Slippery Little Suckers

Well, I'm attempting the art of skate skiing and there definitely are some more techniques that I'm hoping to pick up along the way. Currently I'm just picking myself up off the snow. 1st time on the dang thangs: Monday with a lessson at the touring center. Got the jist of it, I do believe. Then, today went out with the girls, Mandi and Petra, and had fun sliding around. Thanks for your patience gals! Now for tomorrow; Dave, Tim and I are hoping to get in a few k's. Pictures maybe eventually. For now it would probably be hazardous to the camera's health to be in my pocket considering my lack of stability and close relationship with the hard ground. Maybe next time camera, maybe next time.

Another Fun Trip

This past Tuesday & Wednesday Tim, the dogs, and I escaped from Grand County again for a little more R&R. This time we headed way past Leadville to some magnificent hot springs over-looking the San Luis valley. We had so much fun, we hardly wanted to come back home. The day started in Grand Lake @ about -20 degrees, according to our thermometer off our back deck.









We encountered the Collegiate Mountains on our way.












Mo mountains, mo mountains, mo mountains.

Here's the road that took us straight into the mountains to the springs.












We had fun skiing with the dogs for a few hours up the hill a ways to get a better view of the valley and sunset. Beautiful!








After a slippery and harrowing descent, we headed back to our cute, rustic little cabin to change and get ready for a soak in the hot springs. We had several pools to choose from and we opted to hike for several minutes in the blistering cold up an icy dark path to a natural soaking pool to watch the sunset. It was worth every cold step! We admired an incredible sunset and view of the valley and mountain range across from us. The only bad part was trying to get out of the 96 degree water into the 0 degree weather waiting to punish us outside the comforts of the pool. Since the sun went down, we decided to go find another, warmer pool closer to our cabin. So, after several pep talks to each other we made our way out of the first pool and into our towels and boots and scurried down the trail to a little hot tub which was at about 100 degrees. That was exactly what we needed after the chilly trip down.








The next morning we woke up and went almost immediately to the little hot tub we had enjoyed so much the night before. After a nice soak there, we decided to check out the sauna. The heat was a bit intense in the newly built sauna but luckily it was equipped with a cool pool in the middle of the small room. Another neat place! I know that we're planning another trip back to these springs as soon as we can!

FREE COFFEE

Alright all you blog readers...here's a call to action. The first person to post a comment gets a free drink at The Village Hub. Do it, do it.

THE VILLAGE HUB

Here are just a few quick pictures of our new shop. Thanks to our willing patrons for allowing me to snap a few shots. It's a comfortable little place that hopefully invites you to stop in and stay a while!

More Celebrity Snowshoe Race Photos

The RMNP vs. Forest Service was a heated battle!

Some of the Park guys wore traditional garb. It was fun to see them try to complete the course with their huge old shoes.

2007 Grand Lake Snowshoe Festival

Tim, ready to go...
Tim, around the cones...
Wes, jumping through the hoop for the win!

Yay Mike Long!
Here are a few quick pics from the snowshoe festival celebrity race. It was a lot more fun to watch than these pictures can relay. Tim had to race a Crescent Moon Snowshoes rep, which, perhaps needless to say, didn't go too well for Tim. The opponent, Wes, who is a really cool guy, is tall and fit and had no problem getting through the course with ease. Basically what it entailed was getting through a hoola-hoop, bounding over hay bales, running through a bungee cord section, and weaving through cones while balancing a ball on a spoon. At the end, contestants had to stomp on a balloon and then do the whole obstacle course backwards. It was a riot!

Dogs and Skis

Today I got a chance to get out and enjoy the snow! The dogs and I strapped on our skis and skied right from our back door, across the street and into the big field. We did a few laps around and then Echo wouldn't stop barking (she gets a bit excited when we're playing outside) so we headed back toward the homestead. She mellowed out slightly so I decided to put in a loop around our yard. That was fun! Then after a few laps around the house Copper was stopping to chew the ice balls out of her feet so we decided to call it a day. Good times!

2007 Grand Lake Snowshoe Festival

That's right folks, you've been waiting, and Tim's been preparing. The 3rd annual "Catch the Spirit" Grand Lake Snowshoe Festival is upon us! This weekend, the 12th-15th, Grand Lake will play host to a busy weekend of snowshoeing craziness! Pick up a schedule of events at The Village Hub or the Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce to see what all is going on. The main event is the race starting at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, the 13th. Town Park is the place to be to participate. Register NOW at www.grandlakesnowshoefestival.com or at Town Park on the day of the race for $10 more. Do it! Tim and some other of G.L.'s finest will be participating in the celebrity race so come and cheer them on or... Sign up for either the fun run or the competitive 7K race (a USSSA qualifier!) and have a gay old time. See you out there! Also, on Sunday morning The Village Hub will be selling coffee at the Hospitality Haus and donating all proceeds to the Greening of Grand Lake, which is an effort to restore life to the Grand County forests that the pine beetles have wreaked havoc upon.

Road Trip Photos

Tim and I had a blast the last two days. We decided that it was time to get out of Grand County and take a little random road trip. We looked online for dog friendly hotels around Frisco or Steamboat or Breckenridge and found a great quaint little place about a block off of main street in Frisco. The Woods Inn http://www.woodsinn.biz. It's defenitely worth checking out if you'r in that area and need a cool place to stay. All of the rooms are decorated differently and we stayed in the European Winterhausen room. It was kinda funky with a bunch of different art work, really high ceilings, a fluffy down comforter, a nice outdoor covered hot tub, and really friendly staff. Unfortunately, we gorged ourselves on tasty margaritas and mexican food and didn't end up getting down to check out the hot tub for ourselves. Fun place. Our only complaint was that it wasn't very sound proof. Every time someone came or went in the rooms next door, we knew about it. We'd reccommend it anyway.

The next morning we got up (after getting up several times throughout the night to deal with the dogs, namely Copper), checked out and went to find coffee.

I had a huge breakfast veggie, cheese, and egg bagel sandwich with an Irish Cream Latte which was very good. Tim shared part of my huge bagel and had a latte himself. We hit the road and decided to check out Leadville since I'd never been there and Tim wanted to see Melanzana http://www.melanzana.com which is a place there that makes and sells fleece gear. We both bought really cool fleece tops and then took a walk down main street to an antique mall. This was a huge neat old building jam packed with stuff from bottles, to postcards, to skeleton keys, old jewelry, you name it, if it was old, it was there. I found a cool skirt that happened to fit, and that was our only purchase there.

We left Leadville and decided to go sledding on some random mountain on the way back towards home. We stopped at some resevoir in Summit county and sledded ourselves silly. The dogs were loving it and we couldn't believe that such a simple contraption could be so much fun!

After we pulled ourselves away from the sledding hill we decided to head back homeward. We of course had to stop at the Dam Brewery in Dillon on our way back. After a few beers, we headed home. It was so nice to get away from work for a while. Colorado has so many neat places we want to see that we can't decide where next trip will take us.

1st XC Ski of the Season

My buddy Amy called the other day to see if I could sneak away from the shop for a while on Sunday to go try out our new skis that we both got for xmas from our boys. We headed up into RMNP to the Bowen-Baker trail head and skied for about an hour and a half. It was rediculously windy but other than that, we had a blast. First we had to cross a big meadow and then we got into the trees which was a lot more entertaining. We struggled on a few hills and laughed our butts off. I'm feeling it a little bit today. Thanks Amy! Anybody out there wanting to ski? Tim and I have Mondays and Tuesdays off now!! Hooray!