Getting closer......

Well, this post is about 3 weeks late.   A casualty of spending every free moment trying to put this kitchen back together!  We're really much farther along than these pics show, so I'll post again in another week or so to get all up to date.  Mike's dad Steve has been a huge help, here working 3 or 4 days a week and leading us through every step of they way!

We're trying to add some elements of eco-friendliness to this project, which has been an interesting endeavor.  It's not always easy to find the green products, but it has been worth the effort for the most part.  It's nice to know that we're not adding unhealthy chemicals to our indoor environment, and we're doing what we can to prevent more from being emitted in the world outside our doors.   Here's some of what we did:

To insulate the room we used sheep's wool!  In addition to being non-flammable, non-polluting (unless you count sheep poop), and comfortable to work with, it has the benefit of smelling like a nice wool blanket!   Plus, it's made in the US, and helps keep farmers on their land. (Black Mountain InsulationUSA)

The cabinets are made in a local factory in Bow, NH (Young Furniture).  They use FSC certified wood, and formaldehyde free plywood in their construction.  The cabinets are unfinished, so I spent a fair amount of time painting them, but it made them more affordable!

The counter we got is a butcher block, also FSC certified with formaldehyde free glue and sealant.  I looked at several other interesting materials, like compressed paper (PaperStone) and recycled glass/solid surface stuff, but they were just too expensive.  Plus, I really like the feel of wood, so butcher block was a good choice.

For our decking material I found a company in Wisconsin called Renew Plastics that makes completely recycled plastic 'boards' that are PVC and BPA free .  It was a little tricky to track them down, but I worked with a local lumberyard that was very helpful and managed to find what I was looking for (thanks Exeter Lumber!).  Jamie basically laid the whole deck surface for us, which was an amazing help! 

I also used VOC free paint, and of course did some creative recycling of materials that were in the house already (some cabinets that are our pantry and the kitchen sink). 


So that's the news for now!  I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I'll try my best to get some newer photos posted after I recover from stuffing myself on Thursday! :)

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Kitchen Chronicles

Well, we arrived home from our trip Labor Day weekend and immediately jumped into kitchen renovations.  So far we've built most of a deck (still waiting for decking boards to arrive), demolished the walls and ceiling, created a door where there once was a window and done lots of research into green materials for each step of the way.  I also replaced my car after 11 1/2 years of faithful service!  And, just to add more excitement to the mix, our friend Jamie got an unexpected early invite to start his Master's program in Mass. and is staying with us for a while....the more the merrier!!  For anyone who's interested in the saga, here are some pictures to get you started (as well as some last photos from Colorado): 

blog 5

The Final Stretch

Well, here we are at the end of the trip.  We start wending our way home on Saturday, it's hard to believe that it's time to get back to jobs and home responsibilities, but it has been wonderful to have this time together to explore and enjoy the first months of our marriage. 

Mike did one alpine peak in BC--Mt. Habrich-- with his friend Duncan (from England); they hiked in 4 hours or so to reach the final headwall, 1000 feet of climbing!  They really enjoyed it but it sounds like a long haul!  Just before we left Squamish we took a 3 day backpacking trip in Garibaldi Provincial Park.  It was a great time; beautiful, pristine wilderness, hardly any people around and relatively good weather (one day was rainy off and on).  We have lots of pictures to share, so I hope you enjoy them

Since then we've been 'camped' in Boulder, staying with our friend Colin and enjoying the luxuries of life under a roof: refrigeration, running water, etc.... ;)  We've done a lot of climbing at small crags which has been a nice change from the long, committing days we had in Squamish.  The three of us did do one adventure climb in Rocky Mountain National Park: the Petit Grepon.  It was 5+ miles of hiking in to a remote little pond surrounded by granite walls.  The Petit Grepon is a free-standing tower, 1000 feet high, with a tiny summit--maybe 8 feet by 25 feet? A pretty amazing spot, and a fun day for us.   The climbing wasn't particularly hard, but it was a long strenuous day altogether, we started at 7:30 a.m. and didn't make it back to the car until 9:00 p.m!   We were ravenous and exhausted but very happy to have done it!  


Hope you all enjoy the pictures, and we look forward to catching up with everyone when we get home!

Blog 4

Well, I was supposed to write this post a week ago, but time flew by and here I am a week later just getting around to it.  Oh well!  We've just finished a little backpacking trip and will be leaving BC tomorrow, but I'll save that story for next time.

For now, most of what I have to report on is climbing, climbing, climbing.  We did as many long routes up the Chief as we could fit in, as well as visiting other spots in the area like the Malamute, Slhanay,  and Bulletheads.  I was most excited about doing the Grand Wall; it's a pretty classic route with some hard climbing and it's one of the routes we didn't get to do together last time we were here.  The last few pitches of the route--called the Roman Chimneys--are not generally climbed anymore, and after doing them we could see why!  A bit dirty and mossy, a bit harrowing and not so fun.  But, after talking about wanting to do that part for 2 years, at least Mike can say that he's done it!

We continued to have beautiful weather until the evening of July 31st, when we saw the first rain since we arrived.  I guess July really is the best time to be here!  Since then we've had a few more showery days, enough to make it hard to climb but not so bad that it's a pain to be camping.  We also got to enjoy the local 'Logger Sports' festival, with competitions in more kinds of wood chopping than you knew existed!  Tree climbing and log rolling in water were also fun to watch. 


