15

In honor of 15 years of weddedness, Pie and I set off for 2 days of kids-lessness in beautiful Steamboat Springs. It is a couple hours from Denver into the Rocky Mountains. Steamboat is a ski town but also a bike town, river town, hike town and stinky spring town. That last part really isn't all that bad--you cannot smell the springs unless you are right near them. But when you do come upon one of those springs you know it, because all of the sudden it is egg salad gone really bad. I have no idea why people soak in these springs, or even worse, drink from them--is there a malady worth curing that is really worse than smelling like the cure? I can't think of one.

Anyway, we spent two days biking, hiking, riding gondolas and Alpine Slides, eating, sunning, and just generally lolling about, enjoying our freedom and saying to heck with a sensible diet. Here are the obligatory pictures:

Our hike to Fish Lake Falls.

We saw dozens of "chickmonks" that defied our attempts to photograph them, but somehow managed to catch this butterfly. Or moth. It doesn't matter.

The following morning: Our 2 1/2 hour bike ride on the miles of trails around the Yampa River. These pictures in the parking lot came after our ride, when we were reunited with our camera. We had originally planned on biking to the river and then tubing the river, then biking back. So we didn't bring our camera (because of, you know, the river) and then decided against the tubing...so no pictures of the beautiful river trails. This is a picture of me adjusting the height of my bike seat. It is the only thing I know how to fix yet on my new bike. I am happy to have a new skill. I adjusted the seat of my bike lots of times during our ride. I used the 5 mm allen wrench. My bike is named Black Venom.

Later we went to a botanical garden that we saw from our ride on the river trail. There was a children's music band having a concert in the middle of the gardens. It was one of those horrid acoustic groups fronted by a weird man that sang bizarre songs, the kind of songs about bugs with emotional issues that adults assume children will like. The concert excepted, we had a fine time tootling about and looking for plants that will work in our back yard.

For dinner we walked around main street until we found a restaurant that looked good. It had lots of animals hanging on the walls. We took this as a good sign that the people running the joint have the proper attitude regarding red meat. They did. Dinner was delicious and suited these carnivores just fine.

Our last morning we took a ride up the gondola to the top of one of the ski mountains and walked a nature trail. The pictures don't do it justice. The trail was beautiful and we felt like we were the only people on the mountain. The views of the valley and surrounding mountains were incredible and Pie picked out the farmland down below that he wants to live on.....yes, Pie and I fell in love with Steamboat, although maybe I more fell in "like" with the place. It was beautiful and I would love to visit every year. Pie, on the other hand, is in luuuuv. Honestly, it isn't hard for me to understand how he feels.