Busy, busy, busy…

 I know some folks have a tough time transitioning to retirement. We have friends who last only a couple of weeks or months before they return to some type of employment because they don’t quite know what to do with all their newfound free time.

I, for one, haven’t had that problem. While I thoroughly enjoyed most aspects of my career I knew that while I was working I never had enough free time to pursue all the other things I was passionate about. From travel to honing my guitar skills (or lack thereof!) to catching up on my reading, and of course the ever present honey-do list which never seems to get any shorter, I still find myself with not enough time to do all the things I love to do.

Travel is something my wife and I have always enjoyed but while working, yet even with the very generous PTO (paid time off) allowance my employer gave employees we found ourselves wanting more time to see the things of interest to us. Now the only limitation is our travel BUDGET which, alas, never seems to have enough on hand to fund all the wonderful trips my wife dreams up. Plus, post-COVID a lot of us retirees are playing catch up on our travel aspirations and hey, as if you didn’t know, it’s still a big, beautiful world out there. 

We are fortunate to live in Colorado so we don’t even need to travel very far to scratch our travel itch. This summer we’ve been lucky enough to share our State with some out-of-State friends and family and even after living in the State for more than 50 years I’m still amazed at what I haven’t yet seen or experienced in this wonderful place we call home. 

Of course Colorado is bounded on all sides by other beautiful States and we started our summer revisiting one of our favorite places - Grand Teton country in northwest Wyoming. There too I find myself seeking out places and things still unexplored and I tried to capture some of those in the following video:

The area around Jackson Hole didn’t disappoint though candidly it seems slightly more empty and lonely now that it was devoid of its most famous citizen - Bear 399. Sadly she was struck and killed by a vehicle late last year and perhaps in mourning her loss we didn’t see a single bear during our three week visit.

Last Fall we had been lucky enough to take a Fall foliage cruise from Boston to Quebec City and while in Quebec my wife had the chance to reconnect with one of her cousins that she hadn’t seen since she was a youngster. Val had been nice enough to spend a day and a half being our personal tour guide  as she showed us the nooks and crannies of that special city. To reciprocate we invited Val and her partner Nat to visit us in Colorado. Due to the political upheaval and anger of Canadians suddenly being the target of our President’s ire they were reluctant to head south of the border but we managed to assuage their concerns by assuring them that Coloradans are a friendly bunch and that they would be warmly welcomed and that in fact turned out to be the case. Val and Nat spent 3 weeks traversing almost every corner of our State and we got to share in some of their exploration. One thing neither my wife or I had done in all our years here was to take the Royal Gorge Train and we had a wonderful day and weather riding the rails and gazing a thousand feet upward at the Royal Gorge Bridge which we have visited several times. If you’re into trains and heck, even if you’re not, you’ll enjoy this unique trip along the Arkansas river. Here’s a quick video of that day trip from Denver:

And just to get caught up, just last weekend we headed up to one of my favorite small towns, Leadville, to see another event I had never been to. Part of Leadville’s annual Boom Days Celebration is a burro race and I’ve got to admit I fell in love with these adorable asses. And, oh, they can run, at least when they’re so inclined but their sometimes balky behavior just makes them all the more endearing.So yes, I got out my camera and here’s some of what I saw:

Perhaps you can now understand while I’m perpetually running out of time. As I always tell my wife, the grass can get mowed manana. In the meantime I’ve got burros to watch get their ass up the pass. What could be better?