Just a few new pictures this time.....since we've been primarily climbing there isn't much new to show.  You can only take so many pictures of a person climbing above or below you on a wall; they all pretty much look the same! 

Blog 3

Squamish, redux

We arrived in Squamish at the tail end of their long winter and dragged out spring to enjoy a week of 90+ degree weather!  We immediately settled in and got down to business...there's more climbing to be done than we could possibly touch in a lifetime.

For those who don't know about this climbing paradise, take a look at the western coast of British Columbia, find Vancouver then go North about 25 miles to the little town of Squamish at the tip of Howe Sound.  There you will find a formation called the Stawamus Chief, 2000 feet of granite walls rising straight out of the water.  Not to mention all the other 'smaller' formations in the area that would be world class in their own right: the Slaney (formerly Squaw), the Papoose, the Malamute....400-1000 feet high and riddled with amazing rock to climb.  If you're interested in checking out the area try this site: www.squamishclimbing.com 

So far we've climbed about as much as my muscles can handle (Mike could climb 24 hours a day).  We've done some incredible routes, including a day of 18 pitches and over 2000 feet of climbing to the top of the Second Peak.   There's so much daylight here that you can literally climb until almost 10 at night (and we have done so accidentally on a couple of occasions!) .  We've met a lot of nice people here, including a whole crew of folks from the UK.  It's interesting, when we were here 2 years ago there were a lot more Americans from all over the place.  Now we see a few license plates from the Northwest, California and Colorado, but by and large everyone else is either Canadian or has traveled from Europe.  The cooking area at night is a hodge podge of languages; we've heard German,French, Dutch, Swiss, Flemish, Hebrew, Portuguese.....it's a pretty cool mix!   Not a lot else is different from our last trip here, the campground is a little bigger and there's now a water tap at the cooking area, oh joy! :)  Simple pleasures!  

Last week there was big drama: a guy tried to BASE jump off the top of the Chief on a very windy day.  He ended up getting blown back into the cliff with his parachute and (very luckily) got stuck on a small ledge a couple hundred feet from the top.  A huge rescue effort was pulled together that took about 6 hours and lots of helicopter time.  He was eventually pulled up and flown away, with only a broken ankle.  Incredible!  So that's the big news for now!

We'll stay here a bit longer, not really sure exactly when we'll be able to drag ourselves away or where we'll be next, so stay tuned!

Hope this finds everyone well and enjoying the summer!

Blog 2

And so it begins....

We left NH on Tuesday, June 22nd.  We spent a day or so in Western NY visiting Grandma Veazey and other family, then moved on to Madison, WI for a visit with Jamie and Ellen.  Sandstone climbing with complimentary fingerprint erasing, farmer's market with more fresh veggies, breads and other goodies than could possibly be consumed....good times were had by all!  It was hard to drag ourselves away, but amazing climbing and adventures beckoned! 


We continued on our way west, stopping to play at a roadside sandstone formation called Castle Rock, and eventually washing up in the far west of Minnesota at Blue Mounds State Park.  Mike checked out the climbing (and I use the term lightly), I watched the buffalo roam (well, really, they were just grazing), we rested up for a night then moved on out in the morning.  Stopped in the Black Hills of South Dakota for a day and a half; tried to find the climbing in Victoria Canyon but only succeeded in stream-whacking for a couple miles (that's bushwhacking, but in a stream).  At least it was cool!  I don't think we've had a day yet that was below 90.  We also visited the Needles in General Custer State Park, we put on a show for the tourists at one formation, then explored a little bit farther afield in a nice shady spot.  Amazing spot, unlimited climbing!  No time to linger, though, because we were bound for Devil's Tower. 


Arrived at the tower Wed late in the afternoon, just in time for a severe thunderstorm.  Luckily the predicted hail did not arrive, I don't know if the car could have handled another hail beating!  Colin drove up from Boulder to join us for a couple of days, and we huddled in the car for the evening while the rain poured down.  Luckily the next morning was beautiful, so we went looking for some climbing in the shade.  We were sort of successful.....it's not easy when you're on a thousand foot high volcanic cone in the middle of a plain.  More hot weather brought more thunderstorms, we had just rapped down and were considering what else to climb when we heard the first rolls of thunder.  Packing up and hiking out quickly were suddenly a priority! 


The next morning the three of us got up early to do the Durrance Route to the summit. We were hiking in by 6:15, but there were still two parties ahead of us by the time we got there.  It's a popular route, and the weather was supposed to be very hot again so I guess we all had the same idea.  Luckily it was a windy day, so the heat wasn't quite as bad as it could have been, but rapping down in 95 degrees and full sun was, shall we say, a bit uncomfortable?  Still, it was amazing to be on the summit of such a unique formation and have a chance to play on some very cool rock!   We stuck around one more day to try a few more routes, including El Matador which is one of the classics of the tower.  Imagine climbing up the inside of a 6 foot wide hallway for 150 feet and you'll get some idea of what it was like.  Extremely intense!  The sun finally chased us off the wall, and we jumped in the car to continue West.  We stopped one night in the middle of Montana, and one night just north of Seattle, and today crossed the border into Canada!  We just arrived in Squamish this afternoon and are looking forward to settling in for some serious playtime on incredible granite!  Tally so far: 2 weeks, 14 states, 5 climbing areas, 3,200 miles.

