Colorado

Remember when I had a life...and a blog. I'm beginning to get back a small part of that now that it's summer. Nevermind the fact that I'm already doing prep work for next year, I have a little more freedom.

I'll do a reflection on the school year at a later time. It's still pretty fresh but FIRST I want to share about our trip to Colorado. If you follow me on insta (mountainmeghan) then you likely felt like you were on this trip with us. But in case you didn't get enough allow me to give you some highlights and pics here on yet another social media outlet.

This was my first time flying and the flight west was amazing! So easy, arrived 30 minutes early and lugged our Osprey packs and luggage around Denver for a few hours while we waited on our room to be ready. We stayed downtown and enjoyed walking along the 16th Street Mall. We were told we had the "swagger of humanitarians" by a friendly street vendor. When I asked her what that looked like she said that we were wearing earth-tones and were smiling as if enjoying vacation but still pondering the injustices of the world. She was pretty dead on actually so we listened to her for 45 minutes.

Denver was a city. Convenient. Wonderful brunch. Lots of people doing their own thing. We attempted public transportation and bragged on ourselves as we got on the bus saying "We are so good at this." Then had to pay a stranger $20 because we didn't have change for our bus fare and after 15 minutes on said bus another well-meaning stranger told us we were on the wrong bus. Despite being a "city" Denver was incredibly friendly. In the end we paid $40 to realize we should just stay downtown and walk to destinations. Lesson learned.

While in Denver we also went to Red Rocks amphitheater which is apparently a rite of passage if you visit Colorado. We would have seen any old band there just to say we went but once we caught wind that Old Crow Medicine Show was going to be there we bumped our trip up from July to June. The venue was breathtaking and OCMS never disappoints. Drew clearly scared our neighbors when they played Carry Me Back to Virginia.

We spent the next day driving into the mountains (we rented a car after our bus fiasco) where we rented sleeping bags to camp in Rocky Mountain National Park that night. We took our Enos and set up camp for the night. We made pork chops and s'mores and lounged and read. Unfortunately it rained and we slept in the car but it was still a great experience.

The next day (my birthday) we had planned for an 11 mile hike along the Lumpy Ridge trail. We chose this trail because it allowed for so many different views, it is supposed to be the best to see all of the landscape of the National Park: mountains, meadows, rocks and a lake that is only from snow melt. Pretty freaking awesome. Sure it rained and I thought I was having a heart attack because my left arm and hand went numb but again totally worth it.

That night we met our friends Sarah and Ben for my birthday dinner in Boulder. I ate my weight in crab legs and we enjoyed catching up with them. Drew and Sarah had planned for us to go to an escape room which was really cool even though we didn't solve the mystery.

We stayed in Boulder for the remainder of our trip relaxing in our awesome Airbnb, or Enos, or eating really yummy food. Admittedly, this trip was to kind of feel out the city of Boulder as a possible move for us in the future and we did love the entire vibe of it. We did a little kayaking and a tour at Celestial Seasonings for our last day.

Our trip home was not quite as smooth, cancelled flights, mechanical issues and an overnight stay in Newark made us more than ready to get home.

The landscape in Colorado was breathtaking everywhere you turned. We WILL go back and hopefully take our family and dogs. But....it's not home. We were so happy to be back in "our" mountains and immersed once again in our small town. It's been so nice to be home and start my summer.

Apple Sauce & Old Crow

Here's all the wonders happening here in Floyd:

All three of our transplanted tomato plants are alive and thriving! Many a'mouth told us they were too big to try and move but I'm glad we don't take advice cause now we've got maters.

We have frozen more apples than we'll ever use so I've switched to canning apple sauce. I'd never canned before in my life so it was an adventure. The first batch I worked up by myself one day while Drew was at work and I ended up with 3 whole jars, one of which didn't seal so we'll have to eat it soon.

I really wanted to avoid adding sugar but I knew some of our apples were sour so I used maple syrup instead (and cinnamon and lemon juice, believe it or not the only grocery store in Floyd was OUT of lemons, small town charms am I right?).  The second round Drew and I double-teamed and cooked overnight. I do not recommend this because waking up at 4:30 to can apple sauce is less than ideal (especially later in the day when you're driving to Pittsburgh attempting to listen to Game of Thrones on audiobook and you're both dozing off).

This round we ended up with 7 jars all of which sealed. Hooray!!!

I am already making plans to can some apple butter and salsa and depending on our cucumber crop, pickling some cukes. I have lofty goals but need to remind myself I start school next week. Cue Meghan muttering Martin Luther quotes incoherently in front of 16 year olds.

Since we have both blackberries and apples on the grounds here I wanted to find a recipe to incorporate both. Found here. 

The recipe made 12 which you won't need to worry about if you drop the pan in the oven trying to get them out and half of them catch fire while you curse and yell dramatically for "HELP!" I'm pretty sure Drew thought I was on fire. Another alternative is freezing the extras. They are seriously the best muffins I've ever eaten. The only thing I did differently was replace the suggested yogurt with blueberry Activia to keep me regular.

In other news...

We took a whirlwind trip to Pittsburgh on Friday which was totally worth it to see our friends, Sarah and Ben. They bought a beautiful house and it was great to get to visit them and see their town before things get too crazy with school. Also, it's probably the last time we will see them before baby Arlo arrives!!

We left them on Saturday to head back down to Charleston, WV to see our favorite band, Old Crow Medicine Show. We saw them last year with Mumford but wanted to see them headline. And West Virginia was the perfect place to experience it. It's hard to even describe how much fun they are live.

Also, Charleston was lovely.The concert was outside which is always preferable and you just can't beat the goodness that happens when different types of people come together for music as good as OCMS.


We finished off an amazing weekend with what I like to call "The reason I haven't been lesson planning is I've been deciding who I'm going to draft for fantasy football." Priorities people. Eddie Lacy trumps Henry VIII in my world right now. It's just the way it is. And I'm gonna kick ass this year.

Soak in these last few days of summer, teacher friends. I felt a fall crisp in the air today and football is coming. I, for one, can't wait.