Visiting Family & Friends

For the last two months I have spent most of my time visiting family and friends in Colorado, North Dakota and Pennsylvania rather than blogging.  (That will certainly tell you where my priorities lie,
won't it?)  I am posting this from York, Pennsylvania, the home of Suzanne, James and Audrey (4),
where I will be a few more days.  Then it is home to Silverton for a couple of months of snow shoveling (I hope), visits by the fire with friends, and time to reflect on my wonderful visits.

There have been some great adventures as well as visits.  How many of you have enjoyed driving across Wyoming on the back roads, where not even the buffalo roam anymore---just a few sheep, the occasional cow, and a few oil rigs pierce the great, open sky with their derricks.  Who has been to the Snyders of Hanover pretzel factory where 250,000 pounds of wheat are turned into pretzels of every conceivable size and shape each day?  Have you driven through the beautiful farm country of SW Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Amish land) where green fields roll away to the rivers and streams, often being cultivated by a team of six horses?  Or, had the great good fortune to attend a symphony
concert with your five-year-old grandson who hopes to play the tuba one day? (Think Denver
Sympony with Finn after a 70th birthday dinner with his family---James Bond music!)

Then there was the day I spent at Gettyburg, reliving the battle at the wonderful new museum
where I learned that by 1850 the United States enslaved more people than any other country in the world.  Somehow this stunned me...or the day I went along on a cattle moving trip in ND in a four-wheeler!  Picture me wrapped in a large fleece blanket (yep---Trav---it was the one that went to
Virginia with you!), seat-belted into the four-wheeler with Dean Helling, rocketing along through a
dry cornfield after black angus cattle that had other ideas about where they wanted to go!