Blog 1

On to the next adventure...

When last we met, our intrepid adventurers had just arrived home to jump into major house renovations.  Fast forward 18 months and one wedding and here we are, hitting the road again!  So, for those who are interested in keeping up with our travels the blog will be revived for the summer.

We really enjoyed catching up with family and friends at our wedding.  It was such a whirlwind, we wished we could have spent more time with everyone but I guess that's how it tends to go for the bride and groom :)  Thanks to everyone who made the trip, and for those who couldn't make it...you were missed!  Thanks also to all who shared pictures through email and Facebook, it's been great to see all the different perspectives on the weekend.  For anyone who'd like more wedding pics, please check out our friend Kump's official site: www.weddingprints.com  Search for 'veazey', click on 'select', then put in the password: kumpy (no need to enter your email address).  You're able to order prints if you would like, or just check out his amazing work!

Heading out now...more to come soon!

Yosemite Valley

Well, this last month has definitely flown! It doesn’t seem like so long ago that I was sitting in Ben & Meghan’s living room typing out the last post, but a quick check of the calendar has revealed to me that it’s been….26 days. Yipes! And almost time to be leaving the Valley now. Sigh. Mike was telling me this morning that he feels like we didn’t do anything while we were here, so I’m going to have to make a list and prove to him that we haven’t just been sitting around!

A quick rundown and then some details:

We’ve climbed Stately Pleasure Dome, Lembert Dome, Fairview Dome, Cathedral Peak, bouldered for 2 days in Bishop, climbed the Nutcracker (and some single pitches nearby), Pillar of Frenzy (ditto single pitch stuff nearby), East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock, 2 days of bouldering in Yosemite, climbed Serenity Crack & Sons of Yesterday, sport climbed for a day, hiked/climbed Higher Cathedral Spire, Bircheff- Williams Route, Munginella, Werner’s Ant Trees/The Surprise, Commitment, Jam Crack and the East Buttress of El Capitan.

Eight of the above days involved 900 feet of climbing or more. So there!

With the exception of a cold first week we’ve been blessed with unbelievable weather. Gorgeous sunny days with temperatures in the 80s! We’ve actually had to postpone some of the routes we wanted to do because it was too hot to be on a south facing wall in the sun! Hard to believe it could be this nice in October. We’ve been staying at Camp 4 (of course); it’s the ‘official’ climbers’ campground here in the park, and the place where all those history making climbers of the ‘50s-‘70s stayed. Not the most glamorous of campgrounds but it’s definitely fun to be here and be at the heart of all the climbing action. We’ve seen climbers here from all around the world: Germany, Austria, Spain, France, Argentina, Japan, Canada, Denmark, Australia, Poland, Norway, England. And that’s just in the 5 or 6 campsites around ours! Pretty amazing.

We spent our first week here in Tuolomne; the northern section of the park. We met up with my friend Candy from back home and spent a few days climbing the granite domes. The highlight of the week was definitely our climb of Cathedral Peak. Our hike in was somewhat epic, since we missed the shorter trail. Oops! We added a few miles to the approach, but did get to see Cathedral Lakes so it wasn’t a complete loss. The long scramble up the slabs and slippery scree slope on the back of the peak was less than entertaining but we survived it! The three of us got to the base of the last section of the peak where we started the ‘real’ climbing. Harnesses and ropes on and up 900 more feet we went to an amazing picnic-table-sized peak! There was barely room for the three of us and the ropes. The descent was very tricky; lots of scrambling down steep sections of rock and slab with a little snow leftover from the weekend’s storm to make things even spicier! We made it safely down and hiked out the correct trail (phew!), getting to the car just a few minutes after dark. When Candy and I climb together we always seem to end up off trail, off route and adventuring, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it happened yet again!

The rest of our time here has been just as much fun. We spent 2 weekends bouldering with our friends Ben, Meghan, Dan and Andy…..and it took me several days after to recover! Bouldering is not exactly easy. Mike and I tackled lots of classic routes (most mentioned in the above list), and so far we’ve only had one after-dark epic rappel session. Quite the accomplishment! The crack climbing is amazingly fun and challenging; I’ve definitely gotten a lot more comfortable with this whole multi-pitch thing since our first days in January. The vistas from these climbs are just incredible, I love being that far above the valley floor and seeing the vast expanses of granite walls and domes all around. It’s easy to forget the hustle and bustle of the valley up there and just drink in the peace and gorgeous scenery. We’ve done two really long climbs: the East Buttresses of Middle Cathedral Rock and El Capitan. With 1200 and 1400 feet of climbing respectively they were definitely the most challenging days for me. The hike in, the climbing, the gear and rope management, the long descents on steep rock….it adds up to an extreme amount of exhaustion by the end of the day! But, it’s been great to test my limits and push myself to try something so hard and manage to get through it.

We still have a couple days left here and then it looks like we’re in for some rain, so we’ll be trying to pack in as much climbing as we can and after the weekend start meandering our way to Indian Creek in Utah for a few days. The trip is winding down, we’re planning to be home by November 15^th so we’ll just try to fill our time with as many new experiences as possible before heading back east.

