Celebrating 25 years

We came to Crested Butte for the weekend to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, by riding lots of awesome trails in the high mountains between the wildflowers. 

Our friends Becca and Scott, and Michael and Brittany joined us. The first, and only other time we have been here was in 2020, also with Becca and Scott. We are staying in a nice condo, so it’s much more comfortable than camping!

The first day we did laps at the bike park, the next day we rode Tiocally & Strandhill, and today we rode 403 and 401. We have done a lot of elevation gain. More than 3000 feet per day! Some of the elevation gain wasn’t necessarily 100% necessary, because we could’ve probably shuttled some of it. But it’s nice to be in good enough shape to be able to ride it. 

After a long day on the mountain, we come back to the condo and make yummy dinner and just hang out and chat. I have been making videos on my Insta 360 camera, and have been able to throw together some fun clips to watch. Tomorrow is our last day here and then we go back to real life. In the meantime, Ginger has been watching the boys, which has been amazing.

Preventative maintenance

Getting old sucks! 

Just went to my preventative annual physical, just so I can get my thyroid prescriptions renewed for my Hashimotos.  Not only did I need the standard Pap smear, they want me to get a mammogram as well as the equivalent of a colonoscopy. There was talk about peri-menopause, and somehow she talked me into getting the HPV vaccine since you never know if/how long I will outlive Joe, and they’re only approved until age 45, which I’ll be tomorrow - she scared me with 70 year old ladies still needing Pap smears. And to add insult to injury, they didn’t tell me I might get a fever and have a very sore arm until after they gave me the shot! 

Broken record?

Not to sound like a broken record, but I love riding in the high country! Today Joe and Brittany and Stephi did Molas to Engineer- plenty hard, but I paced myself and it was no problem. 

Joe hasn’t had as much time to ride, so he suffered a little more.. 

I brought my insta360 camera, and took a bunch of short clips that I’ll now how to somehow shorten into a 4-5 minute video. 
Yesterday I worked on the video of our ice lakes hike, and I probably spent over 8 hours editing! Hopefullya this one won’t take as long. 

I had been taking my allergy medicine for a few days, and thought the allergens must have gone away. So I made the mistake of not taking it yesterday or this morning..  had a bit of a sneeze attack as I waited for Joe to pick up the car at the end of the ride. 

The High Country

Last summer, in 2024, I was gone so much that I hardly got to ride any of the trails in the high country near Durango. However, since I have been around here this whole summer, I have been able to do a lot of fun rides with all sorts of different people. 

In the past three weekends, the wildflowers have started to come out a lot more! When I rode Pass Creek to engineer two weeks ago, there was hardly any. Now, there are Indian paint brushes, columbines, and lots of other pretty flowers everywhere. 

It was a zoo up at Coal bank pass today, because of the Fourth of July. However, I was still able to enjoy the mountains, because it’s pretty easy to get away from the crowds on a bike. I tried to make it a point to look around and really take in the beauty of the mountains, because I do feel so lucky to be able to live here.

I rode Pass Creek to Coal with Stephi, Cassidy, and Stephi‘s friend Kelly. Then, Cassidy and I went back up pass Greek and down engineer. I really wanted to go at my own speed, so I just bombed down engineer and set a bunch of PR’s.

(Stephi, Cassidy, me, Kelly)

(Cassidy)

Almost like new

 

There’s just something about a clean house and a clean car that makes me so happy! I have been fortunate enough to have professional cleaners come clean my house for the last two years or so. Working full-time just did not leave enough time that I wanted to dedicate towards cleaning. And I was tired of the mess! 

Besides the obvious benefit of someone else doing the actual cleaning, having someone come every other week means we have to actually tidy the house to get it ready for them to clean. We used to have to run around like crazy people the night before and spend 2 to 3 hours cleaning up, but as we have gotten used to living in a cleaner house, we have been able to keep it more organized… Generally. Of course, anytime you go on a trip. It seems like a bomb went off when you bring all the stuff in. And since it’s not that big to begin with, small messes seem bigger than they are- and yet are quicker to clean up too! 

Chase got in trouble at Boys and Girls Club last week, and was not allowed to come yesterday or today. So I had made him a whole schedule of chores and projects to do. Selfishly I was kind of glad because he was able to clean up the mess after our back packing trip. 

Also, the Subaru really was a disgrace! I started driving it about six months ago, when I started my new job in town. I had not taken the time to fully clean it out until this week. Chase started the process of cleaning it out yesterday, but as you can imagine, the job did not quite live up to my standards. So today as part of his chore schedule, I blocked out a two hour time block to go to the car wash and do a thorough job of cleaning it out. 

