My sisters hate me...

Or I assume they do. They haven't told me otherwise, so I'm forced to assume that their continued silence is evidence of their outright animosity, or complete antipathy. The result is the same.

Until they tell me otherwise, I'll just sit here in the dark.

kim

Happy Dia de los Muertos, Everyone!

I hope everyone had a happy, safe Halloween!

Brent and I went to this great Halloween party at Janet and Dave's place west of Denver. They really went all out on this party, and it was awesome! We had our auras photographed, our cards read, and our caricatures drawn! Brent was dressed as a wizard, and I was a green fairy. Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead were there, Dave was a very dashing Jack Sparrow, and Janet had on a really great hat.

Here are some pics from the party:


And here are photos of our Aura-photos:


Those dark spots on Brent's picture are supposed to be his spirit guides, and I am supposed to be unbalanced and ungrounded. Another crazy thing happened at this party: I learned how to smile for a camera! I can't decide if it was the costume or Janet's magic lip gloss, but somehow, I actually look nice in most of these pictures. I'm a little annoyed that the Aura-picture is such a good picture of me, but it's got all this aura all over it! There are a few more pictures on Janet's facebook page if you want to look for them...

On Friday night we went to an Eagles Hockey game with Cody and Kristin. We ate far too much fried food, including these absolutely evil little cinnamon doughnuts that came in a bucket. There were 2 fights, and the Eagles won! Woohoo!

Really, except for having to go in to work on Saturday morning, we had a pretty great weekend!

Kim

Lot's of Snow!

They say it was a record snowfall for this early in October in Fort Collins. Check out this picture from our balcony!
- Brent

Hmmmmm...

Not much to keep track of anymore, huh?

We're in the same place as my last post, which was AGES ago, doing most of the same things we were doing then. Pretty boring.

But really, September was a pretty busy month. Lots of stuff going on! Here's a quick and dirty version:

In mid-August I cut 85% of my hair off. And I'll probably be going for another chop relatively soon.

Brent started taking violin lessons from a guy in Boulder. He's really enjoying them! His teacher says that he has to teach someone to play the violin, so I volunteered. So I'm learning how to play the violin a little too.

We took a short trip to San Francisco around August 29th. We went to the farmers market, spent some time with my sisters, and went to see the Giants play the Rockies at AT&T Ballpark. Our seats were great, Brent commented that he hadn't sat that close to home plate since Little League!

The next weekend (September 5 and 6) we went up the the Rocky Mountain Shambhala center to take a class on meditation. Brent was looking for some techniques to use in his practicing, and I was just sort of along for the ride, but it was an interesting class. The Great Stupa and the surrounding area is very beautiful, though. It was worth it just to be there. And it was Brent's birthday! Happy Birthday Brent!

The following weekend we jetted off to Bloomington to visit Janelle and to go to Brent's cousin's wedding (congratulations Ken and Kristen!). While there we ate awesome Korean food, wandered around IU, and visited Janelle and Sung's community garden plot.

Brent climbed Longs peak on Sept 20 (right before it started snowing in the high country). He said that he was probably one of the last 20 people to make it up this season. Even as he hiked down he could see the storms rolling in.

My Dad, Brent and I all went down to Albuquerque around September 26 to help Nathan move into his newly acquired house. Hope he's unpacked a little...

Finally, last Friday, October 2nd, Brent and I and Scott and Holly all spent the evening in Boulder. It was Scott and Holly's first night out without the boys in a while, and we had a lot of fun! We started out at the Dushanbe Tea house, where we had lovely, spicy chai and appetizers. Then we went to see the Kronos Quartet play at Mackey Auditorium. They played "Black Angels" which is a very famous, though disturbing, piece of theirs - it was really fascinating to see them play it. We finished up the evening with dinner at Jax Fish House, which is an INCREDIBLE restaurant. It was a really fun evening, we hope to do it again soon!

That's pretty much it! Work is busy, our apartment is great, and we got a big bag of local Honeycrisp apples at the farmers market this past weekend. Leaves are changing, and there's a forecast of snow for tomorrow. It must be fall!

Best wishes all! Here's another bonus picture from Brent's Longs peak hike.


Kim

p.s. - Brent and I have both found our way onto facebook in the recent past as well. If you haven't found us there already, friend us!