Yosemite

What we did on our summer vacation….

Well….we spent the last 2 weeks of July in Squamish climbing as much as possible, leaving on the last weekend in July to travel back to New England for my family reunion and our friends’ wedding (hi Ben & Meghan! J) After many many hours in the car we got back to NH on a Wed afternoon and spent the next couple of days helping my parents get ready for the reunion. We had a great time visiting with family, barbecueing, setting off rockets, playing wiffleball…..the torrential downpours weren’t too fun, but we made the best of it!

The following weekend we traveled to Vermont for Ben & Meghan’s wedding. More torrential downpours! But, luckily the day of the wedding was beautiful; we visited with friends, partied (and slept) in a barn and Mike pulled off his groomsman duties flawlessly.

As for the rest of August, we did some climbing around home, visited family, took a little trip to Acadia in Maine, and just for fun bought a house! On Labor Day weekend, a few days before we were planning to leave for California, I went and saw a house on a whim. It’s in the neighborhood where my parents live and I’d gone by it all the time when I was out taking Loki for a walk, so I figured I’d just go take a look. Well, a look turned into a weekend of soul searching because I fell in love with the house and couldn’t decide what to do. We had planned to leave for California for the last leg of our trip, it wasn’t exactly the time to be buying a house! After not being able to put it out of my mind, Mike convinced me to at least try to put in an offer and see what happened. Tuesday morning I applied for a mortgage, Thursday evening I made an offer and on Friday night my offer was accepted!! I was just astounded. The next couple of weeks were filled with inspections, paperwork and getting ready to move. It was a complete whirlwhind! On September 21^st, 2 weeks and 3 days after my offer was accepted papers were signed and homeownership began. Yahoo! The house is great, but we have a lot of work ahead of us: painting, renovating kitchen and bathroom, and ripping down faux wood paneling just for starters. Still, I think it’ll be worth the effort, this house has the potential to be a very cosy little home! Our friends Ri and Sarah are going to be our housemates and we’re pretty excited to have built in climbing and adventuring partners! So, are we rolling up our sleeves and getting right to work? Not quite. We moved all our stuff in the day after the closing, spent a couple days cleaning and getting a little bit unpacked, then hit the road again last Friday! With stops to visit friends in New Haven and Boulder we arrived in California last Wed night. Whew! Time for one more stint of serious climbing before we settle in and get down to work at home.

We’ve stopped in Davis to visit with Ben & Meghan (and to avoid a bad storm in Yosemite), and we’ll be heading into Yosemite Valley on Sunday to climb on some big rocks, lie in the meadow and watch the clouds go by, hike some beautiful trails…. Can’t wait!

Hope this note finds everyone enjoying the fall!

Summer vacation

Squamish, BC: Climbing and weather paradise!

Well, having been in Squamish for just over 2 weeks now I can definitely recommend coming in July! We’ve had only one rainy day the entire time, and considering the lushness of the vegetation it must rain the other 11 months of the year! We’re about an hour north of Vancouver, camped in a beautiful little campground just at the base of the Chief—the 2300 foot tall granite cliff that looms up from the waters of Howe Sound. Climbing is one of the main draws to the area, and there are climbers here from all over the world. We’ve seen people from almost every state and province (though no one else from northern New England), as well as folks from England, Sweden, Mexico, Japan, New Zealand and I’m sure many other countries. It really is a climbing paradise! There’s enough rock within a 30 mile radius to keep you busy for several lifetimes. The one drawback is the construction going on right now. The main North-South highway is being widened in preparation for the 2010 Olympics here, and since the road is squashed in between the Chief and the water that means a lot of construction noise just 50 yards or so from where we’re camped. It’s not so bad, just somewhat annoying when they’re working overnight and backing up the trucks a lot….beep, beep, beep at 3 a.m.!

Our friends Jamie and Ellen were here for two weeks, we had a blast climbing and hanging out with them. We’ve done some hard sport climbing, some one-pitch trad climbing, some bouldering and several multi-pitch routes up part or all of the Chief. Really, we’re spoiled for choice here! Mike had an opportunity to climb the Grand Wall with a friend we met here; it was a long-term dream of his to do that route so I was thrilled he got the chance. We may try to climb it together before we leave, but we have so many things on the to-do list who knows how much we’ll actually get done! Although we’ve been having an amazing time it’s almost time for us to leave and head back home for a little bit…some family events and a friend’s wedding are calling us home for August. We’ve got a lot of climbing to pack in to the next 10 days, so wish us luck and hopefully we’ll get a chance to catch up with NH/Maine based folks soon!

Squamish 1

On the road again: Colorado to British Columbia

We left Colorado on June 17^th and traveled north and west to eventually land over the border in British Columbia. On our way we made a few stops to climb: at Vedauwoo in Wyoming (just to see, no climbing there), at Maple Canyon south of Salt Lake City in Utah, and at City of Rocks in southern Idaho. We also spent a day at Mt Rainier National Park in Washington. It was an amazing 10 days, we traveled through some gorgeous areas (and some flattish, boring areas too!), enjoyed some new climbing spots and I went through 3 states I’d never been in before!

Maple Canyon was just okay, the rock was very interesting, it’s called cobble and it’s made up of smooth river stones embedded in a natural concrete. Cool in theory, but not all that pretty to look at and just mediocre to climb on. Oh well, now we know what it’s like at least!

