Learning Golden

Another busy week in CO!
Last weekend we spent Saturday in Golden, attending a football game and the annual Chili Cook-off and Beer tasting. And then on Sunday we went for a 'little' hike to help burn off all that chili and beer. YES. Great way to spend a weekend!

Here is our awesome marching band, promoting the Chili Cookoff, at halftime. Yup, their outfits are just a pair of dark jeans and red flannel shirts, with hard hats..

This is me with our mascot - Marvin the Miner :D

This is a view of the crowded Chili event.

Every year students hike up to the M on this mountain, carrying a 10 pound rock. When they arrive, they whitewash the M and leave their rock. When students graduate, they are encouraged to hike back up to the M and take a rock with them. New faculty and staff are encouraged to participate as well, so next fall I will get to make my trek.

 On Sunday we went for a hike to the Royal Arch, from Chautauqua Park. This is the view as we started our hike. The park is a 5 minute drive from our hotel. We didn't doctor anything in this picture - it really looked that amazing!

And then a view from up at the Arch, 1,500 feet up from where we started at the car. The first is a view of one of the flatirons, through the Arch, and the second is a view of the University of Colorado from up above.

This week we also had snow, and I flew to IL to stand up in my good friends Ari & CJ's wedding. That will have to be another post. For now it is time for dinner! 

House Signing

We signed on a house!! What a crazy thing to do. A friend joked to me that my "Adult" card from AARP should be coming in the mail soon. This certainly feels like the year of becoming more grown up (being grown up is expensive!).

We should be in the house one month from now. The Monday before Thanksgiving. On the down side, we'll have to spend the long weekend unpacking. On the up side, we'll have the long weekend to unpack, we'll get to cook our own Thanksgiving meal, and will be able to curl up by our very own fireplace at the end of the holiday. Yup, I'm going to take every bit of romantic, sappy newlywed enjoyment out of that I can. :)

Meeting the Foothills

Busy weekend! Yesterday we looked at our top few houses again, and found out that while we were looking at them all, our probable #1 pick was being signed for by someone else. Lost that one. Oh well. So the house hunt continues this week. We'll go see our #2 again and see if we decide to move on it. Also, I finally got a smart phone this afternoon - welcome to this century, right? 

On top of all that, we went for our first CO hike together today! This hike just off my daily commute. During the spring/summer there will be enough light to take this lovely walk after work.

For those who are wondering, my foot is ok with our hike today. It's not super happy with me, but it doesn't seem to be swelling or anything. If it is not too sore tomorrow, this will mean I've made some good progress with healing. Cross your fingers!

Being a Kid Again

Our days are measured counting from the day we left Miami. As often happens when I move to a new place, each day seems like three or four, and it can be a boggling task to figure out when and where I am.

Last night it took me several minutes to calculate exactly how long it had been since we left, and to do that I had to count milestones - visits on the drive, the days we looked at houses, my first day of work (only five days ago!), the knowledge that the next day should be Friday...

Having the world so full of new places and experiences is like being a kid again. Every day on my drive to work I marvel at the new sunshine gracing the foothills and hope that it will never cease to fuel my imagination.

Here is a video of roughly what we see each morning.

We Made It!

Hard to believe we've been in town a couple days already! We started our house hunting project today. Will post a recap of that tomorrow or Saturday, once we've had day two of looking at things.

But first, some pictures from our last day of driving and arriving in Boulder!

One of the sights we knew would be on our drive was a huge easel with a giant Van Gogh painting on it. Kansas is the sunflower state, so of course it's a painting of sunflowers. The easel is conveniently located next to Bill's Shootin' Shop and Bubba's Meat Block... So first thing on Tuesday we took our portrait by the easel.

And then continued our drive. It was pretty exciting to finally enter Colorful Colorado. OK I know I'd told people KS wasn't so bad, but man western KS is hard to get through! Probably aided by anticipation about getting into CO. Sorry KS people, but dude.. (I will say that eastern CO isn't much better :P )

All of a sudden, at mile marker 371, we were able to clearly see the mountains! These pictures are from a little later, since the faraway mountains weren't too photogenic.

It has yet to sink in that we actually live in this place; it's gorgeous and SO different than Miami. It kind-of feels like a big vacation. Aided, surely, by staying in a hotel suite. I suppose at some point we will get used to it, but we were saying today that it might not feel real until we move into someplace and have all our 'stuff' back. And so the house-hunting adventure continues!

Kansas

Greetings from Kansas!
We've made it to the Mountain time zone, at 3,700 feet. Observations from today: Kansas is not nearly as flat as people would have you believe, a field full of dead sunflowers is one of the saddest things I've ever seen, and giant objects are totally worthy roadside attractions. Chris points out that we saw dust devils twirling through fields and were in Topeka for the tornado siren tests, which was quite eery as 6 or 7 sirens echoed off the hills.

It's picture time!
While driving through IL we heard about a statue of a giant shuttlecock in Kansas City, which is where we stayed last night. So of course we had to go see it!


Entering Kansas..

Partway through our drive we came up on some windmills, which we had some fun with.

Tomorrow we complete our trip! We have been enjoying the time on the road. A much needed vacation, it's been great to spend time together with little to do but chat and watch the scenery, and we've had a lot of fun hanging out with friends at each stop. We're ready to start the next part of the adventure though, so it will be good to get in to CO and see what happens next!