It's Not Unusual

Does this ever happen in your city? You see this kind of thing all the time around here, because there's a huge Army base on the south end of town. In this case, there were several flatbed train cars transporting a seemingly endless supply of these armored vehicles (whatever they're called). It's also not unusual to see things of this sort being trucked by the dozens down the interstate.

And now, for your listening pleasure...

Turkey Creek

The drive between Fort Carson and  Penrose is very pretty indeed. This area is called Turkey Creek, and believe it or not it's mostly owned by the U.S. government and used as an Army training ground. Yes, this is where they blow stuff up! You can't see the training area from the highway, but sometimes you can hear it. And it's not unusual to see helicopters doing maneuvers as you drive through here. In fact, moments after I took this picture, a Chinook (I think that's what it was) went past us nearly at eye level and prepared to land.

The 55th Annual Downtown Pancake Breakfast

Our annual Western Street Breakfast was held yesterday morning on Pikes Peak Avenue. I think this is one of our city's niftiest traditions. Sponsored by the Pikes Peak Range Riders, the street breakfast kicks off their annual five day ride. The Range Riders parade on horseback through the streets of our downtown at the conclusion of breakfast, then continue onward into the proverbial sunset. What a romantic ideal! I love that this longstanding Colorado Springs tradition is still going strong! You can read more about the Range Riders HERE. (I wonder where they are right now -- how far have they ridden in one day?)

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the event. Full disclosure: in 36 years of living here I'd never attended the street breakfast before, even when I worked downtown. Why? Because I am notoriously nocturnal, and getting up early enough is a near impossible feat for me. I finally made it after all these years, with the help of Pat, who valiantly urged me out of bed, and my friend Steph, whose presence forced me to follow through with my plans. But my brain is not very alert at 7:00 in the morning, thus I failed to bring a decent camera and lenses with me. Next year, if I manage to make it to the Street Breakfast again, I will bring real gear with me and take much better pictures!

Fort Carson soldiers cook and serve all the vittles.

Here come the Range Riders! This is just the best! This year's ride is their 67th. It looks like this guy has got a little cowpoke hitchhiker.

So many gorgeous horses!

This year's Girl of the West, Rachael Braaten.

Here come the Rangerettes! I've always thought it'd be fun to be a Rangerette. Alas, I do not possess the kind of mad riding skills necessary for the job! These are serious horsewomen.

Father and son? It sure looks that way to me!

Indian hoop dancing. This was awesome!

Great performance! The guys onstage in the background are the famous Flying W Wranglers -- old fashioned cowboy music at its best. If you've never seen them perform, get down the Flying W Ranch and check them out. They're wonderful!

This hoop dancer did his dance in about 30 seconds flat. He was so fast, and so skilled!

Tori Doven, the 2015 El Paso County Fair Queen. She was incredibly poised and polite. Oh but she's not just another pretty face! I did a little research on her and found that she just graduated from high school as the valedictorian, and she'll be matriculating at the Colorado School of Mines in the fall. It's a college for engineering, science and geology, and you pretty much have to be a genius to be accepted there. Good for you, Tori!

Welcome home!

Colorado Springs is a military town. We have five military installations here, the most glamorous, I suppose, being the US Air Force Academy. But we also have Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, NORAD, and the largest of them all, Fort Carson (which is Army). All of this means that we have a somewhat transient population, since military families tend to get re-stationed every three years. My father was in the Air Force and was stationed at Peterson when I was 14, and the rest is history. We are lucky to have been assigned here and I'm so glad he never got stationed anywhere else after that!

There are pros and cons to having such a large military population. One of the pros is that they keep our economy going. They get a guaranteed paycheck and they never lose their jobs! So these military families spend their money in Colorado Springs, and everyone benefits.

One of the downsides of the pervasive military presence here is the war. It's very hard to see all these young men and women (some of them members of my own family) get sent off to Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them multiple times over. You just worry about them constantly, and there are reports in the news almost every week of "another Fort Carson casualty". Then there is the sad coverage of their funerals on TV, with Taps being played on the bugle, and a 21 gun salute. I gasp when I hear their ages -- some of them are so young. 19, 20, 21. Never to return from the war.

But when they do return it's a joyful thing! All the families gather together and give them a hero's welcome. My boyfriend Pat, a news photog (video) for one of the local TV channels, frequently gets the happy assignment of documenting these joyous homecomings for the evening broadcast. It always gives me a lump in my throat to see these soldiers come home, to be ecstatically greeted by their families who have missed them and worried about them so much.

The photo above was taken today, just outside the main gate of Fort Carson. There is a wall of homemade banners stretching at least two or three blocks, welcoming home loved ones. I've been wanting to photograph it for a while now. It just keeps growing.

And here is a rather funny photo of me taken by Pat as I tried to capture the scene at just the right moment. I look so serious. And it was very windy out there!