We made a Sunday outing a couple of weeks ago to attend the 48th Annual Scottish Festival and Games over in Highlands Ranch.This was our first time at this festival and we got to see quite a variety of activities. There were Massed Pipes and Drums, Pipe Band Competitions, British Dogs Exhibition, Four Stages of non-stop Celtic Music, Scottish Athletic Competitions, Scotch Tasting, and of course…a British Car Show. We drove the Jag and joined up with the other British Cars for a little parade through the festival grounds and then we parked them all on the field for display. Aside from a number of beautiful Jaguar XK-120’s there a couple of quite nice older Rolls-Royces.

We wandered about and visited the Genealogy Tent to see if we had any Scottish ancestry lurking in our background but it looked doubtful. Our friend Cynthia had much more luck and discovered that she had some direct lineage to the Cumming Clan. They adopted her and she was quickly pressed into duty carrying the clan standard (flag) for the big parade of Clans. The Clan thing is really a big deal and they all had tents set up telling about their history and lineage. There were 55 clans represented as I recall.

There were lots of folk dressed in authentic costume, including a lot of men wearing kilts. We only got to see a little bit of the log-tossing event and a wee bit of sword fighting. The Celtic music was playing away in the background and we stopped by the Macallan tent to got an education on what it requires to be classified as “Scotch Wisky” and do a little “tasting”. By the way, there is no “e” in whisky in case you didn’t know that. Everyone seemed to leave the tent in a better mood than when they went in.

I then sampled a traditional Scottish snack called a “bridie”. A bridie is a savory pie similar to a pasty, but the pastry is not as hard and no potato is used, making it much lighter in texture. The filling is made of minced steak, butter, and beef suet seasoned with salt and pepper, and sometimes with an addition of minced onions. It was quite tasty although a bit greasy.

The clouds rolled in along with some thunder and impending rain so we headed back to the display area and put the top up just before the rains drifted in. All in all it was an enjoyable event and I would recommend it.

I’ve been working a 9/80 flex schedule this summer so I can have some extra three-day weekends and we finally got out for a camping trip last weekend. All of our old spots are too far away now so we got to go exploring and find something new. I was a little leery of how crowded the mountains might be close in to Denver but I guess we went far enough out that it wasn’t a problem. That decision was partially solved for us by a burning ban from Boulder to Hwy 119 around Central City/Blackhawk. Going camping without having a campfire is just wrong so we ended up going west of Hwy 119 out into the Arapahoe National Forest and found a spot up in Mammoth Gulch that had a really nice view of James Peak.

The weather has been a bit sketchy here lately with pretty frequent rain storms and the weekend didn’t turn out to be any different. We got to our site by mid-afternoon on Thursday and managed to get camp set up before the storms rolled over the mountains. I had picked up a new tarp before heading out and sure was glad we had it. I used it to make a lean-to and we put our chairs and “kitchen table” under it, made a cup of coffee, and waited for the storm to roll on by.

The first storm produced enough rain to point out some flaws in the tent site selection with regards to campsite drainage. In particular, there was one waterway that was determined to go right beneath our tent! A minor diversion channel took care of that problem and I was grateful for the early rain. Those are not the kind of things you want to find out in the middle of the night. The rains came and went throughout the weekend but we managed to stay dry and overall we still had a lot of nice weather in between.

One unpleasant side-effect of all that rain was an abundance of mosquitoes. I have to confess I’ve gotten really spoiled living in South Central Colorado where mosquitoes were practically non-existent. Fortunately, we had some oils that Rhonda had brought along and some OFF which kept them from biting (mostly) but it’s still a little disconcerting having them swarm all around you.

Abby was kept entertained by the local squirrels and chipmunks and thoroughly enjoyed the weekend too. We went for a short hike on Saturday down to the valley floor and found the creek that we could hear rushing along from our campsite. It has been a late spring in the mountains and there is still a lot of snowmelt which keeps the creeks moving right along. The water was incredibly cold but that did not keep Abby from getting in. There were a number of folks fishing the creek trying to catch a mountain trout for supper. Abby went fishing too but she didn’t catch anything either 😉

We had heard trains chugging along during the weekend so after we packed up Sunday morning we down into the valley and found the Moffat Tunnel which was built in the 1920’s to connect Denver with Salt Lake City and then on to the West Coast. The tunnel goes under the Continental Divide, is 6.2 miles long and comes out near Winter Park on the other side. There were a bunch of vehicles(30 or so) parked there which seemed odd until we realized there is a trailhead there for the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area.

We decided to go home a different way and headed up to Nederland, CO where we stopped for coffee & ice cream, and then a picnic lunch by Barker Meadow Reservoir. We then followed Boulder Creek down the canyon, on into Boulder, and finally back to Aurora.

It’s hard to grow things in Colorado. Way different from the black dirt in Iowa that we were used to. Up until now the only thing we’ve taken a stab at was tomatos and even those were a touch difficult due to the short growing season. This year Rhonda saw a neat idea in a magazine that we could use to extend the growing season and so we decided to try our hand at gardening again.The basic idea is to accomplish three main things; better soil, solar gain, and regular watering.

We covered the ground with an old carpet earlier this year in the hopes of raising the soil temperature from solar gain. This worked out pretty well and I spaded up the soil to a depth of about eight inches and then Rhonda started adding compost, vermiculite, and other stuff to improve the quality.

The “structure” was my challenge. The magazine picture shows what looks like a simple hoop structure made out of a few boards, some plastic water pipe, and a plastic covering. I made a trip to Lowes and came home with some materials. It was one of those build it as you go projects which can sometimes create some interesting twists and turns in the design. The structure came together pretty well but the plastic covering was not so fun. Seems like every time we went to put the plastic on it was windy.

The fundamental concept was to create a raised-bed, square-foot style garden with a covering to extend the growing season and in this, we succeeded. The manual watering thing wasn’t going too well so to accomplish a daily water scheme I managed to tap into an unused zone on our sprinkler system and rig up some mist sprayers inside the structure which were programmed to come on for a short bit every morning. This made a huge difference in how the plants grew.

It has gone pretty well for a first attempt. We did have some problems with the soil being too “hot”, chemically that is, and the crazy plastic did not hold up to the intense ultraviolet well at all. By the middle of the summer it had gotten brittle and a good wind came along and shattered it into many pieces. But we’ve gotten quite a lot of yummy produce out of it so far.