July 3 - 11

At long last I sit down to write again. Tons have happened since the last entry and we've had a fair bit of down time, especially since we've been in Salt Lake with Shannon's dad. I just haven't been in the right frame of mind to sit down and blog. I think perhaps there has been too much to process and that the down-time forced me into some self-reflection that I've needed to do for quite a while. At any rate, if I had blogged during the last week it might not have been very pretty.

We spent the fourth of July in Fairplay CO, just south and over Hoosier Pass from Breckenridge. Breck is a town that is just a bit over the top for my taste. Lots of beautiful people, lots of money, lots of stuff. Once you go over the pass, over 10,000 feet up and twisty-turny switchbacks, you come to the most bad ass little town of Alma. We shopped at the Al-Mart. T-shirts for the girls. Pick 200 or so of the quirkiest, artsy, back-to-the-lander, sun and snow hardened folks you can imagine and those are the residents of this former mining beef raising town. They have refurbished all of the turn of the century downtown buildings and have opened the coolest bars, hair salons, art galleries, outfitters, etc. We camped in a little BLM campground called Horseshoe at about 9,000 feet up. Ali and I took a 3 mile hike up into the mountain and threw snowballs. We had to cross a fast flowing 30' wide snow-melt river to get back to camp. The BLM folks had laid some large timbers across the water but it was flowing too high to cross. So, somebody put large stepping stones every foot or so on top of the timbers. The water came over the top of many of these. Ali donned her Crocs and I went naked foot across. Man, was that water cold.

Our reason for being in the Breck area for this trip was to attend the wedding of our college buddy Laura Allen. Her folks have been heading up there from Plano, TX since the 80's and Laura is now living and teaching there. We had a great time meeting friends and family and her new husband, Bernie. The wedding, held at the home of a family friend, was beautiful. The view of the mountains was priceless and the weather held out until shortly before the reception then the cold rain came pouring in. We wish Laura and Bernie the very best.




We boondocked the night of the wedding at a rest stop in western CO. The next morning we headed to CO National Monument. What a beautiful place. Similar to Canyonlands National Park but just different enough make it a special day for us. We hiked a couple of the trails, explored a cave off the trail that we shouldn't have, and had a picnic lunch at the top of one of the canyons. We headed into Fruita, CO to check out the Dinosaur Museum. OK but not nearly as cool as the one at Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, UT that we visited three years ago. We crashed at Highland Lake State Park in CO, a bit of an oasis in the desert with several bodies of water and lots of trees, grass, birds, and white trash. We slept fitfully through a raging wind storm and headed out first thing in the morning for UT.


Since arriving at Gary and Connie's we have slept, showered, read, relaxed, hiked, swam, eaten, cooked, caught a movie (Wanted), read some more, washed and waxed Biesel, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The girls have had an absolute blast hanging out here with the grands. In five minutes Kenny and Kristi and clan will arrive from TX and the girls are beside themselves with anticipation. We'll keep you posted.