Week of November 16th

Colorado was the 38th state admitted to the union in 1876, hence the nickname the “Centennial State”. When I think of Colorado I think of 2 things; skiing and beautiful vistas. We did think about going to our local ski “resort” to celebrate the beautiful Rocky Mountain state but it’s too early for Missouri to produce any reasonable snow. And, once again, the budget and time restraints didn’t call for traipsing across Kansas to visit Colorado.

We all had a very busy week ahead of us. Just like everyone else we had Thanksgiving menus to plan, travel to arrange, kids coming home and work to finish up. This left, not a lot of time to plan for our state celebration. Even so, we decided, celebrate we must. (Although we did elect to give ourselves 2 weeks to experience the next state to be picked, due to the hectic Thanksgiving week. We would make it up later in the year.)

So how do you celebrate a beautiful state like Colorado without actually being there? Using your senses, of course. The plan was to take a trip to Colorado using all of our senses. Our son came home from college Sunday night, so he joined us in the celebration.

We settled in and listened to the sounds of Yonder Mountain String Band, with the aroma of pine scented candles in the air and enjoyed nice cold Coors beers. At the same time we took turns perusing a photo essay by David & Marc Muench of the magnificent landscapes that make up Colorado. Their photos took us from the spring flowers peeking up through the snow to the majestic snow covered mountains of Cooper Mountain to the pine forests outside of Vail. Colorado is truly a beautiful state and this author would like to return some day to see it firsthand. There is little question that Katherine Lee Bates wrote “America the Beautiful” after being inspired by the view from Pikes Peak of the “purple mountains majesty above the fruited plains”.

Color in (with wonderful hues of purple and auburn) the state in the Rockies and travel back up to the northern Midwest to the Badger State - Wisconsin. Here we come football, cheese and cranberries. Six down - 46 to go.