Craig), and had a great time visiting with uncles, aunts and cousins.     Bill and Frances made the trip too:

Bill and Frances came back home with us and the end of their visit overlapped with a visit from Marie and Mindy.     We 'girls' took a couple of trips together.    One to the Precious Moments Museum and Park,

and then to the Lake of the Ozarks.

Bill and Frances left and we spent a few more days thoroughly enjoying Marie and Mindy.   I especially like this photograph that Mindy took of the four of us:

The last highlight of the year was another trip to Mt. Vernon for me to attend the 75th anniversary of the B.P.W. Federation in Mt. Vernon.    They invited all the Past Presidents to attend.     It was enjoyable and it was nice to see the women I knew again, but I found it somewhat sad to see how small the group had become.     We had over 100 members in our years, but there was barely 30 any more and apparently this was prevalent throughout the country.

One sad note - I lost my beloved Callie.    She was about 17 years old and had a cancerous tumor which was giving her pain, so I had her put down.     I really did love that cat and she had some lovely ways of showing her love for me.

A couple of favorite photos to end the blog.    The first one of Willie was taken by Mindy during her visit.     The second one is my favorite of Pedro.    He had a very shake beginning to his life so it was lovely to see the trust he showed in me.

Well nothing catastrophic happened at the end of the year.     The banks didn't all close down.    The internet didn't crash.     The government didn't come to a standstill and the electricity stayed on - we simply went from 11.59pm on December 31st to 12.01am January 1st with nothing but the sound of Dick and I sleeping peacefully!    And we entered the 21st century.   

1999 continued

1999 really was an exciting year, full of great trips and people visiting us.

I started off the year by flying to England and spending ten days with Mair.    I landed in Manchester and my great niece and nephew picked me up and took me to Southport where Mair lived.     She and I spent a few fantastic days with her friend Jean who lived in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales.    It was my first visit to this part of England and I was absolutely enthralled with its beauty and the amazing little villages.

From there we went to Llandudno and spent a couple of days with our cousin and her husband.   

This photo of Mair is taken on the West Shore in Llandudno.   Our home was a couple of short blocks from this shore.     The hotel you can see in the background is where Lewis Carrol stayed with his daughter Alice, and where he wrote Alice in Wonderland.    Just looking at this photo brings back a torrent of memories.    I dearly love this town.

Not too long after this trip, Louise and I set off for Mt Rushmore.    Susan and Mark were living and working there at the time.     We drove across the lesser known roads across Nebraska to get there and stopped at a rare roadside attraction.     It was all done with cars, and duplicated Stonehenge.    Quite a feat by someone.

We drove across the Custer State Park and saw some pretty large herds of buffalo.

Mt. Rushmore itself was quite impressive and Suzanne, Louise and I took a side trip to the town of Deadwood, which I really enjoyed.    One of Dick's great\great\great uncles was sherrif of Deadwood and his portrait still hangs over one of the bars there.     He was there the same time as Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane, and wrote a small book about his time there.     Apparently the great romance between Bill and Jane was not as told in Hollywood.    He couldn't stand the sight of her and would say that he could smell her coming even before she came into sight!

On the way home we took the more direct route across Iowa, sightseeing along the way.     The Corn Palace was fascinating.     Inside was full of corn murals too and they are all done freshly each year.