Sunday, September 16, 2012

Peaceful Fall Nights

Something about the weather changing is making me okay with just staying home and resting.  Could also be that the venturing out we did do this weekend to run errands consisted of not finding what we needed and feeling like everyone on the road was in a hurry to kill someone! So back to the comforts of home. Our house smells deliciously like fall thanks to a "Leaves" candle.  The name does not do it justice.  It smells like cider and mulled wine and baking pumpkin bread all mixed together.  Lovely. Tonight I made chicken taco soup (I know, I know mom I have finally decided there is something redeeming about soup - for the record though I'm pretty sure I will never like bean soup, even if it is only on principle haha), and we sat out on our front porch on the new table and benches Spencer built from his dad's old cedar fence posts.  When it's not dark out I'll take a picture so you can see how awesome and restoration hardware like it looks :).  Then I tried a poached fig recipe (weird) while Spencer ironed and we listened to The Milk Carton Kids and now we are reading - okay Spencer is reading, I was reading till The Smartest Guys In The Room started putting me to sleep.  It's actually a really fascinating book about the fall of Enron, but I can only handle so many pages at a time that require me to really pay attention to business details!

Now for a little Colorado photo fun.  I know, I know it's almost a month late, where has the time gone?!


Here's me thankful I made it up the pass alive all by my lonesome.  I might not have been smiling if I knew the way down was an hour and a half of gravel roads and no cell service!  Good thing I trusted my instincts and it made it to Taylor Park safe and sound to meet the rest of the gang. 


My attempt at being artistic.  Our lovely host Roy had the most chill dog every, Panda.  Well most chill ever unless you tried to pull out his matted hair, then he was vicious, not that I would know :).  Roy also owns the cabin we got to stay in.  It was so beautiful and peaceful.  And there was no cell service and no TV and no internet which was also beautiful.  And there was a shower which was also beautiful.  I know, I know not true roughing it, but what can I say I do like to wash my hair after a long day of hiking or four wheeling . . . more on that later!


The view after our morning hike up the hill above the cabin.


My handsome hiking loving hubby and half of his mom haha.

 
My handsome hiking loving hubby pushing down a dead tree.  Boys will be boys :).


Four wheeling!!  So this looks pretty tame right?  Wrong.  We definitely ended up going up the side of the mountain and right when we were on the edge of the tree line it started hailing!  So we huddled around under the last few trees and got soaking wet with freezing rain.  After that we still had to make it up the mountain and then back down again!  It was so wet I couldn't even see out of my visor and my pants were soaked through and I couldn't feel my hands half the ride down and we almost got run over by some crazy dirt (mud) bikers who thought I was an expert at steering my four wheeler up the side of the mountain.  The view at the top was totally worth it though.  And like I said getting to take a nice hot shower when we finally made it back was pretty awesome too :). 


Probably the coolest ring bearer I've ever known.


The cute couple whose wedding was the whole reason - make that excuse - for going to Colorado in the first place.  I mean, come on how cute are they?! :)

 
And the lovely view I had of the river Spencer and his dad fly fished on while Gena and I read.  If you're looking for an easy, gratifying read, you should get Plainsong.  It's written by a guy from Salida (where the wedding was) and it was one of the most understated and yet redeeming books I have read in a long time.
 

Spencer and I came back from the trip with a rekindled love for hiking.  We took two "easy" 3 or 4 hour hikes while we were there.  At least they were easy according to the online sites.  The first one was not easy!!  But it took us up to the continental divide and to, two really pretty lakes nestled up against the mountain on the tree line.  We had a nice little picnic of Nut Thins and apples and wished we had gotten up early so we could lay in the sun by the lake.  We also wished we had brought Blitz, she would have loved it!  So now we've decided we want to make hiking a regular thing, only problem is we live in Oklahoma, hiking is not really a state past time.  We did hit up Turkey Mountain last weekend though and we're thinking Arkansas mountains sometime soon!  Anybody know any other places to hike? Other than redbud which won't let you bring your dog - lame.

Happy fall to all.  Wow on that awful cheesy note I think I'm going to head to bed! 

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