Welcoming the President to Grand Junction

Frank and I both got tickets to the Town Hall held by President Obama on Saturday, August 15. It was held at a local high school in my school district and it was an amazing event.  I can tell you there was a LOT of planning and preparation that went into it the week beforehand and then it was organized chaos the day of the event.  So many people!  Overall, an amazing and intense experience to be in the same room as the President of the United States.  To hear him speak in person was to confirm what we knew from TV, Barack Obama is one heck of an orator!  A once in a lifetime experience for the both of us that we will treasure always.  We hope to post some of our pictures and maybe some from friends who also attended… so check back!

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

An e-mail came in to our Webmaster account today and was forwarded to me… the man wanted to know why we call it a “Traditional” calendar… (site he was looking at is http://www.mesa.k12.co.us/2003/Schools/Calendars/ ) and took issue with the use of the word traditional.  Seriously!  Offered no alternatives but instead asked,

“May I have your definition of Traditional, please? Does this reference Gregorian instead of Julian? Darian? ISO, Islamic, or Hellenic?” 

I tried to get rid of him with a response like “the traditional calendar is in use by most of our schools” but he wrote back AGAIN! At this point, my response might be, “don’t you have anything better to do than pick on us for the use of a word?”

I know we don’t have a lot of folks checking up on our family who actually live in Mesa County… but I feel it’s my moral obligation to support these two ballot measures in any way I possibly can!  Our school district 51 needs every vote it can get… this bond will help make space by the time Bridget starts preschool, which is kind of a scary thought that that is coming so soon.

Last week we went on our annual float trip down the Colorado River.  We floated from the Loma Boat Launch to Westwater in Utah, and camped at the mouth of Mee Canyon.  Check out our photo gallery for pictures from the trip.

I took my personal canoe, mostly because I was worried that I wouldn’t even get it in the water this year otherwise.  The canoe handled really well, and thanks to some musical chairs between boats right before the only significant swift water, I also learned how the boat performs when swamped (not too well).  I think before I take it on any more significant trips I need to get some float bags for the front and rear to help with the added weight.  I also discovered that the one man tent my dad gave me isn’t nearly so claustrophobic or coffin like when you have a clear night and can roll up the fly.

We did some nonnative species removal on our way downriver (catfishing).  I only caught one catfish, but it was a pretty good sized fish.  We spent quite a bit of time this trip jumping off of rocks into the river.  All of the pictures and video in the gallery are from one of our catfishing holes, but we did spend some time jumping off a “cliff” about twice as high at an area called black rocks, so named for the, you guessed it, black colored rocks.

Hey everyone. TheMcGees.net has a brand new look. It’s a little sharper, and it will allow us to post more frequent updates to keep everyone up to date on all the excitement. We’re still working out the bugs and adding some content, so bear with us, but overall this should make the website a lot more user friendly.

I spent all afternoon Monday looking for a cow moose we released a few years ago to see if she had a calf this year. After beating the brush for hours, and seemingly walking around in circles, I finally found the moose. Sadly she didn’t have a calf with her this year.

Wednesday I had better luck.  Despite bouncing radio signals, thick willows, and swarms of killer mosquitoes I found another cow moose, and this one did have a new calf.  While I was looking for the cow moose I almost walked right into a bull moose that was in the same area.  Very cool.