[jdviole2]

After yesterdays sad story I thought I'd try a couple of more upbeat stories for today. We used to take our hiking vacations in the fall. We went to Colorado all the time for the hiking and the Aspen trees are so brilliantly colored in the fall that we tried to time our visits when they were at their best. The down side of that is that you could run into snowstorms in the mountains also. On one trip we decided to try to hike to the top of Flattop mountain. It was going to be a long hike but not as bad as some of the mountain top hikes could be. The sky was clear when we started the hike. The path winds through the forest to the base of the mountains. From there it climbs fairly sharply along the side of a narrow valley before it begins to climb up above the trees. The path along the valley is perched right on the edge of a drop off of about 220 meters. The path is not very wide either. Before we had climbed very far it got cloudy and then started to snow. Just lightly at first. It was really beautiful walking through the forest in the snow. We had climbed almost all the way past the valley when we noticed that the snow was getting very heavy. We could not longer see any further than about a meter in front of us if that. Helena was worried about finding our way back down. I assured her we could just follow our footprints in the snow. I turned around to show her and saw that our footprints were disappearing almost as fast as we were creating them. I told her we had better start down. Needless to say the hike back through the valley was interesting since we couldn't see where the dropoff occured. It was slow going. We were both pretty nervous but by the time we got home the hike had become Helena's favorite story of the trip. On our first trip to California, as I have told you, Helena had pretty much planned out the entire trip. All the things she wanted to see. After she layed out the trip for me I told her that she had forgotten to put Disneyland on the list. She looked at me like I was insane. She reluctantly added a day at Disneyland to her list (just for me). So we get to Disneyland and go in. If you have never been to the California Disneyland you enter by passing under some train tracks and through a tunnel and emerge into Main Street. A representation of an early american small town. As you exit the tunnel all the sounds of the outside world seem to disappear and it really is almost like time travel. We had a great day. Lots of fun things to do and see. I thought she was having a good time but she hadn't said anything one way or the other. We stayed through the fireworks and then headed back to Hollywood to our hotel. We had seen a lot but hadn't seen it all. On the way back she turned to me and in a really soft hesitant voice asked if there was anyway we could go back another day. I started to laugh and she got a little mad. She wanted to know what was so damn funny. I told her that I had already planned for us to go there three times. I just knew she would love it. That became a life long joke for us. Anytime she indicated that she didn't think she would like something all I had to do was say the word Disneyland and she would smack me, or if we were in public, I would get "the look". I'm sure you all know, or have given someone "the look". So for today we will start out in Disneyland. This is Helena in front of the town hall next to the "lost parents" sign taken in the mid 70's. THe second shot shows her in a formal garden somewhere, I really don't remember where this was taken. It is around 1980. Third picture is taken on a trail in Colorado. She is in front of an Aspen tree. Unfortunately we were a bit late that year and the brilliant colors had faded. This was 82 or 83. The next picture shows Helena in an outfit that she didn't wear much. I don't know why I think she looks exquisite in blue. This was in the late 70's. Those fall vacations sometimes meant that the temperature was cooler than she liked. No complaints from her though. As you can see she was ready for the cold. Again this was in the early 80's. The last picture is one of the set wearing the hat she had on in the nude mirror shots. This would have been in 74 or 75. (you might notice a lot of dust specs on the picture. I spent about an hour last night working on this picture and still didn't get all the spots removed. It was a really dirty slide. And not that kind of "dirty")