While we lived in Andover, Peg took an initiative which led to a happy outcome over a number of years. She saw an advertisement for a place called Forbes Park, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in southern Colorado. Plots in Forbes Park were offered for sale by the prestigious Forbes Corporation, which gave Peg confidence to request more information. It all looked good. Our friends Bob and Sue Turner were at their place in Santa Fe, some hundred twenty miles away. We imposed on them to go to Forbes Park and take a look. Their report was favorable, so Peg bought a 6-acre plot with her own money from her violin shop.

The following summer, when we went out with our trailer and looked at the plot, she did not care for it. There was a money-back or exchange guarantee, and the salesman took us to three other plots, the last of which drew an appreciative "This is it!" from Peg. It was a two-acre plot in a grove of aspen trees with a view of the nearby lake and in the distance, above the foot hills, a view of the West Spanish Peak. The prairie stretched out before the plot and was part of the commons on which roamed a few hundred beef cattle, never to be developed for real estate plots. Our altitude there was 9,200 feet.

We had a lovely small house built according to our specifications, and for many years until we had to give up traveling, we drove out each summer, 1,700 miles each way - four days and three nights in our rec vehicle. In some summers we even made the trip twice.

We enjoyed the clear air and beautiful vistas and the cows which came up around our house sometimes, and the rancher and his wife on horseback who tended them and who drank many a Margarita at our house. We drove the forty miles or so into Alamosa every week or so for shopping, and always ate lunch at the same Mexican restaurant.

David and his second wife Katherine came from California to spend a few days with us each summer. They loved the place, and when we finally ceased to make the trip out there, we deeded it to him. Since then they have spent weeks at a time there during longer vacations and Christmas breaks, and we are glad that it remains in the family and that they enjoy it so much.

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