We found a place!!

Yay! No more living in Mom and Dad's basement!

Our new apartment is in Park Lane Towers, on the 9th floor. We've gone to the other extreme from living in a basement, I guess. It's got 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and a lovely kitchen and balcony. As a matter of fact, here is one of the coolest things about this new apartment: 2 things that I saw from the balcony this morning!


Really, we have an awesome view. It's close to a busy street, though. It's pretty impressive how noisy it still is, even though we're 9 stories in the air. The apartment was rented furnished, so we didn't have to move any of our precariously balanced stuff out of storage. We basically just brought over all of our clothes over the course of a few days, and then we were all moved in! It's great. We can walk to work, or out to dinner, or to a movie. The Saturday farmers market is only 3 blocks away. We have an underground parking space, access to 2 swimming pools, a hot tub, and 2 gathering rooms. Lucille's is right across our parking lot, Avo's is just down the street. There's a coffee shop on my way into work!

There are a couple of down points, I suppose. We're not allowed to have open flames on the balconies, so that means no grills. There are lots of various rules and regulations about conduct and stuff (wear a cover up and footwear on your way to and from the pool! No pizza boxes in the garbage chute!). Things that all make sense or are reasonable; but there sure are a lot of them.

Anyway, here are a couple of other pictures of the apartment. Y'all should all come visit!



Kim

The vacation's over...phooey.

Today Brent and I went back to work. Officially. From here on out, this blog may get a little boring. What did we do today? We woke up, went to work, came home, went for a run, then we ate dinner, then we did random home stuff, then we went to bed. Boring.

We're both working at the same company we left 14 months ago, before we left for the Trail. Ironically, Brent's replacement left a short time ago, and his old boss called and offered Brent his job back, with a few perks that made the whole deal irresistible. When my old boss heard that Brent was coming back, she mentioned to his boss that she had some positions opening up that I would be qualified for, so I called, and our first day back was today! What is similarly ironic is that the person who replaced me in my position is leaving this coming Thursday. Somehow we managed to engineer a 14 month leave of absence in the middle of a recession, when some areas of the country have 14% unemployment rates. How the heck did we do that?!

Anyway, my first day back was fine. I think that I missed the easy interaction, and people. There were lots of people I didn't know, but lots that I did know too. The day passed quickly, and my trainer was a surprised at how much I remembered, which, considering it had been idle for more than a year, was a lot. I must just be gifted.

Brent will be working from home most of the time, but he came in too, greeted old coworkers, picked up a laptop, and stuff like that. We're pretty sure we still want to live in Old Town Fort Collins, so we'll have to be on the lookout for rentals or houses for sale. Our house is still rented, and the tenants have it until April next year. We're currently still crashing with Mom and Dad, but their place is pretty far from work, and you can't really walk anywhere from there.

Anyway, that was our first day back. I didn't take any pictures, 'cause that's against company security policy. You'll just have to be content with my assertion that everything was just fine!

Kim

Cruisin'

So, yes, we went on a cruise. If we don't sound particularly excited, it's because it was the exact same cruise we went on 3 years ago, except with different people and a slightly different intinerary. Same boat, same food, most of the same shore stops. This time we went with my dad's family, last time it was mom's. Another thing that was different (and great) was that Korin and Brian got an "Owner's Suite" (check out a picture/floorplan here), which mom, dad, and of course, Charli, stayed in with them. It had a big bedroom, a ginormous bathroom, a closet big enough to put Charli's crib in, a big living/sitting room, and a deck with a hot tub. Plus the butler, concierge service, and the super-special restaurant at your disposal. It had an espresso machine, and they gave us 3 big bottles of booze, and champagne on the first day. Brent, Sam and I spent most of our time there, just coming back to our puny inside stateroom to sleep. Here are some pictures of people enjoying the suite:



Don't we look like we're having a great time? We could shoehorn a lot of people in there.

The first stop was in Ketchikan, where Brian, Sam, Brent and I all went on a nice hike up Deer mountain. It was pretty foggy all day, and we ended up hiking right up into the clouds, but it was really pretty up there.