I love the vacuums and pressured air that the car wash has! It is so much better than our old, weak shopvac! While I am cleaning a car, it seems like it can never get completely clean. But somehow, as you drive away from the car wash, the shiny dashboards and crumb free floor mats almost make it feel like I’m in a brand new car again. Minus the cracked windshield and 145,000 miles on the odometer… 

Time flies

Somehow, I got on the topic of couponing when I asked a friend if she had any pro deals on any outdoor gear. She said that some of the pro deals can be complicated and I told her that I used to be an extreme couponer so not much would phase me. I honestly kind of forgot about this blog, but wanted to show her some of the coupon posts. I was amazed at how many posts I have on here! It really is a shame that I have not kept it going. I also feel like I should probably print all of this stuff since you never know what will be on the Internet in the future.

Technology has definitely advanced since I first started blogging, and voice to text is a lifesaver!  Most of my blog post were from a different life entirely. My life  has changed dramatically from even a few years ago. We no longer have five kids at home, but just two. Miles and Chase are already 11 and 13! In addition, we both work full-time and play as much as possible on our free time. We still love living in Durango! That is one of the few things that stayed the same since 2022.

Just for a quick recap, Winter is a full-time tattoo artist, Sterling graduated college with an accounting degree, and Ginger is a sophomore at Fort Lewis College Studying to be an art teacher. I am working at A local CPA firm and Joe is still working at the local Hospital.

Reading back my blog posts, I feel like I used to be a better writer than I am now. Maybe it is true that practice makes perfect?  

What’s interesting is that although I have no longer been keeping track of all the happenings in my regular life, I do keep track of all my travels really well. Since my memory is so bad, I am so happy to at least have that! But now this is my new goal. Daily Duolingo and blogging updates! - and I might even try to backfill some posts! 

Pack goats in training

 Joe told me he wanted to go backpacking to Navajo Lake up near Telluride. Since we are doing a longer backpacking trip next month at Maroon Bells, we thought it might help the boys to have a shorter backpacking trip as practice. 

We have goats at our property at Wild Turkey Canyon, to keep our agricultural exemption. Several of those goats were purchased for the purpose of also becoming pack goats. Twister and Ozay are Alpine Goats, which are the best type of pack Goats. they are just six months old, so not old enough to actually carry anything. Rico is a Nubian goat that was originally purchased to become a pack goat as well. However, Rico is the biggest pain in the butt! He is so loud! He screams the whole 2 hour drive, and anytime you are more than 5 feet away from him on the trail. It does not even matter if he’s the one that walked away from you in the first place! He just screams and screams and screams. 

Although none of them actually packed any of our stuff, they were our pack goats in training this weekend. They actually are really good about following us on the hike, unless we happen to be walking uphill, and some other hikers are walking downhill. At that point, they lose all loyalty to us and were ready to abandon us for just about anybody. I guess that’s something we’ll have to work on! 

We hiked up 5 miles along some beautiful mountain ranges, meadows, waterfalls, and creeks. The goats snacked on lots of dandelions. Miles and Chase did awesome! I can really tell the difference between now and even a year ago when it comes to hiking abilities. 

My friend Kate and her dog Arkty came along for the hike. Arkty is not a fan of our goats. He was hypnotized and fixated on them at all times, and would constantly lunge at them. Nothing seemed to be working. We ended up just hiking separately most of the way after Arkty pulled Miles to the ground. It wasn’t until later in the evening, when we realized that the rubber coverings on the shock collar were actually still on the collar! And they have owned this collar for months and months… so anytime Kate thought she had buzzed Arkty’s, it had done absolutely nothing. After a quick lesson with the actual shock collar, Arkty was less enticed by the Goats and we were able to finish the evening on happier terms.

Once we got to the final destination of Navajo Lake, Chase, unfortunately realized he had lost his fishing pole and immediately turned around with Joe to go look for it. Miles did not waste any time and started fishing right away. Both of them caught several trout. Besides the annoying mosquitoes that chased us to bed by 8 PM, we had a lovely evening in the mountains.

I was a little bit stressed about the goat being there, since we did not have a dog with us to protect them. (Kate and Arkty sleep on the “lower level” (aka different campsite) The goats were just tied up on a line 15 feet away from our tent. But if a hungry bear would’ve happened on our camp, there’s nothing we could’ve done to save them. Luckily, all my worry was for nothing, and we spent the next day fishing and reading and sleeping before heading back down the mountain.