Trace Hybertson who lives near by and is 12 years old and
then on to pick up Ariel at her house in Erie. From there we
drove another 20 miles to Keensburg, Colorado. There we
visited the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary. Of course,
we picked one of the coldest days of this winter to do this.
It was 17 degrees F. and we were there early, just as they
opened at 9 AM. Clearly, they expected zero people on such a
day, but were very nice and gave us the spiel about the
animals. They rescue large mammals from people who have
gotten them somehow as small pups, kittens, whatever and now
they are adult carnivores and they don't know what to do
with them! The Sanctuary has many tigers, one grizzly bear
that we saw. There may be more. Three Cougars, again there
may be more and many lions. A few small animals, too.
After they rescue an animal it is put in a small pen and
usually with another animal of its species. The other
animal is called a baby sitter and is an adult, relaxed
and quite comfortable in the setting. As the new animal
becomes accustomed to the sanctuary s/he is move to a
larger pen with more animals and then a larger one until
s/he is in a very larger area which almost amounts to
"freedom."
It is a very interesting place and we had a good time
although we almost froze our buns off!
On Tuesday Ariel made another stuffed toy; this one was
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. She also learned how to use
the glue gun and how NOT to use the glue gun.
In the afternoon we went to Costco and Target and then
the rec center where she spent an hour and a half in the
pool.
On Wednesday Robyn arrived. She left Walla Walla in the
morning and drove to Spokane and from there flew to DIA and
then took the bus to Boulder where we picked her up as she
was getting off the bus. That made for a long day, but she
seemed not to feel it. I would have been pooped. Carl
asked me if I felt old when I was Robyn's age (58) and I
did not, but somewhere along the line I realized that I
don't FEEL old, but I get tired more easily and then I start
making mistakes. That would make the kind of traveling I
did when I was younger much more difficult. I used to get
tired after a long trip (24-30 hours), but that wasn't a big
deal. Now it would be because of the confusion and/or
mistakes I might make. It would require me to be very
thoughtful and very careful to the point where it would
cease to be fun.
Anyway, Robyn didn't have those problems and at her age I
didn't either.
On Thursday Robert and she built racks for the batteries we
brought back from RMBL. On Friday Robyn met with Ian, her
boss at the lobby of the St. Julien for a meeting. The
lobby is lovely, large and I assumed it would be a good
place to meet and no one would question their being there.
That turned out to be correct. Friday evening we all went
to a cocktail party at a gorgeous home on Mapleton Ave. It
was a chance for the RMBL folks to give their pitch and try
and get us to give them more money and a chance for us to
visit with some interesting people and have come great
refreshments.
Robyn is off again today for more meetings and has a
breakfast meeting tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM. In the
afternoon Carl, Martha and Ariel are coming for dinner and
to see Robyn and celebrate her birthday, only a week late.
So..the Israel and Hamas continue to go at each other. I
believe that the US should stop sending money to Israel
until and unless they stop killing Palestinians. I realize
that the rockets that Hamas keeps throwing at them is a pain
and a problem. In this war hundreds of Palestinians have
been killed and 1/3 of them are children while 13 Jews have
been killed and they were all soldiers.
