Big News & Big-ish News

Ron and I both have exciting Beaver Creek bus driving news. Not a lot goes on in the bus driving world that is all that exciting, but this is exciting for us.

Beaver Creek, Colorado

Ron got a promotion! He is now one of the supervisors of the Beaver Creek bus system. Ron is responsible for teaching the new kids to drive buses, writing daily schedules, pulling out buses stuck in ditches and other general boss duties.

My less exciting new is that I have graduated from driving this small "people mover" bus.

I passed my CDL-B (commercial drivers License with Air Brakes) test and now am qualified to drive these bigger buses. Woo-Hoo!

We are both very proud. We celebrated by going to see....

The movie was amazing. The monsters didn't look like mascots at all...very realistic.

Colorado Fall

I originally hail from Michigan where fall is an epic rage of color worthy of a tourist bureau. Here in Colorado it is a few weeks of vibrant yellows signifying winter is very close.

Most vacationers don't bother coming this time of year because it is too cold to golf and not cold enough to ski; which makes it very slow, almost becoming a ghost town.

Fall has been Ron and my favorite season since we have been doing the seasonal jobs.

We enjoy fall partially because yellow is prettier than white or brown, but mostly because it represents change. The changing of leaves, the changing of jobs, locations, situations.

The elk herds have been seen moving around the mountain. Porcupine, red tailed hawks, raccoons and fox walk around this time of year thankful for the lack of humans and reclaim their territory.

The black bears are still out fattening up. We have had a few get into trouble by breaking into homes and restaurants. They shot a mother and relocated her cubs. They still wander the streets up in Beaver Creek.

The grass up close is a riot of electric pinks and reds. From afar the grassy hills are a muted mauve.

Ivan the Terrible takes a nap...

Jessie asked me to add captions to this post nearly three weeks ago. I have avoided it until now. Why you ask? Like an onion, that question has many layers and makes me cry. Jessie asked me to add the captions because I haven't been as engaged in the new blog as I was in the winter blog. I have avoided it because I am having a hard time adjusting from a blog about winter care taking at Many Glacier and all the unique and thoroughly awesome stuff that goes along with that to a blog post about my cat taking a nap.

Don't get me wrong, I like the cat. He's cute and does fun cat stuff like getting hair all over my fleeces and clawing up the couch and knocking over breakable objects. I guess we can go ahead and add another layer to the onion I mentioned before...I have avoided this post because I'm afraid that it will make you think that Ivan is all about adorable naps in strange places. He is not. It's just hard to capture his alter ego on camera.

The calm before the adorable storm.

Most days, I hope he doesn't stick his paw in the outlet.

Probably hiding after doing something he shouldn't have.

Cat in a bag.

Though it's not readily apparent, this is a metal boat. I have seriously considered having Ivan test it's sea-worthiness.

Wedged behind the couch.

Thus concludes a pet anecdote post. He's a good kid.

Bryce Canyon

The adventure continued from Zion Nat. Park and the Subway to Bryce Canyon Nat. Park. We went for a short loop hike down into the canyon and amongst the spires.

Photo by Jessie

This is one of my favorite pictures of the week....Bellmen.

Photo by Jessie

Photo by Lincoln

The boys and I fell asleep at the campground under a blanket of pitch black night. We woke early to find a full moon hanging over us.

Photo by Jessie

The morning slowly transformed into a vibrant orange glow, throwing shadows and color all over the canyon below.

Photo by Jessie

Photo by Jessie

Photo by Ron

My camera did not adequately capture the orange color of the spires as the sun finally hit them. The intense relief and contrast of the hoodoos created such vivid detail to the eye, I have yet to master the conversion to camera. It is true talent to be able to portray mood, beauty and emotions through a lens.

Photo by Jessie

After we tired of the stark beauty of Bryce we ventured down a long dirt road into the middle of nowhere. I seemed to take days, but then again I slept through most of it.

Photo by Jessie

Lincoln apparently knew what he was doing because we ended up at a group of gulch canyons. The skies were threatening rain and flash flooding had me a bit concerned. It was a "Shelly would not approve" moment. Therefore we proceeded with our hike into 3 claustrophobic separate, yet converging canyons.

Photo by Jason

The canyons were swirly and narrow. Nooks and Crannies everywhere. We were climbing over fins, through holes and over ledges.

Photo by Jason

This little lizard was the only wild life we saw down in the canyons. He looked like he could use a rain, a bit dehydrated.

Photo by Jessie

It was a great trip. We really enjoyed hanging out with some of our old Glacier Crew. They know how we feel and what we are going through. We all lived at Many Glacier and considered it home. Now that we have begun "branching out" we compare everything to Glacier. It is nice to have a support group as close knit as ours to help help you through your Glacier withdrawls.

Subway....way better than the sandwich

Ron and I took a week off and headed to Utah to meet Jason & Lincoln and do some wicked hiking. Lincoln did all the planning & driving. We showed up and did as we were told. The Subway in Zion Nat. Park was first on the list.

Photo by Jason

Over the decades the water created some interesting rock formations.

Photo by Lincoln

There was some rappelling down large rocks and off cliffs to the canyon bottom. Nothing too dangerous or hard core, we are so sporty. Our trip mantra was "Shelly would not approve". Shelly missed the trip, but was constantly a part of the conversation. Especially when we were doing something...well that we knew Shelly would not approve of.

Photo by Lincoln

The pictures came out great but it is hard to capture the canyons and the Subway. The immensity of the canyon, the vibrant oranges of the rocks, the shocking greens of the flora and deep blues of the pools seems to be too much for the camera to handle all at once. We tried anyway.

Photo by Jessie

There was some chilly swimming through pools that dotted the canyon floor.

Photo by Lincoln

The Bellmen are all grown up, sort of. Jason & Shelly are all married and junk, Lincoln's got a real job as a TV anchor, and Ron...well he has me and we have a couch, 2 fish and a cat.

Photo by Jessie

We all have cats and the entire week we talked about them in a pathetic/humorous parental pride sort of way. This is the first time we all have been out of the GNP transient life style and were allowed to have pets since we were kids. Lincoln left first to pursue his dream of looking good and talking pretty. Then Shelson (Shelly & Jason) ventured into the "real world". Ron and I are easing into it with jobs that are considered "full-time seasonal". The cat conversations were pretty entertaining, we even got Shelly on the phone to discuss the little guys. Good times.

Photo by Jason

After a hard day of hiking we headed back to Lincoln's place to unwind with an intense game of Knock Out. ( A souped up version of Jenga where you have to knock out which ever color block you roll on the dice with a battery operated jackhammer without knocking out the solid block)

Photo by Jessie

We had such a good time we miss you guys!

The Band

As part of our Colorado nesting we bought some fish. You may recall that we have not had the best of luck with our previous icthyological endeavors. This, unfortunately, doesn't get any better.

Ron and I decided since we had such rotten luck with goldfish we would go a different direction. We chose 5 smaller "schooling" neon tetra fish instead of one or two bigger fish.

We weren't feeling very creative so we just referred to them generically as "The Band". Slowly they started disappearing. One of the band would mysteriously vanish each week. When it finally got down to "the duo" we notice one of them was a bit of a bully. Low and behold we came home to find only one fish left.

We named her Yoko and quarantined her so she doesn't ruin anything else.