NedFest

Last weekend was the 15th annual NedFest Bluegrass Festival in Nederland, CO, and Ilana hooked us up with a pretty sweet deal  for the weekend! She has a friend who has started her own compost/recycle company up in Nederland and she was contracted for the festival, too. We volunteered to help her out for the weekend and stayed at her awesome house way up in the mountains and spent the days listening to great music and envying the hippies and their mad hula-hoop skillz.

AND... I met someone. He's a world traveler and now he lives up in the mountains outside of Nederland. He's a bit of a local celebrity, but he hasn't let it go to his head. He's only a bit older than me, turning 113 years old this year, but he's aged well. He (probably) doesn't look a day over 89, which is how old  he was when he passed away and was placed in various types of cryonics preservation facilities, finally ending up in Nederland, Colorado on dry ice.

I kid you not.

I'd  heard the story of the Frozen Dead Guy who supposedly rested in the mountains above Nederland, but I had no idea it was actually true. Until...

It pays to know the right people!

Every year Nederland celebrates Frozen Dead Guy Days honoring this man in the mountain who still, after all these years, has dry ice hauled up the mountain every two weeks to keep his coffin cool in hopes of reanimation some day. Had I done research I would have realized it was true, but I just thought it was a quirky mountain tale. Check out the whole story here - http://www.legendsofamerica.com/co-frozendeadguy.html

So who is in for next year's Frozen Dead Guy Days? http://frozendeadguydays.org/ I should go to support my new friend, after all...

Much love from the Rockies!

The view is nice at 14,000 ft!

Time for another 14'er adventure! Luckily I have adventurous friends, too, so Ilana, Michael, Jordan and I headed out bright and early to check out the views from 14,000+ feet on Sunday morning.

There are two peaks on the front range close together named Gray's and Torrey's, and the uber-ambitious people hike them both in one day (hiking along the saddleback from Gray's to Torrey's and then back again). That was my plan, but I forgot how EXHAUSTING it is to hike in that altitude, so we only made it up one peak. Only one 14'er - for shame...

Lovely morning for a hike!

 Cairns marking the way...

WE MADE IT!

Signing the register at the top - it's official!

See that trail in the valley that leads into the trees? That's where we started

Ilana is excited to be heading back down! (Notice the dark cloud in the background??)

In spite of our early start we still got caught in a lot of thunder hail on the way back down! 

That large mountain straight in the background? Yup, we were on top of that. 

We were fueled by zuchini muffins, Clif Bars, grapes, and gummy energy sharks all the way to the top where Michael then provided us all with delicious tamales. Yup, tamales at the summit. Everyone was jealous.

The hike back down was exhausting in it's own way and by the time we made it to Idaho Springs for our lunch/dinner we were too tired to speak to each other. Luckily none of us took it personally and we were all much happier once we'd been fed :) Now we wait for the muscle soreness to subside!

Much love from the Rockies!

This morning I'm sitting through a 3 hour webinar hosted by the Federal government. It is riveting, of course. Hence, a bit of internet headline browsing that revealed this:

A zoo in China tried to pass off a dog as a lion - WHAT?!? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23714896

Have you seen my llama?

Welp, I've not only survived two whole weeks at my new job, I've also survived our first fundraising event! This weekend YouthBiz was the benefiting charity for what is affectionately referred to as the fat man's triathlon. It is a weekend where a group of men compete in a poker tournament (Friday night), a golf tournament (Saturday morning), and a bowling tournament (Saturday afternoon). YouthBiz was there to represent all weekend long which means that as the only female in the room, it was quite... interesting. I was at one point told that I was "pretty hot for a girl who writes down poker scores". Um, thank you?? Only a snippet of the weekend fun :)

Which brings me back to the llama. In much need of the peace and quiet that the mountains provide, I wrangled Michael into a hike on Sunday. Luckily, he did the planning and the driving. I brought burritos.

We headed to a less-populated area of Rocky Mountain National Park intending to see some waterfalls and maybe, maybe, one of the lakes a bit further out. Once we started hiking we just kept going, and this turned in to a 14 (14!) mile hike. Sheesh!

Yup!

 Waterfall #1

Wait... is that rain heading our way? Oh, rain and hail. GREAT! Rain gear does not equal hail gear, but luckily we are hard-core. That, and we were fueled by our desire to eat our hard-earned breakfast burritos at the top.

 Those extra miles were totally worth it because we ended up here:

Four hours up was well worth it! With dark clouds threatening (yet again) we decided to book it back down to the trail head, and Michael was pretty sure we could make it down in a mere 2 hours 15 minutes. And my, was he motivated! Bounding down the mountain with my (trying to stay)  hot on his heels dodging big fat raindrops as we went.

He was pretty sure we could save some precious minutes by taking a smaller trail not open to horses or dogs, yes, you guessed it, only to hikers and llamas. (Llamas?!?) So as we veered off the main trail we told some fellow hikers that we were going llama-hunting in search of the elusive Rocky Mountain Llama, native to the area.

The altitude must have gotten to their brains, because they didn't find my joke funny. (Come on people, that was hilarious!) So we decided that we'd tell people we came across that we were looking for our llama, asking them if they'd seen it.

However, not many humans took the llama trail, so we never got the opportunity. But trust me, that would have been fu-nny. 

Anyhoo, my feets are KILLING me after that hike, which does not bode well for the 26.2 miles looming in my future. Eek.

Much love from the Rockies!

kiddos galore!

Last weekend was a weekend at home celebrating all sorts of little ones... Eli's 2nd birthday, Micah's baptism, and of course, I had to see meet Katie's twins in person! Lots of little ones to celebrate, and it was lovely :)

Of course Eli needed a tractor party, and Lori outdid herself again, as you can see!

 Birthday dirt cake!

 Little bro had lots of "help" opening his gifts

 Just some grillin'...

On to Micah's baptism celebration! Seriously, what a good looking couple. My Steph is such a hot mom - she was rockin' those heels! Way to set the bar high for the rest of us, Edum!

 (not our babies)

 The group shots are getting bigger! Missing Mason, though...

And finally, what is summer without a stop at Zoucha's pool? Some, okay most, okay probably all, of my best summer memories are at this pool! Tom and Dianna were always gracious and insisted we treat the pool as our own. And that has now passed down a generation :)  Thanks, Zouchas! To many more summer memories!!

 And the golf cart trek back home...

Thanks for a fabulous weekend in O-town, everyone! Much love from the Rockies!