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Steph and I celebrated 15 fun years together this past weekend. We were able to go to Walt Disney World for a few days, and Nana and Papa flew in to watch the kiddos. Here are some of the photos from the weekend.

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With the remainder here

With so many mechanical issues with the bus and suburban it really cut into our trips planned this summer. We were fortunate to be able to visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park . Here are a few photos from that trip.
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We had such a great time in Vegas. Now it’s all over

While searching for something uniquely Colorado to take Andrea and the kids to we ran across the Phoenix Gold Mine and decided to head into the front range to explore. We were greeted with a nice tour guide who took us all through a small history of the mine and showed us the many tools used to mine from all ranges of time periods. We were able to see gold veins right in the rock itself, as well as some areas of the mine where it had started to collapse in and was no longer able to be mined. After the tour, we were turned loose in the creek near the mine to try our hand at gold panning for gold. A prospector gave us some tips on how to go about searching for gold, and Steph actually found a small gold nugget. She got to keep it as well. Some of the Photos can be found here

Last fall break we made a trip to Hammond’s Candy factory. I thought that would be something fun for Nathan, Evie, Allie, & Katie. They have free tours, and then they have a candy store. All of their candies are homemade, even the marshmellows are homemade. So after lunch we loaded up in the bus and the suburban, and headed into Denver to the candy factory. Andrea drove the suburban and I drove the bus. It took a little longer to get there since we had to take the bus. We made it though, and it took long enough that Katie and Olivia got a little nap. The kids seemed to have a good time, and there were several people in the factory making candy so they got to see first hand how they make all there candies. I took a few pictures here they are.

Thursday after school Chloe and I left for a father-daughter camping adventure. With it being so late in the season, many of the roads to reach many of the trailheads were closed, or too far to make it before dusk. For this reason our destination on this trip was Mt. Bierstadt We made through Guanella pass early enough to stop and admire the view before heading on to find a place to pitch camp. Over the pass and down into the valley we found some great disbursed camping spots and decided on one. Being so late in the year we saw nobody during the evening, and only heard a few automobiles pass through the area. We spent the evening enjoying some backpacking instant food and coco around the fire. Another event of note is that Chloe lost another tooth, and seemed quite relieved to have it gone. As the stars came out we both headed to the tent for some rest. Chloe was fine, but I froze over the night. I had only packed my 40 degree sleeping bag and quite honestly was not prepared for the temperature to drop below the freezing point. Lesson learned, and I should know better anyway.

Early the next morning we rose, quickly packed up camp and headed back up to the pass. This Mountain is the first real 14er that we have attempted to summit so we were quite unsure of how it would be like. It was cold, but not windy when we stared out about 7am. As we gained elevation the thinner air became quite apparent, but we headed on. Chloe did a fantastic job of keeping up, and led the way most of the way up. By mid morning the sun was finally over the summit so we were in sunlight, but the wind had picked up quite a bit. It became apparent that we were not going to make it to the top, but we pushed on for a bit more and ended up turning around 13k feet we made the decision to turn back. Perhaps next year we will make it to the summit, but for now we will just have to look forward to the next attempt. We took a few photos. photos

We made our trek east for High Country Bus Festival.

Trip report can be found here

Photos are here:

We made it back with no problems at a decent clip. I have put photos of the trip up and they can be found below.

On the way home the bus rolled over another 100k miles. This is the second time I have personally seen this happen on this bus. So at the very least it’s working on it’s quarter million mile badge, or perhaps more than that.

Samba thread here.

Over the past week we spent time in the First National Park of the US. The trip was fantastic and expect photos to follow, we are still on the road back home.