Obviously, I’ve been procrastinating on blogging about any progress with my Te Araroa book. I sat down to write this post a dozen times, but I just didn’t feel like I had much to share. Actually, if you’d like to fast forward through my babbling, here’s the punchline: I’m not much further along in the…
GOODBYE 2017 AND HAPPY 2018 EVERYONE!!! I feel like this Currently post is a little long-winded, so consider yourselves warned … Currently living/working in: Caretaking Fenton Ranch in northern New Mexico. I have to say, while we love epic snowstorms, not having an ounce of snowfall around these parts has made our caretaking job much…
Our Christmas visits continued in Denver this week with Justin’s family. Some nice traditions have been established here as well: Christmas Eve Mass, Christmas Eve dinner at J’s mom’s and opening stocking stuffers, Christmas breakfast brunch and kid gift opening, then J & I head back to his mom’s to relax for the afternoon &…
Tis the season for crowded airports and long days of travel! At least for us. We have completed our first round of holiday visits with a quick trip to the East Coast to see as many people as we could (we never have enough time to see everyone). Since Justin & I both grew up…
I can’t say this enough. I LOVE hosting people! So given the fact we’ve stayed in one place for more than a few months, Fenton Ranch keeps on proving to be a perfect place for doing that. Justin’s sister (Jamie) and her wife (Rachel) were our latest visitors! Their stay was filled with lots of hiking,…
Currently living/working in: Still property caretaking the school’s property, Fenton Ranch, in the Jemez Mountains. More than property caretaking, though, we have spent most of the month chin deep in product specs, tester quotes and creative adjectives to describe “lightweight” to meet our magazine deadlines for our gear testing submissions. Current mood: Mentally exhausted with a…
We successfully hosted our first Thanksgiving at Fenton Ranch! J’s mom, sister, husband and 2 kids drove from Denver for the celebration. We haven’t hosted a Thanksgiving–much less any holiday–since 2010, so it was a real treat to have the ability to host once again. ***Warning, picture-heavy post!*** J’s mom came a few days in…
I know I owe y’all a blog post, so I am going to take this opportunity to do a quick, picture-heavy post about Mrs. Gibbles, our cat. Everyone loves cats, right??? It’s been a year since Mrs. Gibbles, the mystery cat, showed up at Fenton Ranch, starving and—unbeknownst to us at the time—nursing some newborn…
Currently living/working in: We finished teaching the kids at Fenton Ranch Oct. 12, so from now through March, we wear the main hat of property caretakers. This entails greeting weekend guests (faculty/staff of the school who can reserve the main house as a benefit), doing maintenance projects and general upkeep, along with a few bigger projects.…
Today is our 11th anniversary!! Man, 11 years sure flew by. When I was sifting through our storage unit this summer, I came across our “Wishing You …” bowl. It was set up at our reception and asked guests to share their best marriage advice. We recently sold that bowl, but kept the cards with…
We finished another environmental education session at Fenton Ranch Oct. 12 and now our main job is to watch the property for the school. Fall is a perfect time to complete outdoor projects around the 5 acres of land and prep for the winter. As our wood-burning stove beckons to be stoked every morning already,…
Whenever someone poses the mountains versus beach question, we will always opt for mountains. But you know what? Beach really does stand for “best escape anyone can have!” Last weekend, we had the honor of being guests at the small wedding affair of Casey & Laura on Daufuskie Island in South Carolina. Casey (AKA Beef)…
We have always used travel to weddings as an excuse to explore a new area. And while we had a heap of weddings every year through 2008ish, there’s been a dearth since. Until this year. Our calendar includes more weddings this year than we’ve had in the last 4 years! So, when we realized we…
Currently living/working in: We’ve taught 4 fifth grade classes and 4 fourth grade classes for the private school at Fenton Ranch and will be finishing up the season with second graders! We still love, love, love teaching environmental education and wrangling kids into the outdoors; it has been an amazing experience, so we’ll see how it…
Thanks for all the new website love and sorry to neglect the blog this month a little! I think I’ll be back on a regular schedule now. To start, lemme tell you about a gorgeous overnight backpacking trip we took earlier in September in southern Colorado … Trip Name: Highland Mary Lakes/CDT/Cunningham Gulch Loop Area: Weminuche Wilderness…
This post is way overdue and out of chronological order, but I never blogged about the state high points we knocked off this summer! Besides my successful summit of Oregon’s Mt. Hood paired with Justin’s not-so-sucessful second attempt to summit Hood, we checked off 3 more high points, bringing us to a grand total of 43/50!…
Currently living/working in: We are back to caretaking Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico and teaching kids (5th, 4th & 2nd graders) environmental education! The fall session of teaching will run through mid-October, while the caretaking role will be all winter. Current mood: Really excited to be settled down again for a bit and…
I turned 39 today at 3:37am EST. And while I truly stand by the fact that age is just a number, I have a hard time believing this will be my last year in my 30s! Birthdays are one of those days I’d rather just ignore and treat as another day, but that does not…
Over the years, we’ve spent A LOT of time in Colorado, but only I had been to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. And in our quest to visit all 59 of the national parks, it doesn’t count until we’ve been there together! We finally visited it together last weekend, making it number 42.…
Dates: May 1- July 25 Distance Traveled: 14,240 miles *12,328 miles on the Superfeet Van *1,912 miles on our own car ***Our friend Alexis put together this REALLY AWESOME video of the Superfeet van. Check it out on our YouTube channel. Gracias Alexis!*** Longest Drive: 922 miles on 7/23/17 from Moorehead, MN to…