Welcome to the website for Barbara and Erik Thomas
(and their dog Joe, and two cats, Annie and Molly)

Here you can find out a bit about Erik and Barbara, what they're up to these days, and view some photos they've taken since moving to the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

You can also read Barbara's bio and her latest news, or read Erik's bio and his latest news.

JULY 2011

Pearson Family Reunion

Just got back from a wonderful long weekend at Barbara's sister's home in Eunice, Louisiana where the entire extended Pearson family gathered to talk, eat, watch little Donovan crawl across the floor, play cards, eat some more, and do it all again.

It was a really awesome time!

View The Pictures Barb took.

JUNE 2011

Joe is a Therapy Dog!

Barb & Joe passed the Pet Partners therapy team evaluation in April 2011 and are now visiting at Golden West and Fraiser Meadows assisted living facilities. The folks seem to love Joe and he just hangs out getting tummy rubs!

SUNDAY, MAY 8 2011

What a Ride!

Click to view Erik's Moab 2011 Pics

Click to view Dave's Moab 2011 Pics

It's been a long time since I've updated this blog, but I couldn't resist! I just got back from an awesome 5 day campout with epic enduro rides in the high desert near Moab, Utah and the Canyonlands with my friends Ed Baker, Steve Diebel, Wayne Franz, Dave Buttress, and Steve Warner.

We had an amazing 4 days of beautiful long rides, twice on the White Rim Trail (once in each direction) and a couple other great destinations. The White Rim Trail is where most of these photos are from, a 120 mile track of mostly very rough dirt, sand, and rocky trails, with occasional stretches of rock face for as much as 1/4 mile at a time overlooking the canyons below. These trails were absolutely perfect for the enduro motorcycles we were riding.

You can click on any of the panoramas in this post to view a full size version. I used Photoshop CS5 to merge some photos I took with a cheapo handheld digital camera I've owned for many years. I was surprised at how well the panoramas came out.

I ride a 2008 Honda XR650L Enduro style dual sport bike that's street legal, but oriented for serious off-roading. It's the one with the red tank and white side panels.

Most of the rim is on sheer rock cliffs as high as a couple hundred feet.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19 2009

Hello Greenwood Wildlife Rehab Center!

Barbara took some time off from her usual volunteer activities last year due to cancer surgery and treatment, but she's now fit and ready to go. So…

Enter Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

Greenwood takes in orphaned or wounded animals and rehabilitates them for release back to their natural habitat. Barbara's duties include everything from cleaning cages and doing laundry to feeding baby squirrels.

Check out this cute little jet black baby squirrel! Click the image to see a larger version.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 16 2009

Erik Thomas and Heaven's Key
The 3rd Annual New Day Bluegrass and Gospel Concert

Wow, what a fun weekend we had! Dick, Steve, Charlie, and Charlie's wife Helen stayed at our house while LeRoy and his wife Jan stayed in their coach. Wonderful friends, good food, lots of laughs, great music and awesome audiences made for a weekend to remember.

Check out some concert picks.

SATURDAY, MARCH 28 2009

A big spring snowstorm hit the Boulder area, the first good one of the year. We really needed the moisture and after such a dry year, we enjoyed seeing it come down!

Here are some pics of Barbara and Joe playing in the snow (just under 2 feet of snow fell).

SATURDAY, JANUARY 24 1009

More pictures of Joe

SATURDAY, JULY 12 2008

Little Joe is really starting to sprout! I took these photos earlier today.

The fawns are finally out! Seems late this year, but we finally got to see some babies.

SATURDAY, JUNE 14 2008

It's about time we posted some pictures of our puppy so we can show off the best dog in the whole world! Oh, you disagree? OK, maybe he's not the absolute best dog in the whole world but he is to us!

Joe is a wonderful puppy, and though he's not house trained yet, he's getting closer all the time. He's well behaved and already knows the "sit" command, nearly always comes when called, fetches the ball and sometimes even brings it back, doesn't fuss much in his crate at bedtime, seldom barks or cries, and he's just the cutest little guy!

He is nearly leashed trained and walks on the leash about 1/2 mile on the road every day. He wanders around in the yard much of the time and gets the chance to play with neighbor dogs pretty often. Here he is (left) with our next door neighbor's dog Sierra.

Blessings,

Erik

SATURDAY, MAY 17 2008

We're getting a dog!

Barbara and I are so excited! We get to pick up our yellow lab pup on June 1st and he'll be just 8 weeks old. Here's a photo of him when he was 3 weeks old (right). We decided to name him "Joe" just to remember Barbara's dad since Don's favorite dog he ever had was a yellow lab named Joe.

Springtime in the Rockies

It's springtime in the mountains, and after a very long winter, and only hints of spring-like weather all through April and the first half of May, it has finally arrived, with temperatures expected to reach 80 degrees Fahrenheit today!

