The Black Cloister Reviews

Here are the links to several recent reviews of The Black Cloister. I'm so grateful for each of you who have taken the time to read this novel and either post a review online or tell your friends about it.

Thank you! Thank you!!

CBN.com

Patti Lacy's Blog

Jessy Ferguson Blog

Real Life Review

Colorado Pix

Here are the rest of our pictures from Colorado. What a great time we had visiting friends, hiking, swimming in Ouray's amazing hot springs pool, and visiting the hospital where Karly was born and the lodge where Jon and I were married.

Thank you to everyone who hosted our family in their homes! We're so thankful for each of you!!

Ghost Town Pix

One of my favorite things to do is explore ghost towns. When we lived in Colorado, we used to take our truck on the rocky, back roads to find abandoned mines and mining towns. Most of the houses and buildings are now skeletons of wood, stone, and crumbling bricks, but every once in awhile, we've found a town that had been abandoned in more recent years.

On this trip, we took the girls to visit some of our favorite old places, but we also discovered a 1930s or 40s mining town abandoned in the last few decades. Because of all the broken glass and floors, I explored the four remaining houses in this town on my own. One of the houses had an old doctor's chair and dusty patient records scattered on the floor. The brightly-colored paint in all the houses was peeling, and I had to climb to get in one of the house because the stairs were gone. I loved roaming through these abandoned rooms and wondering...

For those of you who like ghost towns as much as I do, here are a few pix:

Yurt Camping

Well, I had every intention of blogging regularly during our two weeks in Colorado but the time flew by and I still haven't downloaded our pictures. I'll try and post them later this week...

One reason I'm so late in posting is because when we got back from CO, we started preparing right away for a camping trip with friends from church. Here in Oregon, you have the option of reserving camp sites NINE months before your trip, and Oregonians do just that. We tried to reserve a tent site at the Ft. Stevens campground about six months ago and out of about five hundred sites, they had one site open on Saturday so we grabbed it.

The rest of our friends reserved yurt sites, at seven o'clock in the morning, nine months beforehand. In minutes, all the yurts were gone... But then one of our friends had to cancel last week and they let us borrow their reservations so we spent a wonderful weekend camping in a yurt.

We've never stayed in a yurt before but quickly discovered that it's a cross between a tepee, canvas tent, and small cabin. The best part about yurts is that they have electricity, beds, and HEAT. I've never slept better on a camping trip, and I loved making hot tea before going outside in the morning to start breakfast on our camping stove.

Besides the four of us getting a great night's sleep and escaping the hot temps at home, we also swam, flew kites on the windy beach, climbed an old shipwreck, roasted marshmallows with friends, rented a paddle boat, attempted (unsuccessfully) to catch a couple of fish, and ended the weekend eating seafood at a restaurant on the Columbia River.

Staying in a yurt has completely spoiled me for life. Forget tent camping! I'll be the one waiting in December at seven in the morning to reserve our yurt for August 2009.