In light of my pathetically long and inexcusable silence I think it’s time for a travel synopsis of past activities to bring this blog up to date... after my last post I carried on having fun skiing and drunken shenanigans for the remainder of the winter and beginning of spring in Steamboat. These included improving my skiing enough to do black runs (for non-snow sport enthusiasts the classifications for the various runs/trails of the mountain are green=beginner/easy, blue=intermediate/more difficult, black=advanced/difficult and double black=expert/most difficult) and discovering a love of powder tree skiing which my Mum assures me is like discovering a love of lobster and French champagne, but we were blessed with a lot of lobster and French champagne skiing over the winter. This time also included my birthday (when I got a massage and thought I was made of clouds and all was right with the world for about an hour afterwards because it was so amazing) gaper day, when all the Steamboat locals and staff ski in ridiculous outfits, often with an eighties, retro ski gear flair, and go on a major pub/party crawl of the mountain which, in myself and friends case ended with climbing a fence into the outdoor hot tub area of a hotel and going in in our underwear before being gently kicked out by a kindly security guard, going skiing in Winter Park for a few days with terrain above the tree line so you’re skiing in a giant bowl of snow with incredible views, and much more.
Post winter season I embarked on a road trip,
first with my sister and parents, heading from Colorado, through Kansas to
visit friends, through Missouri where we stopped in Mark Twain’s home town of
Hannibal, through Illinois with a visit to Chicago, and into Indiana, the land
that time forgot, to visit my paternal grandparents, some of the coolest and
most delightful and amusing people I have the privilege to know. Then we headed
east, through Ohio and Pennsylvania to New Jersey to visit other family, then
up to New York for a few days (where we saw Mamma Mia on Broadway-something I’ve
wanted to do since I was a kid, it was fantastic), then back to Indiana. Then
Laura and I headed back to Chicago and there reunited with our old friend the
Greyhound bus, which took us up through Wisconsin to Minnesota, land of the
friendliest of people with one of the best and funniest accents going. We
stayed with our friend Leah (a friend from Steamboat who would also be
returning there for the summer season, as we had decided to do) and her family
for a night, then Laura, Leah and I embarked on a road trip across Minnesota,
South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and into Washington where we met our
friend Elise for Sasquatch Music Festival, a three day, four night joyous
musical extravaganza, before carrying on to Seattle to visit friends. Then
Laura, Leah and I headed down along the Washington and Oregon coast, visited
Portland, then headed back to Steamboat via Idaho, Utah and a little of
Wyoming.
During the summer season in Steamboat I
resumed my job in the cafe, plus got a second job working as a front desk
receptionist for a large vacation rental complex on the mountain. The small
portions of free time were well spent river tubing, at the pub, camping,
hiking, and going to rugby practice which I joined because it seemed like
something I would never do and why not? My friend Jo came to visit from
Australia, we befriended genuine cowboys who completely changed my outlook on
horses for the better, my friend Naomi came for her 30th birthday
celebration during which we river tubed during a thunder and lightening storm,
which I do not recommend, and I stood on a tiny, thin land bridge called the
Devil’s Causeway at 11,800 feet and looked out over the incredible Flat Tops
Wilderness Area. In other words, general merriment and good times were had by
all.
At the end of our summer season Laura and I
bawled our way out of town on a shuttle bound for Denver where we got on a
flight to Seattle. We stayed in Seattle for a couple weeks before flying back to
Australia in a higgledy piggledy, patchwork manner. Thus ‘concluded’ (it’s
never really done) our extraordinary trip.
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