City of Rocks was phenomenal, so it more than made up for Maple! The formations there were great, a lot like what we saw in Joshua Tree but in high desert, so there were a lot more trees and shrubs. But it was still hot!! We really enjoyed the climbing there, and there’s an almost infinite amount of it, so we’ll definitely have to go back someday and spend some more time there.

After our 3 days we packed up again and moved on, this time through Oregon and into Washington to stop at Mt. Rainier. There was still an unbelievable amount of snow there! Banks over 8 feet high on the side of the road! We did a little walking around (the forest is just incredible! I’ve never seen trees so big!), Mike hiked a little ways up onto the mountain (in the snow, in his sneakers!) and then we headed out to make our way towards the border. We were planning to meet up with our friends Jamie and Ellen once we got up there, but oddly enough we just happened to be driving through Seattle at exactly the same time! We stopped to say hi and catch up a bit, then they continued driving up to Squamish (about 3 more hours) while we decided to stop for the night and take a break since it was after 8:00. The next day we got back in the car for the last leg of this particular journey, crossed the border into Canada and made our way slooowly up to Squamish (delayed several hours by an accident on the highway). And now we’re happily esconced in a campground at the base of a 2000 foot granite cliff with more rock in a 30 mile radius than can be climbed in a lifetime! But, more about that next time!

Northwest jaunt

Colorado: the grand tour

We’ve been in Colorado for the last three weeks and loved (almost) every minute of it! We stayed with our friend Colin in Boulder for two weeks and spent the middle week touring around the state. Except for the 2 ½ days of rain in Rifle (aaaugh!!) we had perfect weather….blue skies, warm and sunny. We managed to get a taste of 10 different climbing areas! Boulder Canyon, Flagstaff, Clear Creek Canyon, Rifle, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Shelf Road, Eldorado Canyon, Lumpy Ridge, N. Table Mountain, and the Flatirons. There’s an unbelievable amount of stuff just around Boulder, 6 of those spots are within half an hour of where we’ve been staying. Climbing paradise! We did several days of long multi-pitch routes, a good amount of sport climbing and a little bouldering as well….pretty well rounded jaunt overall! Boulder is a fantastic place; very easy to walk or bike just about anywhere you want to go, lots of parks and open spaces, good food, great farmer’s market, and the scenery is pretty darn fabulous! I love it here! Staying with Colin was a lot of fun; his friend Rudy was here for a week so that was great, we also got to hang out with Cristin (who we met in Kentucky and was on her way to California), my friend Becky (another interpreter), and visited my brother Roddy and Mike’s aunt, uncle and cousins from Denver. We also visited Great Sand Dunes National Park, and Rocky Mountain National Park and managed to throw in some hiking and exploring while we were at it. Kind of a whirlwind!

This morning we’re back on the road, our eventual destination is Squamish, in British Columbia, but we’ll be stopping along the way to do a little climbing in Utah, and Idaho and maybe Washington. July 1^st should see us camped out at the next great climbing mecca and ready for more exploring and adventuring!

I hope this finds everyone enjoying the beginnings of summer!

Colorado

Home and back again

I spent a bit over a week at home in early May, visiting family and friends and running around doing some errands. I got to have very belated Easter egg hunts with almost all my nieces and nephews, it was lots of fun to see them! It sure was strange to sleep in a bed under a roof though…..we’d been camping about 6 weeks and I’d gotten very used to having the birds wake me up in the morning! I really enjoyed being home, seeing my parents and having a little time to relax. I also picked up my dog, Loki, who will be joining us on our travels for the next few months. On the way back to Kentucky I had a nice visit with my cousin and her husband and their baby.

Since I got back we’ve been climbing climbing climbing! We both had some routes we wanted to complete, so we spent some time focusing on that. Mike sent his first 5.13! It was very exciting! (For non-climbers, 5.13 is a difficulty rating….it’s very hard!) I did a few more 5.12s, nothing too crazy, but fun for me to push myself and feel stronger day by day. We’ve had a lot of fun hanging out with friends here, the climbing is just amazing and there’s lots more to explore but we’re finally ready to move on. So….we’re planning to leave for Colorado on Tuesday! I’m looking forward to exploring new places, doing some hiking, and meeting up with friends. Colorado will be new for both of us, I’ve never climbed there and Mike’s only done a little bit, so it will be great to see and do as much as we can.

That’s about all the news from here, til next time!

RRG 3 and home

Red River Gorge, Kentucky: Climbing til our arms fall off

We’ve been here at the Red for nearly five weeks now; leaves and wildflowers are busting out everywhere, we had a week of sunny weather with temps in the 80’s (bliss!), and we just keep climbing on this crazy steep rock! Our days start off in a leisurely way, I roll out of bed around 9:00 (Mike is up early as always, usually inside chatting with Miguel), we have breakfast, and make the rounds of friends’ tables to see what the plans for the day look like and what everybody is in the mood for. It’s rare that we leave for climbing before 10:30, but since it stays light out til 8:30 or so a late start doesn’t really matter! There are hundreds of crags scattered throughout the region, with thousands of different climbs to do. With so much climbing available, the dilemma is how to keep ourselves off the rock when our bodies need rest! Most days we end up climbing with some permutation of the long-term crew who are here from all over : Bryce (Texas), Cristin (Penn.), Eric & Kyler (Alaska), Jenny (Wyoming), Chuck (Quebec), Malek & Steph (Ontario), Dave (Ohio, now lives here), and some assorted others. It’s a pretty fantastic life! Our worries are limited to whether we have any strength left to climb, and what the weather looks like!

