Texas 2 year step!

Greetings  from the country of Texas, oops we mean the greetings  from the state of Texas!  We arrived in Texas October 8th and spent about 5 days down in the Big Bend National Park area, we stayed in Alpine, TX at the Lost Alaskan RV Park.  If you are looking for Alaska, you sure would be lost if that is were you ended up!  It really is amazing just how big this state is, we will be here for the next 2 years, and probably won’t see it all! 
We arrived at Jellystone Hill Country RV Resort and Campground October 13th and our official job will be managers for the park.   This is the same campground that we worked at from December 2008 – September of 2009.  Time sure does fly by as it seems we have done so much in just the a little over a month that we have been here!  We are looking forward to working with Kim and Larry and all the others here to make sure customers have a happy and fun camping experience.  On November 8th we actually got on an airplane, and  flew from Austin to Cincinnati for the Jellystone Symposium, we met the Jones family there as they had left a week earlier and drove to Cincinnati.  We got to meet several other Jellystone  campground owners along with the corporate staff  from LSI, they as they are  are the corporation  behind Jellystone.  It was a very good learning experience,  and  also got to see all the new fun products coming out that will be for sale in our store this summer.  With not much time to goof off, we did get to do one geocache before heading out to airport the morning of our departure. 
Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving, if you are ever headed to Texas, we are located in  between Austin and San Antonio,  which is in the Hill Country area of Texas, we would sure love to see you!  Before you know we will have an accent and y’all will be part of daily vocabulary!

		Big Bend area VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

		Jellystone Hillcountry VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Indian summer has arrived, and we are departing!

Our time here in Columbine, Colorado is coming to an end, as we will be on the road again on Friday October 1st.  We have really enjoyed our stay here up in the mountains, so many forest roads to explore, trails to hike and bike, we would really need many more summers here to explore all of them, but we are very happy we got to experience a small part of it!  Since we arrived in late May, we have experienced all the seasons, Winter, Spring, Summer and and fantastic Fall, looks like we will not have to experience winter again, as temps will be in the 70’s for the next few days; great packing weather!

So what next you may ask?  From here we will travel to Colorado Springs and stay with our friends Chris and Carrie for about a week, and then we will head South to Canyon Lake, Texas!  We are going back to the Jellystone campground that we worked at last summer.  We were offered a management position there, and we are excited about learning all about that aspects of campground work.  Looks like will be there for 2 years, we will still have lots to explore down there, just not many forest roads. Hitch itch will be the worst part of it, all you RV’s can understand that! 

If you have time check out our Fotki photo site, we have so many pages of photos since we have been here, look under Fulltiming 2010 and Columbine Cabins and Steamboat Springs.   Here are some views since the leaves have changed, hope you all are doing well, drop us line when you can!

 

Our 1000th Geocache!

We started geocaching back in April of 2002 just after we bought our brand new New Beetle, we had no idea how our life would change, as in the lifetime  friendships we have made with owning the car, and the adventures that geocaching would take us on.  If you are not familiar with geocaching,  it is game/hobby you can play if you own a GPS.  There are over a million caches hidden all over the world, meaning a cache can be anything from an army ammo can to a Rubbermaid plastic container to a tiny magnetic metal cylinder big enough to hold a rolled up piece of paper, and then there are some geocaches that are nothing, they are virtual, that you have to find answers to questions that are there, usually a historical marker or something of  that nature. The caches that are larger, the ammo cans, and plastic containers have a log book that you sign and will trade items inside (usually bubble gum machine trinkets), you can take something and then leave something, we have found some neat things some of the caches, but sometimes we just sign the log book and go one to the next one.   When you get home from you day of  geocaching you log on to the official geocaching web site and enter your logs, and that is what keeps track of your caches.  Geocaches will take you to places you would not think about going, whether it is just a city park a few blocks off the main road, to a forest road out in the middle of nowhere with awesome views of nature.    If you would like to find more about this fun game with your GPS, please check out their web site www.geocaching.com  it will have all the information about getting started on your new adventure! 

Our 1000th cache took us almost to the top of Hahn’s Peak (elevation 10,839), we have been wanting to hike up there since we arrived in Columbine in May. But due to dramatic change in elevation that we have been at in the past couple of years, we decided to wait until our lungs were up to speed, and that happened to be last Sunday the 15th.  It was perfect for our 1000th cache, as it was an inspiring hike up, with great views all around. We are so glad we had hiking poles as it was a very steep climb up, and going down was a test on the knees!  We came across 2 abandoned cabins, it really makes you think how hardy the pioneers were living up there and braving the elements!  Here are a few pictures from our adventure! 

 

Blink and summer may be gone!

We are finally enjoying the nice warm summer days!  Some of the forest trails in the area did not even open until July 1st, and can you guess what we were doing on July 1st, you bet we were on the KLR riding down one of those trails!    This area is really amazing, so green and lush!  To all of our Colorado friends, you must go for a drive and go 30 miles North of Steamboat Springs on Country Road 129.  If we had known about this place when we lived here, it would have been a great weekend destination! Here our some pictures of the past month on some of our adventures.  Hope everyone is having a fun summer!  Check our Fotki site for more photos!

July 1st and on the trail to California Park.  The downed tree was not a problem as we were able to ride around it, glad we were not in the car as we would of had to turn around.  Views from California Park!

Did we mention how green it is?

Yes, this is actually a marked country road, we came upon 2 young antelope running down the road in front of us.

Trip to Black Hall Mountain Lookout, only 5 miles into the trip, the road was closed, glad there was another route to take!  Still some snow up there in mid July!

No those are not ski poles, Marnie hiking down from the forest lookout tower, and a fun spot to get out the RC car, and having fun in the Bug coming down the trail!

A bit of nature along the way, don’t forget to stop and smell or photograph the flowers!

 

Out for an evening ride, only about 2 miles from the camper, views from  Hahn’s Peak