So…it’s really going to happen.

Taylor and Callie will be packing up their stuff tomorrow. They have decided that it would be best to head home from Limon rather than make the big move to Denton, MT with us only to turn around and head home. Good choice, I suppose. However, for those of you who have followed our journey for at least a year, you know I don’t handle the goodbye very well. After the girls have left, the reminders of them being here with us are everywhere. Even their towels make me cry. Nothing new. You would think by now it just wouldn’t affect me like that. WRONG! So, tonight, I’m trying to soak in all the giggles, the yelling and the chatter between the two of them because in a couple of nights, that will be gone.  I’ll have tomorrow with them and then I probably won’t see them again for six weeks.  Ugh!

Callie will start her sophomore year of high school on August 15. Taylor won’t start school (1st year of college) until after Labor Day. I wish the high school waited until after Labor Day so they could stay with us a little longer. We’ve talked about why this year would be different from any other year. I think we’re later than normal – I think. Last year, we left with our first trip to Montana on July 11. Whoa! (It’s always fun to go back to previous posts and see what was happening.) Another thing which makes the summer shorter for the girls is that it WAS shorter. We’ve only been gone from home seven weeks. A typical harvest is 100+ days long.

So, yesterday I decided that if we weren’t needed for anything, we were going to go to Colorado Springs. I told Taylor and Callie I’d take them shopping since they had to endure the previous day of doing NOTHING. Before we could leave, though, we were needed to help move equipment from the soggy, muddy field to the farmer’s yard before it started raining again. The call from Jim finally came shortly after noon. By the time we did what we had to do, it was after 2:00. Kind of a late start considering it was over an hour drive to the Springs. The day was cool, cloudy and felt like fall. As I kept driving further west, the mountains kept getting closer…calling my name. We got to a “fork in the road” – “Ok girls, shopping or a drive in the mountains?”, I asked. We decided they could go shopping when they got home. We filled the Nasty with gas, grabbed snacks for the road and hit the highway!

It was at this very intersection I asked the question – shopping or mountains?

I grabbed the atlas and scoped the best, quick drive we could muster with the time we had available. I headed the Nasty towards Cripple Creek. Callie turned on her John Mayer drive-through-the-mountains tunes, we rolled down the windows (to smell the pines and take in the fresh mountain air) and we drove.

The  town of Cripple Creek certainly doesn’t look the same as it did when I was a kid. The quaint, history-filled town has been replaced with casinos and gambling. 

We took the highway out of town – not sure where it would lead us. It lead us to the historic town of Victor. This looked more like what I remembered Cripple Creek looking like so many years ago. I fell in love with the old buildings and dirt streets.

“Don’t hit the fox!“, yelled Taylor. I seriously might have had she not yelled at me. We saw two of these little critters just roaming the streets. Odd!

There are remnants of old gold mines everywhere! At one time, there were over 500 mines in the Cripple Creek and Victor communities.

We stopped at the Walmart in Woodland Park to grab a few of the items that were on our shopping list and headed back towards Colorado Springs. We all agreed it was a good day – a fun day – a spontaneous adventure. We all agreed we had made the right decision of taking our afternoon drive through the mountains.  It was just like vacation – we ate what we wanted, we stopped when we wanted and we laughed.

Today, though, it was back to work. Time for the BIG clean up before heading north. Jim takes the time (if we have it) to really clean equipment and service the vehicles before we begin our 2,700 mile trip. By the time we make both trips, it will be that many miles. We’ve decided to make the trip to Denton first and then go back through Jordan on our way home. The acres we have in Jordan are Spring Wheat so it will be later in August before they’ll be ready to cut. Going back to Jordan will take on a whole different feel again this year. The farmer we have cut for for quite a few years died of a heart attack this spring. It won’t be the same without Charlie being there to greet us as we pull into his yard! Change…sometimes so very hard to get used to. When we said goodbye last year, I would never have dreamed it would be the last.

Callie sweeping out Frank’s box so we can load it with all our miscellaneous items tomorrow.

The header was a mess! After the rain, the straw and mud were glued together. And the smell…Eeewww! Have you ever smelled old, wet grain? Not good. This job took a little bit of time.

T & C taking a well deserved break from the heat and dirt.

Tomorrow will be the last day of the 2013 wheat harvest for Taylor and Callie. A day of packing and goodbyes. I mentioned in an earlier post how our farmers become more than a job. The people we’ve worked for this year for the first time felt like family the very first day we met them. Weird how that happens. Once the girls get home, harvest will feel like it never happened and the countdown for the 2014 wheat harvest will begin. How do I know this? It happens every year – for all of us!