Given that yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the US, I find myself being nostalgic for the many Thanksgivings I had at my grandmother’s house growing up. Unpacking various pieces of china and serving ware to put away in our new house, assorted family heirlooms that I remember from my childhood, and using the buffet that was from my grandmother’s house has filled me with a steady stream of memories. It is no surprise, then, that seeing this week’s friday foto finder theme of “stream” brought to mind one body of water: the one in the town where my grandmother had lived.

These photos are from May of 2005, the last time I visited that town. The creek that runs through Beulah, Colorado ranges from a tiny trickle in times of drought (which Beulah sees quite often) to a rushing torrent in the spring, gushing with the runoff from the snowmelt up in the higher mountains. During that visit, the creek (pronounced “crick” by many locals) was quite high.

My mother and I walked down to see the place where the creek crosses Central Avenue. At this junction, the creek calmly flows under the road through some pipes for much of the year. But in the spring, the creek insists on crossing the road. Cars and trucks typically drive right through the creek, but happily there is a little bridge for pedestrians who aren’t wearing their waders.

To see what other streams are flowing, merrily row yourself over to the fff blog.

This week’s theme for friday foto finder is “sky.”

These photos are from 2004, taken during a visit to see my mother back when she lived in Colorado. I took these from the highway that runs from Pueblo to Beulah. (Don’t worry, I wasn’t the one driving!)

Montana may be the state nicknamed “big sky country,” but Colorado has pretty big skies, too. Out on the plains, especially, where there are no tall buildings and few buildings or trees of any size, the sky seems somehow more immense than in other parts of the world I’ve seen.

When summer storms come, the sky can look particularly dramatic.

A particularly ominous mass of clouds.

Look up!

I love the way rain in the distance can look like a bit like clouds hanging down in curtains. (Or like the sky is falling.)

I am partial to this photo for the way it captured a very s-like shape in the side road. But the sky looks pretty cool, too.

These photos were from June, which, up in that part of Colorado, is Spring. The bright green grasses you can see in these photos are mostly brown by July.

To see what the sky looks like in other people’s worlds, drop by the friday foto finder blog.