Turkey Sunday

Today Will and I celebrated our own Thanksgiving together! Just like the real Turkey day, football and laziness were abundant.

My first time cooking a Thanksgiving meal... turned out pretty good. Which is good since I made way too much and we'll be eating it all week.

Ridley loves her turkey.

And now there's a snow storm moving into the western slope and I am very thankful we have all that new firewood to stay warm inside and a short week ahead of us!!

Wood you light my fire

We finally broke down and ordered a chord of wood to be delivered for the low low price of $50. It turns out it's cheap for a reason...

Time to start chopping! Good news is, we will have plenty of wood to keep a fire all winter long and fulfill my pyro tendencies. And Will has a new workout regimen.

Oh Snow You Didnt!

Our first snow in town. We got about 1/2-1" of big puffy snow this morning, all of which was gone by about lunchtime when the sun came out. My kind of snow.

School isn't cancelled?!?!?! Where are we?...

Ridley avoiding the weather in a Piggly Wiggly grocery bag (or sack if you're a weirdo).

Fall Time

Sorry for not posting recently... but here's a quick wrap up on what we've been up to the past few weekends! With the leaves changing colors, we went for a hike up on the Grand Mesa three weeks ago.

The next weekend my parents were in town and we tried to do the same thing, but with much colder and dreary weather. And in hunting season (not very safe). So we only did a small portion of the hike. But we drove over the top of the mesa which was a first and got to see a good bit of snow!

This is the same trail from the pictures above, just a week later... Brrrrr!

And our friends Danielle and Shane stopped by on their way out West! They're moving to Hawaii and were making their way to LA to have their car shipped over. It was good to see them and best of luck to them on their move. Can't wait to visit!!

Last weekend Morgan and Drew came to visit from UGA! Saturday we drove over the Mesa again... but stopped along the way at some new spots we hadn't seen.

Skipping ice and snow balls on the frozen lake

Check out how deep the snow was

Hiking Crags Crest trail

That same day we drove to the Colorado National Monument and checked that out.

On Sunday we drove the 2 hours to Moab to Arches National Park!

And to wrap up the weekend, we built a fire (you know how I love my fires...) in our fire pit and passed out candy to the wee ones.

Now we are watching some football and enjoying a quiet weekend. Go cocks!

Morning Glory Arch

Morning Glory Arch is the 6th longest natural span in the US (according to the sign). Its right outside Moab.

Its big ya'll

A sweet setup in the campground. Van + popup + canoe=wicked jealous

Porcupine Rim

For fall break I decided to head down to Moab, UT and ride the world famous Porcupine Rim trail. I decided just to go out and back on the trail which makes for a solid 28ish miles. Most people just take a shuttle to the trailhead, and now I know why. It is pretty much all uphill from where I started to the trailhead(and I endo'ed on the first little downhill like 12 miles in). It ended up being a 5 1/2 hour ride with some wind and nice cold rain.

Castle Valley

The La Sal Mountains from porcupine rim

High Anxiety Viewpoint. Its 3000' from here to the valley floor below.

There is a tractor in the parking lot down there.

I had been planning on riding the next morning too but since I could barely move I decided against it. It was a great ride though and I found a CO2 canister, pump, 2 tire levers, 2 water bottles, a sweet beanie, and 5 bucks!! All of which was spread out over about 10 miles. You know its a good ride when you come back with more money than you started with.

spontaneity weekend

This weekend we had hoped to meet up with Tony Zanca and his friends riding their bikes across the country. They were planning on being in southern Utah and Colorado over the weekend, just a few hours from us and TZ said he'd call us when they got in Friday evening to figure things out. So Friday afternoon we loaded up the car and made our way South. We weren't really sure where we were heading, but knew 2 hours away was the town of Ouray, which we had heard was pretty cool, so we made that our stop for the night. We got in after dark, found a European-esque hotel, and made our way to the local pub! Ouray is known as the "Switzerland of America" and is settled in between the mountains- Very pretty.

Main Street...

Ouray from above...We woke up early to a frost, walked around the town, and then got back on the road in search of Tony, who we had not heard back from yet. We continued South without much direction, stopping briefly to check out towns and lakes we came across.

Drive safely... Really, the only town we came across was Silverton, a tiny town that is known for their beer and the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge railroad train. The brewery was closed and not much was open, so we walked around and got back on the road... as we neared Durango, still no word from Tony, we decided to stop and check out Durango!

We got in around lunch time and enjoyed a lunch outside. Durango was pretty cool and is a bicycle friendly town, so we had some fun checking out the local bike shops. I found a white Electra Amsterdam at Papa Wheelies that caught my eye... but left it behind, promising to think about it.

Lunch outside... Mountains in the background!

A very Dutch bicycle outside Papa Wheelies...A few hours later we realized we needed to find a bar to watch the South Carolina/ Alabama game! We found a great bar with some Michigan fans (boo Michigan!- but these guys were nice) and settled in to watch us kick some Crimson Tide tushie!! Very exciting game, the entire bar was cheering for Carolina by the end!! We left hours later still on a high from winning and me still thinking about the bicycle from Papa Wheelies... so we went back and made the purchase!

Still no word from Tony, we found a campground and got settled in for the night. We finally got ahold of Tony and he said they were doing well and would be in Ridgeway later this week (maybe an hour south of Junction) so Will may head down to see him then. We fell asleep quickly- afterall, we had a very busy and exciting day, and woke up early, packed up, and made our way back home. I got to ride my new purchase downtown to lunch today!!

Lookin good :) This time my bike will remain locked up when left outside...