This area of eastern Kentucky is in the heart of Appalachia; it’s a land full of steep hills and ‘hollers’, tiny churches that look like they might hold 40 people, and winding roads without guard rails that threaten to dump you into a ravine. Our favorite thing here is the ‘Tradio’. It’s a local radio show where people call in to sell or trade things. And boy, do they have a random assortment of stuff to get rid of! Lawnmower engines, goats, childrens’ clothes, car parts, old appliances, rabbits….we’ve seen the yards and can imagine folks just looking out the door and thinking “Hmm, maybe we should get rid of some of this stuff….let’s call the Tradio!” It’s a great piece of local color, fun to hear the accents! On Sundays that station plays bluegrass gospel music; good stuff! It’s certainly an interesting corner of the world, we really enjoy it.

We had initially planned to be leaving here around now and heading back West, but we’ve decided to stick around a while longer. Well, actually, I’m leaving on Friday for a week at home; I’ll visit friends and family, pick up my dog, then meet Mike back down here. And then…..we’ll see! We may stay in Kentucky til the heat chases us out, but we’re pretty sure we’ll be in Colorado for June. We’ll keep you posted!

Til next time!

RedRiver Gorge 2

Red River Gorge, Kentucky: Living in a swamp

We’ve had quite a lot of rainy weather in the three weeks we’ve been here, and the campground is at the bottom of a holler, so life here has been pretty damp! We are now quasi-permanent residents of Miguel’s, a combination pizza place, climbing gear shop, and climber’s campground. It’s a unique place, to say the least! We arrived on a Friday afternoon, and our first week some friends came to climb with us, so we didn’t fully appreciate the extent of the weekend crowds. Then Friday rolled around again and suddenly you could hardly find space to walk between all the tents, parking was at a premium, and forget finding a spot to sit inside! It’s a pretty crazy contrast; during the week there might be 20 people camped here, and on weekends there must be at least 100 or so.

Despite the rains we’ve managed to do a lot of amazing climbing. It’s fun to be part of the long-term resident crowd; we’ve met a bunch of great people, including some guys from Alaska that we bumped into in Maine last fall! Small world. We’re planning to stay here until the end of April, so hopefully we’ll have enough time to get on most of the routes we’ve been excited about.

I’ve been enjoying the emergence of Spring yet again, seems like it’s been chasing us the last month or so! Violets, daffodils and forsythia are blooming, so it feels a lot more like home. My favorite are the redbud trees, they’re everywhere and they have tons of tiny little purple flowers busting out when everything else has been pretty bare. I put some branches on our picnic table to spruce it up, so check out the picture in the photo album. The last few days have been gorgeous, so there’s been some basking in the sun…a very welcome change from the wet and gloomy that dominated the first two weeks.

Not too much else exciting to report…just climbing and more climbing. A bunch of folks from all over the place will be joining us this weekend, looking forward to catching up with friends we haven’t seen for a while!

Red River Gorge 1

On the Road Again: Traveling the Southeast

Well, we dragged ourselves away from Tuscon at long last. We originally thought we’d go straight to Kentucky to climb at the Red River Gorge, but Mother Nature had other plans for us. The weather forecast included snow on several days just when we would arrive, and we wanted nothing to do with that! To delay a bit we decided to take a little tour of three climbing areas farther south that were all within a few hours of each other. But first…..we had to get there. Sigh. Back in the car!

We left Tuscon late in the morning and stopped at Saguaro National Park on the way out, so we didn’t really get on the road until 1:00. Eight hours of driving later found us 100 miles into Texas, and ready for a break so we stayed at a cheap little motel. The next day we kept on driving through Texas. And driving. And driving. Texas is really big. And really dull. The route we took was a total of 800 loooong miles! Finished up day 2 of the trek just a few miles past Shreveport, Louisiana, camping in a National Forest. It was a little tricky to find an out of the way spot this time, but it was well worth the effort when we were woken by the bird jubilee the next morning! Hundreds of birds, singing their hearts out to greet the dawn….truly a beautiful moment. We continued on our way, passing through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (3 new states for me!) before arriving at Horse Pens 40, a bouldering area in the northeast corner of Alabama.

We stayed one day, tired ourselves out on a lot of boulder problems then drove a couple of hours to northwestern Georgia to the top of another little mountain and another bouldering area. We had a fun day exploring the boulders but didn’t do too much climbing since we were so tired from the day before. Left in the late afternoon for the 2 hour jaunt to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Following directions in the climbing guidebook we found the ad-hoc campground in a beautiful little spot right next to the Tennesse River. It was stunning! The river is so wide and calm. The next day we needed a rest so we went into Chattanooga to do a little exploring. It’s a great city! We really enjoyed walking around the downtown area, they have lots of museums and fun shops and restaurants, and some beautiful riverfront parks. There’s a long pedestrian footbridge across the river, which seemed a popular spot for locals to jog on and tourists to meander along. We found a neat little coffee shop overlooking the river and got some internet time, then went out to dinner. Unfortunately we forgot to bring a camera, so we have no pictures of all our entertaining times. Oh well! The next day we went climbing at Tennesse Wall, about a 15 minute hike from where we were camped. It’s pretty convenient to be able to roll out of your tent, eat some breakfast, then walk up the hill to go climbing! We enjoyed the routes we did, and were lucky enough to have warm weather without it being too hot. Overall it was a great little side-trip!

