My skeletal souvenir takes a tour of Steamboat

Look who we found while shopping in Colorado! This cute little frog happens to be something I'd wanted last year but they sold out around here. These frogs are my favorite skeleton animals.

So he was a neat surprise and the perfect souvenir. Come to think of it, it's good that the animal skeleton I was in love with was not one of the larger ones! There wasn't a lot of leftover room in my suitcase.

So, here's his little spine and ribcage from above:

And one of his little fins:

I thought that a neat way to help capture the area we were staying in would be to photograph this little cutie along with it. So the frog got a tour of the Steamboat Springs area and the beautiful nature included.

Here he is posing on, what for him, is a giant Adirondack chair. Actually, it was a pretty big chair for a human.

Aww...

Mom and the frog

I thought these red chairs looked so pretty with all the blue and green around.

I carefully stepped onto the rocks to pose the frog on one.

These are photos of what I'd call the "natural environment" for a frog.

This one might be my favorite photo of him:

Here he is with a mountain lion sculpture. I sat next to that sculpture too and that metal was very hot in the sun!

Do you think a real frog would be in trouble sitting on a real mountain lion's paw?

This photo gives an idea of a lot of the action going on at this time. There's the gondola going up the mountain, a chair lift, a new ride that was just opening, hikers, bikers, runners (there appeared to be a few races going), and some activities for kids. It was incredibly hot too! I felt hot just walking at a normal pace, so it had to be hot for those runners.

Me with a Steamboat Coca-Cola Bear. I'm reminded of those cute old Christmas ads. 🙂

Here's something you'll see a lot of in Colorado: Magpies. Looks like this one got a cracker or a cookie.

What's funny is that the last time we were in Colorado, I couldn't get a picture of one of these birds to save my life! Those pics are a bunch of blurs. It got to the point where I thought the birds were playing tricks on me. This time they were coming out of the woodwork to be photographed! I have many more pics than these two.

I just noticed the brains squirting out on this ad! I guess this is for a clothing company? It's just something I saw hanging next to some shops and happened to like. I just googled this saying and found the shirt. For those interested: skull shirt

As the sun was going down, the water lit up in a soft way.

There was some incredible wind, as you can see here. It was hard for me to gauge the weather in Steamboat. At home, I can tell when it's going to rain and I can guess how long it will last. In Steamboat, I kept thinking it was going to rain and it wouldn't.

These are the gondolas we rode up the mountain to my cousin's wedding. I'll probably write another blog post about that night, so you'll see more gondola action.

And here's a picture of the gondolas the day we arrived. It was incredibly hazy because of the fires. That building at the top of the mountain is where my cousin was married.

Before we left for Colorado, I checked the weather there and saw that there were fires in Steamboat. The fires started right before our trip and we were concerned. It took a good week to get them under control from what I heard. They were still raging 13 miles from where we were on the night of the wedding.

I never saw any fire, just the haze. What's funny is that before the fire worries, I was worried about being snowed on! Yes, snow can arrive in September up there. Actually, it has snowed by now. We were lucky enough to be there a week before the snow fell.

I couldn't pass up one last frog shot, when I saw a nice potted plant by the shops.

The little froggy traveled home in my suitcase and I'm pretty sure I saw the TSA guy take a second look as my suitcase went under the scanner or x-ray or whatever they're looking at. 😉 Now he's a happy Wisconsin frog. After all, there was a friend waiting for him here!

I'm thinking this little guy might end up in the center of this year's bowl of trick-or-treat candy. See, he's already getting into the candy!