Colorado

Nice to be back in Colorado again for our yearly visit. We stopped in Pueblo for a few days to visit Marlene and Dan, who live in the mountains outside of Pueblo in a little town called Beulah. The weather wasn't too cooperative, rainy and chilly, but we were able to take a nice hike around Beulah Mountain Park which has lots of streams and ponds.

One area of the park has several buildings including a small hotel. The building below is used for community events, weddings, and so on. The stone work is incredible especially considering it was constructed before the use of heavy machinery to move all the rocks and boulders.

Of course on the day we left Pueblo the weather improved - the sun came out and it warmed up. Our next stop was the Longmont/Lyons area where we spent much of our lives. So much has changed since we left here as the area continues to grow and grow.
We stayed for a week at the Boulder County Fairgrounds where we have stayed in previous years. In addition to being conveniently located, there are interesting walking trails in and near the Fairgrounds. We followed one trail that went by an osprey nest, then wound around several ponds and had beautiful views of the Front Range.

The osprey nest has a mounted camera to follow the  ospreys. The camera broadcasts live from the following link  Longmont Osprey Camera. There are 4 eggs in the nest but we haven't seen any hatch yet. We'll be keeping an eye out to see how things develop.
We  were able to observe the ospreys fishing and carrying their catch to the nest. As far as we could tell, after catching the fish the osprey doing the hunting returned to the nest and shared the fish with the osprey sitting on the eggs. After that it flew to another perch and continued eating the fish.

The ponds have an abundance of geese as well as other birds and waterfowl. We saw something different every day.

The Fairgrounds are busy every weekend - horse shows, car shows. antique shows, rodeos, a farmers market and all sorts of other events including what appeared to be a miniature horse or pony show. Not sure exactly what the difference is but this one was decked out for the occasion.