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| From 2009-07-18 |
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Weekend at the Lake
Well, we just finished up dinner and we were talking about how in the last 27 hours we spent 10 hours at the lake so far this weekend. Whew...we all feel a little 'sunned' It has been really nice though. Friday night we had our small group from church out to the lake and got them all out there in shifts over 4 hours. Everyone had a good time and spent some time in the water...either swimming or in the tube. While not on the boat we had everyone over to our place for a BBQ and smores. It was a nice time with friends. Our friends from Hawaii (Kent & Erin & family) are in town and we had a chance to hang out with them as well. It is always great to meet up with friends we haven't seen in a while. We went with them out to white fence farm the night before and checked out the animals and let the kids hang out for a while. Good times.
Saturday we were back up at the lake with some friends that live up in Loveland. We had a good time relaxing, doing some wakeboarding (getting some nice jumps in :-)...nice Matt) and hanging out. It was a beautiful day and HOT. Being in the water felt great (77 degrees right now..warm).
We've been really enjoying having Rachel here with us this summer and have got to do a lot of fun things together. We had a fun 4th of July with all of us watching fireworks at City Park by our house. It was really a good show. We made it down to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival and had fun looking around and checking it out...we've been out doing some hiking and then of course the trips to the lake. She's pretty good at the wakeboard...she can make it almost all the way around the lake without falling. Pretty impressive. Anyway, it's great having her and Blake really enjoys having his aunt around.
Blake is making pretty amazing progress on his walking. He can get around pretty well now. He still prefers to crawl if there's somewhere he wants to get to really quickly, but he can make it across the room on two feet and will be running before we know it i'm sure. He's a lot of fun. We are enjoying watching him learn new things and get more and more interested in what we're doing.
Saturday we were back up at the lake with some friends that live up in Loveland. We had a good time relaxing, doing some wakeboarding (getting some nice jumps in :-)...nice Matt) and hanging out. It was a beautiful day and HOT. Being in the water felt great (77 degrees right now..warm).
We've been really enjoying having Rachel here with us this summer and have got to do a lot of fun things together. We had a fun 4th of July with all of us watching fireworks at City Park by our house. It was really a good show. We made it down to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival and had fun looking around and checking it out...we've been out doing some hiking and then of course the trips to the lake. She's pretty good at the wakeboard...she can make it almost all the way around the lake without falling. Pretty impressive. Anyway, it's great having her and Blake really enjoys having his aunt around.
Blake is making pretty amazing progress on his walking. He can get around pretty well now. He still prefers to crawl if there's somewhere he wants to get to really quickly, but he can make it across the room on two feet and will be running before we know it i'm sure. He's a lot of fun. We are enjoying watching him learn new things and get more and more interested in what we're doing.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Havasupai
Wow...all i can really say is wow. What a beautiful place. We drove down from Denver in one straight shot with only a few stops for gas and food on Friday...14 hours total to get there. It was a really beautiful drive through the rockies (green with rivers running high) to Moab (got to see slick rock and some of Arches NP) to Flagstaff (really a nice place...a lot of trees for AZ) and over to Seligman where we stayed the night before heading down to the trail. After looking at a map i think we may have passed through Seligman on our bike trip 10 years ago...it didn't look familiar, but based on the maps i saw i think we probably went through there...going to have to review some old journals and pictures and find out.
5:30 Sat we headed out for the trail..1.5 hour drive from Seligman (edge of civilization) to the trailhead (there is NOTHING out there). We were all pretty excited to get out there and get going. Most all the guys (of the 21 of us that went) sent their gear down on mules. I think there were 5 of us that packed our gear down the canyon. I haven't really done official back packing before (off the bike) with a pack, so i thought it would be fun to pack the stuff and see what its like. It worked out well although 10 miles proved to be a pretty long way with 35lbs on the back. The hike down was good but we were all good and ready to rest by the time we got to the bottom.
The campground is on a stretch of river with a waterfall above the campground (Havasupai falls) and a waterfall below the campground (Mooney falls). Both were pretty spectacular and a great place to hang out and stay cool during the scorching heat. It was well over 100 the whole time we were there except at night.
The next day we went up to a new set of falls that was created during a 50 year flood that came through at the end of last season and carved out an entire new canyon and 2 new waterfalls. Pretty incredible that a river will do that during a flood. The falls were about 35-40 and made for great jumping. A number of us did some cliff jumping from there. Pretty sweet.
On day two we did the 7 mile round-trip hike to Beaver falls below the campground. It was pretty amazing to see the oasis and beauty along the river all the way down. The combination of the water and heat makes for pretty ideal growing for the plants down there. Beautiful. The falls were different than the others in that they weren't a giant waterfall off a cliff, but rather a series of falls into pools that went one right into the next about 6 or 7 times. It was a hot and difficult hike that required using ropes to get up cliffs a few times and a lot of rock hopping AND the only snakes we saw on the trip turned up on this hike...a rattler and a kingsnake. Pretty great hike.
