Its a BEAR!!!!!

Hello again! What a fun few days we've had!  We officially hit the road on our adventure yesterday.  We spent the weekend in Montrose with my family.  We wanted to make sure to get in some good quality time with my grandparents before we hit the road for the next 6ish months.  It was honestly one of the best times that we've had in montrose.  We got to help my dad and little sisters test out their new paintball business.  I had forgotten how much I love playing Paintball.  Its the only time it is ever actually acceptable to shoot each other! It was a blast and there were only a couple of casualties.  I got shot in the head twice (once by my dad, which was pretty funny, then the other I am fairly certain was my husband), and got a really nice circular lesion on my ring finger.  After that thought it might be smart to take off my wedding ring so that I didn't lose it, but my finger was so swollen at that point I realized it wasn't going to be an issue.  For the most part, everyone made it out of there with just minor bruising, but to the kid that I hit in the neck, I sincerely apologize and I hope that you didn't get too much grief at school yesterday.   The rest of the weekend included a fun family dinner at my grandparents house, where my Grandma set my grandpa up perfectly with one of her jokes and had us all rolling with laughter. We got to see most of the Hovde clan for Brunch on Sunday for Grandpa Micks birthday.  It was so fun getting to see everyone and catch up.  The kids have all grown so much, its hard believe how fast time flies.  Then Monday morning we enjoyed some coffee with my Aunt Janet and cousin Shayla, before she had to go back to school.

After a lot of careful consideration, we pulled out of Montrose headed toward Durango/Cortez area via Lizard Head Pass.  I almost had Kyle convinced to take the camper over Red Mountain Pass, out of Ouray to Silverton, but realized I am terrified of that road, and I really didn't want any part of it. Which I know our good buddy Brett will give us a lot of grief for being chickens about, but Im good with that.  Kyle said that maybe after he's been driving with the trailer for 6 months, Red Mountain Pass will be something he wants to tackle but not till then.  I had traveled over Lizard Head pass a lot as a kid but really didn't remember much of it, other than it being beautiful.  So I kept trying to tell Kyle that it really was the best way and that he would love the views along the way.  Well, you gotta love spring time in the Rockies, and of course it SNOWED the entire way, and visibility was about two miles the whole time, so maybe next time he will get to experience its beauty.  Even in the snow it was still pretty tho.

Part of the adventures that we wanted to have while in Southwestern colorado included going to, Durango, the 4 Corners Monument and Mesa Verde, so we wanted to try to camp somewhere somewhat centrally located to that.  We landed at Mancos State Park last night, and we love it.  We are only 1 of 2 campers in the park right now, which is fantastic because it lets the puppies have a little more freedom when they normally wouldn't if it was busy.  There is a nice little lake here and hiking trails all around if we chose to utilize them.  

While there is really only a couple more human campers here in the park with us, there seems to be plenty of wildlife around us.  Most of the time I love having wildlife all around us, but sometimes, some animals get a little too close for comfort for my taste.  Early this morning, maybe like 4ish, Trigger started just barking like crazy, then we heard a very distinctive thud outside the camper. Enough to make Kyle and I both say "What the f*** was that!"  We never did see what it was last night when we looked out the windows, so we just calmed the pups down and went back to sleep. Then this morning I got up to feed the puppies, and was kind of just looking around when I discovered who our visitor was.   It was a bear, and apparently the thud we heard was him trying to look into the windows of the camper!! He must have ran off after the dogs started barking because, our grill which was on the front side of the camper, was completely untouched.

We decided today that we were going to go down to the 4 Corners Monument and check out Mesa Verde.  It was a really fun day, but a long day.  The 4 corners monument was cool, kinda of cheesy too, but as Kyle said its a weird surveyor thing so we had to go. I'm happy we did though, it brought back many memories of my travels in this area as a kid so it was fun to reminisce about it. Plus you get to be in 4 states at one time which is pretty fun.  

