Twin Pines, the Birthday Boy, and the Cloud Goddess

Even though it was still a few miles out of town, we decided on Twin Pines and headed down the little hill to set up camp.  It was so nice down there, and all the tree cover made us feel cozy.

See what I mean?  Cozy.  :)

The trees bent over us and gave us some shelter from the storms and from the sun.

An early morning view of the lake.

During the evenings we would sit at this bench and watch the sunsets.

And there were some spectacular ones!

The moon shining through the clouds made an awesome moonset.  Is that a word?

During the day we worked on JenTiles and got a couple of orders filled.  (If you have a backorder with me, hang tight, they are slowly being filled.)  We came up with this pine tree design.  Like it?

I also macro'd a few new bugs.  Hadn't done that in awhile.

Shadfly.

These small blue dragonflies were everywhere!  The most I've seen in one place.

Simon chilled in the tent.  He likes it in the tent so much he tries to get in it while we are putting it up.

He heard the camera click.  He was trying to fall asleep standing up.  He does that a lot.

Guess who's birthday it was while we were in Lander!!  My Dad's!  To celebrate we took him out for ice cream and since there were two places in town that were reputed to have great ice cream, we took him to both of them.  :)

The first place we went to was Ken and Betty's.

It was VERY good!

In between ice cream places we stopped at the newspaper to meet with Anne and do a quick interview for the local paper.

Look at the size of that tree!

You can probably tell my Dad was taking this picture by the rabbit ears.  lol  After the interview we headed for the other ice cream place in town, The Scream Shack:

A smaller place.  Here you ordered at the window and sat at the tables outside.

More ice cream please!

I would be hard pressed to tell you which one was the best.  They were both YUMMY and I think my Dad liked his little birthday outing with us.  Happy Birthday Dad!!!

When we got back HOME, a storm started to brew and we got some excellent, and STRANGE pictures.  Check this stuff out:

The clouds looked SCARY.

It was starting to rain far off in the distance over the lake.

We walked up on the hill near the tepee and got this picture of Ken:

Wow, huh?

Then a rainbow appeared in the sky.  And then.....  right after the rainbow, this cloud goddess showed herself.  AWESOMENESS!

See her?  From here she looks like a witch, but if you zoom in and look closer the detail in her face is astonishing.  There are two eyes, a normal nose, even teeth and a pixie haircut.  It looks as though she is about to eat a marshmallow.  Do you see her???

So many cool things happened here.  The barking at the lake, the goddess in the clouds, and the unparalleled sunsets made this stay one we will never, ever forget!

We heart Lander!