Another full day

The last post was about 20 minutes before we went to bed last night.  We were worried about the cold, but we were confident that the wind had died down.  Well, we were worried about the wrong problem.  Our preparation with the heater and the insulation under the bed kept the camper nice and toasty all night...but the wind was another story.  In a Colorado valley, you can hear the wind gusts coming way before they get to you.  It sounds like you're parked next to a hiway and semis are flying past.  You hear it coming and you brace, and then the camper shakes like its going to blow right over.  The wind wasn't bad all night, but it did wake us up several times.  Really, we were fairly comfortable and not that scared, just worried that the camper was going to get really torn up.  So, we were happy to see the forecast that the wind was not supposed to be bad tonight...

...until after all our adventures today.  We were pulling into our campsite, about the pop the camper up and start grilling when the radio announced that the wind gusts tonight were supposed to be 40 mph.  :< Right then and there we decided that we did not want to sleep another night in our "kite."  We went to the office and asked if we could upgrade to one of the cabins on site, we were going to pay the difference just for the night, because "the wind is GOING to die down tomorrow!"  But when we went in and explained our situation, they felt sorry for us and upgraded our reservation for free!!  So tonight, we are in this awesome cabin, safe from the wind and cold, with our own personal bathroom and even cable.  :)  God is good and provides for His children.  Tomorrow we are going to move back to the camper because it really is fun!  But tonight I'm happily sitting on a comfy couch while blogging.

So, today in pictures:

Breakfast this morning, bacon, eggs, coffee, and grapefruit juice.  Mmmmm!

These were shot at the Alluvial Fan in the Rocky Mountain National Park.  We climbed up the boulders almost to the top and enjoyed basking in the sun.

Elk crossing the road in front of our truck.

Such gorgeous scenery.

The next 3 pictures are from our hike around Bear Lake.  We drove up to the trail head and the ranger informed us that getting 2/3 of the way around the 3/4 mile loop wasn't too bad, but after that it would be "dicy."  This is what she meant:  A foot of packed snow on the trail!  We had to be careful not to slide into the lake!  It was really exciting and fun.

This is my foot, I was trying to show how deep this foot print was, but I wasnt terribly successful.  It was literally 2 feet deep.  I hope somebody didn't hurt themselves by making it!

So today was exciting and fun.  We are tired and again, and very glad for the generosity of the campground manager at Spruce Lake campground in Estes Park.  If you ever visit, stay here!  We don't have to battle the wind, and we are in this beautiful cabin.  Allen cooked us steak on the grill for dinner and said it was probably the most dangerous steak he'd ever cooked in his life.  Haha!  Its the wind!  Its so crazy.  We put the grill between two cabins so that it would be a little sheltered, but we were still worried.  In the end though, the steaks were amazing and he put the coals out with water after he was done so that we made sure not to catch anything on fire.  

Good night all!  Safe sleeping!  We are watching all of our friends and family in the path of storms and tornados and praying that you are safe.  More tomorrow.  

Real Camping...popup style

Day two of our adventure and its has been eventful.  I was just looking back over the pictures and I can't believe we got it all done in one day!  We arrived in Estes Park tonight to guess what???

Wind

and

SNOW!!!  Well, not really so much snow as just spitting sleet.  Really it was about 55 degrees when we got here, but the snow caps on the mountains looked like they were covered in a blizzard.  And, the blizzard was then whipping down the mountains with winds gusting at least 30 miles per hour.  So, we did not put our camper up.  We decided to wait it out, since this lady at the front desk of our site informed us that it was supposed to stop and be calm by 9 PM.  We went to dinner at an Italian place in town.  It was really yummy, but we were a little dissapointed because we had stopped outside Denver and loaded up on grilling ingredients.  Maybe tomorrow we'll have better luck with less wind around dinner time.

As for the morning and the rest of our day, we were happy with our decision to get a hotel room last night after listening to the radio announcer talk about how bad the storm was.  When a local radio guy in the middle of Kansas says a storm is bad, you know its true!  This morning, we got up after a nice restful night's sleep and found a roadside steakhouse about an hour into our drive.  It was good!

Tonight we finally did set up the camper at about 8:30 and we are doing alright with the wind.  There is a rare gust that rocks us a little, but nothing like last night.  Our only issue is possibly getting cold.  Its supposed to be 34 tonight, but we have a space heater and we've rigged the curtains up so that our bed is like a little cave that the heater is blowing directly into.  We also increased our insulation under the bed by using the seat cushions.  We've been watching Bear Grylls, we know our survival techniques! ;) Its really very warm at the moment and we know its already cold outside because we went for a walk.  I might take a picture of our ingeniousness tomorrow to show you exactly what we did, but for tonight I'm sleepy.  Enjoy the pictures of our gorgeous drive and campsite!  More tomorrow.

