Crested Butte & Taylor Park Pics

Well, we are nearing the end of our time in this beautiful part of the country. It's been so nice and cool and I've enjoyed every single stinkin minute of it! I really wish we didn't have to come back to hot and humid Texas right now... really. Wish I was one of the fortunate ones that could just come and stay here all summer long. Oh well... life is what it is! Luckily, while we will start making our way back to Texas tomorrow, I still have another week of vacation so all is well!!

Here are some pictures of the last couple of days. Thursday we went into Crested Butte and wandered around. Pretty little town.

Yesterday, we went back to the area Travis took us too and had a great time! I caught and released 5 brookies and Dad caught more than that and kept 5. John didn't have quite as much luck as we did yesterday but we think he is at a disadvantage as the fish can see him coming a lot easier! :-) We had a lovely picnic lunch along the river and it was nice and cool. Gotta love it!

Here are the composites of the pictures I took yesterday! Enjoy!

We are going to have a big ole fish fry tonight!! YAY!

Later!

Fishing... Fishing and more fishing....

We've been fishing! That's what we've been doing.

Our first day was at Spring Creek and while it was beautiful there, we were not successful in catching any fish. However, we did have a lovely trout dinner from some of the fish the boys caught earlier at Quarter Circle Circle Ranch. Yummy stuff!!

Pictures from Spring Creek:

Yesterday, we had our fishing day with Travis. He's the owner of High Mountain Drifter Guide Service. My parents and Perry have been using his guide service for the last couple of years and he's a really nice, cute and good guide!

We wanted to do a walk/fish trip vs a float trip because we wanted to keep some of the fish for eating. Floating around here on either the Taylor or Gunnison Rivers is fun, but is catch & release only so no keeping and eating! So.. Travis took us WAY WAY far up in Taylor Park and probably more north out of Taylor Park really. We think we finally stopped at about 10,500 elevation where there were some absolutely beautiful creeks and beaver ponds and the fishing was excellent.

We all caught a ton of fish. Many were really small and we put them back, but we ended up keeping 19 of them, mostly brookies and one cutthroat. I caught the largest of all!

There was a lot of walking, climbing, maneuvering around holes and creeks, walking through dense areas of willow and who knows what else. I kept having to remind myself there are no poisonous snakes this high up in Colorado because you really couldn't see a lot of what you were walking on or through. Just kept praying there would be no bear just pop up his head while I'm out there. :-)

We are a bit on the tired side today from yesterday's adventure, so we are going to wander our way into Crested Butte to do a little shopping. Later!

Here are some pics from yesterday:

Day 1 - Harmel's here we come!

This was our (well, my!) first full day in Colorado and let me say, it was quite nice. I can't recall if I mentioned what we did last night (Sunday), but we went to Garlic Mike's for dinner which was really good! Italian (if you couldn't guess) and sitting right on the Gunnison River. Was nice!

This morning, we lazily got up, had some breakfast at the great Holiday Inn Express breakfast bar and packed up. Even gave some lessons on Facebook to my dad AND helped him to set up an account. He's a cool facebooking 72 year now! LOL

Once packed, we hit Gene Taylor's Fly shop to get my fishing license, then the grocery store for provisions, and then made our way to Harmels. We got here about 1 pm and our cabin was ready! This is quite a nice place - not luxurious - but nice. Our cabin is facing the Taylor river, you can hear the river sitting on the porch. It was a bit on the hot side again today at about 87 degrees or so. That's pretty hot up here and remember, there is no AC, so we sat outside in the shade under the porch. By about 4:30, we got our fishing gear on and took the few steps to the Taylor River in front of us. Dad hung out with me to give me some lessons and I had one strike. Nothing else, but I did get some good practicing and I sure did look good! So did John.

Dinner tonight was care of the very popular Harmel's BBQ - steak/crab night cookout. Lots of other folks in a nice clearing with a accordion musician and polka music. Was a fun time! John ate TONS of crab. His portion, mine and Dad's since we only had steak. Picture below of the damage!

After dinner... Dad wanted to learn more about Facebook, so we had a few more lessons and even a funny conversation with my sister, Stacey!

Pictures - most are on my Flickr website HERE and a few below!

Ok - we're getting ready to hit the creeks again today.. fish beware!!

"Stinky Boys" Trip - a few pics

This is apparently the "mountain" they climbed down to get to the creek where they fished one day!


THIS, my friends, is why I don't go on the Stinky Boys Trip!


These are the fish the Great Fishermen caught!


Our cabin at Harmels


This is right in front of our cabin practically!


Great pic of my Dad!


Yea.. that's my man!


Look at me!!


The fishing couple!


Captured these faces last night! Crazy boys.


John's Pile O Crab last night!!


Dancing last night!

Check out the rest of the pics in Flickr! Click HERE!!

Travel Day to Gunnison!

After a long day of washing clothes, packing, packing and packing, paying bills and doing Band stuff, I went to bed around midnight. Alarm went off at 4 am!! Yea... that's early and 4 hours is really not enough sleep. Up and ready.. off to the airport by 4:30 ish for my 6:15 am flight out of the Big Airport (IAH). Little Embraer plane (really not a fan of small planes) and 2 hours later, I'm in Denver where I'm writing this at the moment.

Waiting for my next flight on an even smaller airplane over to Gunnison. Oh - how I love little planes. Praying for a calm flight with little turbulence.

Just for the record, the temps here in Denver are pretty much the same as in Houston.... forecasted to be 98 - 100 degrees today. Yuck!! Gunnison - luckily, is not quite so hot at about 86 today and getting a bit cooler the rest of the week, with Almont (where we'll be) another 4/5 degrees cooler then that. Thank goodness... hate it when I'm trying to escape heat and just transfer myself from one hot place to another!! Our cabin in Almont doesn't have A/C (I didn't realize this btw) which is not a problem during most of the day and evening when the lows are in the 40's with highs around 80. We'll probably be outside most of the days, so probably not an issue.

Excited to see my husband and dad in just a bit and catch up with the survivalists and see if they managed to catch any fish.

Later!

VACATION 2010!!!

Finally... vacation has begun! Colorado here we come. Will keep the blog updated with pictures and info along the way.

John and Dad left earlier this week to go to Quarter Circle Circle Ranch for some ultra rustic man time fishing and cooking over coals.

I am joining them early Sunday via airplane for more fun at Harmel's Ranch Resort in Almont, CO.

The kids are not able to join us this time. We're going to miss them on this trip.

Packing... packing.. packing... :-)

More to come!

MA