In Juneau we rented bicycles and rode around Gastineau Channel and across the bridge to Douglas. We found this great historical park there that had all of these awesome mine ruins. Unfortunately, we were running sort of late, and couldn't stop to take any pictures. We should have, but the ship may have left without us, and that would be bad. We had to be back because we were taking a sightseeing trip up Tracy Arm Fjord, where we saw seals, eagles, whales, waterfalls, glaciers calving, and lots of people with binoculars.

Skagway was the last stop, and we went looking for some internet (wireless on the ship is unbelievably expensive). After wandering around in town for a while, we went on a short guided hike along a portion of the Chilkoot trail, a 30+ mile hike that the gold miners had to take over White pass. The hike was great, and our guide was really cool, and it was all capped of by a nice float down the Taiya River.

Here's the full Yang/Davis/Lawler/Yamashiro/Palafox/Metzger party. A good time was had by all!

-Kim

Two National Parks in one day!

I picked up Brent in Durango, and we decided to spend a couple of days down here in southern Colorado before heading back to Denver. This morning we headed off to Mesa Verde (National Park # 1), where we took a tour of Balcony House. We had to climb 3 ladders to get there - these people took their security seriously. But they had a lot of cool stuff in their cliff houses. Balcony house is named for the "porches" many of the rooms may have had. It's speculated that the eaves you can see at the left were covered with reeds and clay, then used to sleep or sit out on, just like a veranda! The cliff houses were out of the sun, many of them had a spring or other water source, and, of course, a ceremonial kiva. They actually seemed like pretty nice places to live!

We stopped in Telluride for lunch, which was much as we remembered it from when we started our bike trip there years and years ago. Still a nice mountain town. This time we took the main road through town all the way through, and discovered that it takes you through a neighborhood full of big houses, to a really nice view of Bridal Veil falls. We stopped, but you could see the road switch-backing again and again and again. It looked really neat, like it would be an incredible (but really hard) bike ride.

From Telluride we headed to the Black Canyon on the Gunnison River (National Park #2). It was gorgeous, and the sun was setting. We took some short walks to the edges of the canyon, which was SCARY high - my dad would have had a heart attack. We did most of the scenic drive before we got worried about being in a National Park on a Friday night. It turned out that we shouldn't have worried, cause there was tons of camping at the campground. We slept well!

Kim

In Durango

I headed over to the laundromat in my raingear to do some laundry, and who should show up but another raingear-clad hiker, Eric, who we met way back in Salida! We swapped stories and got cleaned up, and headed over to the Durango Diner for an enormous breakfast. If you're ever in Durango, and in the mood for some butter with potato and egg and cheese mixed in, that's the place to go!

I hung out in Ivan's coffee shop (he wouldn't let me pay for my coffee - free hitchiking with gourmet coffee thrown in, not bad!) until Kim got to Durango. We stayed at a dive motel for the night, and had a nice dinner at a French restaurant - nothing like steak tartare to make your stomach sure you're not eating trail food anymore!

Finished! :(

Some warm air came in during the night - I woke up sweating and had to take off a bunch of layers of clothing - and I had camped at treeline, so it had been pretty chilly in the evening! I guess some warm desert air came in from the south.

Today's trail was much more interesting, climbing up over Indian Ridge, before beginning the long, 4500 ft descent into Durango. I had planned to camp a few miles from Durango and go in tomorrow, but I was counting on a water source the guidebook described as a "year-round improved spring." Sounded pretty nice, but here's the reality:

Not my idea of drinkable water. So I hiked the rest of the way to the end of the trail, about 6 miles - so with mixed feelings, I was done! Man, I'm going to miss this when I go back to work...

I hadn't been in the parking lot for 5 minutes before Ivan, a coffee shop owner in Durango out for a bike ride, offered me a ride into town. He dropped me off at Carver's, a local brewpub, which has a policy of a free beer for any hiker finishing the CT. So that worked out pretty well. I walked a few miles over to the Durango Hostel for the night - which is about the nicest hostel I've seen - it was like walking into an Ikea store...

PBR

My day started today with a big grey bird staring me in the face. I accidentally left a few granola bar wrappers out in my pack, and he must have been attracted to those. In any case, I opened my eyes, and there he was, staring back. He then panicked, and flew upward into the roof of the tarp. It took him a few seconds to figured out how to get out. And then, of course, I was awake.