 

Camping Out...sort of

Well we are on our vacation!!  I'm so excited to be done with school and off on an adventure with Allen.  This is the first day and it definitely has been an adventure so far. 

(Allen and his dad Terry planning our drive)

We decided to drive our Ford Ranger (which has a new look by the way) and pull a pop-up trailer.  Pictures of these will be posted later.  We are driving to Colorado and set to arrive in Estes Park tomorrow night.  Today we drove through Oklahoma and we're staying in Kansas.  We were all set to camp tonight and have a relaxing evening with grilled steaks or burgers or something like that...but Kansas had other plans.

Our first clue of a possible problem started in Okahoma.  As soon as we turned onto I-35, there was a huge shelf cloud to our West.  We learned the difference between a shelf cloud and a wall cloud by listening to the radio today...in case you are wondering, the shelf cloud covers almost the entire horizon.  Yes, it did.  It accompanied our drive from Stillwater, OK to Salina, KS the whole way!  Just hung out on our left hand side.  Then after some discussion as to whether we should stop in Salina and let it pass over, or just drive straight through it...We turned West into the storm and drove straight in.  

It was pretty black and the radio said the wind was whipping at 75 miles per hour.  The rain was sideways for a couple minutes.  But it actually didn't last that long because it was going 40 miles per hour East and we were going 55-65 miles per hour West. We were only going that fast on the hiway because it was blowing SO hard!!  And remember, we are pulling a camper.  You can see the edge of it in the picture. 

This is the back end of the storm.  This cloud was crazy.  It was huge and you could see it spinning, but it was blowing from the bottom to the top.  Basically it looked like a gigantic tornado laid on its side horizontally.  

So, like I said, the storm only lasted a few minutes and we arrived on the other side safe and sound, no problems.  The radio was reporting tornado warnings and watches all over Kansas, but we could see light in the sky and when we figured out what county we were driving through, we new it was ok.

  

After driving since 9 AM, we finally made it to our campsite at about 6 PM and hesitated as the lady who checked us in told us that:
1.  There were more storms coming in.
2.  The only shelter in the campground was in the bathroom area of the main building.

I didn't get a picture of the building at the campsite, but it was not substantial.  Jut a wood sided 80's style building, no way going to stand up to much...but, at this point we decided to try and tough it out. and went through the process of opening of the camper, pulling all the cables and setting all the springs.   Meanwhile it was almost being lifted off the ground by the wind.  Now, keep in mind, it was NOT stormy at this point, in fact it was nice and light, no clouds.  But the wind was awful!!  Allen and I ate our sandwich quietly and tried to tell ourselves we would be ok for the night....Then I checked the radar...Duh duh duh..

A HUGE storm was coming in!!

You know how fast a camper can be put back together and pulled down???  When we finally decided we did not want to die in the storm, our camper was packed that fast.

This is a video of the wind and the sky right before the storm, which hit about 15 minutes after we got everything in our hotel room.  I'm really really glad we did it.  Its still storming hard with lightening, thunder, and tornado watches outside and we've been here 2 hours.

Tomorrow we will camp in Estes Park.  It will be beautiful and sunny...we hope ;)  We are having a lot of fun...anyone who knows us, knows we love adventure...and a guy who was watching us come into our hotel said we must be on our honeymoon.  Haha!  That's the way to wear 9 years of marriage!

We'll keep you updated on our vacation adventures in the next couple weeks!!

I'm back!

I'm back!!

Back in Arkansas! And back in the blogging world!!  Missed you guys.  Actually, you can thank my best friend Caitlin Grace for my return since she started her own blog about her pregnancy and family and has inspired me to return to mine.

Check out her blog:

http://myfirstbump13.blogspot.com


So, A LOT has happened since I wrote my last blog post almost a year ago!  I moved to Greenwood, Bloomington, and Muncie, Indiana and then finally last week, back to my beloved Arkansas.  It was a long rode with lots of stories that I need to catch you up on.  But now, I'm looking to the future and what's coming around the bend!

Goals for me and Allen this summer:

-Optometry license ( just one more test! State board July 13th)
-Garden (we're shooting for 500 tomatoes ;)
-Vacation (camping! Wherever the wind may blow us)
-Family time (oh yes always lots of this)
-Allen wants to work on his lessons (more details later)

I think that's all for now.  I'm sure I Weill think of more later.  Pictures and stories to come!  :). Stay tuned!