The Epic Colorado Road Trip of 2011 - Part 1, Austin to Fairplay

A view inside Rocky Mountain National Park, July 2011

We originally planned to venture to Colorado at the beginning of June, so we could miss a lot of the summer crowd, benefit from the spring price breaks, and still see a lot of mountain snow.  A special legislative session pushed our plans back to July, but we still got to enjoy our trip, which I'm finally posting about today.

I can't tell you how badly we needed this break.  In 2010, we weren't able to take a real vacation, thanks to the pressures of a brutal election season.  We had quick trips out to Oxford, MS and a lot of small day trips, but nothing to really take the stress off.  So, when planning for 2011, we wanted to stretch our legs outside Texas.  In May, we found out I was pregnant with Annalise, and suddenly our trip to Colorado became the last big road trip we would take as a couple for a long time.  All the more reason to live it up a bit!

July 5, 2011 - Headed toward Amarillo.  This was as straight a push as we could make it.  We stopped for a couple of courthouse pics and that was really it.  We had dinner at the Pizza Hut in Plainview and spent the night at a Hampton Inn once in Amarillo.  I think this was the first time we used the Expedia app on my Droid, too - so handy on this trip, with only two hotel reservations made ahead of time, and a deep desire to wander as much as hearts desired.

July 6, 2011 - We headed northwest out of Amarillo to get a courthouse pic in Dalhart, and stopped for lunch at a McDonald's in Raton, New Mexico.  Can you believe I had never been to New Mexico before?  Not that this really counts, but still.  The mountains impressed us immediately after the day before, traveling through straight Texas prairie for so long.  We went as far as Canon City, Colorado.  Once we got our hotel room (thank you again, Expedia app!), we went out to Royal Gorge.  We walked across the bridge and through the wildlife area - where we saw a very rare white buffalo calf, born to another white buffalo!  Of course, we counted this as a good omen for our trip, and I bought a stuffed white buffalo for our baby.  On our way back into town, we stopped at The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey.  Sadly, I couldn't participate in tasting, but we got a couple of bottles to take home for a later time.

Of course, there is no fishing off the bridge at Royal Gorge.

Our good luck charms - the white buffalo and her calf - also female!  We found out at the shop that this is rather rare.

July 7, 2011 - Our first morning in mountain time!  We woke up with one goal in mind - head to Colorado Springs and up Pike's Peak!  It was a perfect morning for it, though once we got up the mountain we learned just how quickly weather can change at that altitude.  On our way back down, we were caught by a brief thunderstorm, complete with hail.  It turned out later to be just the first of many storms on this trip, totally unlike the summer we were having back home in Austin.  We had plans that night to stay in Breckenridge, the first of our planned overnights.  We had a room waiting for us at the Lodge at Breckenridge, a great place with some of the best mountain views we had on the trip.  But on the way there, plenty to see!  I grew up with a bit of a James Michener obsession - Centennial was annual viewing at our house, and last winter I read the book for the first time.  Imagine my geeky delight to discover the South Platte River!  The winding road we took gave us beautiful views, even though it rained for just about the entire drive.  Then, we found ourselves in Fairplay - and we couldn't resist stopping!

Randy on Pike's Peak.  You can see the storms building off to the left.

Michele on Pike's Peak - about 12 weeks pregnant.  Annalise can't say she never went anywhere!

In Fairplay, there is this awesome "ghost town" attraction called South Park City.  It's a complete main street replica of a 1800s Colorado mining town.  Most of the buildings and all of the "stuff" are authentic.  The pictures we took hardly do the place justice, but I'll share a few with you.  The next part of our trip will be in the next post.

Randy posing with the coal train.

Seeing as how part of Colorado was once in the Republic of Texas, we wondered if Commissioner Patterson would like these digs....

Just to give you an idea of how built up the attraction is.

The South Platte River!

The schoolhouse was the only place where you couldn't get right up to the artifacts, but it was definitely amazing.

This is the drugstore. Contains the most complete collection of authentic medicines and pharmacy tools known in the United States. The collection actually came from Iowa, I think, belonging to the grandson of a 19th century pharmacist. They really have cures for whatever ails you in this place....

The Big Catch-Up

Can it really be over a year since Randy and I posted anything on this blog?  What poor oversharers we've turned out to be.  Let's see if I can recap 2011 for anyone who stumbles over here.

January 2011 - The big pantry re-do.  This was the first step in updating our kitchen, and it was a wonderful one.  I still love the Elfa organizer, and I would love to use their products for other things down the road.  So that was a thing.  And then, of course, there was the speaker's race and the start of the 82nd Legislature in the Texas House.  Randy works for a state rep. who ran for speaker, and I worked on the campaign.  It was great working together - so it was nice to end up working together for the next several months.  Talk about adventure!

February 2011 - I started working in the same office as Randy as a legislative aide.  Work took up most of our time for the next several months.  On the weekends we were so worn out we didn't really do much, especially after March.  Maybe a couple of day trips, but I don't think I have pictures.  It snowed one day that month, too!

