I've not been feeling well which is why I've been away from blogland for a while, but I am mostly better now. Michael kept asking when I was going to update the blog and many times I offered to show him how to do it...but he didn't bite.

This morning I went along for the annual fall pilgrimage to Gays Mills to the squash stand and the apple orchard. Last year Mom, Leslie and Cina discovered a roadside farm stand that sells winter squash of every variety (and pie pumpkins, pictured above) for only 50 cents each! Obviously, everyone wanted to return to this cucurbita bargain bonanza. The squash are straight from the field and still covered in dirt. Limited by space in the car, we only bought 30.

Then we went to one of many apple orchards up in the bluffs above the Mississippi River. We found everyone's favorite apple, a relatively new variety called Honeycrisp, for only $28/bushel, whereas other orchards sold them for as much as $74/bushel! So we had to get a bushel of Honeycrisps to add to the apples we bought the day before. (The $28/bushel apples were seconds, but who cares!) Apparently I missed out on this apple craze all these years including the introduction of the famous Honeycrisps, not living anywhere where apple orchards are prolific. But everyone else walked into the store knowing exactly which was their favorite apple (Gala, Jonathan, Jonagold, Honeycrisp, and so on).

Then we went to the cheese store, where Ryan plugged his nose the entire time. I was delighted that they had a Norwegian brown cheese called Gjetost. I bought it once before thinking I owed it to my Scandinavian heritage to try it out, and it turns out Michael thought it was the best cheese ever. I haven't seen it in a store ever since, until today.

So I am returning to Colorado with a bushel of apples, a dozen squash, a sack of cheese, and at my brother Ben's insistence a few bottles of "the best BBQ sauce on earth," Cookie's Country Style (made in Iowa). From my parent's freezer, add several packages of frozen corn (this summer's harvest), a loaf or two four of my Mom's zucchini bread, and some homemade strawberry rhubarb jam. I guess you could call it a haul. Michael might not have liked my being gone for so long but I at least I can make it up to him with food, and after all, is there any other way?

Mom, Leslie, Ryan and I are visiting my Aunt Cina at her place on the Mississippi River in southern Wisconsin near Prairie du Chien. Cina has a trailer she parks here all summer and spends many if not most weekends here spring through fall. Yesterday and today Ryan fished off the dock and caught perch, crappie and bluegills. He also drove the boat, played in the leaves, ate s'mores, went to the pumpkin patch and...took a 2.5 hour nap today.

Cina and her friends have been coming to the river "for 50 years" but she only had a trailer here for the last 10 or so.

I am spending a couple weeks at home in Iowa, arriving just in time for harvest season. I was thinking this might be the first time I've been home this time of year since, well, high school. The farm is in action - all the farms around here are in action. I might even ride in the combine this week, which would be the first time I've done that since I was, errr, 10? This is my brother Ben combining corn - he has forbade me from putting his picture on the blog in the past so this is as close as Ben will ever come to making an appearance here!

We had a pretty lazy weekend but on Sunday we went for one of those aimless Sunday drives and ended up at Eleven Mile State Park, a place we've never been to before. It was a cold and rainy day and even though the Aspens were much more yellow than last weekend, they weren't as pretty without the sun. Eleven Mile is a wild windswept place nearly devoid of people this time of year but I suspect is teeming with fishermen in the summer. They had a nice state park campground (with hookups) but the landscape of the campground looked much like the picture above, including the absence of trees. I doubt we will ever bring the trailer here, but if we had a boat.....

We spent last weekend in the southern San Juan Mountains between Horca and Platoro, Colorado along the Conejos River in Rio Grande National Forest. It's a spot that we never would have thought to go until we read here that Highway 17 is a great spot for fall color. We were a little early for some areas of the valley and right on the mark for others. As a whole, I think the leaves will peak later this week. The drive up Forest Road 250 to Platoro and beyond was just so pretty. There's no question (in our opinion) that September is the best month in the mountains. The smell of fall hung in the air, the temps were cool and crisp, and it wasn't the least bit crowded, although I doubt this area ever gets that crowded. Real people live in this valley; we appreciate that multi-million dollar mansions have not taken over where ranches once thrived (for the most part). The little town of Platoro is about as close to an old-time authentic mountain town as it gets, or so it seems to me anyway. As far as I could tell there wasn't a single souvenir shop for 30 miles (maybe 50) in any direction. Gotta love that.

Since the Forest Service's campground hosts have left for the season, the campgrounds go back to being self-serve where you put your 10 bucks in an envelop and drop it in a metal box. Sort of a nostalgic thing that my brother Ben remembers from our camping trip years ago in Colorado, but hard to find these days. Michael spied the host's vacant spot with luxurious water, sewer and electricity hookups, but darn it! they lock it all up. Oh well. We have not once camped in the trailer with hookups of any kind.

Dad's dream job. Maybe Katie's too.

Near Stunner Pass, el. 10,541 feet.

Near the Trail Creek Primitive camping area above the Conejos River.

A lone cow eating dinner along the road.

I miss DC but I miss the Virginia countryside more. Before there was the Flying Cloud and Colorado, there was the Virginia countryside in the Fall to happily occupy our weekends. We never got tired of the old houses, the farm stands, the pumpkin patches and the antique shops.

Beth and I picked a ton of these Common Gaillardias, or Blanketflowers, in Idaho last month for Kelly's wedding flowers. Apparently they are also found with mostly yellow petals. 201 years earlier, Lewis and Clark collected a specimen of this flower in present day Montana. Of course I didn't know that at the time we found them. I don't what the butterfly is.

Saturday we went to Denver and stayed overnight with Michael's sister's family. Sunday morning we had breakfast with Michael's old friends Steven and Sandy (pictured) and then went to Red Rocks Amphitheater to reminiscence (apparently). I had not been there since I was 11, and I've still never been to a concert there. Michael says his first "real" concert ever was at Red Rocks: Journey in 1980. I was still taking afternoon naps in 1980. (Nevermind that Michael is still taking afternoon naps in 2007.)

The weather here has just been spectacular. Fall (for me) started about two weeks ago when the daily highs dropped to the low 80s - with a few days when it topped out in the 60s. Afternoon thunderstorms have resumed on a nearly daily basis. Other than when Michael comes back from the gym overheated, we haven't had the AC on in two weeks. Some of my favorite birds have left for greener pastures in Mexico and new ones from up north are passing through and devouring the birdseed faster than I can keep the feeders full. Lately we have been filling to the brim the hummingbird feeder once/week, no doubt from hungry migrators passing through. Just as it was this Spring, hummingbirds are about as easy to spot as leaves on a tree. They are everywhere and I love it. I recently heard that hummingbird feeders should be taken down in the Fall to encourage the birds to begin their southward migration so I looked it up online and found out this seems to be a myth. In researching this I also discovered that hummingbirds "routinely accelerate and decelerate at 2 Gs -- three times the force that throws a car into a skid. Herein lies the human fascination with these phenomenal fliers -- they're extreme." (source) I thought this would impress Michael. (He routinely pulled 7 Gs in the jet, albeit not under his own sugar-fueled prowess.)