We're not dead yet!

Hey, everyone -

Far from dead, we have created new life. Check out pictures of our little wonder, Jade: http://picasaweb.google.com/jkramerwine.

You are never far from our hearts.

Jen and Dennis

28 hours with Mikey D in Glenwood Springs, Colorado

Hey, everyone - While Londoner Mikey D (a friend from our days at Camp Lokanda) was in the states, he flew out to visit us in Denver. We promptly left our fair city and headed to the mountains! We found an oasis 150 miles away in Glenwood Springs. Dennis is writing the screenplay for our adventures. Keep your eyes and ears open for the likes of Dave Brave - coming soon to a blog near you.

Jen and Dennis

Postcard picture of Glenwood Springs

We stayed at a hotel to the left of the pool. The stats on the pool are outrageous: the "large" pool, is 405 feet long and 100 feet wide at the widest point. It contains 1,071,000 gallons of water, and is kept at about 90 degrees F / 32 degrees C. It has a diving area and exercise lap lanes. The therapy pool, the "small" pool, is 100 feet long and contains 91,000 gallons of water. It is kept at a temperature of about 104 degrees F / 40 degrees C.

A natural spring, called the Yampah spring, is located at the eastern most end of the pool. It has a daily flow of 3,500,000 gallons of water, at approximately 122 degrees F, or 51 degrees C. The source for the Yampah spring is water percolated through fractures in the bedrock formation and into the Leadville aquifer. As this occurs the water is heated by the geothermal gradient in the area. The source of water for the spring is from south of the Colorado River in the Lookout Mountain and Grand Hogback areas.

Thanks to www.hotspringspool.com for the facts.

Hello from Denver!

If you are reading this, you probably received a long overdue change-of-address announcement. We have many things to report, but little time to be articulate so we're going to list some fun happenings of the past four months:
- We have been able to drive to visit Michelle (Dennis' sister) in New Mexico three times!
- Our neighbors have invited us over for two dinner parties! They are from Louisiana and made Gumbo for the last party.
- Pooch, our cat, arrived on April 1st. She loves it! And we finally are training her not to claw the couch...
- The picture on the card you (might have) received was taken on our way to Idaho Springs, a town in the mountains. Our friend Travis was visiting and we wanted to go on a hike, but we could not find the trail because the trailhead was covered with snow.
- U2 preformed here on their 2005 tour and we had tickets! This was our first visit to the Pepsi Center - Dennis really loved the Avalanche paraphernalia (read this with tons of sarcasm).
- Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain boys preformed in Boulder and, again, we had tickets. This was especially exciting as we had just visited the Ralph Stanley museum in Virginia on our journey to Denver.
- It snowed here on May 1st. Yet, the average temperature had been 60 degrees for the last two months.

Come visit!

Jen and Dennis

This was the view from our front door during the "Blizzard of 2005" that happened at the beginning of April.

This is the non-distorted version of the picture we printed on our new address announcement.

Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado!

That's right, another gargantuan post! Not really, more of just a quick update with a commitment for photos and more dialogue to come.

After spending some time with Bob the cat in Missouri, we headed due north - not due west, which would have put us in Denver - to our friends Michelle, George and James'. They are in Northfield, Minnesota, about 40 miles from the twin cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Somewhat cold, but not the -25 of the previous week, thank goodness - Black Betty (our car) would not have appreciated that after our 4,000 mile journey! Happy times once again with lovely people and a terrific 15 month old called James. We sledded a little bit but mostly just stayed inside reading and letting the little man entertain! We spent most of Monday wandering around Minneapolis and then back for the evening before shoving off Tuesday for Rapid City, South Dakota.

What a nice little town that was. Dennis was skeptical of too much of a tourist trap, but the town was quaint and had some nice charm. Wednesday morning we moved on to spend a little while at Mount Rushmore. Pretty cool in mid-week during the winter, we really had the whole place to ourselves!

We drove the rest of the day through Wyoming (finding the Sierra Trading Post outlet only 100 miles outside of Denver) and landed at our hotel at 7 pm.

We are off to find an apartment - more juicy details later. (Sorry, Iowa natives - we only had time to stop at a Subway in your fair state.)

Dennis and Jen

The Katy Trail is over 200 miles long across Missouri, a former railway along the Missouri River, criscrossing the Lewis and Clark journeyline. This is a great photo of us with Bill and Hollis. The Stolz family is winning the visit contest, as Aunt Emma of early photo is Bill's, and Claudia and Bill are also in a previous photo. Once again, old family friends - the kind where the only difference is that we don't share the same bloodline - otherwise they'll always be family.

This one's for you, Aunt Eve - part of the Lewis and Clark journey from the Katy Trail In Rocheport, Missouri - our next stop with friends Bill and Hollis.