The wildlife is so very busy now that the winter is over, making nests, mating, arriving from south America (yup, the hummingbirds are back), chasing each other around, all happy and playful that it's the best time of the year.

We've been seeing the same young (yearling) black bear (the first two photos here) wandering around our property every few days. He is a cute little guy and we named him Jesse for Holling's mythical bear on Northern Exposure. Jesse is an adolescent this year, but was the cutest little cub last year. We caught Jesse up in our pine tree outside our kitchen window last year (right).

Jesse seems to take after his mom (left), a much larger black bear that we've seen around our home over the past couple of years. Of course we're not absolutely sure Jesse is her cub, but it seems possible.

 

For a short while this spring a couple of our trees were adopted by an Abert Squirrel that hung around our home for about a month before moving on. We were sad to see him go. Aberts are so cute, with tufted, pointy ears.

With the spring came our favorite little hibernating Golden Mantled Squirrel, ready to start packing out all the peanuts she can fit in her amazingly fat cheeks. Last year, Barbara would sit out on our deck reading with some unsalted peanuts in-the-shell by her side. She'd throw one about 10 feet away and this particular squirrel would run right up, shell it, and tuck the nuts into her cheeks, and run back to her home somewhere in our front yard.

SUNDAY, JULY 1 2007

Happy 20th in Grand Lake(s)

Barbara and I have achieved a pretty significant milestone—at least that's what folks tell us—in that we've reached 20 years of marriage!

To celebrate this wonderful event, Barbara and I decided to extend the weekend of June 30th to 3-days and go up to Grand Lake and do some sailing. We drove through the Rocky Mountain National Park on Friday morning (wow it's beautiful this time of year, and the Elk Herds are out in force) and we arrived at our destination in the early afternoon, a very comfortable little hotel that was located right downtown about 100' from the waters edge.

We spent the weekend on the lake either sailing or put-putting around with our little 3.5 HP outboard motor. We explored Shadow Mountain, Grand, and Granby Lakes and had a wonderful  time! We were also able to walk to restaurants and do some shopping when we weren't boating.

Of the three lakes, we decided we liked Shadow Mountain Lake best since it doesn't have any buildings on two sides and it has several really cool little islands on the southwest side with picnic benches where you can just tie off your boat and explore.

On Sunday, just before heading back through the RMNP, we stopped in Granby to pick up my anniversary present to Barbara, a very beautiful Aspen bench for our entry-way. It's a perfect addition to our home and Barbara loves it. It was made to order by a very skilled craftsman who turned out to be a super guy. We very much enjoyed meeting Tom and his lovely wife Kris who own Aspen High Designs, located in a very beautiful Aspen grove just above Lake Granby.

Happy anniversary Honey!

Erik

THURSDAY, JUNE 14 2007

Hook, Line, and Yellowstone

Grand Teton range in western Wyoming (click for 3840 X 1024)

Just returned from a wonderful—though far too short—fishing trip with my dad, brother, and step-mom in south-eastern Montana just west of Yellowstone National Park. It's become an annual tradition for five years running, but this was my third year up there.

We're lake fishermen (shhhh!), preferring to troll with lures over standing in rivers casting about with flies—we're not as young as we once were—but Lake Hebgen is really just a wide spot in the Madison River which is considered one of the best trout rivers in the country, and it's a major destination for serious fly fishermen from around the world. The Madison flows through Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, and feeds Lake Hebgen just outside the park boundaries on the Montana side.

A farm alongside Highway 287 in the middle of Wyoming

One of the best parts of the trip is the drive across Wyoming from Cheyenne through the heart of the state and the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. The scenery is just spectacular (click on any image to see a full size version) so I made frequent stops for photos along the way.

Never saw a bear on the trip, but did catch some Antelope, a Bald Eagle (sorry, I wasn't quick enough to get a photo), some Bison and lots of deer. I also took a few shots of the beautiful mountains, lakes, and rivers along the way, and my dear old dad (Bob at right), and my brother (Paul at left).

I'm really impressed by a cool new tool in Photoshop CS3 (I just upgraded) that merges multiple photos into panoramas. It's the most impressive new technology to come along in years!

Each of the panoramas shown here were made using our relatively cheapo 3 Megapixel digital camera. I simply took multiple overlapping shots, sweeping across the horizon. But the most impressive part is that I did it free-handed, with no tripod to steady the camera or to ensure the overlaps are lined up horizontally. Photoshop's Photomerge technology is able to find the common patterns in each photo and line them up perfectly both vertically and horizontally, correctly rotated and adjusted for light and color to make it look like it was taken from a single shot.

If Photomerge could do so well merging photos together that were taken free-handed using a cheap camera and automatic settings—where exposure times and focal length can vary—just imagine what quality panoramas one can achieve using a Nikon digital SLR with manual settings (so they don't vary between frames)!

