Holidays in Review

Happy New Year!
Time for a review of the holiday season which will most likely will come in parts.

Turkey Travels:
Our Thanksgiving road trip to California was perfect. We loved going to bed when we were tired and waking up when we weren't, reading a lot, hot spring visits, the ocean, the wine, and a friendly visit from our friend Joe. Our first days brought us to San Louis Obispo and Pismo State Beach. We explored the cute little town and ventured on our 'biking' tour of wineries. We rented bikes from a friendly gentleman in a side alley and set out up the hill out into the country - wine country. Five miles later with inches of a bike lane and cars whizzing past at about 65 mph, we decide to turn around and come back with our car. Smart move on our part but it was fun believing we could tour the wineries on our bikes.

We ditched the road to ride on the beach and then ditched the bikes to read and drink wine on the beach

We moved onto Refugio State Beach north of Santa Barbara. We hiked up to our first hot springs and met with the tell tale smell of sulfur. It was everything we expected, foreigners and naked bodies.

Our last few nights brought us into the mountains, creek side near Ojai for Thanksgiving and meeting Joe. We had a great campsite and cooked an AMAZING thanksgiving dinner on the fire. Gabe and Joe prepared our cornish game hens over the fire and we had the appropriate sides from boxes. It was so so delicious. We walked off our food indulgence and made friends with our neighbors whom passed on directions from a hippie to another hot spring. We were all game and successfully found them based on these directions:

Drive about 3 miles down the road, you'll see 3 blue trash containers, turn right? (2people think left. Drive until you see a flashing light - park there and head left. You'll see them below.

By the time we go, maybe 6ish, it is pitch black but lucky for us we find them and they are glorious. Right next to a quickly flowing river, the hot springs were much clearer (i could see my leg under the water and moonlight), larger therefore less smelly, and so so warm. We were pleased we ventured out only to return to our campsite to eat an entire pumpkin pie with coffee. So on vacation...

The next day we ventured back to Tempe on a fun road trip listening to audio TAPES :) It was restful, rejuvenating, blissful and everything we had dreamed of.

Turkey Travels

Things have been so consistently busy here that we don't seem to be able to blog as often as we'd like so you probably won't even notice our hiatus but we're setting off to get to know the road between here and California a little better.

We are setting out to camp on the beaches of California, experience a biking wine tour, and indulge in turkey dinner campfire style. I'll miss the turkey comatose, family and friends, and football but we are excited to celebrate Thanksgiving and travels together.

We are wishing everyone a happy thanksgiving and safe travels; we hope to get in touch with you all soon!

We love and miss you

dream

We all have moments in life where it feels like we are dreaming. There are also those moments in life that we wish we were dreaming or we are so thankful that we actually were dreaming. Last weekend I gleefully was living the life that it feels like you are dreaming.

On thursday night when I walked through our door, getting home from yoga, I was greeted by this face.
Ms. Lindsay Mangan, my dear elusive friend whom I rarely see because of her unique field biology jobs. My wonderful husband cooked up this dream for me. I was surprised and in for the weekend of a lifetime.

Gabe's dear friend flew in as well and the four of us were on our way to funness for three full days. We traveled southeast to Mount Graham where we stayed at Shannon Campground :) at about 9000 ft elevation. It was beautiful and full of great adventures and storms. We even saw a bobcat and got hailed upon, two highlights that I don't come by too often.

This man that I love is better than what I could come up with in my dreams.

"un-established" secretive campground discovered...

...by our friend pointing us in the general direction for a campsite after our planned spot (and 2 backups) were all found FULL. We had our camping trip planned for this past weekend for almost a month. I use the word planned very loosely, it was just scheduled into that weekend so that we didn't plan anything else. So we chose our spot to go camping last, oh, about Wednesday i guess.

Gabe and I headed up Friday night and the spot we had originally planned on staying at is absolutely gorgeous. We pulled up around 6 pm to discover this campground full, no biggie, our friend had a "secret" backup spot. We went there to check it out - it also was a wonderful location but it was right along the river and it didn't look like we could fit 2 other larger tents down there with us so we had to pass. Although the couch's spadefoot frogs were out in full force calling like they needed a mate NOW. It was spectacular -- i miss the sound of calling frogs from MN.

So we move onto a third location - also full. After having pulled off to the side of the road for dinner and discovering 3 locations that weren't going to work it was around 8:30 and we were sick of this game. We headed toward a trail head for dispersed camping - bummed about being away from water but still happy to be out. We didn't make it to the trail head and just pulled off in one of our first clearing and stayed the night. In the morning we got up to check out the rest of the drive and discover a neon green band of cottonwood trees - water! At the bottom of the road we found an un-established campground - so its still considered dispersed camping - but it has everything an established campground would have except regulations pretty much. Which can be nice at times but not if you don't enjoy heavy metal blaring for a good few hours in the morning.

It was an awesome spot and the weather was great. We had very interesting neighbors surrounding us; some of which we really wonder if they have permanent residency there. Nonetheless, it was a great weekend of weather, camping, company, and welcoming spring to be officially here (and inviting it to stay awhile). I recently had a local Arizonan, weirdly uncommon down here, tell me that no matter how long you live here - you always underestimate the summers heat. I thinks he's right and i'm soaking up spring knowing what's not too far off for us down here.

Happy Spring Everyone!

some of you are going to think we're crazy...

the rest of you know we are -- crazy about being outdoors. Last weekend we ventured up northeast into the mountains because they got a big storm which brought in a lot of snow. Gabe and I finally have our snowshoes down here for the first time. So we wanted to get out and play in the snow. We planned on getting up there and finding a camping spot in one of the many campgrounds and going snowshoeing.

we had a wonderful drive up and they did indeed have a lot of snow to play in. Soon after driving on the 260 past all of the many campgrounds we discovered they were all closed - huh. We pulled off the road where there was a trail head and decided to at least get some snowshoeing out of the trip before the sun set. We had a good little hike but were quickly reminded how tiring snowshoeing can be and took a lot of breaks . Gabe discovered that he had stepped in dog poop and was leaving a little of it behind with every step in the snow. I'm not sure that he ever did get over stepping in dog poop with snow shoes on. We found a couple little streams that were running from the snow melt and it felt magical, like we were the only ones to discover that beauty.

We came up with a good plan during our little hike -- we would camp in the parking lot of this trail head (it was covered in snow). My only concern was that it was a very popular place to sled as well and well we might have a lot of people traffic at our little made up camp site. So we decided to just drive down random roads and see if we could find an open somewhat flat spot that we could make our campsite. (Undeveloped camping is very popular here). Thankfully we did find a great spot and set up camp. We got a fire, dinner, and sleeping quarters set up fully equipped with a heater. Needless to say winter camping attempt #2 -- successful! (Attempt #1 happened back in college in MN -- not so much a success when you're driving home at 10 p.m.) We had such a great time - it was a wonderful way to spend valentines weekend.

Here is our set up -- in the front right you can see the table gabe built for us.

Just two people loving nature

The ice crystals on the car in the morning were beautiful -- reminded me of my snow study days during student teaching. Its amazing how many different shapes snowflakes take on and all the reasoning behind that specific shape. A great morning treat (probably more so when you don't get it months in a row)! It was 15 degrees in the morning for those of you wondering how "true" our winter camping experience was down in AZ. :)