St. George Turkey(s)

Overdue? Yes. Worth the wait? Also, yes.

Carl and I spent Turkey Day '07 with the whole Bauer clan in St. George, UT and had a grand time. The food, company, outings and weather were all unbeatable! Here are a few shots from our good times...

The Bauer fam gathering for some Thanksgiving Day climbing:Carl, nearing the clouds on his first ascent
Art shot!!
Brief back-story for the next few pics: A few years ago C and I hit up some mountain bike trails with Paul in Utah for fun during one of our school breaks. One trail in particular stuck out as being just about the best ever, and said trail has remained the top favorite for both of us ever since. We rode this very same trail on Thanksgiving, which was a treat, but are especially excited that this trail is now minutes away from the newly acquired Bauer Winter Retreat in St. George! In fact, the base of the trail is about a quarter mile away from the front door! SCORE!

Biking on the -awesome- trails behind the new house!Later in the trip we did another ride, which was a bit more daring and required more breaks...And finally, the last day of our visit, the boys went out on the Virgin River while I explored downtown by bike.
A fun place and a great trip!

Birthday Nuggets

Short post! For Carl's quarter century birthday we went to a Denver Nuggets game. They DOMINATED the Knicks.
The end.

Aspen Explosion Hike

Another long-overdue post, but this hike was too phenomenal to leave out. Last Fall (yeesh...) we headed up to Estes Park to witness the changing of the Aspen leaves we had heard so much about. We chose a beautiful day to hike and the colors were more vibrant than we imagined. Already looking forward to next year.

A small gathering of Aspens on the mountainside stands out from miles away.
Beautiful viewsA much larger grove
The view from inside the giant grove
At the next clearing, as we approached our lakeside lunch spot, we came across this guy.
The other major attraction in the park that weekend was the annual bull elk bugling. We joined a group of spectators above a field to watch the males protect their domains, and although we weren't witness to any antler-to-antler combat, we heard plenty of their screechy bugling. (If you haven't heard what this sounds like and are interested, this site has an automatic looping audio clip of it: elk sounds!)