March 2011 - April 2011 - Yeah, not much to report.  We started planning our getaway trip - an epic Colorado road trip!  I shamefully did not blog about it at the time, so I will have another post up later with pics, etc.

May 2011 - We found out we were expecting!  Got it confirmed the day after the session ended.  Then, there were special sessions.  Our road trip was put on indefinite delay.

June 2011 - Special session.

July 2011 - EPIC COLORADO ROAD TRIP.  Also, we spent the Fourth of July in Round Rock, where this happened (Mayor McGraw parachuted down to the park where the celebration was taking place):

August 2011:  My mother passed away on the 19th.

September 2011:  The upheaval and complete rearrangement of our upstairs bedrooms to make room for our baby's arrival.

October 2011:  Pretty much the same, with added kitchen upgrades!  Painted cabinets, painted walls, and a new kitchen table and chairs (we got them for nothing, thanks to my dad who had just switched out his own set)

November 2011:  Scott and Victoria's wedding in east Texas!  A little place in Rusk.  It was beautiful!!  Later in the month, I went on my last road trip, to Fort Worth for the Texas Federation of Republican Women convention.  We spent Thanksgiving at Randy's aunt Barbara and uncle Gary's house here in Austin.

December 2011:  We celebrated our anniversary early, twice!  Once we had dinner at the European Bistro in Pflugerville (one of our favorite local places), and then again at Andiamo's in north Austin (a really great find, thanks to a gift certificate).  Our actual anniversary was spent at cousins night at Barbara and Gary's.  We also hosted my family for Christmas, a week early, and ventured out to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar here in Austin.  That was a blast!  We visited Georgetown a couple of times, including for their courthouse lighting (I think that was in November, actually).  And, we spent a day in Lockhart and Bastrop with newlyweds Scott and Victoria - their last taste of real Texas bbq before being shipped overseas (Scott is a Marine).

January 2012:  On the 3rd, we welcomed Annalise Ruth to our family.  She's the best adventure yet.

Adventures in organization

So, what do we do when we can't go on a road trip?  We tackle projects around the house.  Over Christmas, this meant hitting the tip of the iceberg that is our kitchen.

I have no love at all for my kitchen.  For a room that I spend so much time in, I'd like it to meet my exact specifications - recessed lighting, lots of countertop space, cabinets that fit the odd-sized pots and pans that come with being a budding foodie, and a deep walk-in pantry along an outside wall.  Instead, we have small cabinets, very little counter space, fluorescent lighting that buzzes and gives me a headache, and a pantry that, until very recently, was dark and crowded.

We have a dozen things we plan to do to the kitchen to make it at least tolerable if not more functional, but the first thing ended up being the pantry.  For Christmas this year, a lot of kitchen stuff was hiding under the various family trees.  Some of it is stuff not meant for every day use.  Randy also got me some storage items I'd been eyeing that were meant for the pantry, but a deeper look made us decide to just re-do the entire space.

All this coincided with the annual Elfa sale at the Container Store, and a couple of afternoons later, Randy was ripping out the rotting, warped wooden shelves, repainting, and putting together this gorgeous storage and organizing unit.  I married the right man, y'all.  :-)

Some before and after shots:

You can see the problems, right?  The shelving on the left was two feet deep, and I had to use the baskets as a way of just keeping certain goods from getting lost in the back forever.  The pictures don't really show how bad the bottom shelves were - the front-facing one in particular had begun to bow.  The interior walls were painted the same peach-beige color our entire house is done in.  The previous owner had the place painted, and generally we've made the color work, but in the pantry it just soaked up light.

So, all of this had to go.

The first discovery Randy made was that in some places, the wood shelves were painted to the wall.  In other places, they were barely sitting on the supports - we were surprised that the shelving lasted through all the stress we put them through the last few years.

Painting meant prepping the walls - this is Randy priming.

This is our pantry, existing on the dining table for almost a week.  Not everything here was in the pantry beforehand - a lot of the original box items were Christmas gifts we needed to create storage for.  This picture also really gives you an idea of the tiny space that exists as our dining room.  The orange curtains are covering the back door, and to the immediate left of the wine cabinet is our living room couch.

Randy putting in the shelves.  See how the pantry door collides with our refrigerator in the background?  What on earth made builders in the early 80s devalue kitchens so much???

Getting there!  This is all the Elfa shelving.  We opted to go across the back wall in full, instead of recreating the L-shape of the wooden shelves.  And see how the drawer unit created extra counter work space for me!

The drawer unit, and the spice racks installed above it.  The spice racks were actually what inspired this whole project - I wanted to move my ever-increasing stock of spices into the pantry, and had intended those racks to go on the back of the door.  When we decided to go for the Elfa shelving, this idea came to us at the store.

And this is to show off another awesome feature - the varying drawer sizes.  We customized this so that we now have a place to stow our wedding silver and extra cooking utensils.  In the drawer above that, I picked up a plastic divider to store teas of varying kinds.

I will have to share the final "after" picture another time, since I haven't actually taken it yet :-)  I got so excited about putting everything away that I forgot!

