Fifty Thousand Pounds of Goats

I know I don't have any readers out there, because there's been nothing to read!
So this is my attempt to get back into blogging for 620 Bluff - "50,000 pounds of goats.

Liz and I visited my newlywed brother and his newlywed bride at the beginning of October. (Maybe there'll be a post about their August wedding sometime. And eventually I'll work my way back to when I left off with Winter in Vilnius.)

Tim and Gen have a beautiful home in the far southwestern area of Denver.

Among other things, Tim and nephew Matt and I went to a CU football game in Boulder. The opponent was Oregon, when they were still invincible. So no picture - it would be too gruesome.

We also rode bikes

on a great path (downhill) along the S. Platte River. Lunch a little north of the football stadium, and then we took our bikes on the light rail train back to the parking lot. A great day!

Another day we ended up downtown for supper at Marlowes with Matt, and then the four of us went to Boettcher Hall for the Denver Symphony. Some beautiful Brahms and then a Sibelius symphony. And, again, light rail home. (Too bad Wisconsin can't figure out light rail.)

And yet another day we headed out in the jeep and followed portions of the S. Platte again.

 We hoped to see great aspen color - and we did see a little. But not quite the conflagration we were banking on.

 We stopped at an old, old general store.

Bought a bottle of Pepsi (sitting in the jeep's backseat did some things to our stomachs - I needed some bubbles) - I think the bottle's sell-by date was 6-11, June 1911, that is. Well, not that old, but the last bubble of carbonation had burst many moons ago.

We also went past the Gudy Gaskill bridge.

It's part of the second or third stage of the Colorado Trail, which starts near Tim and Gen's place. We hope to walk parts of the trail one of these days.

OK - the GOATS! Tim is on the fire abatement committee for his community, and someone had the idea to hire Wyoming goats to munch on the underbrush in Tim's neighborhood - a small token of fire resistance, at least. So we watched for the goats . . .  and finally they arrived - 50,000 pounds of them, more or less. (They're hired not by the number of goats but by the pound. Don't ask!) At least a couple hundred goats, plus two or three people, and three border collies.

The goats were in residence two weeks and ate their fill. On their last night a mountain lion decided to eat his fill of goat. He jumped the fence and killed a goat, but wasn't able to jump back out with it. When this was discovered, the goatherds decided to put the goat out somewhere for the cat. They didn't want it coming back inside looking for it. And I understand that he waited a couple nights but finally came back and took it away - ripe and delicious!

Life in the wild, wild West.