A Garden Of The Gods Reunion

My sister Susan and I got together this past Saturday morning with our cousin Linda, her husband Rodger, their daughters Kerry and Amy, and Kerry and Amy's spouses and children at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, as seen, along with my sister Susan, in the photograph on the left. Linda and Rodger live in South Carolina, Kerry and her family in Texas, and Amy and her family in Alabama, and all were very impressed with this iconic Colorado Springs park, not to mention Colorado's low humidity, something they don't experience in those Southern States where they live.

The Garden of the Gods is indeed very impressive. We took the shuttle from the visitor's center to the Central Gardens and hiked past some of the most spectacular rock formations in the park, several of which can be seen in the photograph on the right. Colorado Springs, by the way, was founded as a resort town, and the Garden of the Gods was one of the top attractions. The area was originally home to the Ute people, who sadly were forced to move to reservations in southwestern Colorado and eastern Utah by 1882. 

After the hike, we all had lunch at the nearby Black Bear Diner, a really fun, old-fashioned restaurant with great food. Linda's parents, Bill (my mother's brother) and Elsie, moved to Stuart, Florida back in 1972. When my father Nelson retired, he, my mother Mary, and I drove to Stuart to see if they wanted to retire there, too, which they did, and moved there in 1976. The last time I saw Linda was in Stuart, when I was down there visiting my mother. And I was shocked when Linda told me that was 30 years ago. Time really does fly, doesn't it? Back when their children were young, Linda and her sister Judy and their families would spend several weeks every summer at Ocean Village, located on the ocean in Fort Pierce, just to the north of Stuart, and I was very happy to learn that Linda and Rodger, seen in the photograph on the left, still spend several months there each year. Since Susan and I are taking back our mother's condo in Stuart after renting it out for the past 15 years, we definitely plan to get together down there next season. Why wait another 30 years, right?