The next morning we packed ourselves up and tried to figure out where the weather was sending us next. We finally decided to head on to Kentucky and the Red River Gorge as planned, since it looked like we’d have the best chance of avoiding rain that way! We arrived at Miguel’s (combination pizza/climbing shop and climber campground…..more on that next time!) late in the afternoon on Friday and got ourselves set up, happy to be settled semi-permanently at least.

Southeast Blitz

Tuscon, Arizona: a NH pilgrimage to the desert

Tuscon became part of the trip because two of our friends (former NH-ites) were getting married there. They and another climbing friend from NH had moved to Tuscon within the past couple of years, so this was a nice chance to visit and catch up. The wedding drew quite a NH crowd! I think there were 18 of us total, plus the 3 who now live there. It was so much fun to see everyone again, have a chance to hang out and climb together and enjoy the beautiful Tuscon weather. We arrived at our friend James’ house late Wednesday night, with the wedding on Saturday. Unbeknownst to us, there was a bachelor party happening all day and night on Thursday, so Mike joined the boys for their festivities and I hung out enjoying a soft couch and bad TV for the first time in a good long while! We climbed at Mt. Lemmon on Friday (just a few miles outside of town) with a few folks, explored downtown Tuscon on Saturday during the day, then went to the wedding in the evening. The wedding was at a beautiful historic inn on the edge of town, the ceremony was in a little enclosed garden and the reception inside. Lots of great food and dancing!

Sunday we were all invited to Jeremy & Laura’s house (the newlyweds) for a little after-wedding gathering. It was a perfect time, relaxing, good conversation and marveling at the downpour outside! Couldn’t believe we were having yet another precipitation experience in the desert. The next day the 10 of us who were left drove to a climbing area about an hour away. The weather was, well, surprising. Snow flurries off and on all day….no joke! We managed to have a great day despite the chill. We climbed again at Mt. Lemmon on Tuesday with a slightly diminished group as people gradually left for home. Great weather, sunny and hot and hard to believe we were wearing hats and down coats just 24 hours before. We’d been planning to leave on Tuesday, but as folks from home kept extending their stay we couldn’t resist staying a little longer! Unfortunately I caught a bad cold, so I spent a day on the couch recuperating while everyone else climbed. Oh well, it was bound to happen eventually. We finally managed to get back on the road on Friday to start making our way east towards Kentucky and the Red River Gorge.

Tuscon

Hueco Tanks, Texas

We spent a great week bouldering at Hueco with our friends Ben and Aram. Hueco Tanks Historical Park is about 25 miles east of El Paso, Texas. It’s an international destination for bouldering, believe it or not! It’s also an important site for Native American pictographs. Because it became so popular, there’s now a strict limit on the number of people who are allowed to enter the park per day. If you want to climb there you either have to make a reservation, or show up before the gates open and hope to be one of the 10 people they let in without reservations. Made for some early mornings for us! We developed a good system, though. Get up early, eat breakfast and drive to the park to line up, then go find a nice sunny place in the park to nap for a couple of hours! It was perfect.

The bouldering was a lot of fun, and we really enjoyed hanging out with Ben and Aram. Plus, we had amazing weather! Beautiful sunny days, nights that stayed above freezing….bliss!

On one of our rest days we took a trip down the road an hour or so to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We took a 9 mile hike up to Hunter’s Peak, the second highest point in Texas. It was a great hike, though a little more than we reckoned for. The scenery was beautiful, we even saw some cliffs that looked like they were begging to be climbed, but they were too far away to explore. We finished hiking out just after dark…..9 miles and 2,500 feet of elevation gain (and loss) in 5 hours.

We climbed until the very last minute, ran back to the campground to pack up the car, and hit the road about 5:00. Next stop…back west to Tuscon, Arizona to go to a friend’s wedding. On the road again!

Hueco

Northern Arizona: The Tourist Life

After about 7 hours of driving we arrived at the National Forest just south of the Grand Canyon. Word on the web was that you could camp anywhere in the forest as long as you’re ¼ mile away from the main road, so we scouted out a little dirt road and found a good spot to camp tucked away in the trees. It was cold!! Low temperature overnight…..19 degrees. We slept out under the stars, bundled up in lots of clothes. The next morning it was on to take a gander at the big ditch. Spent the day driving to different lookout points throughout the park, took lots of pictures and also took a little hike along the rim. We realized it’s been quite a while since we’ve spent time in regular, mainstream America…it was a little bit of culture shock! After getting our fill of the sights, and being frozen by the wind, we got back on the road and headed east towards the Navaho National Monument and the cliff dwellings at Betatakin.