It is amazing to me what changes as simple as this can do for the peace one feels about one's home.  Clearing out the clutter, putting things in some kind of definitive order, really made a difference in the natural harmony in our home.  And just having things easily accessible and easy to put away made me like being in the kitchen more.  A good thing, since I love cooking, and not being happy about the kitchen took some of the joy away.  Also, hurray for finding a better, more efficient way to use small space like this.  The pantry is now one of my favorite places in the house!

The latest adventure

I do sincerely wish I had a travel-oriented update for you all.  This blog's title gets to be a little ridiculous, I know, when you consider how little we've been able to travel in the last year.  We're also feeling the ache of not being able to untether ourselves and find wide open space.  It's an ongoing challenge to find balance, and contentedness, without a few days out of our fair city.

That being said, life is not without adventure, and the Lord blesses us with opportunities to learn things about ourselves every day.  The latest adventure is missional community leadership training at our church (The Austin Stone).  We're doing this mostly out of curiosity, a desire to know more about missional community, and to have some grounding going forward.  Two classes in, we are learning quite a bit - not least of which is what it means to have a literally Christ-centered, gospel-centered, community-focused life.

If you'd like to get an idea of what I'm talking about, I'd like to recommend the book we are reading with this class: Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.

If reading a whole new book about this idea is too much, then I recommend the Book of Acts.  The actions of the apostles and early church disciples are inspiring, and humbling.

Welcome 2011!

Wow, we haven't updated here in awhile.  

Looking forward to 2011, we hope to get some traveling in, so there will be more adventures to post about here.  And we're kicking it off right - this afternoon, despite the chilly temperatures, we're going for a drive in the Hill Country, to enjoy the scenery and each other's company before the first work week of the year begins.

Here's to your own adventures this year, whether close to home or far away.  

VOTE

'Nuff said.

Adventure in Little Rock

We did two trips this year that included presidential libraries & museums - I realized today I forgot to share pictures from our trip east to Mississippi, which included a stop in Little Rock for the Clinton Library.

Back in May, we traveled to Dallas to help my parents pack for their big move, and from there headed out to Oxford, Mississippi to watch Randy's brother Scott graduate from Ole Miss.  This short trip was really our only "vacation" time this year, and since most of it was spent packing boxes and driving, I don't think "vacation" is how either of us would classify it.  But because it was us, we took the time to stop and see some sights.

The Clinton Library was important to us, because we've made a habit/tradition of going to presidential spots.  With the trips we took to Little Rock and College Station this year, we're up to five presidential libraries and one presidential birthplace.  

The nostalgia factor was high for us both.  We each remember all of Clinton's presidency; it was part of our landscape growing up, and the events of those years are important events in our lives.

The library was a lot more modern in terms of architecture and layout than previous libraries had been (Reagan's is close; it's very open, and Clinton's had a similar feel).  I was a little disappointed because I felt it wasn't a very "deep" experience.  You don't come away with a sense of having learned more than you already knew, but that may be because Clinton's presidency is barely history.

I did really love that we were able to get close to so much.  A few of the libraries are bad about letting you take pictures or get any kind of tactile experience.  But at Clinton's, I got these:

The Oval Office!  If you're a West Wing fan, you'll recognize the couches - I had forgotten they used Clinton's Oval as a model.

This is me sitting in the Chief of Staff's chair, in a replica Roosevelt Room, I believe (if I'm wrong about the room, excuse me - it's been a very long summer).

See?

A collection of campaign buttons from all of Bill Clinton's various campaigns over the years; I think this specifically in a display about the 1992 campaign for the presidency.

You can't expect a couple of Republican political operatives to miss out on this!

View of the Arkansas River from inside the museum; also pictured is the old, original railroad bridge.

This is a good shot to give you an idea of the layout; there is a lot of natural light, and the archived documents are all stored in the columns in plain sight.  The timeline portion was not very naturally laid out; we found it a bit difficult to navigate properly.  We also had limited time, as we arrived late in the afternoon, and so missed a handful of exhibits (presidential gifts of state, that sort of thing).  

One thing I noticed about this library compared to others was the lack of pomp & circumstance surrounding the First Lady's history; I'm sure this had something to do with Hillary Clinton's prominence separate from her husband's legacy, but it was still odd (compared to LBJ's library, which is much more focused on Lady Bird's contributions and legacy, almost out of balance in the opposite way).

When we finished at the library, we went in search of the Arkansas state house.

Beautiful grounds and building; I really liked this, and wished we could have gone inside, but the doors lock at 5pm and we needed to find food and press on to Tennessee.

This stop in Arkansas was our first introduction, in this trip, to the South.  There was an atmospheric change from Texas; we notice this whenever we venture out of state, but the South had a unique feel.  There was a palatable sense of time having rewound, or at least slowed down so significantly as to give the idea that it never passes.  This only deepened as we went on, through Tennessee and down into Mississippi.  I hope to be able to post about the rest of this trip soon, so I can try and convey what I mean.

In the meantime - if you have a chance to visit the Clinton Library, I highly recommend it.  It has a lot to offer and it is a must-see in Little Rock.