Whatever happened to Kansas?

So I am back from my little vacation! I could have used a few more days...okay, who am I kidding???? I could have used a few more weeks! But at this point I took what I could get. I didn't hear from the person downtown so I THINK all went well with the application process. I will get an interview as all inner office applicants will so I am not going to be too excited about that. The real tension comes After the interview is over. Thanks to all you who sent well wishes!
Soooo... I won't bore you with an interminable Slideshow of MY FAMILY VACATION but it was a beautiful little spot to go, as Talei Loto of Musings of an Aspiring Scribe would call it, "Glamping in a Tent". And though I am not much of a camper and might hesitate to give it such a name, I felt that once you take champagne with you, you are no longer just camping, you are indeed GLAMPING!!! 
We hit the road early and  made our way to Kansas. WHY KANSAS you ask???? 
I was asking the same question!
After all I grew up in Kansas and I know very well that Kansas looks like this:

  miles and miles of it! Not exactly the scenic vistas and lovely peaks we live within hours from. And when your driving on the plains the joke becomes "Didn't we just pass this farm?" because it feels as though you keep passing the same place over and over, never getting anywhere. At any rate, once we got there, it quickly became obviously that we had fallen in
A HOLE IN KANSAS!!!

 Down we went to find blue skies, a lingering sunset over a scenic lake and canyon walls to view the horizons from. All quite picturesque and most definitely unKansasie.

We pitched our tents..

Did some hiking, swimming (the water was a trifle cold for me, which surprised me as the water in Kansas is usually warm in the summer!!!) and the kids went out on a little canoeing adventure...

Mo's son Aubrey is in front, girlfriend Nisa in back steering and my son in the middle 

We sat out at night and drank champagne (as all cultured campers do) and watched the dragonflies put on a show and (thank god!) keep the biting gnats off their delighted audience (me!- who also played the part of gnat meal- yikes!).

Then later we watched as a Great Horned Owl swooped down so quick and low under a tree, I was convinced it was a fox. Then he flew up into a tree and down onto a table in an attempt to catch something we couldn't spot but the night hunter most definitely had his great eye on dinner! And when the sky was finally filled with a canopy of stars and the last droplets of liquid gold were gone, we went to our tents to listen to the whistling wind and the night calls of the coyote until at last we fell asleep. It was like living in an episode of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

Oh and by the way... I have a surprise coming up on my blog which I am hoping everyone will enjoy. Keep your eye out as I don't post on regular day (although I don't really think that matters. Would you remember if I said I was going to post certain days? It seems like it would be hard to keep track anyway so I've never bothered to try. Let me know if you think it would be helpful!)

So how was your weekend?

Lost word #2

Some cities have to work overtime to phalerate their hum drum highways and byways. Key West's lush tropics make human trimmings look tiresome, tired, even tedious don't you think? 

St. Augustine at a glance

I can't possibly do the oldest continuously occupied European city and port in the United States any justice without starting from the beginning... 

The vicinity of St. Augustine was first explored by Ponce de Leon although it seems that "exploration" mostly amounted to his waving as he floated past the shores of Northern Florida. Here he stands, apparently still in search of his Fountain of Youth. The one he found (at least according to local legend) not far from this statue was worthless since he did in fact die.

So Ponce de Leon found Florida... or at least saw it first and then went on his way but the French thought they'd give it a go. They were not terribly successful as the Florida coast was a wild and mosquito infested area. But when it became a hideout for pirates who then attacked Spanish ships along the Caribbean, the Spanish began to take notice. That's when Pedro Menendez de Aviles headed for the Florida coast and spotted land on August 28, 1565. As this fell on the feast day of Augustine of Hippo, he decided the area was to be dubbed San Augustin (and only later to be called St. Augustine.) and his little flag was quickly planted...

What's in a plan???

Sometimes planning is overrated and sometimes having something planned is like waiting for Christmas...

It is no secret to the most glancing of a glimpser of my blog that I love Key West- that there is something about the place for me that I can only try to articulate but I probably am not quite able to convey properly is probably true. Probably part of the charm for me is that I was always moved hither and yon by my family whether I wanted to move or not and the place I landed as an adult had absolutely nothing to do with where I wanted to live. I occasionally thought of moving but finances managed to keep the family where we were. I struggled a great deal with winter depression when my children were young and could only be grateful that I was in Colorado where there were more sunny days than in most states and I guess it never occurred to me to push to move to a sunnier state where a winter malaise wouldn't knock me out three months out of the year. At any rate, now when I am older and wiser, I realize that some of those factors probably play into what attracts me to the Sunshine state of Florida along with my love of the ocean. But there's much, much more to it than that and perhaps as time goes on I will do more to explain why Key West, an Island that is as bawdy as it is lovely draws me the ways it does...  But today I shall merely touch upon all of that because it explains why my vacation this year was not merely a vacation, it was a VACATION!

So...

In 2009 we had a vacation planned to go to Key West but the change of jobs and finances forced us to put it off. We decided to put the trip off and went to New Mexico instead. We went to see the Sunspot Observatory which was interesting and spoke to one scientist (which is rare because they sleep during the day and do their observations at night.) about their work there which was truly interesting.

there were certainly some lovely views. They have some fantastic Sunset points... 

we scandalized one gentleman by offering him some champagne. He obviously missed his wife though and wished she would come with him. 

we had a a lot of fun in Roswell and took tons of pictures there !!!

Another day we went down to the New Mexico Museum of Space History which was pretty terrific and to the White Sand Dunes. I won't put pictures of all that here because the real point to all that is that we had a lovely little vacation last summer with the long range plans to come back to Key West this summer. 

So we began counting down right after school ended. Plans were being made although we kept a pretty serious eye on the oil spill and we were constantly worried (and still are!) that the oil might ruin that beautiful place.

Our luck held however and before you know it we were negotiating our tickets with United Airlines to fly to Orlando for first a jaunt to St. Augustine...