We just got back from our final camping trip for the summer
and it kind of felt like the death of summer. Is that being overdramatic? I’m
really trying hard to not get ahead of myself but I’m feeling depressed that
it’s getting darker earlier and that I need to turn on the kitchen light in the
morning now. I’m hoping we can enjoy the fall and that snow holds off for a bit
so I don’t start uncontrollably bawling.
We camped at Chalk Lake outside of Buena Vista. We had
assumed we could kayak on Chalk Lake but it turns out that lake is more like a
pond and we would be the bane of every fisherman’s existence if we put our boat
in the lake. We hadn’t done any research on hiking trails and we were so tired from
a sleepless week of nightly 2am thunderstorms and raccoons hulk-smashing our
trashcans at 4am* that we took the opportunity to relax and take naps. We did
drive up the road to see the ghost town of St. Elmo and that was worth the
trip.
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| St. Elmo Ghost Town |
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| St. Elmo Ghost Town |
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| St. Elmo Ghost Town |
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| St. Elmo Ghost Town |
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| St. Elmo Ghost Town |
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| Camping at the base of Mt. Princeton is pretty awful. |
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Little baby Cotton had an asthma attack when she thought we
were going to make her hike. Man do we have some work
to do with this one. |
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| What a refugee camp it was. We were about 5 ft from our neighbors. American problems. |
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| Not a bad view. |
I’m happy to report that our garden looks a bit better now. I’m
not quite as embarrassed even though we haven’t seen much return on our
investment. We did have salad last night with homegrown lettuce so I’m feeling
more hopeful now; except that someone keeps eating our kale.** Rude.
My Colorado History class ended last week. Yippee! I only
missed 2 points all term so I got a spanking good grade and then found myself
utterly disappointed to see a ‘P’ on my transcript. Lesson learned: No more
pass/fail. Now that I don’t have to spend all my free time doing homework I guess it is
back to digging up sod in the backyard so that we can replant better sod and
keep the mud from splashing up onto our freshly painted garage.
This weekend we have tickets to the Rockies game in Denver
for the ceremonial retiring of Todd Helton’s number. I haven’t been to a
Rockies game since before we moved 2 years ago so it should be a fun time. We’re spending the night in Denver, getting in
some big city shopping, and then we are picking up Mom Stoess, Dad Stoess, and
Brother Stoess at the airport. They’ll be staying with us for a week and Brian
has some adventures planned for them in Moab while I work and watch the pets.
August is a busy month so we don’t anticipate getting much
done on the house but to give perspective, this time last year we hadn’t even
officially moved into our house yet. In fact, I think this upcoming weekend
marks the anniversary. We’ve accomplished so much on the house this year! It’s
good to stop and reflect because sometimes you get so bogged down in it all
that you forget how far you’ve actually come. With that, I'll leave you with some before and after pics (and now I've realized I really need to go through and take more after photos for the catalog, I don't have any for our bedroom, the compost bin, or the laundry chute).
See you in September!
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| Living room before |
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| Living room after |
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| Dining Room Before |
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| Dining Room After |
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| Basement Rec Room after we painted and added carpet |
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| Basement guestroom after painting and adding carpet |
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| House before |
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| House in process. We're further along than this but I'm saving it for the big reveal. |
*Our neighbors just informed us they were not raccoons, they were bears. And that the reason they weren't raccoons is because the mountain lions are eating all the raccoons. I can't decide if I believe them or not. How on earth do they know this?
**I bet my neighbors would say it's the mountain lions eating our kale.
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