One month of Adventures!

You're getting a update on all of our adventures in the last month, all at once!

One weekend we took a drive to see the Fall colors. We drove up through Paonia to Aspen then to Leadville and back. All our pictures can be found here.

See if you can find Daisy... she's using her hunting skills.

While we were on the drive the VW Jetta turn over 200,000 miles. Yippy!

Beautiful...we were a little early for the reds and oranges but this was one of only open weekends to go.



We also bought a new car a couple of months ago for expeditions and camping. It's a Toyota Landcruiser. Here are some shots of some local trails.

We took a fun road from Colorado over into Utah and headed toward Moab.




This is the Dolores River which we got out and played in while looking for a crossing that wasn't too deep. Daisy loved it.



We also headed up into the base of the La Sals mountains, overlooking Moab.


Just recently we were in Utah for National Public Lands Day. We were with Greg's website, RockyMountainExtreme.com cleaning up recreational areas. it was a beautiful day. With the help of about 50 people from Gregs web site, in a couple hours we filled up the huge dumpster.

Then it was on to playing.

This is known as Waynes World it was so steep it was hard to walk up... let alone drive up! Our Jeep went right up without a problem.

This is the last big obstacle... it's called the Eagles Nest...but yes it is as scary as it looks. Everyone in our group has to winch up it.

And here's Greg, who takes me on all these fun adventures.

From Chile to Peru

Before I say anything about Peru I will first comment of how unreliable the airports and airlines were.

With that being said when we finally made it to Peru it was so amazing the pictures and words just don't express how large or how fantastic all the Inca sites were. I was also surprised at the size of cusco i was thinking that it was about 30,000 - 40,000 people...Nope it is more like 370,000 people. Most of which are still living in adobe houses.


The first day we met with our tour company, Lamaita Travel, who deals primarily with missionaries and their families. They were fabulous. We went on a tour around Cusco and some of the Inca sites that were close by.


The second day we went to a llama farm and Sacsahuaman. Cusco mean navel because it was the center of the Inca empire. Sacsahuaman was thought to be the mouth of the head. These large rocks were formed to be the teeth. It was a fortress.


The llama farm had alpaca,llamas, vicuna (which are endangered and softer that alpaca)and guanaco (which is the most soft and most rare)we got to watch them spin and die the yarns.


We also went to a town called Ollantaytambo. This was one of my favorites. The town still looks that same as it did when the Inca lived there except the roofs are tile instead of thatched.




Here is a side of the mountain where they farmed and stored their grains can you see the face of an Andean man?

Then we traveled to the town of Aguas Calientes. The only way to get there is by train or by foot hiking on the original Inca trail/highway. The main street in this town is the rail from the train. No cars.


From this town you take a bus up to Macchu Picchu.
This site is so much larger than you think in real life. We took a tour once up there. The tour was about 2.5 hours and only covered maybe half of the site.

Some of the parts that stand out in my mind are:
1. the irrigation system that was all over all of the Inca sites. They knew how to make that water flow to where they needed it to go.

2. When they say Inca trail/highway what they really mean is stairs that go up and down the mountain.

3. Inca temples are made with such presicion that it would be hard today to replicate it. The Sun temple was the Inca king.

4. The word Macchu Picchu means "old mountain" this is the mountain that the site is sitting on.

5. The famous Mountain is called Hauyna Picchu which means "young mountain" you can actually take a hike that goes to the top where there is a house and some terraced gardens.


6. These people were inspired and hard working to build and live in this area.

One month of Excitement

I haven't posted in the last month because I have been out of the country! My parents who have been serving an LDS mission in Chile were being released in August. I decided I would go and bring them home. What a vacation! The trip started out in Fruita were I left Daisy in a kennel and Greg picked her up on the weekends. I traveled down to California to visit my sister and her family for almost a week. I then journeyed down to San Diego to attend a conference fro school. A week later I flew to South America.

I spent about a week in Santiago, Chile with my parents. Chile was beautiful and while there I was jealous of Melissa who was able to serve a mission here also.

They lived a couple of blocke from the MTC, temple, mission home and area offices. I was not expecting to do as much walking as we did. Santiago is a big city with skyscrapers and smog. It is also nestled in by the Andes to make a beautiful backdrop.

We went out to the coast one day to San Antonio and Cartahegna. We got the visit the fish markets and watch the fisher men bring home their catches.





On another day we hiked to the top of a mountain to see a giant statue of the Virgin Mary. I kid you not we hiked a good 10 miles all uphill. The views at the top were amazing.


On the way down we took the ferrico which was kinda scary considering we were going straight down.


You may be thinking why hasn't she posted any pictures of the exotic food? The answer is simple...the food was gross! It was so bland and not very good.

I have so many more pictures. All of the pictures are on our smug mug account. The link is on the side under family album.