The hike out wasn't too bad...we got an early start and made it to the top just before it got REALLY hot. It was still a pretty good haul for the 10 miles out though and the switchbacks in the last two miles were tough, but definitely worth it. I decided to the let the mules do the work of hauling my stuff out since i hadn't done the hike before and i'm glad i did...it would have pretty near killed me i think. There were a few guys who did it and did just fine...amazing.
Overall...great time. Good bunch of guys, got to know them better...beautiful place....more sodium than i need to eat for the next year (we did freeze-dried MREs while we were down there...not bad really...i was surprised...but pretty much a heart attack in a bag :), and good relaxation (outside of the cumulative 40 miles of hiking we did while there). We all agreed that 14 hours is a LONG time in the car in one shot. If you ever have the chance to make the trip there you should...definitely a unique place with water that looks like it belongs in the tropics. The limestone coats the river bottom and gives it the crazy blue color.
5:30 Sat we headed out for the trail..1.5 hour drive from Seligman (edge of civilization) to the trailhead (there is NOTHING out there). We were all pretty excited to get out there and get going. Most all the guys (of the 21 of us that went) sent their gear down on mules. I think there were 5 of us that packed our gear down the canyon. I haven't really done official back packing before (off the bike) with a pack, so i thought it would be fun to pack the stuff and see what its like. It worked out well although 10 miles proved to be a pretty long way with 35lbs on the back. The hike down was good but we were all good and ready to rest by the time we got to the bottom.
The campground is on a stretch of river with a waterfall above the campground (Havasupai falls) and a waterfall below the campground (Mooney falls). Both were pretty spectacular and a great place to hang out and stay cool during the scorching heat. It was well over 100 the whole time we were there except at night.
The next day we went up to a new set of falls that was created during a 50 year flood that came through at the end of last season and carved out an entire new canyon and 2 new waterfalls. Pretty incredible that a river will do that during a flood. The falls were about 35-40 and made for great jumping. A number of us did some cliff jumping from there. Pretty sweet.
On day two we did the 7 mile round-trip hike to Beaver falls below the campground. It was pretty amazing to see the oasis and beauty along the river all the way down. The combination of the water and heat makes for pretty ideal growing for the plants down there. Beautiful. The falls were different than the others in that they weren't a giant waterfall off a cliff, but rather a series of falls into pools that went one right into the next about 6 or 7 times. It was a hot and difficult hike that required using ropes to get up cliffs a few times and a lot of rock hopping AND the only snakes we saw on the trip turned up on this hike...a rattler and a kingsnake. Pretty great hike.
The hike out wasn't too bad...we got an early start and made it to the top just before it got REALLY hot. It was still a pretty good haul for the 10 miles out though and the switchbacks in the last two miles were tough, but definitely worth it. I decided to the let the mules do the work of hauling my stuff out since i hadn't done the hike before and i'm glad i did...it would have pretty near killed me i think. There were a few guys who did it and did just fine...amazing.
Overall...great time. Good bunch of guys, got to know them better...beautiful place....more sodium than i need to eat for the next year (we did freeze-dried MREs while we were down there...not bad really...i was surprised...but pretty much a heart attack in a bag :), and good relaxation (outside of the cumulative 40 miles of hiking we did while there). We all agreed that 14 hours is a LONG time in the car in one shot. If you ever have the chance to make the trip there you should...definitely a unique place with water that looks like it belongs in the tropics. The limestone coats the river bottom and gives it the crazy blue color.
Family Visit
June was a busy month for us...so busy i noticed i didn't even blog. Oh well, back to it i suppose. The first couple weeks the weather was REALLY crazy...like tornadoes, thunderstorm, weird rain storms crazy. Generally June is the extreme weather month and we expect some of this but it was excessive this year that's for sure. We had a period of about a week and a half where every afternoon we had either a severe thunderstorm warning or tornado watches/warnings with funnel cloud sightings almost every day. Too close to home for me, i'm glad that season has passed now and we're into the more consistently good weather.
Second week of June, Mom and Rachel came to town and spent a week with us. It was a lot of fun and they had a really great time playing with Blake. He's been a lot of good entertainment lately as he is on the verge of walking now and pretty interactive.
The rest of the family joined us at the end of the week and we're here for a long weekend. We had a nice time together relaxing, hiking, spending some time at the lake and visiting with some friends that we hadn't seen in about 10 years. Good times. Everyone headed out on Tuesday then it was a busy week of work and packing for the Grand Canyon. I was headed off for the Havasupai hike with 21 guys from church while Abby was headed off to Utah to spend time with her grandparents, mom and cousin.
Second week of June, Mom and Rachel came to town and spent a week with us. It was a lot of fun and they had a really great time playing with Blake. He's been a lot of good entertainment lately as he is on the verge of walking now and pretty interactive.
The rest of the family joined us at the end of the week and we're here for a long weekend. We had a nice time together relaxing, hiking, spending some time at the lake and visiting with some friends that we hadn't seen in about 10 years. Good times. Everyone headed out on Tuesday then it was a busy week of work and packing for the Grand Canyon. I was headed off for the Havasupai hike with 21 guys from church while Abby was headed off to Utah to spend time with her grandparents, mom and cousin.
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