Welcome to the website for Barbara and Erik Thomas
(and their two cats, Annie and Molly)
Here you'll learn a bit about Erik
and Barbara, what they're up to these days, and view some
photos they've taken since moving to the Colorado
Rockies.
To read Barbara's bio and her
latest news, click here. To read
Erik's bio and latest news, click here.
Click for
details (Adobe PDF):
full flyer side A,
bio side B
Don't forget to make plans to
attend the 2nd annual Heaven's Key Bluegrass Gospel Concert on
August 2nd!
S A T U R D A Y, J
U L Y
1 2 2 0 0 8
Little Joe is really starting to
sprout! I took these photos earlier today.
  
S A T U R D A Y, J
U L Y
1 2 2 0 0 8
The fawns are finally out! Seems
late this year, but we finally got to see some babies.
  
S A T U R D A Y, J
U N E
1 4 2 0 0 8
 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
S A T U R D A Y, M
A Y
1 7 2 0 0 8
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.
S U N D A Y, J
U L Y
1 2 0 0 7
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
T H U R S D A Y, J
U N E
1 4 2 0 0 7
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. T he
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
T H U R S D A Y, J
U N E
7 2 0 0 7
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!
Here is a map of wind speeds clocked along the
front range at low altitude that show winds hitting 92 at the entrance to
our canyon in North Boulder. We expect the wind was much stronger on the
tops of the peaks where we live.
This is from NOAA's National Weather Service
Weather Forecast Office:
Strong Winds Pound Foothills in Northeast Colorado
The Daily Camera also reported gusts to 100 mph
around Boulder county:
read the article here, and local folks with weather stations were
reporting 80 to 92 mph winds in and around Boulder.
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
M O N D A Y, M A Y
2 8 2 0 0 7 - M E M O R I A L
D A Y
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.
|