After that we headed over to Mesa Verde.   I did not remember how big Mesa Verde was, it is a total of 20 miles from the park entrance to the actual ruins that we got to tour.  It is an absolutely beautiful national park, so much history... Part of the park had been ravished by fire between 1996 and 2003, so that was hard to see, but it was still pretty. Its amazing to me how old the ruins are, and how well they were built.  Most of the ruins date back to 1200 AD. I was in awe... The structural integrity of these cliff dwellings is remarkable.  Our tour guide told us that they have found plumbobs, which they think is how they got the walls so straight.  We got to take a tour of one of the dwellings, called Balcony House, which tested a couple of fears for me, my fear of heights and my fear of tight spaces.  We had to climb a 32 ft ladder, and crawl through an 18in wide tunnel for about 12 ft, both of those things could potentially send me into a panic mode, but I was fine.  I highly recommend Mesa Verde being on everyones bucket list.  It is a cool glimpse into our past that most of us didn't even know existed. 

If the weather had been better you could have seen forever from this look out, but it did not happen for us today.

One of many Kivas we got to see

The Spruce House

The view of Soda Canyon while waiting for the Balcony House tour

The start of the Balcony House Tour.  Gotta take a selfie i suppose

 The 32 Ft ladder

A view of the ladder from the Balcony

The original wood beams from the balcony that Balcony House gets its name from, this was built in 1284 AD

 Tomorrow we are off to Durango to do some hiking and more exploring.  I will check in with you again later this week!    

Our crazy adventure

Well hello there!!  I'm excited that ya'll have decided to join us on this crazy adventure that Kyle and I are about to embark on with our three crazy labs.  I know most people probably think that we are a little insane to be doing this.  Its not entirely normal for a couple in their mid-thirties to quit their jobs, sell pretty much everything, and buy a camper to travel for a while.  For us tho, its seems perfectly normal, because bottom line is why not doing something crazy at least once in your life right!  We know that we had a really good thing going for us in New Castle.  Both of us had great careers, we had beautiful house and really life was pretty darn good, but sometimes you just have to break away from the daily grind and wander.   There are so many amazing a beautiful places out there if you'd just be willing to go find them.  So that is what we decided to do!

Its going to be a definite adjustment to move our entire world into a little 19ft camper, but I really don't think that we will struggle too much with it.  As we started to go through the house and sort through the stuff that 10 years of being a couple has accumulated, we discovered that we really don't need much.  We were fortunate to be able to sell most of our furniture, or find a good new home for what we didn't sell.  Then the things that we did keep, we were able to fit into a 10x10 storage unit. Then only put the essentials into our camper with us.

For those of you who know me well, know that I LOVE to bake.  One of the questions that we get asked most frequently is "am I going to be able to still bake?  And yes, there is a full oven in our camper!  So i can still bake cookies, which is like therapy for me, I don't think I will be baking cake anytime soon, as all my cake baking goods are boxed up in storage, so I will have to wait a few months to do that.  I am also very excited to learn how to use my new cast iron dutch oven that my coworkers gave me.  I am fairly certain that, as much as Kyle thinks we will just switch back to eating Ramen noodles and PB&J, we will still eat really well. I like real food WAY too much!

These last few weeks have been a definite roller coaster, as we quit our jobs, move out of our house, and the hardest part, say goodbye to all of our friends who have really become like family to us.  Ive started to stop looking at it as goodbye though, we will see you all again very soon, its kind of like we are just going on an extended vacation :)

We have had several people ask what our plan is, and the truth is we don't really have a complete plan, just the skeleton of one.  We have a general idea of the direction we want to go, and some places that we want to see but everything else we'll just figure out as we go.

When we pull out of New Castle tomorrow, we will head to south western Colorado and explore there for a week before heading up to Moab next weekend.  I will definitely keep you all posted on what fun discoveries we have made!

I better wrap this up for now, but I want to thank you all for tuning in as we embark on this crazy adventure! I can't wait to share more stories with you!