Day Trip

On Wednesday July 23 we took our new granddaughter on a day trip with us. Our daughter was going to come along but she woke up sick so to give her a day of rest grandpa and grandma picked up Elizabeth and took her with us on our day trip. We went to the Needle in a Haystack quilt shop near Severy, Ks. where I found some neat things to make. Then we went on to Sedan, Ks. to the Emmett Kelly Museum, he was a famous clown who was born and lived a short while in Sedan. Then it was on to Henry's Candy factor in Dexter, Ks. Our last stop was in Ark City, Ks. where we met with a friend at Graves Drug Store. We had a picture taken there with our granddaughter Elizabeth. We enjoyed our day very much. Then our daughter felt she needed a little more R & R so Elizabeth got to spend her first night with grandma and grandpa. The next morning we snapped the picture with her wearing her onsie that says "When God created Me he was just showing off". That reminds me of Psalm 139 where God says that each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made. In the New Living Translation verse 14 says "Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it." May each of us know how precious we are in God's sight!!!

New Member in the family

Meet the newest member of our family, Elizabeth Dawn born July 10, 2008 weighing in at 6 lbs. 10 oz. and 19 1/2 inches long to our daughter Heather and her husband Steve.

Elizabeth with Grandpa Roger

Elizabeth with Grandma Carol and asleep in her Daddy's arms

5th Birthday Trip

I thought it was time to add our 5th birthday trip to this blog. Our last birthday trip in 2007 occurred on Nov. 9, 2007 when we celebrated Cherie's birthday. We first stopped at the Mustard Seed Coffee Shop and Deli in Buhler, Ks where we enjoyed a delicious lunch and where they also served a variety of coffees and teas. We then walked around town and watch the glass blowers at Garnett Art Glass. It was then on to the Corn Maze where we enjoyed finding the clues to get out of the Maze. After that we went back to our place where we enjoyed homemade scones and tea. This wraps up our year of birthday trips. I think we all enjoyed the fun and learned a bit about each other as well. Above is Cherie and Mark at the Mustard Seed Coffee Shop. Below are a few of the items they make at the Art Glass, then a picture at the Corn Maze, then our table set up for tea.

4th Birthday Trip

Today was our 4th Birthday trip honoring Heather's birthday. We went to the Scottish Festival in McPherson, Ks. That was Carol's first time going. It was interesting watching men in kilts pick up telephone poles and throw them, we saw some scottish dancers and a lot of bagpipe music. They had the parade of Tartans at noon and they had many Pipe and Drum Corps there even as far away as Texas. There were some people there from Oregon and Washington.

Heather wanted a purse made from either the Blair Tartan or the Moran Tartan so we all chipped in and she chose the Moran Tartan for her purse.

For whatever reasons I forgot the camera so I don't have any pictures but you can go to a couple of websites. The first one is www.macfestival.org that one has pictures of the festival and then you can go to www.ozhighlandfarm.com where you can go to find out about Highland Cattle. We had a taste of their meat at the festival.

Sorry I forgot the camera.

Anniversary Trip

Today we celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary by going on a road trip to Kansas City to see the Steamboat Arabia Museum. That was pretty impressive, how they found it and everything that was still on the steamboat still in fairly good condition. One of the guys who found it talked to our group. If you want to know more you can go to www.1856.com


Then it was back on the road on the way back to Abilene where we were going to eat for the evening. On the way we stopped at Grandma Hoerner's Gourmet Store and Factory. They sell all natural foods with not preservatives, etc. They had some raspberry and strawberry preserves on sale buy one get one free because they were not labeled correctly. So we took advantage of that then they had some salsa that we couldn't resist and we brought home some organic cane sugar. At the checkout we saw that they had some Green Tea Mints that we couldn't pass up. To check out Grandma Hoerner's you can go to www.grandmahoerners.com and then the website for the mints is www.senchanaturals.com

From there we were on to Abilene where we ate our anniversary dinner at the Brookville Hotel. It is a replica of the real one that was in Brookville. Still the same good chicken dinners though. If you are interested you can check them out at www.brookvillehotel.com

That is the end of our day celebrating 32 years of marriage. We commented that 32 years ago we were a little slimmer and neither of us wore glasses back then. It was an enjoyable day together.

3rd Birthday Trip

Today, August 26, we took our 3rd birthday road trip to Holton, Kansas. Holton is north of Topeka. This was a combined birthday trip as Roger and Carol both have birthdays in August so we combined it into one trip.
Our first stop was at the Waterfall Restaruant which is 1/2 mile south of Holton on Highway 75. We enjoyed good home cooking, with smoked chicken, brisket, pulled pork, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy on the buffet with a trip to the salad bar. Dessert was a pumpkin dessert and blueberry dessert which we took a little of each. They are also home to the largest cinnamon rolls, Heather registered to win a 15 pound cinnamon roll. We were going to purchase their single cinnamon rolls which they say are the size of a large plate but they were sold out of them by the time we got there. Guess we will have to try that at another time. All of their food is made from scratch! That was very good!!!

The above picture I took of the front of the menu.

The above picture is of the waterfall that greets you as you enter the restaurant. After enjoying our noon meal here we went on into Holton and walked around the square and stopped inside an antique store and while there we watched a guy sandblast names into bricks on the sidewalk. I always wondered how they did that now I know. Then it was heading back west on I-70 and going to Rock City at Minneapolis, Kansas which is 20 miles north of the I-70 and I-135 intersection.

There are 200 huge sandstone concretions which were depostied here when Kansas was covered by an inland sea. It is a National Natural Landmark. We enjoyed looking at all of the formations and taking pictures on the rocks. If you look at the one rock above it almost looks like a heart imprinted on the side.

Here we are beside one of the rocks. Mark was able to get a picture of all six of us on the rocks. Which may appear in our Christmas cards this year! Hope you enjoyed this trip. We have two more to go and the next one will be for Heather in September. Scottish Festival here we come!!!

Estes Park, Colorado

We left for Estes Park, Colorado the morning of June 26 and returned the evening of June 29. This was our first time in the Estes Park area and I really enjoyed it. We stayed at the Whispering Pines Cottages and had an enjoyable stay there. Our first evening there we grilled some hamburgers and had a little visitor, a red fox thought our hamburgers smelled awfully good too. We took a few pictures of him but we didn't share our food. We also saw an Elk behind our cottage as well.

The next morning we set out for Grand Lake, Colorado which was 48 miles by way of Trail Ridge road through Rocky Mountain National Park. Neither of us realized we were going to be 12, 183 feet up in the mountains before we reached our destination. For a couple who really don't like heights this was quite a challenge. We stopped at the various places to pull over along the way and finally made it to Grand Lake in early afternoon. The picture below was taken at Alpine Visitors Center. We were told that the poles were used to measure the snow.

The picture below is one taken of the valley below. We did not feel that Grand Lake was as interesting as we were told it was and we didn't stay very long. We did walk a trail that took us to Adam's Falls which was worth the walk to see. Then we took another route back to Estes Park.

On Thursday we walked downtown and enjoyed the River Walk, while we were downtown in the middle of town there is a small triangular park area and there were several Elk and their babies enjoying the grass and the shade. A lot of people stopped to take their picture. The rangers finally came along and sent the Elk back into the woods as it was too dangerous for them to be in town.

During the afternoon we went back to Rocky Mountain National Park to the area called Horseshoe Park which is not very far in to see if we could see a Big Horn Sheep. We were able to see one up on the side of the mountain. We spent the rest of the day checking out things in Estes Park. We had an enjoyable trip, now it is back to our daily routine.