back on the road again!

After over a year hiatus, I am back on the road. woowhoo! stay tuned...

Fort Collins and surrounding areas

I love this place.
Sara and I both drove up Friday afternoon caught my friend Jenn at home before she headed out for dinner then went to meet up with my old house mate Christy to get some food and drinks. Christy is now teaching a psychology class at our old University and is an assistant teacher for another class, crazy, and in a doctorate program there. Where has the time gone? I guess we are getting old, by 10:30 we were all calling it a night, lame huh. But as Christy and I were walking back to her house we passed the Aggie Theatre where she use to bartend when we lived together, so of course we had to stop in for a drink, say hi and see who was playing. I was the only one who didn't end up at an ex-boyfriends house that night......
Saturday, some of Jenns friends came over to can peaches and make peach preserves, mmm it smelled scrumptious. Sunday, Jenn and I went to the Grant Family Farm to pick apples, plums and visit some small friends:
I headed to Old Town on Monday to pick up some ingredients to make my own lip balm and stopped by my favorite store, Nature's Own to get some stone jars. One of the guys working mentioned he had puppies so I of course had to go take a look at them that evening. Oh man were they cute, I may be picking up a little fur ball on my way back through for my drive south.

Wednesday Jenn and I drove up to Red Feather and camped off Deadman Rd. We were looking for the best spot that was protected from the wind and was surrounded by changing Aspens. We found it after a bit of seeking, but no doubt it was worth the search. We set up the tent and started a fire. Jenn made some delicious guacamole and Magda explored the woods. As the sun set the coyotes began their call, with each set of howls we could hear them getting closer

In the morning we packed up and harvested some rose hips, then headed to the The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya I do not have the words to describe this place, they will come one day.

That evening Jenn and I rode bikes to the last bike in movie at New Belgium for some pre-movie double dutch and a few brews.
Friday I was picking up a CSer at the Greyhound in Fort Collins who was going to travel with me to the west and ran into Kevin a friend of Jenns that I met the night before at double dutch. He came to pick up Jaret with me and invited us to Colorado Springs for the night then go see Bishops Castle Saturday down in Rye Colorado. After sending pictures to one of my friends, he described it perfectly: "it looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie"
We climbed all around it, into the towers and into the globe. I have not been that scared in a long time, the towers were shaking, I wasn't sure how some of the walkways were being held up, there were steep spiral stairs with low ceilings and no hand rails but I felt great. Jim Bishop, the guy who built and is still building this castle was present and working on it all the while speaking his mind on any issue you can think of. My favorite quotes of his were "if bullshit was music, I'd be a walking brass band" and "I have no boss, I work for myself, nobody tells me what to do. Well my wife can tell me what to do, I guess my wife is my boss", he's a smart man.

Denver

After a days worth of driving through Kansas and I'm not sure if I'm losing it or being in the south for so long has gotten to me but Kansas wasn't as bad as I remembered it, I actually thought it was kind of a beautiful drive, anyway, I arrived at my good friend Sara's in the early evening, we caught up, took Jelly, her aussie, to the park where we played this game which included him nipping me on the butt. We then went to dinner around the corner from her place at the Vine Street Pub, we talked the night away and closed them down. The next day, Thursday, we ate at the S.A.M.E. Cafe, also around the corner from her place (So All May Eat, you can check out some info about it on Sara's blog page, click on the link above) which is a pretty cool concept and hopefully more places like it will be popping up all over. Afterwards we took Jelly to City Park just a few blocks away so he could swim in the fountain and herd some geese or chase them into the lake whatever you want to call it he did a fine job.
When we got home we made a sauce conglomeration consisting of eggplant, tomato, peppers, onions, garlic, basil, oregano and tofu to use up all the veggies before they went bad but ran out of time because Blake was picking us up for game night at 6:20 sharp and according to Sara he is never late. At 6:19 her phone rang, Blake was downstairs. So we each picked up a bottle of wine and headed out to play Apples to Apples and Catch Phrase and drink some Pink Panty Droppers or what we use to call Summer Brew in high school and then my dorm mates adapted the name to Liquid Crack. Its amazing how the times have not changed? but I like to think we have become more cultivated, now we have a couple drinks and play games like scrabble or dominoes as a way to socialize where as ten years ago we were playing games like flip cup for the sole purpose of getting drunk.

on the road again

After spending two weeks back in Fort Myers I headed to Athens GA for a few days and CSed with Kendra and her semi-permanent house guest Lacey, hilarious, good-spirited folks. Then headed to St. Louis to see the fam, visit a winery and see my brothers new home in Columbia. From Columbia I'll be heading to Colorado so my tentative route this time is:

