Visitors & Helpers

Have I ever mentioned how awesome our friends are on this blog before? Okay, well if I haven't yet, I'm going to say it now loud & clear: WE HAVE THE MOST AWESOMEST FRIENDS IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!!

We are truly blessed in the friend department, that's for sure. This weekend one set of our awesome friends (ya know, the ones who bought us a white water rafting trip for our wedding gift) drove up to the mountains with us to help us with a ton of work we needed done on the cabin. Here is a list of what was accomplished, most of it in one day:

*Insulation almost completely installed (we still need to purchase a measley 2 rolls)
*Water system figured out and connected
*Wildlife camera mounted & left on tree in area where we've seen deer, etc
*Messy wood pile left by prior owner stacked & organized to dry
*Some fallen trees left by previous owner chain sawed & stacked in newly organized pile
*God-awful, ugly, flea-bag of a 5,000 lb couch left by previous owner removed from interior
*Bathroom ceiling & walls painted

That was quite a lot more than we were expecting to finish so we were all very happy. Along with the work, there was plenty of time for playing and relaxation by the fire.

Our friends' teen-aged daughter (ALF) loved hanging out at the fire with us, except no matter where she stood, that's where the smoke would blow. Right in her face. Poor kid. She did however manage to create some pretty cool rock graffiti (or fire art!) in between ash chokings.

Nighttime was a fun time for us girls to walk the dog down the lane and scare the boogers out of each other. While I was trying to scare my friends, the combination of the dark wooded night & illumination & shadows created from my head lamp started playing tricks with my own head. I got myself all freaked out & we all started screaming and running back to the cabin (which seemed miles away -- it was maybe 50 feet). Artie, being the good protector that he is, assumed that one of my friends was the cause of my alarmed state and as we were running back to the cabin screaming, he ran up to one and tugged on her shorts and almost pulled them off her body! It was quite hilarious!

Here's Artie the next day being especially needy towards me. He's so cute and I love him to pieces but Holy Moses he needs to lighten up a bit!

So, along with all that work, like I said we got some play time in too. We played our cheap-o version of Chuck-O and were doomed to stay at the cabin playing until someone dethroned Carrie from her morning-long winning streak! Finally ALF defeated the evil one in a close game of 18 to 16!! w00t!

Last intense minutes of the Chuck-O Finals!!

ALF brought her pellet gun and since I forbade her (or her dad) from shooting at the small wildlife and since we didn't have any actual target paper, we modified and made up a cute little new game that we'll probably forever play from this day forth. Since I have tons of outdated fashion magazines stashed at the cabin for my reading pleasure, we found the cutest girl in one of the ads, ripped out the page, stapled it to a stump and we all ensued playing round after round of "Shoot The Bimbo"!! We all got off good shots. I mainly liked to make her dance (meaning I rarely hit her but the area around her feet) but the ones that did connect were more surface shots that would keep her from running, e.g. legs and hips. ALF & Carrie were more cruel with shots to the head, throat and one to the boob. The guys made less damaging contact, but I don't think they had as much anamosity towards the gorgeous woman (read: poor waif) as we girls did. I assure you, however, that we were all aiming for a head or crotch shot for sure!

ALF carefully putting the target in her sights and squeezing the trigger while playing a round of "Shoot the Bimbo"

All in all the weekend was a success both work and relaxation wise. I was thrilled to have new friends up that I could show off all the cool spots and create new and lasting memories. Every weekend we go up to the property, it feels as as though the place becomes more ours and our home away from home. I love that little piece of heaven and I love that we have great friends who take time to help us make the place so special for us.

Thank you again, guys! Love you all lots!

2nd Trip, 1st Overnight

The weekend of the 20th we went back up to the cabin to spend our first night! YAY! All the snow from the previous week had melted. We wanted to go fishing, but ended up just cleaning up around the grounds. J took up the ol' Husquvarna and he made short work of some of the fallen trees. We have a great amt of firewood now! While we were hanging out, we had some visitors to the land. See below for highlights!

This flower was growing crazy all over the place. It looks like a Columbine, but it's ginormous and growing close to the ground. I have no clue what it is, but it's gorgeous!

Here's the first vistor who showed up around 7 p.m. on Saturday night.

She stayed for about 15 minutes, was very shy and stayed out in the meadow

and kept a close eye on us.

But something else on our side of the meadow caught her attention. . .

Another younger doe is what caught the older one's attention.

This little girl came within 20 feet of our campfire!!

Holy schmokes to just sit and watch her pass through was so amazing.

Here is film that J was quick enough to capture before she ran off.

