09.24.09

Back to Colorado

Posted in Road Trip, friends, photo, recreation, travel, vacation at 10:50 pm by heidihoho7

Ridgeway & Resting

Thursday morning i went out with John and Randy for a sunrise shoot just outside of Ridgeway, we got some pretty fall color with mountains in the background. While out with the boys I started to realize that I wasn’t feeling so great, and we opted to skip out on breakfast at True Grit to make our way back to the cabins. Once there i decided that i’d take the rest of the day off – i took a wonderfully long nap and bela and i laid low while the rest of the crew went off to Jimmy and Wendell’s for a tex-mex dinner. (and i believe there was fishing at Buddy’s as well as we had fish in the freezer that night)

Have you seen the Muffler Man?

Friday I was feeling better so bela and i decided to go geocaching. Neely and Jen went out with a local friend to go horseback riding and andy wanted to get a bike ride in. As it happened our first geocache happened to have the same name as the place andy wanted to start his biking. So as andy got his bike ready, we found our first cache in the area literally 50′ away. We made plans to meet up in a few hours and parted ways to our own adventures.

Our next cache was at the water reservoir near town. We made a quick side trek to the viewpoint – supposedly we could see all four states and i think we did see most of them… we enjoyed the view and moved on to find the cache fairly quickly right off the main road. The next cache ended up being behind a cemetery that had the coolest little outhouse. we didn’t go inside but i did take a few pics. Our final cache of the day was one of the best caches we’ve ever found – the muffler man. This was one of the craziest spots we’d ever been – this guy creates people and scenes out of old muffler and car parts. We were just mesmerized by all the scenarios he thought up – and then factor in there are goats all over and following us around. The goats helped us find the cache that was hidden right in the middle of it all. We wandered around and took pics of our favorite muffler concoctions.

We were about out of time so we headed back to town to meet up with Andy for a light lunch at the local coffee shop. Back at the cabin we enjoyed a quiet afternoon and it was decided to have a yummy final dinner of our fine local ingredients: freshly caught fish from Buddy’s pond and a puffball mushroom found in the neighbor’s field, in addition to some yummy garlic potatoes. Since the gals had been cooking most of the week, the boys were put in charge of cooking.

Things were just heating up when all of a sudden Jen asks if we’d seen Figgy (1 of her doggies). None of us had, and after John had been taunting us all week with the “better watch out or the coyotes will get them!” we were a little anxious to find Figgy. After an initial check around the cabin with no doggie, things started getting a little crazy. Everyone goes out to search – Bela opted to make sure the cabin didn’t burn down and watched the food and I took over with Fiona (Jen’s youngest), while she assured me she knew where Figgy was, as we kept wandering around the cabin looking and yelling for the doggie. Luckily Jen found Figgy a mile or two down the road on some private property and the search party was called off. Dinner was started up again and we all enjoyed our dinner with relief and a bit of sadness knowing we’d be heading out the next day.

Rock Art and Fine Dining

Saturday morning we finished our packing and got on our way to Albuquerque, waving goodbye to the family and wonderful cabins in the mountains. The drive went by fairy quickly, even with all 4 doggies. I have to admit i liked having the wee doggies – they seemed kind of kittie like sitting on our laps. We convinced andy and neely to make the side trip to Petraglyph Nat’l Monument – we weren’t supposed to have doggies so the kids dropped us off so we could do a quick look see. We enjoyed a quick trip around Boca Negra Canyon, which literally borders the city. There were some cool glyphs and some obvious graffiti but overall quite cool to see all of the rock art with a complete view of the city and mountains in the background.

We all opted to take an afternoon nap (actually i think andy may have gone for a ride/run but he’s crazy and we already know that) after checking in to our hotels. The doggies even had their own bed! The kids picked us up and we were on our way to a wonderful dinner at a little french place the urban spoon suggested. While enjoying the excellent food we also were entertained by the kids coming in for their homecoming dinners. We had great fun guessing who was with who and why they dressed the way they did – Neely did not approve of the hat at the dinner table! We found it pretty cool that our waiter was born in chicago but had lived in texas for a while but was now in ABQ – what are the odds of that!? Just another sign of a great trip we think!

We flew home on sunday morning while the kids finished their long drive to Austin. Overall a wonderful trip with great friends as always!

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