Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Let me tell you a little story of why I'm a baby. As an almost grown child, not yet a teenager, I spent enough camping trips in the White Mountains to not be afraid of bears. There were bear traps everywhere, some containing bears that we were able to oogle at, and signs on every other tree warning you to drop to the ground if a bear came. Act like you're dead and it'll think you're dead. Because of that, I was not afraid of bears. Just act like I'm dead and I'll be fine? Easy! No worries about being ripped limb from limb!

Until last week when a friend ruined everything. Everything, I tell ya! We were on a hike and got to talking about bears and mountain lions, both of which we have in Flagstaff. We were talking about various people we know who have seen both animals while on hikes or mountain bike rides, which made them kind of real to me. I had heard of mountain lions occasionally being in peoples back yards and bears being seen on bike rides, but no real firsthand experiences. All stuff read in the paper until my friend told me some stories. At the end of our hike, I didn't think I was scared or anything and still felt the same un-afraidness of mountain lions and bears as before.

Queue to a week later when I went on a run/hike with Vince while he rode his bike. After a while of exercising together, we split paths so he could go one way and I could go another. I was good for the first 1/2 mile, then realized I was all alone at the top of the mountain where I was most likely to run into a dangerous animal, it was stormy and dark and sprinkling, and I was totally going to get eaten by a mountain lion or bear. Calm down, I didn't actually see any animals, I was just scared. And was so sure one was stalking me right then. What am I even supposed to do if a mountain lion attacks me?! So I ran. And ran. And kept running. Which in turn kind of scared me more because I was wearing a rain jacket that got noisier the faster I ran. I'm not very good with loud noises, let alone one that's right next to my ear, and my heart-rate just kept accelerating.

Finally, I ran into Vince after a couple miles alone and started to relax. I laugh at myself now thinking how silly I was, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to run like that otherwise!

Anyways, here are pictures, a mixture of iPhone and my 'big camera'.

Before we started I made Vince take a picture for our photo album, and of course he had to mess around for 20 shots before I yelled and started to walk away saying, 'SCREW IT, I DIDN'T CARE ANYWAYS.' One of the shots he put a banana on my head and laughed like a five year old.

This was when I was alone, at the outlook overlooking the city, which you can't actually see. It started raining more and I hightailed it back to the car. 

Dark and stormy!

After the run with my favorite girl.

By the way Beth, if you're reading this, I don't blame you. Or maybe I secretly hate you now.

Happenings

|| Life is so much easier when you remember to take your hyperthyroid medication three times a day as prescribed. So. Much. Easier.

|| I got a new tattoo! Here's a preview...a picture of the finished project will be posted soon once it's healed.

|| Some days I need someone to follow me around to punch me in the face when I'm being too anal for my own good. Like when I beat myself up for getting a 43/50 on an Anatomy & Physiology II test even though I still have a 98.3% in the class and we're almost halfway through the semester. A NINETY EIGHT POINT FUCKING THREE. Seriously, self? You're going to worry about that? Fine, here's a punch to your face. Now you have something to worry about. But, since I enjoy the way my face looks, I'll settle for a hefty serving of Cherry Amaretto Coconut Bliss to distract myself. (The best paleo dessert around if you ignore the minuscule amount of guar gum.)

|| Today I pretended like it was summer again.

 

It was a sunny 60 degrees outside after a bitter cold and light dusting of snow the other day. I sat in the backyard soaking up some Vitamin D, ate a cheery salad, played with Roxanne, and pleaded with the universe to let it stay warm. The other day I was looking at an old blog post from the summer to email the link to a friend and I swear, I almost cried. It was like I forgot for a while that there was such a thing as summer and I soon as I remembered it I missed it so much it hurt! I'm ready for tank tops and shorts and exercising outside. Moments like this make me really want to live someplace like LA where there are no seasons. Maybe it's healthy to miss something so strongly, though.

|| Speaking of missing something, MY GRANDPARENTS ARE COMING HOME! They've been on a mission in Peru for the past 16ish months and weren't due to come home until October, but will be back early because of some medical issues. It feels like I haven't seen them in an eternity and I'm excited to see them despite the unfortunate circumstances!

|| Again, I'm going to talk about working out. I took a weight lifting class at the gym today and it was great! We're focusing on free weights for the month (a major perk to having a small class: you get to choose what you want to learn!) which is what I really need help with. I've got all the machines down pretty well but I don't feel like I'm getting enough from them. Enter free weights! I can already tell that by adding free weights to my workout I'll be getting so much more muscle since it's a whole body workout for stability. Bonus? I look and feel like a badass while doing squats with a barbell.

Also, as much as I love the gym, running in the quiet woods on hard packed snow is quite nice.

|| Lastly, here are some yummy foods. I sure do love eating.

Telluride Part 3

To read part one, click here, and to read part two, click here.

After we woke up in the morning, we headed down the scary road and hoped no one would be coming up. Luckily there wasn't, so we went to a cute little coffee shop to get some coffee.

After that, we went to the one and only grocery store in town to get some stuff for breakfast. I wish I would have taken some photos inside because the place was awesome! It was in an old building, and looked like a fancy house inside. The lighting had some chandeliers and other stuff like that that you don't normally see in a grocery store.