We arrived just after dark to find the campground deserted but, fortunately, open. And still free! I had visited there one summer during high school to see the cliff dwellings with my mom and sister. It was a beautiful, isolated spot and I remembered the hike in to see the village being one of the highlights of our trip. I was hoping that they still had guided hikes, but, alas, they don’t during the winter. We could see the trail down from the top of the canyon, all covered in deep snow. Actually, the whole park was covered in snow, and we had another cold night. But, there was one bright spot: a heated bathroom with running water! I’m learning to appreciate the little luxuries, especially after weeks of pit toilets and desert campgrounds where you have to bring your own water. Turning on a faucet seemed like a little bit of magic! We spent some time the next morning at the visitor center and took a short walk to the edge of the canyon, then headed back out on the road. We took a little detour up to Monument Valley just over the border in Utah. The rock formations are just incredible, we were drooling over the climbing possibilities but it’s on the Navaho reservation and they don’t permit climbing on them. Oh well. Onward to Canyon de Chelly to see more ancient cliff dwellings.

We spent the next day touring around Canyon de Chelly. It’s also on the Navaho Nation reservation. It was interesting to see the cliff dwellings, but even more interesting to see the modern farms still being tended at the bottom of the canyon. It must be an amazing place to live! You’re not allowed to hike into the canyon unless you have a certified Navaho guide with you; I can see why since you’d essentially be walking around in people’s ranches and farmland. There is one area where they’ve established a hiking trail down into the canyon so you can get a closer look at one of the ruins. Mike and I took a walk in (followed part of the way by a very endearing stray dog); it was a beautiful place to hike. However, not an especially warm day, so we didn’t linger too much! By mid-afternoon we’d seen our fill and were ready to move on to the next adventure. There were a couple more places I was interested in seeing on our way towards El Paso. We were trying to figure out which route to take and where we might want to camp when we noticed some grim, gray clouds moving in. Turned on the radio to find a weather report; forecast for the night was a low of 17 degrees and snow showers!!! Aaaarrrgggh! I was less than thrilled about that prospect to say the least. The point of being in the Southwest was to avoid winter weather, not be plagued by it! Studied the map some more, did some calculating and decided to try to drive to El Paso, our next climbing destination. Mike figured we could make it before midnight, and sure enough we did. Found the Hueco Rock Ranch, set up our tent and collapsed into bed, very grateful that the temperature would be staying above freezing!

Northern Arizona

Joshua Tree: Spring comes to the desert

We arrived in Joshua Tree National Park late Saturday night (Feb 23rd), not quite out of the storm. It rained almost the entire 5 hour drive, and there were high winds with crazy gusts. We were planning to meet up with Mike’s friend Jay, so we drove to the main climber campground hoping he’d managed to find a site there. Unfortunately he wasn’t there, and he’d left a note that he was at a different campground kind of a hike down the road. It was almost midnight and we were exhausted and not keen to keep driving. We decided to check the next campground to see if there were any sites free, and in a welcome change to our luck there was one site available. We stumbled out of the car and set up the tent in unbelievably high winds….I still don’t know how we managed it! Threw sleeping bags inside and collapsed, just glad to be warm and dry and out of the wind. Mind you, we didn’t actually get to sleep all that much because the wind was blowing the tent around like crazy! Nylon blowing in the wind isn’t all that quiet, to say the least. We decided to give up trying to sleep any longer by 6:30, packed up as quickly as we could and headed back to town to do a little food shopping and time killing until people left for the weekend and we could get a campsite. As we got to town it started raining…oh joy! Grrrr. We’ve certainly been plagued by some bad weather. I’ve never seen so much rain in the desert. Still, we did get to see a fantastic rainbow out of the deal! We did finally get a campsite and spent a couple of hours setting it up, clearing out the car and organizing all our stuff now that it was dry. We met up with Jay and his friends in the evening and they joined us at our site. Spent some time around the fire and looked forward to the rest of the week…..weather prediction: sunny and 70s every day!

We had three days of climbing with the Tuscon guys. Did a lot of fun routes and I worked on leading some harder stuff. Mike did the same, he had a couple of routes he’d had his eye on that he was excited to complete. The weather was just gorgeous and we reveled in the sunshine! Took one rest day to just bask in the sun, rest our bodies and read (and get a little sunburned, oops!), then we climbed two more days. We met a group of guys from NH, ironically enough! Somehow we had never bumped into each other at home, but it was fun to hear a little bit of New England in their accents. I really enjoyed the climbing, but I also had a wonderful time watching Spring arrive. Bushes that looked gray and dead suddenly sprouted lots of little green leaves overnight; birds arrived and sang to us all day; everything seemed to be coming back to life! Every night we’d hear the coyotes calling to each other from quite near the campground. Their yips and howls and barks sounded like a conversation and I wished I had my Coyote-to-English dictionary! One coyote would stroll throught the campground every evening just after sunset, just poking around, hoping to find food laying around. I felt so much a part of all the wildness there, it’s definitely one of my favorite places.

Sunday morning arrived with another windstorm, just to make sure we didn’t enjoy too much good weather. Sigh. Packed up our stuff, tried not to let the tent get blown away, and hit the road. We made a pit stop in town for showers and laundry (a luxury!) then started driving toward the Grand Canyon for a week of sightseeing. Everywhere we go I wish I could stay a little longer….even though we have lots of time there’s somehow never enough!

Joshua Tree