After the house visit downtown, we were compelled to visit his tomb on the edge of town. Amazing, as it was only the second Presidential gravesite that we had visited, next to JFK in Arlington. What a wonderful tribute to a U.S. leader

Lincoln's portion of the master suite. The small desk near center was actually used by him, thought to have been the place that he wrote some important speeches while serving in the Illinois Legislature.

After Decatur, Illinois, only an hour due west was Springfield Illinois - the Capital and home of the only property ever owned by President Lincoln. This is the exterior of the house that he and family occupied until their move to Washington.

After Cincinnati we made a bee line for Aunt Eve and Uncle Dean. What a terrific time of sharing stories of past, present and future.

Always fun to take some parting shots with our hosts. This one is of course with Jen's folks John and Irene in Cincinnati.

Oops, for chronological accuracy, we spent an evening with our close friends Ross, Crystal, Travis and sister Joy at the Ross' in northern KY.

Ahh, a taste of New York..... In Cincinnati? That's right, the Brooklyn Bridge was designed by Roebling, who built a mini version right along the Ohio in Cincinnati. I guess that's a good reason for the 29 photos of the bridge. You think we're homesick just yet???!!

The moms in Cincy after a long day at the Underground Railroad Museum

The Weekend in Cincinnati

Hey, all -

We've stayed in one greater metropolitan area for the past 48 hours is the sum of this update. Somehow we manage to pack-in all that two humans can possibly manage in such little time. Today, for instance, we had a leisurely morning and then headed down to the National Underground Rail Road Freedom Center (http://www.freedomcenter.org/) with Mom and Dad Kramer, Mom Wine and sista J-Lo.

We also celebrated Jen's new MPA degree with food! Her parents treated everyone to dinner at the Fish Market, an excellent new restaurant in Newport, Kentucky (in the proper vernacular here it would be either Newport-on-the-levy or Newport-in-the-levy, I am not sure - regardless, the restaurant is in a mall type structure on the now flooded Ohio River). For dessert, we took home some Cold Stone ice cream (including the cake batter flavor).

We'll put up more pictures tomorrow. Thanks for all of your good wishes, support, emails, calls and comments.

Jen and Dennis

Publish or Perish!!!

Sometimes it takes some time (hey, is that onomatopoeia?) to get segments on the web, but we're back! We've had some happy days, and we're headed out to Illinois on Tuesday, followed by more friends in Missouri and Minnesota for next weekend. We'll update with more about our Ohio fun before we shove off Tuesday morning, so stay tuned.

As always, thanks for watching, and to help control the animal population, be sure to have your pets spayed or neutered.

And a nice shot of mom and dad Stolz with Jen. Always a wonderful visit.

Friday night we dropped in on another adopted family, the Stolz's. Dennis has a long history with the family and we continue to stop in for hello's when we can. Far left is big Bill, next is Tony Pence, an old friend of Dennis' from high school who is back in town stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force base, followed by his girl friend Sara, Caitlin and her daughter Lily, mom Stolz (a.k.a. grandma, Claudia), and finally the familiar Jen and Den.

Brittany loves to be in front of the camera too!

What a treat it is to visit with Brittany and Candis when we stop into Dayton. This is Candis with Dennis' mom, Sue at a local favorite - Marion's Pizza.

After our brief visit with Indiana family, we spent a couple of days in Dayton with Dennis' mom. Wright Patterson Air Force Museum is now the home of four Presidential planes and a host of other smaller Presidential flying machines, as seen in the foreground. The one sticking its nose in at the tail to the left is where LBJ was sworn in after President Kennedy's assassination, and was updated until retired in 1990. The chrome plane in the background was the second used for Presidential purposes, the Columbine, of Eisenhower's tenure. It was amazing to have the opportunity to walk through the four originals!

This photo is of Dennis' cousin Ronnie, like a brother growing up, and his son Michael. If you've ever heard of a story of Dennis riding pigs, this is where it all began!

We our longest day of driving on Tuesday, starting with breakfast in a small town in Tennessee where our server came up to us after sitting down and asked if we were the ones from New York! Man, word travels fast in small towns! We landed in Indianapolis that night and spent a day and a half visiting family and friends. This photo is of Dennis' aunt Phyllis and uncle Jim. On a much sadder note, we found out within the last week that our adopted grandpa Johnson had passed away a few weeks ago at the age of 87. We paid a visit to grandma Johnson and shared terrific stories of such a wonderful family.

We left Tennessee on Tuesday morning and headed straight north into Virginia to visit the Ralph Stanley Mountain Music Museum in Clinchville. We had seen a PBS special on it, as it had just opened in October of last year. A wonderful museum tucked in the mountains of Virginia, and worth a drive to visit (at least for those of us who love Bluegrass music and what Ralph has done for it - in particular since O Brother Where Art Thou).