Posted by: Kyle

First real snow of the year this weekend:

We spent the weekend splitting and stacking all of the wood we cut for the winter.

Posted by: Becca & Kyle

Last weekend we drove to Uncompahgre Plateau for a weekend of mountain biking and leaf peeping. The plateau is about 5 hours from Colorado Springs in an area of Colorado referred to as the Western Slope.
Day 1: Our campsite is one we've had before. It's a beautiful site on the edge of a canyon.

We were able to do a long bike loop right from our campsite. The first leg of the ride followed a forest road with some amazing colors:

We then took a trail to an overlook that had a view of the LaSalle mountain range in Utah at its end. Here are some pictures from along that trail.

It had started getting cloudy by the time we made it to the overlook, so we didn't get any great pictures of the view. There were some 4-wheelers there who took pictures of us instead of the mountains. I guess they found it hard to believe that people rode their bikes ALL THEY WAY to the view point. We took a combo of multi-use trails and forest roads back to camp. No matter where we were there were plenty of beautiful leaves.

After a 4.5 hour bike ride followed by a couple hours of grading quizzes, we had worked up quite a hunger. We concocted a rather delicious meal from rice, canned pozole, tapatio, and avocado.

Day 2: On the 2nd morning we packed up the car and drove to some trails that were on the way out. Again, the colors and views were amazing.

I had the bright idea that we should take a detour through Aspen to see the colors. Given the town's name, it seemed to me that should be the best place in the state to see aspen leaves. It did not disappoint, but it probably added 2 hours to our already long drive. Oops. This picture is looking down on Aspen from Independence Pass.

Posted by: Becca & Kyle

It's fall, so it's time to cut firewood. A couple of weekends ago we got our firewood permits from the Forest Service - $10/cord - and headed out to cut some wood. We cut three truck loads - we would probably only need one load for us, but Chief Al really likes to read/nap in the chair by the woodstove when he's here, so we had to get and extra couple of loads to ensure his comfort. A pile of logs ready to be split:

It was a beautiful weekend, so we spent some time on our mountain bikes as well. Leaves are turning: