New England/Quebec Road Trip Summer 2012

Here are a few pictures from our backpacking trip in the Wild River Wilderness of New Hampshire, traveling around Quebec, and a second backpacking trip on Downeast Maine's Cutler Coast.

the ollie dog

A new member of the family

Meet Ollie:




She normally does sit.

Snow Day!

Growing up, snow days were just about the best it got. In Oregon, a half-inch snow qualifies as a blizzard and all the schools shut down. Mrs. Vaughn would lend her hill and all day the Messolines and Olsens (and assorted others throughout the years) would go sledding. Bumps of varying sizes for kids of varying braveness would be made, and we would go zipping down, then flying off that steep hillside. It didn't matter if the snow was minimal and we were more covered in cowpies than the white stuff, it was a SNOW DAY. These days held such dizzying excitement for me that in anticipation of them, when snow was just falling and not yet sticking, I would run and record the event in my never-used diary. Seriously, my childhood journals have on average one or two entries a year and each is me screaming about the weather with the words getting progressively bigger.

Since living in Utah and Colorado, snow has sadly lost some of it's allure. There are only so many times you can slip on ice, or get your pants muddy and icy, or almost rear end someone else and not have the dream fade. However, every now and then, especially after the first big snowstorm, those old feelings flicker up in me again. Snow... the wonderful homogenizing power of it. Everything is white, clean and new. Just waiting for me to go romp around in it.

And so we did:





This is Nate and me and some friends at city park. Nate's school was canceled, and though he still had to study most of the day, we got some fun in.





15 inches. Not bad for October.







This blog post reminds me of my old diaries. Nothing for months, then excitement over snow. I guess not too much has changed.

On a side note, this is my finger. Yesterday I was
using a vertical stick blender to chop up some dried apricots and was digging out the resulting goo around the blades with my finger when somehow I pressed the on button and came this close to chopping said finger off. Blood sprayed everywhere and I screamed bloody murder and Nate came running in to find me holding up my index finger with a big deep cut all around the circumference of it. Even the nail part was cut open. Because we are poor and I don't have health insurance, we forwent the hospital and bandaged it ourselves. I think it's going to be fine, but it was very terrifying. It made me think about what a klutz I am, and how if I'm not careful someday I'm probably going to die an absurd and unnecessary death.

2243 Franklin Street

Greetings to the few lonely souls who somehow make it to this corner of the world wide web. As many of you know, Annelisa and I recently bought a new house. Not that the house is new; it was built in 1888, the year that Benjamin Harrison narrowly defeated Grover Cleveland in a close presidential election. At the time Colorado had been granted statehood a mere twelve years earlier and the state was still full of miners and mountain men. Although we don't know much about the 121 year history of our house, we do know that several years ago it fell into disrepair and was eventually abandoned for a period of time. Earlier this year an investor bought the dilapidated old house, renovated it, and sold it to the aforementioned young couple eager for some land where they could put down some roots. It is a new and exciting experience for us and we are looking forward to making this house our new abode. We are deeply grateful to our loving and supportive families who have helped make this opportunity possible for us.

Without further ado, here is our little house on 2243 Franklin Street:


Annelisa, a proud new homeowner, posing with our newly planted marigolds.



Annelisa painting the front door a bright blue. Annelisa has most of the creative vision for our house.

Additional photos of the interior are soon to come...