While my friends are up on the deck about to singe their faces with fireworks, I have decided to be a chicken and blog about my latest adventures on the road.
Jeff and I are still in Steamboat Springs CO, it's a beautiful place in the Rockies that has tons to do: outside. Now I enjoy the outdoors, but I'm definitely not an outdoors-woman. I like running outside, playing sports on fields and the beach. I will go on a hike (if you lure me with food and distract me from realizing it's just a crafty name for "walking up"), but generally nature sees me coming. I have the WORST timing when it comes to anything natural.
For example: Today, we went on a tubing adventure on the river that runs through Steamboat. The water was freeeeeeezing and I don't like that about water. I jokingly complained about it when we were on the lazy section of the venture, but I guess the river was annoyed because when the rapids and holes came--guess who was flipped? Me. That's right, of course, me. Lol.
It makes for a good story and the ride was definitely fun.
Yesterday was amazing. Jeff spotted a bear on the mountain across the river from us. I was SO excited! I've wanted to see a wild bear for a long time and was sadly disappointed during my last trip to Colorado Springs (I was told they are on Pike's Peak, the mountain we visited: there weren't any bears).
After staring at this bear for about a half hour and taking tons of video and pictures (photos coming soon to flickr-- I'll blog that too), we headed to watch ski jumping practice. HOLY CRAP! Ski Jumping is the craziest sport EVER. I mean you can bungy jump and jump out of planes, but these people are sliding down a mountain at high speeds, flying through the air, landing on their feet (on skis) and then sliding to the bottom! The people who were jumping yesterday--all kids. It was CRAZY. I mean how does one rationalize this sport? What gets you into this? How do you decide one day that you're going to test the universe/God/nature/elements/whatever you believe in every time you want to play your sport? INSANE! It was mad cool to watch.
We took a chair lift to the top of the mountain and did the most fun slide I've ever been on-- the Alpine Slide. This thing is SICK!
You get on this sled that resembles a mix between a luge and normal sled. The slide itself looks like a water slide w/o water and you go super fast! It was incredibly fun. Carol and I both almost hit a marmot who was straight up chillin' next to the slide (eating some grass). I raced Will, Carol's boyfriend, to the bottom. He won, but the rush was worth it. If I ever make a TON of money it's like 3rd on my list of ridiculously fun and random things to buy.
We also went to the hot springs last night. We went SKINNY DIPPING!!! Woot! It's pitch black so you don't have to see naked hippies unless the moon or mood strikes the right way. Thank goodness it didn't strike. It was really relaxing and we all had a fantastic time.
This place is really beautiful and fun. I can see why they came out here to dwell. Though, I could never live here, because of the land locked thing and I'm not really into all the sports they do here, I could definitely visit again.
Now I'm going back to the festivities. I will post pictures soon of the trip and once I'm back to boring, I'll edit together a sweet fiesta/XC trip video!
Some of the pictures are on twitter so feel free to check out my page http://www.twitter.com/alexis_morrell or @alexis_morrell to follow me! :)