Stayed tuned to this site because I will be posting more panoramas that I'll take with our Nikon D-70S that will make great desktop wallpaper for folks using three monitors. If you don't have three monitors, check out the cool new Matrox TripleHeadToGo that lets you use three monitors from a single graphics card, and it costs much less than multiple graphics cards! I've got one of these amazing little gadgets and just love having three monitors! In fact, this next picture of the Teton Range with the Grizzly sign is my desktop wallpaper right now:

Teton Range in the Grizzly territory of Wyoming

Of course, I make my living developing software so I can justify the multi-monitor setup, but after using three monitors for a week, you'll be addicted and will never go back to a single monitor setup.

OK, I digress! Back to the fishing trip! The first two days were not too productive, with Paul and Dad catching just a couple—truth be told, I was skunked both days without landing a single fish—but the weather was pretty bad. It was quite cold and damp with a pretty strong wind across the lake.

We have found over the years that the trout don't bite much when there's a lot of wind and chop on the lake.

But on Tuesday we had a record day! We caught (and released) ten Rainbow Trout, one Cutthroat Trout, and a German Brown! I personally bagged seven of the Rainbows and the Cutthroat.

(Left: Ingrid, Paul, and Bob in front of one of our comfortable little cabins)

My trip home on Wednesday was pretty uneventful, but it was a long hard drive. Getting through Yellowstone—while a beautiful drive—took an extra long time because of two traffic jams caused by Bison or other wildlife crossing the roads.

Well, I have another set of great memories spending time with family and fishing in some of the most beautiful country anywhere.

Grand Tetons across Jackson Lake

I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them! Cheers,

Erik

THURSDAY, JUNE 7 2007

Unusually Strong Storm for June
Lost a Pine Tree and Satellite Dish!

What do you do when there are 100 mph gusts in Florida or Louisiana? Declare a disaster!

What do you do when there are 100 mph gusts in Boulder, Colorado? Shorten your cycle ride, but not too much because you've got to get in that workout!

Our house shook something fierce last night, keeping me up for most of it. But our house has withstood even stronger winds from time to time during the 35 years it's been on this mountain.

The wind blew down one of the pine trees just below the house, but it was a dead tree we'd been planning to cut down anyway, so this was a nice little bonus! We also found a few sizable tree limbs around our home this morning and I am thankful that none of them came through a window during the night.

We also lost our DirecTV Satellite dish. The wind ripped it clean off our roof! Luckily we don't own the dish so DirecTV is going to replace it next week, but will hopefully mount it in a more secure way.

According to a Louisville (Boulder County) National Weather Service Lab, (using Doppler radar), at 10:20 PM last night they clocked 142 mph gusts at 2000 ft above the plains just east of Boulder. That would be our altitude here on the mountain!

We're hopeful that this will be our last big blow until November or December so we can expect Boulder's beautiful, famous summer weather to start very soon.

Here's to a mild, sunny, summer with occasional cooling afternoon showers that keep the mountains green!

Erik

MONDAY, MAY 28 2007

Summer is Almost Here!

Now that it's nearly June I guess it's safe to say that we will not reach the all-time Boulder snowfall record of 142.9 inches—set back in 1909—unless we get a big freak snow storm in June!

We did get a false spring in March and all our Daffodils sprang out of the ground, just to get pounded with another snow storm (click any picture here to see a full-size version).

According to the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) we received 122.2 inches (10 feet!) of snow in Boulder this winter which makes it the 7th snowiest winter since 1897. The child in me felt that it was really a blast having all those storms, but I sure did get tired of digging my truck out of the snow!

We've seen bears in our backyard twice so far this spring. Our neighbors own two big, beautiful huskies and these dogs announce the arrival of any bears by making a major fuss.

Of course they don't get very close to these huge animals, but once the bears get a few hundred yards off, these dogs swagger around, feeling proud to have made our mountain safe for humans once again. We took this photo yesterday morning and shows a female and what appears to be her year-old cub (looks too big to have been born this spring) on an outcropping of rock on our next door neighbor's property.

The hummingbirds are out in force! We put a feeder on our back deck which is highly visible to passing birds and these tiny little creatures zoom in and out for a snack every minute or so throughout the day. While the hummingbirds in California were virtually silent, most of the hummingbirds here in Colorado make a very loud clicking noise when they fly. We haven't figured out yet how they do that, but they are so cute!

We have Lilacs planted all around our house and for some reason they didn't bloom at all last year, but this year they are just incredible!

The does are really getting heavy with their babies now and we expect to see the first of the new fawns in a few weeks. Stay tuned as we'll be posting some newborn fawn pictures just as soon as we can get some.

Though we took these fox photos a few months ago, we thought we'd go ahead and post them. From our research we learned that this is actually a Red Fox, which can be black and gray! He was friendly little guy and came right up to us on a walk in our neighborhood.