Tag: Granby

Parade

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The Town of Granby does the only 4th of July parade in the county.  Since I live right in town I walked down to where the parade was.  I expected to see some people.  I was surprised by how many people were there.  I didn’t even think that many people lived in the county.  The streets were fully lined with people.  It was what I expected a small-town parade to be x5.

It started with fighter jets flying over the town.  I didn’t expect that.  Then it was the police, the fire departments, and floats from local businesses.  Everyone in the parade was throwing candy to the kids.  Someone handed out otter pops instead of candy.  The parade kept going.  It was so much longer than I would have expected.  I think every group and business in the county was represented except Search and Rescue – not sure why we weren’t there.  There was a big rodeo in town so the number of horses in the parade was impressive.

One of my favorite parts of the parade was watching a mentally handicap girl enjoy the parade.  Each float or car delighted her.  She had trouble getting the candy in the streets.  One of the other kids standing nearby saw this and every time he got a handful of candy, he would put half of it in the candy bag she was holding.

After the parade there was a little festival in the park.  Small town fun!

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Wild Animals

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I miss seeing wild animals from my house.  When I lived in Evergreen, I had a fox that visited regularly.    There were lots of deer, elk every once in a while, and bear.  I saw a black fox once which was very neat.  The squirrels told me stories every day and the chip monks terrorized my house.

When I lived in Morrison, I had a bunny factory under my porch.  There were lots of deer, some rattle snakes and I even saw one bobcat.

I was excited to move to Grand County, thinking I would have even more wild animal sightings.  But so far, there haven’t been any sightings near the house.  There have been footprints in the snow in front of my office window so something has been visiting.  I can’t tell from the prints what it is, only that something small has been there.  Is it a fox, a small wild cat, or something else?  Then one day, I finally saw I white blur go running in front of my office window.  It was difficult to see since it was white on a background of white snow.  Maybe I would see it again the next day.  I did see it the next day, and the next and almost once a week.  It was the small white house dog of my next-door neighbor.  Roughly every few days he goes tearing through the neighborhood in the pure excitement of being outside and able to run.

Father Daughter

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

There is a local bar/restaurant that has decent food so I go there often when I need to get out of the house or when I don’t want to cook.  Tonight, when I got out of the car, I saw two girls about age 7 or 8 dressed to the nines in pink frilly dresses and Patten leather shoes.  They were with their dads.  Normally, they would be cold in these fancy dresses, but they looked invigorated and excited.  They didn’t even notice it was cold.  The dads were dressed in suits and ties.  I thought maybe it was a wedding reception and these were the flower girls, even though the time of year seemed off for a wedding.

I went inside and sat at the bar and ordered my dinner.  I noticed the girls and their dads sat at a big table with a lot of other girls of different ages, dressed up in silk, tulle, sparkles, and pretty pink, blue and green colors.  Then I noticed that all the adults at the table were men.  Oh, there must be a Father Daughter dance tonight and they were going out for dinner first.  Over the next hour, more father daughter duos came in and took up seats in the restaurant.  It was fun to watch them come in, to see the pretty dresses, the happy princesses and the very proud fathers.  The whole restaurant was full of shiny sparkly girly-ness.

Ice Fishing

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Things, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I had seen advertising around town for the upcoming ice fishing tournament.  I didn’t think much about it as this seems extremely unexciting to me.  I went to the town of Grand Lake to go hiking.  As I was driving by Lake Granby I was amazed at how many tents were on the ice.  The lake was covered in ice fishing tents.  It looked like someone had spread confetti on the lake as each tent was a different color and no part of this large lake seemed to be  untouched.  You couldn’t see individual people as they were far away, but you could see movement, snowmobiles wandering between the tents.

I went for my hike.  On my way back by the lake I was shocked to see how few tents were left.  In a couple hours someone had swept most of the confetti off the lake.  I had wanted to get better pictures of how covered the lake was, but I guess the fishing was done and everyone went home.  Mother nature did treat me to a yellow glowing ball of fire sunset instead.

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All those “rocks” in the distance are actually tents.

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All that was left after everyone was gone

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If you want more info on the tournament:

https://www.facebook.com/3lakesicefishing/

Bonfire

On By rrainefioreIn Beautiful Colorado, Uncategorized3 Comments

My little town built a Christmas tree out of old pallets.  It was put up by the Chamber of Commerce and strung with lights.  By day it looked like a jancky pile of pallets with some lights wrapped around it.  At night it actually looked like a Christmas tree.  So what does a small town do with their wooden Christmas tree after the holidays are over?  Yep, you guessed it – Bonfire!

The bonfire was held at the dog park.  I walked over with one of my neighbors.  The bonfire had started before we got there so you could see the glow from it as we approached.  As we got closer you could hear the country music playing.  There were probably about 60 or 70 people standing around the bonfire.  There was a small pop up tent selling beer and soda. I heard stories of how it took a lot longer to light the fire than they had expected.  It was fun watching friends and neighbors catch up with each other and watching little kids running around.  I met some of my neighbors and heard some of their stories.  Once the fire started to dwindle we headed back home.  It was nice way to spend a few hours of the evening.

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