Colorado: 9/9-9/17
Great Basin NP: 9/17-9/19
San Francisco: 9/19-9/22
Arcata: 9/22-9/25
Eugene: 9/25-9/28
Portland: 9/28-9/30
Seattle: 9/30-10/1
Vancouver: 10/1-10/4
North Cascades NP: 10/4-10/7
Idaho: 10/7-10/10
Salt Lake City: 10/10-10/13
Colorado: 10/13-10/17
St. Louis: 10/17-10/20

This is all in pencil and can be edited at a click of a mouse.
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Montreal

We arrived in Montreal around 1:oo a.m. and found our hostess' flat with out a problem. The only thing was she wasn't home nor did she have a cell phone or leave the key under the mat like she said she would. Drew is freaking out, calling his mom; Ofri and I sit down and decide to wait, no worries, she probably went to grab a drink and will be home shortly. So we take a walk around the block and sure enough when we get back Caile and some friends (Dustin, Mark and Shana also couchsurfing from Halifax) are sitting on the porch, had just run out for a beer.
The following afternoon we headed to the "beach", I put this in parentheses because it is man made on a man made lake I believe too. They charge $8/person to get in and we don't want to pay so we walk around trying to find a secluded place to sneak in and end up hopping a fence. Well, not really hopping, we had to climb and then jump, and I was uncontrollably laughing because passerbys were staring and Dustin had a duffel bag of beer he was trying to climb over with. Well we made it, found a spot to lay our things, grapped a beer and jumped in. Right away a lifeguard came over and in French told us we couldn't have beer in the water and also we were not suppose to have glass bottles and the guys at the gate should have told us this(Thanks for the translation Mark). Ooops, we blame the guys at the gate.
Sunday was the Pride Parade and Tamtams, we saw some of the most beautiful people! Montreal is an amazing city, full of life and color.

New Brunswick

On the way to Montreal we made a detour to the Bay of Fundy Hopewell Rocks to see the most intense tides in the world. We timed it for low tide so we were able to walk on the sea floor which is super muddy with seaweed covered rocks. Drew joked he was with Marilyn Monroe and Lucille Ball, my skirt kept blowing up and Ofri was playing in the mud.










Once we were done playing on the ocean floor we made a quick lunch and hit the road again. I drove for a bit more then Ofri took over. It was her first time driving on the trip and we were all a little nervous since she kept saying "lets see if I remember how to drive manual its been awhile" and guess what, we survived!

Nova Scotia

Onward to Canada via New Brunswick to Nova Scotia. First off, THEY LET US IN!! After a few questions: what do you do for work, where are you from (you are holding my passport), how did you meet, how long are you staying, why are you here, are you bringing anything in (yes, can't you see my car is full), are you leaving anything (just the guy in the back), will you be taking anything, do you have any weapons (only if you consider a butter knife a weapon), back to the beginning...I think they are required to ask every question twice. We stopped at the information center so Ofri and Drew could use the playground and so we could get some info on the Bay of Fundy. We then continued our 12 hr? drive to Lawrencetown where we were couchsurfing with Daina and Stefan. We arrived even later then expected(we forgot to take into account the time change, oops). We were greeted by Daina, Daisy and Cozmo, Stefan was at the opening of the Canoe Sprint World Championships, and shown into their amazing home. Daina told us how she and Stefan want to drive down/around to South America via United States and Central America which sounds incredible, by then I should be settled somewhere so hopefully they will visit. The next day we headed down the road to Lawrencetown Beach so Ofri could continue with her immersion into every body of water in the various places we were staying and to see the area. Daina made us a walking map with points of interest in Halifax so after the beach we headed to the ferry. After trying to figure out the parking meter and ATM (which it seems mastercard is the preference in NS) I found a store to exchange some US $ into Canadian so we could pay the meter then we headed on the ferry to Halifax. As we pulled up to the dock we could see the International Buskers Festival going on, street performers galore!
We stopped to watch an acrobat, juggler/fire juggler couple, very impressive. We then walked up to the Public Gardens and around town, watched some more street performers before heading back across the river. That evening Daina prepared dinner and dessert and we watched a surf video. The next morning Daina showed Ofri and I her studio where she creates her beautiful masterpieces (she is an artist), their house is full of stunning artwork, ceramic, photographs, paintings...we then embarked on our trek to Montreal but first making a stop at the Hopewell Rocks.