Friday, December 21, 2012

Merry Christmas!

How quickly summer turned into winter! My last post was right around the first of fall, and here I am not writing again until the first day of winter. Despite my lack of writing, we have been on a couple adventures in the last few months. Not nearly as many as over the summer due to my extreme dislike of the cold, but nevertheless, a few...

In early October, I participated in the Second Annual Black Canyon North Rim 20K and 8K race (I did the 8K). Back in June and July I began to start getting into running, and did my first 5K in Aspen (which I posted about). Well I'm not really sure what motivated me, but I kept it up, and soon I was running up to 5 miles on any given day!  So when I saw a poster advertising the Black Canyon 8K, I knew I had to sign up. I've been wanting to check out the North Rim of the canyon for awhile now, and what better way than this!?


It was an absolutely gorgeous day! Beautiful weather and beautiful views!

Which brings me to my next topic - I've officially signed up to run the Canyonlands Half Marathon on March 16, 2013! I'm very excited. Moab is such a unique place, I think it will be a truly gorgeous race! The course actually boarders Arches National Park! I've been pretty good about exercising about 4-6 days per week and have been working up my mileage, having gotten to 10 miles without stopping. My goal for the race will be to complete all 13.1 miles in less than 2 hours, 10 minutes (which is just under a 10 minute/mile pace). I think it's do-able, but it means no slacking for me once the holidays are over!

Other highlights of the last few months include a visit to Oklahoma in October to meet my new niece, born September 19th. Then for Thanksgiving my family came over from Denver again this year. I got them all to participate in the Turkey Trot put on by the San Juan Mountain Runners. There was a 2 mile walk/run, and a 4.2 mile run. My family all did the 2 miler, and Scott and I did the 4.2. It was a lot of fun!

In early December, Scott and I headed up to Telluride/Mountain Village for a "Christmas Weekend." I LOVE Christmas, but it had been so warm out, it just hadn't felt like the Christmas season yet. So Scott and I made a spontaneous decision to go check out the ski area of Mountain Village (located over the mountain from Telluride). We rode the Gondola from Mountain Village into Telluride for dinner, went ice skating, and enjoyed the Christmas lights. We even woke up the next morning to a winter wonderland with freshly fallen snow!


Unfortunately with freshly fallen snow and cold weather comes ice, and on the way back home we ended up in a car accident. We were about half way between Telluride and Montrose when we hit some ice, lost control of the car, and ended up in a ravine about 30 feet down from the road. Luckily neither of us were injured, other than Scott's Nissan Xterra, which was totaled. So now we're in the process of car shopping!

I believe that covers all of the highlights over the past few months. Now we're just looking forward to enjoying our third Christmas together with our adorable puppy!


Sunday, September 23, 2012

Colorful Colorado


Can I just say that I absolutely love fall!

Yesterday we headed down to Telluride to spend the day viewing all of the beautiful fall colors. I've been wanting to do a drive like this for the last couple of weeks, but wanted to try and time it just right - go too soon and they've still got a lot of green in them, wait too long and they're too brown. Well I think we managed to time it pretty darn well. We stopped at a couple pull outs along the drive (including Dallas Divide), headed up to Bridal Veil Falls in Telluride (Colorado's tallest waterfall), and then south towards Lizard Head Pass. The colors were absolutely phenomenal! Everywhere we went the aspens were bright golden yellow and lit up the entire mountain side.

So without further ado, here are the pictures:






















 



Saturday, September 8, 2012

Wildflower Photo Book

I got a coupon for a free photo book from shutterfly, so I decided to take our flower pictures and make one. I didn't have a lot of time before the coupon expires, so I just made it simple, but I think it's shows the pictures well this way too:


Build your own high-quality photo books at Shutterfly.com.

I also got a great deal on Groupon for a large 11x14 book for $19.00, which I'm going to use this fall to make a big scrapbook of all of our summer 2012 pictures. Can't wait for this one!

Monday, September 3, 2012

Silverton

We had an incredibly wonderful day in Silverton today!

The original Labor Day plan was to go up to Pagosa Springs for the whole weekend - we had a cabin with room for the dog and everything. Unfortunately Scott had to work Saturday and Sunday, so those plans were thrown out the window, but since he was off on Monday I knew we had to do something fun and memorable.

One of the things I had been looking forward to on the Pagosa Springs trip, was driving the "Million Dollar Highway," which stretches south of Ouray, down to Silverton. Since we hadn't had a chance to do this yet, and hadn't seen Silverton yet, I thought it would be a great day trip for us. And it most definitely was!

I had been debating whether we wanted to try and hike, but decided with it being the last day of the long weekend, and never seeing the town before, we'd just take it easy and try out some "touristy" things instead. We started the day around 8:30, stopped for some breakfast on our way out of town, and headed south. It's about an hour and a half drive, and my is it scenic. If we ever have family out here for longer than a day, I really do need to get them to some of these areas, they are gorgeous!

One surprise for me along the way, was that I got to see a little bit of Fall popping up here and there! It was amazing that while most of the Aspen's were still green, every so often there were patches of bright yellow trees, and even a few red ones (although these were much more rare)! So that was very exciting for me and I tried to take several pictures of them, although it was hard to find road pull outs in the exact same places as the changing trees - but I did my best, and managed to find a few.

The Million Dollar Highway was beautiful, although we were surprised that it wasn't quite as scary as we thought. There were definitely a few spots that you wouldn't want to be passing a giant RV, but overall nothing too terrible, and nothing worse than Trail Ridge Road in RMNP.

We made it into Silverton around 10:30 or so and stopped in the visitor's center to see what they recommended for just a half day visit. Of course, they said to walk around town (which we were already planning), and the lady working also told me that the Silverton-Durango train comes in at 12:00, if we wanted to see it. Scott didn't really care too much, but I thought it would be cool, so we walked around town shopping until the train came in, and I got several pictures of it. I would love to take the train down to Durango someday!

After that, we got some lunch, and then headed out to the "Old Hundred Mine" for a Mine Tour (this was another thing I thought would be fun, plus the Visitor Center recommended it as well). We got to wear big rain jackets and hard hats and ride into the mine for a short educational tour. I believe I did one or two mine tours back as a kid, so it was fun to do one again and actually learn a thing or two this time.

Following the mine tour, we ended our day with a quick stop overlooking the "Gold Mill" (another big tourist attraction - but no time this trip), and then into town for some ice cream before making our way back home. We did end up stopping at one more overlook, to check out the "Red Mountain Mining District," and in particular, the "Yankee Girl Mine" - which is one of the most photographed in the area.

Pictures...(again had trouble narrowing it down, so bear with me, there are a lot!)


Million Dollar Highway




Silverton


Old Hundred Mine



The Gold Mill
Yankee Girl Mine








Flattop Mountain & Hallett Peak

I've been wanting to hike to the top of Hallett Peak ever since I found out it was the gorgeous mountain towering above Dream and Emera...