The popping & crackling you hear is the campfire.

We hope you enjoyed. I'm sure we'll have plenty more where this came from.

Stay tuned!!

More 1st Access Photos

More from Saturday, June 13, 2009

The lovely lake

(I know you guys are thinking: How many pictures of this is she going to take?)

All the pretty little flowers

Firestarter! All the little bits of wood were SOAKED!!!

J walking the log on our property.

Access Granted (finally!)

Over the river and through the woods to our wonderful cabin house we go! Whoa! Last Saturday, June 13, 2009, the roads were open all the way up to the . Here are some pictures that capture the day.

A view of Elk Mountain from the FR101 road up. Still a pretty decent amount of snow up there.

We saw skittish deer and a porcupine who moved too fast for me to take a picture of him. But this lovely guy stood still and stoic while I fumbled to turn on my dang camera. Awfully nice of him, don't you think? He seemed almost to strike a pose.

Here's the spot in the road on FR105 where we were stopped by snow a few weeks ago.

Now, it's nice and clear.

Remember when I said the "over the river" part above.

Well, here's the river you go over to our cabin.

Here is how close we got to the cabin.

There is this snowfield, it's still pretty deep, but that's it.

We did not complete any projects because we didn't haul any of the supplies in. Since we weren't sure if we could get through or not we decided just to go lite this time. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon up there. Had a fire, had some lunch, poked around and had a wonderful & relaxing time.

This coming up weekend is when the work will begin. Stay tuned for more.

A Mileagestone

We noticed Leon turned 26,000 on the dot!

Happy Mileagestone, Leon!

Here's to a couple dozen (ha!) more of those and never letting us down!

My First Slug

Growing up in Wyoming it's easy to understand that I have never, ever in my life entire life seen a slug. . .until today. The weather has been so wet that the moisture has driven them above ground. J said hadn't seen a slug in over 20 yrs. since he was back East. He brought this little guy in on the palm of his hand to show me. At the time, the little critter looked like nothing more than something hacked up out of a smoker's brown lung. We put him back out side where he was and he when he started becoming less afraid, he was on the move and had his horns out.

Slugs are cool.

A long, long time ago. . .

. . .in a flower bed not so far away; in a hidey-hole one thousand feet below an ancient pagoda . .





lies the Garden of the Lost. . .

The Garden of the Lost. . .

The Garden of the Lost!!!! (ROAWR!!!!)

Cool Wedding Gift Cashed In the Cache!

Our really good friends bought us a white water rafting trip for our wedding gift last year. Today it was time to cash it in. We insisted that our most awesome friends who bought this adventureous trip join us. They did and now we are going to make white water rafting an annual trip together.

Our tour was with the RMA outfit just northwest of Ft. Collins. The trip was down the Upper Cache la Poudre River and we stopped to have lunch at Mishawaka a.k.a. The Mish. For those of you not local, "The Mish" is a bar/pub located 1/2 way up the canyon, right on the river. They have tons of out door concerts in the little ampitheatre and there are tons of bikers & hippie kids who hang out there. Lots of local color, day trippers and great people watching. We rafted the 1st half of the trip, paddled directly up to the Mish, ate lunch, then got back in our boats and paddled down the rest of the trip. So much fun. We navigated rapids with names such as "Zig-Zag," "Sarah's Hole" (in which a girl named Sarah on the other boat got injured -- weird), "Devil's Drop" followed by "Hell Hole" and my favorite "Ding Dong." We are still so tired and so sore from the work out.

We thought there'd be more chances to take pictures, but we were busy working/paddling through rapids the entire time. :) Made for a fun ride but produced next to no pictures. We were the first "paying customers" our guide, Evan, steered down the river. Of course, at the beginning of the trip, we thought he was joking. ha ha. Guess what? He wasn't. We would have never known if he hadn't told us. He was a great guide. Good job, Evan.

Here are the few pictures J managed to snap. Nothing major, but I still wanted to post them.

Evan's 1st Crew Survived (minus J, he's taking the pict)

Evan is second from the left.

I can't wait til our next annual white water rafting trip! Thanks, Friends, this was the most exciting & adventureous wedding gift we got! You're the best! xoxo - JAKL

Birdbath CAM Pt. 2

We put the Birdbath CAM on today while we were at our most awesome white water rafting trip. We had a few friends stop by. Some are difficult to see. . .can you spot the visitor? Enjoy!

High Plains Purse-Suit 5k Time

Official time = 42.25 minutes

That's a 14 minute mile. . . pretty dang slow-moving,

but at least we finished it.

Just wanted to officially record here for, again, historical purposes.