Mini Vacations

As you may have noticed, I'm a little behind on posting about the goings-on in our lives. With a very busy schedule and a new blogger interface that makes posting take forever, I just wasn't sure if it was worth it - especially considering my measly number of readers. But, as you may have read in my last post, I have a renewed interest in documenting my life - particularly my experiences in Colorado.

Ironically, this first post has nothing to do with Colorado...

Anyway, it may take me a little while to fully catch up on everything that has happened these last few months. But I suppose one good thing about being so behind is that I can connect two events of a similar subject in one post, even if they happened weeks and weeks apart. For example, during my spring semester (I can't help but separate all events in my life into semesters: fall, spring, and summer), I took a couple of mini-vacations to get some breaks from school. The first was way back in February when Matt and I flew to Washington state to visit friends who recently moved up there. Katie is completing her residency for veterinary surgery in Pullman, WA, so she and Dave will be living there for the three years of the program. Hopefully, they'll make their way back to good ol' Colorado when the three years are up.

While the weekend was a short one, it involved lots of beer and skiing. And lots of hanging out, too.

After saying hi to Roxie and Kanzi...

We went to check out all Pullman and the surrounding area had to offer. Which was basically the college (Washington State University), a few restaurants and breweries, and some grizzly bears. Yup, grizzly bears:

Behind the many fences are the bears. They're a part of the Bear Center, which is a research and conservation program associated with the university.

A couple of the restaurants we visited. An old European place with awesome potato pancakes, and a delicious fine dining restaurant where Matt had the best steak he's ever had. Yum.

Beer! Palouse Falls Brewing Co.

On day 2, we made our way to Dave's local ski resort a couple of hours away. These pictures might look familiar because I think I already included them in my skiing post. Oh, well. It's always fun to look at ski pictures.

At Silver Mountain Ski Resort in Idaho.

Driving through Idaho and Washington.

It was a nice trip, and it was great to see Dave and Katie.

The second mini-vacation was a girls' camping trip to Moab, Utah during my spring break. I was super excited to go to a destination I've been wanting to visit for years, but it was a little bittersweet because I went without Matt.. While I really value girl-time and time with friends, I also love sharing my experiences with my husband. Fortunately, I only saw a fraction of what Moab has to offer, so we'll definitely go back sometime.

Camping!

We basically had one full day to see Arches National Park. We tried to hit the big sights, which included the Windows, Delicate Arch, and Landscape Arch.

Viewing an arch from the underside.

Walking around at the Windows.

Besties!

Hiking to Delicate Arch.

At Delicate Arch.

Meryn climbing something. She did this a lot, and it got a little boring standing around as she climbed random rock after random rock. This was, like, the10th thing she climbed. At least she was having fun!

Walking to Landscape Arch.

Landscape Arch.

After a night of awkward camping on the side of the road (a little planning goes a long way, kids) and a breakfast by the river....

We went to Dead Horse Point before Kirsten and I headed home. Amazing views!

Look how close I got to the edge!

It's always nice to get out of town for a couple of days, and it helps me keep my sanity at my stressful job.

Still Catchin' Up: Camping in the Cold

A while back, Dave somehow convinced us (mostly me - Matt was excited) to go camping - in SEPTEMBER! In case you didn't know, the mountains can get a little chilly in September. And in case you haven't read my blog in the past, I HATE the cold. Seriously.

But Matt has learned the proper way to get me to do something I don't want to do: tell me it involves the purchase of new toys - and then buy me new toys! This time, we got new, fancy sleeping bags! They're down and cozy and extremely warm and awesome. So, I quit my complaining and packed my bag for a weekend of fall colors and cold.

It wouldn't be long before I would regret ever deciding to go.

Ok, not really. I just like being super dramatic. But there were some crazy, bad things that made the weekend quite adventurous. We'll get to that in a bit.

Anyway, off we went to the mountains - more specifically, the area around Marble, Colorado. And after a quick stop at a roadside waterfall...

Ahh.

We made it to our campsite!

I snapped this picture of our beautiful car - so proud of it. I had no idea that my pride would quickly change to disappointment. Massive disappointment. (Ha, this dramatic thing is awesome!)

Anyway, we had a delicious lunch at a local barbecue place, and readied ourselves for a little hike to see some fall colors. This was when I came face-to-face with "disaster" #1: I forgot my shoes! I was wearing awesome North Face sandals, but I'd meant to bring my trail shoes for the hike. Since I'd forgotten them, I had to hike in sandals. And it wasn't fun.

But oh, well. The hike was still nice. Unfortunately, the fall colors were not quite what we were hoping for ("disaster" #2). Dave had planned to get some good photos on this trip, but the aspens at the higher altitude were not turning the beautiful yellows we were looking for. So, we hiked and saw some pretty views and got a few glimpses of some pretty colors in bushes and lower altitude trees. No wall-worthy photos, but still fun.

Hiking.

See? Still pretty.

Hiking. We came across the old foundation of what was supposed to be condos for Marble Ski Resort - before the resort closed. Matt and Dave, being the avid skiers they are, were pretty giddy about this discovery.

After our hike, Dave had the bright idea (that's right, I'm blaming it all on you, Dave) to head up a rocky road to Crystal Mill. It's supposed to be beautiful up there, and Dave was still hoping to get some awesome pictures on this trip. We started up the road, which was 4-wheel-drive only, thinking our nifty little Subie could handle anything it came across.

Enter disaster #3: The Big One.

To give our Subie a little credit, it wasn't the car itself that failed us, but one of the tires. And to give the tire a little credit, it was a REALLY rocky road. We just hit a rock perfectly, and our tire was very suddenly flat.

The bad news (other than the flat) was that the road was very narrow and pretty busy. There was no way than another car was going to be passing us in either direction. The good news was that the boys changed the tire faster than I've ever seen anyone change a tire in my life.

Flat tires suck.

The other bad news was that we still had to make it back down the 3 miles of road we'd already traveled (we obviously were no longer trying to make it to the mill). They put on the flat, turned the car around (in a terrifyingly narrow section!), drove to a wider section of road, moved the spare from the front tire to the back tire (which involved putting the flat back on, switching the spare and the back tire, and moving the back tire to the front), and VERY SLOWLY drove back down the road, watching carefully for rocks.

It was so fun! Don't believe me? Well, that's because it really sucked.

After driving back to the nearest town and searching for anyone who sell us a tire at 6:00 on a Saturday night, we finally gave up and went back to camp. We were in desperate need of relaxation, so we had some hot dogs, some beer, and some fire before heading to bed.

Camping!

I somehow made it through the freezing cold night, despite the fact that my toes were exposed to the elements through my stupid sandals. My new sleeping bag was ridiculously warm, and we woke up to a beautiful, new day. The bacon Matt was cooking when I got up may have made the world look a little more lovely, but it was a nice morning, nonetheless.

Good mornin', good mornin' to you.

I took a walk to see the lovely fall colors, which were prettier at our campsite than anywhere on our hike. I took lots of pictures to show my kids at school!

So we packed up and drove off to find a tire, which resulted in the purchase of FOUR tires for LOTS of money. But now we have awesome tires, and that's good.

Goodbye, pretty mountains.

So, it was actually not a bad weekend. Things didn't go quite as awesomely as we'd hoped, but being in the mountains on a crappy camping trip is still WAY better than being in the city doing work. Even when it's majorly cold.