When we went there the night before to get stuff for dinner, we also wanted to get some wood, unkowing that we couldn't have campfires. There were boxes of wood at the front of the store, and we figured that we could just tell the cashier that we wanted to grab some on the way out like any other grocery store. When we told her we wanted to buy some wood, she just stared at us. So I repeated it again, and she just kept staring! I looked at Vince with a 'What the fuccccckkk' kind of stare, not knowing what was going on. I tried to say it in a different way saying, 'Fire wood? The kind that burns?' After getting a stare again, I just told Vince to go get the box. A lady at another register realized what was happening though and just went over to our cashier to ring us up for wood, explaining that she doesn't speak English and that she was Russian or something? I felt so bad that she had to work at a register, they should have put her somewhere that she wouldn't have to speak so much with people! Maybe she wanted to learn English that way or something?

But anyways, after that, we were off to the gondolas! 

Parking is pretty much impossible to find anywhere within a few blocks of the gondolas, but somehow we found one 2 blocks away. We had to pay like $.50 an hour or something, and the bummer thing was that you could only pay for three hours! So I had to go back to the car a few times to add more money, passing by this rad bus each time.

I didn't mind paying for parking, though, because the gondola was FREE! So here's how it works. You can start in the small town of Telluride, take a five minute gondola ride to the top of a mountain which has a bike park/hiking trails, and then you can go down the gondola for another 5 minutes to the even smaller town of Mountain Village. There is a road that can take you from Mountain Village to Telluride, but it's close to a half hour drive, so it's faster to just take the gondola.

An even better thing than being free is that you can take pets on. When we were first trying to get Roxi to walk on, she looked at us like we were insane, so I had to lift her up. After getting on and off 5 or 6 times, though, she got the hang of it.

So Vince, Rox and I rode up to the top of the mountain from Telluride with our breakfast. 

We first  filled out his paperwork for the bike park and talked to some guys about the trails.

Then we ate in a breakfast in a huge meadow surrounded by beautiful mountains.

 It was so nice and Roxanne was in heaven being able to run around and eat some dirty snow even though it was 80 degrees out! 

(See that teeny tiny landing strip to the right? There's no way I'd want to land on that!!)

We then took the lift down the mountain to Mountain Village and looked around for a minute. 

Mountain Village is mainly full of resorts and condos and we weren't very impressed so we turned around and went back up and then down the mountain to Telluride.

 We went back to the car to load up on some more parking time and so that Vince could get his bike and gear on so he could ride the park.

After getting his stuff, we went back up the mountain where he got off to ride, but Rox and I kept going to Mountain Village. 

I was tired from all of the hiking and walking we did before, so I took this time to jump on my laptop and read some emails/blogs while sitting in a sunny  courtyard. 

I occasionally took a break when Vince would come see Rox and I to get some water.

Once Vince did a few runs which took an hour or two, we went back to the car that was about to run out of it's parking time and then we packed up and were off to Crested Butte, which I will post about next!

Fossil

Last weekend Vince and I and our friends Veronica and Ty took a little trip to Fossil Creek. It was SO beautiful and the temp was perfect! It's crazy because you drive through a bunch of dry land that looks like dessert, and at the very body of a canyon is the lush creek.

There was a little birds nest with a baby bird on the trail! It was so cute because when we walked by its mouth was wide open and it was waiting for the mamma to come back and feed it!

The first place we stopped to swim was beautiful and so fun. We kept trying to swim upstream and it was SO hard because the water is so strong! I couldn't believe how clear and green the water was.

And after hiking for about a mile, we came to the waterfall...

And guess what Veronica did? She jumped off the waterfall!!

She was so nervous, just like I would have been. It was so awesome to see her jump!

Before she jumped, Veronica, Ty, and I went behind the waterfall. It was SOOOO scary. The rocks were super slippery and the waterfall was so strong. I actually scratched the inside of my engagement ring because I was gripping the rocks so tightly! It was fun to get under it and feel how intense nature can be. I wish Vince could have come back there, but he was with Rox.

Roxanne hasn't ever been in water this fast and deep, and she was nervous. She kept refusing to go with us and would only come when we crossed the creek. She would try to follow us across and she just looked so scared! So Vince was trying to get her to be calm in the water, but she kept trying to climb up him. 

Driving home!

At the very beginning of the road that goes down into the canyon there is a HUGE dropoff. And I mean huge. If you are taking that corner faster than 25 mph there's no way you could stop and you'd fly over, which is what some people had done...

The car in the middle looked like it was relatively new. It was eery to see because you know they couldn't have survived. =/  Fortunately they put up a barrier on the edge of that corner now.

On the last stretch of road as we were driving, I saw something huge in the middle of the road. I asked Vince what is was and he couldn't tell what it was. We drove over it and as we did I realized it was a tarantula! 

We pulled over and went to look at it and a couple of the cars behind us stopped to see as well. One of the guys actually PICKED IT UP. It was so freaky! I guess there was venom coming out that everyone saw, but I didn't see it. 

Either way, it was a good end to our trip!