Before Laurie and I moved to Colorado, people would ask, “Why Colorado?”. Why not Colorado? Ever since my parents took me to the Shenandoah mountains when I was 13, I fell in love with the mountains. The view from the top of a summit is awesome. To me, I can see the beauty of God’s handiwork. I used to read books on rock climbing.  I loved the outdoors. I spent many weekends on scouting trips and camping. I knew I was really hooked was in 1973 when my parents took my brother and I on a road trip to Alaska where my mom was raised. Mountains took on a whole new meaning with the shear size of them rising from the ocean. Even though my mom is from Alaska, she loves to go to the beach. The outer banks of NC were her idea of God’s beauty. To me, it was just sand, sand and more sand; let’s don’t forget the intense heat and humidity to go with it. The mountains were in my blood. I love to ski, even though I’m nothing to write home about. We went snowshoeing last winter for the first time. I found the forest to be so quiet, especially when there is snow to absorb the sound. Another way to enjoy the outside is camping. It is a great way to get away from it all. Hiking during the day, then coming back to camp to enjoy a great dinner by the fire with only the stars as your only light.  The air is dry here, so there is very little humidity. You can go outside during July, take a hike and barely perspire. Here in Estes Park, you never run out of things to do. We are at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Downtown Estes has some sort of festival most weekends until around November. Boulder is only about 1 hr away. In Estes Park, everyone is from somewhere else, so you don’t end up with attitudes about you being new. It’s sort of like a melting pot. We have found the people to be extremely friendly throughout the state. Leaving family back east has been hard; fortunately, our parents will be flying out for Thanksgiving to spend time with us. My youngest, Brooke, just left for college, so she is busy with her new surroundings. Our other children are in their mid 20’s to 30’s so they are very busy with their lives. We do miss seeing them, but hopefully we will fly them out here for Christmas. Eric, my youngest son of 27 years will hopefully move out here in spring with his new bride to work for me at our company. We hope he will send this very contagious bug back east and who knows, we might see a few others follow him here. So, why not Colorado!