Trips to the SPRINGS!

For the first and third week in June I've been working in Colorado Springs. The last time I was in the Springs was when I was in diapers. The area is beautiful and I wished I could have done more sight seeing.

Aerial photographs after take-off from Salt Lake International Airport.

My room at Residence Inn Colorado Springs North at Interquest.

Garden of the Gods.

Pikes Peak.

Backyard Work

Before the rain turned our backyard into a mud pit, we'd been working each weekend on the backyard. With the help of my folks, family, and neighbors, our outdoor projects have been coming along nicely. I've compiled a bunch of photographs below.

Making garden boxes from landscaping timbers.

The good ol' Blue Truck.

Ken movin' some rocks for a small retaining wall near the garden area.

At American Stone in Lehi we picked out some Cherokee slabs, which would become the steps up into the garden.

Loading the rocks into the truck... it took two trips for four slabs.

Garden area with new stone steps!

Digging a drainage ditch.

Moving more rocks.

I broke Ken's wheel-barrel. Opps...

Building a wall.

Re-burying sprinkler lines.

Digging, shoveling, digging, and more shoveling.

View from the backyard.

Raleigh, NC

After attending training in Colorado, I headed to Raleigh, North Carolina for another training course. Below are some photographs of my home-away-from-home (Embassy Suites Raleigh - Crabtree) and some photographs of the training center. Our training took place at the Golden LEAF Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center (BTEC) at NC State University.

View from my hotel window.

The pool was way too cold to use.

Bioreactors on the lower level.

CIP skid.

Bioreactors on the upper level.

Denver, CO - Downtown Aquarium

The Downtown Aquarium was amazing! Being a weeknight, Marion and I almost had the entire place to ourselves. We took a ton of photographs and even had dinner at the restaurant where the seating is around a 150,000 gallon tank. I whittled down my photographs to the ones below:

The restaurant.

Fish near our table.

The tank at the restaurant.

Yum - crème brûlée!

Marion's key lime pie.

Ready for sharks.

Crazy fast otter...

He was too fast for my camera.

Nurse shark.

Tiger at the aquarium (yeah, I thought it was strange too).

Uncropped photograph - the black line in the middle is the seam of the tank.

I love jellyfish!