The trail climbed over blackhawk pass in the morning, but spent most of the rest of the day in clearcuts and on logging roads, so there wasn't much reason to stop - except for the cooler of beer someone from Durango left out for CT thru-hikers. Ahh.. PBR....

Chased by storms

The motel owner where I stayed offered me a ride back to the trailhead, which was great! So I got a fairly early start, which was good, since the thunderstorms started around 10:30am. Looking back, there was even a fresh coating of snow on the mountains. I spent most of the day threading the needle on thunderstorms - lots of them were around, and every time I looked back, it was nasty looking where I had just left. So I just kept hiking, and luckily nothing major caught up with me.

The trail stayed over 11,000 feet in elevation most of the day, but the geology noticeably changed - lots of red/clay soil and sedimentary rocks. Also, there were lots of alpine meadows covered in wildflowers. After all the rain we've been getting, its going to be an amazing wildflower season.

I had a really nice campsite overlooking Engineer peak and a wide valley below me, and I could even see a bit of Lizard Head pass (outside Telluride) through the trees.

Into Silverton

Once again, it rained really hard through the night, but I was warm and dry. I putzed around a little in the morning before getting going - it was only a 9 mile hike into Silverton. On the way in I passed a really cool little spot, with some Beaver ponds and Arrow and Vestal peaks in the background:









The mountain range here is called the Grenadiers - it's not a huge range of mountains, but very distinctive:









I also crossed over the Durango-Silverton railroad line, an old steam engine line that now runs as a tourist attraction - the cheater's way into Silverton on the CT.









It only took me a few minutes to hitch a ride into Silverton in the back of a pickup truck. The town was really busy when I got there - the train had just arrived, and the town was full of people. That combined with the 4th of July weekend reminants, and all the locals seemed pretty harried. But after the last train left it got a lot quieter - it's a cute little town. I had mexican food for dinner, and it was actually good! Must be getting closer to New Mexico.

Brent hits Silverton!

Brent says that he pulled into Silverton at around noon today. His hike has been going fine and he's been enjoying himself immensely. Apparently, most of this last section was above treeline, with amazing vistas; he says that he's been having trouble deciding where to look! He particularly like Elk Creek Drainage, where he dropped down to 8,000 feet to cross the Animas River. He said that it's a glacier carved valley with waterfalls on both sides. This probably has to do with Colorado's crazy-wet summer we're having, but it still sounds pretty cool. Brent also mentioned that the mountain lightning storms have been fairly merciful. He only had to bail on a section of trail once, just after leaving Creede. He's been taking lots of pictures, which we'll post here, along with some trail-journaling, after I pick him up in Durango on the 9th!

kim

Elk everywhere

I woke up to the morning sun on the tarp, which was a wonderful change! The entire day I didn't know which way to look - there were great views in every direction. This stretch between Creede and Silverton is some of the best hiking of the entire trail. There were lots of herds of Elk, with many new calves, some of them very new, even still struggling to walk. I thought it would be really neat to see an Elk giving birth, but no such luck. I did try to record the squeaking sound the calves make - here's the video - turn up your speakers if you watch it, its kind of cool!


Not much else to say today, other than post lots of pictures. The day ended with a really dramatic descent into the Elk Creek drainage - huge cliffs and waterfalls everywhere, very beautiful!

Colorado Trail's highest point

I woke up to more rain this morning, but it cleared up as I was packing up, which was nice. The trail climbed right back above treeline. There was a lot of elevation gain, and I crossed the Colorado Trail's official highest point, at 13,250 feet - a very beautiful and isolated section of trail. And then I crossed over a to Carson Saddle, and was surrounded by motorized tourists - there was a jeep road up from the valley, and there must have been 20-30 people on loud, smelly ATVs running around. It was a bit shocking after not having seen anyone since leaving the Creede trailhead.

In any case, I crossed over another pass and was suddenly alone again, in a valley below Sunshine and Redcloud peaks. Kind of a strange interlude.

I had a shin splint starting up today - I blame my shoes, combined with all the climbing. But I took 4 ibuprofen and tied my bandana around my shin, and after 4 hours or so, it felt much better - that must've popped that stupid shin muscle back into place, to my relief.






Brent