I left off with Saturday’s events at the Estes Park Wool Market. Sunday began with the Estes Park Wool Market Classic Sheep Show. Saturday’s show was specifically for the JSBA annual meeting, but this one could include several breeds. There were a few other sheep, but it was mostly the Jacob sheep that had shown on Saturday. This is Lamb 2329 that was heading to Pennsylvania following the show. She won her class.

Here she is in the champion line-up. The judge spent so much time looking at her and coming back to her that I thought she would take a ribbon, but Grand and Reserve went to some of the older sheep. The sheep in the back being shown by Royal (standing) is Meridian Quince, second in the Yearling Ewe class.

Royal helped show in all the classes while Dan was watching over the sheep that were tied to the fence waiting for their turn. This class is Young Flock, a ram lamb and two ewe lambs.

Best Four. The trick for this class is to pay attention to what the judge has said and choose the ones that she liked best. Ours was first place.

This class is Best Flock. That’s one ram, two ewe lambs, and two older ewes. We chose one of the ram lambs for this class because this judge gave him better comments than she gave Turbo, the yearling who was Champion Ram on Saturday. First place for this group.

A Sheep Lead class followed the sheep show. This ram and his companion are ready for the office!

I wore almost a repeat of the previous day, but substituted a pinwheel shawl that I had just got back from the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival where it took the award for the Best Jacob project.

Turbo and I were given the top place in this event. I sure like that ram. He was going to stay behind because one of the organizers of the JSBA meeting purchased him for her flock. However I wouldn’t go home empty-handed.

Her ram, Fair Adventure Horatio, was to come home with me.

The show wasn’t over yet. The Jacob fleeces were judged in the afternoon. It was frustrating to listen to comments but not know whose fleece was being discussed. I tried to recognize bags, but the best I could do was to tell that some bags were NOT mine. I could also tell the difference between coated and non-coated fleeces. When we picked up fleeces after the judging I found that I had won a first, second, and third. Those weren’t all in the same class because large groups had been split into smaller classes. These same fleeces will go to Black Sheep Gathering this week.

I finally spent a little time walking around the vendor booths. This is the only photo I took. I thought these mittens were certainly photo-worthy.

By about 4:00 the barn was almost empty. I was torn about leaving Quince and her lamb behind. I really like that ewe, but I know I have too many sheep and one of the reasons to go all the way to this show was to sell sheep if possible. I’m glad that these sheep will be with a serious Jacob breeder.

We loaded fewer sheep for the return trip. The ram, Horatio, joined us as did a couple of ewe lambs I brought home for a friend. But we left behind Turbo, Quince, and 5 lambs.

My phone showed that if we drove straight through we’d be home at almost 8 a.m. That of course is not possible.

The first point of interest, just a few miles out of town. There were a couple of places where people had pulled off the road to see elk.

On the windy road between Estes Park and Fort Collins.

Now we’re back to drive-by scenery photos like in the first couple of posts about the trip.

I was still in the passenger seat, but now we’re going the other direction so the scenery is different.

Dinner on the road.

Wyoming. We should have paid attention to Siri. The phone told us to take a detour but we didn’t see any reason to. Eventually we came upon a huge back up of trucks and cars and it took us over 90 minutes to go 10 miles. When we got to the problem it turned out to be a big-rig trailer that had caught fire.

In the meantime the traffic was stop and go and the sky became more ominous. I entertained myself with taking videos and isolating the lightning shots.

We also noticed the spinning wheel in this truck when we were both stopped on the freeway. We both had windows down and we asked if he’d been at Estes Park. Yes, he had.

I took this photo and the next from some of the videos I recorded while waiting on the freeway.

We drove until some time after midnight and stopped at a rest stop in Utah I think.