We are not done yet!

The summer presses on and we love it.  We are having a wonderful time hiking, climbing, and getting used to life at home.  This week we are taking care of Emma, Tori and Mike's dog (more Mike's probably).  We continue to have wild adventures including climbing in Clear Creek Canyon yesterday, hiking in Frisco on Saturday, an engagement party on Saturday night, and soccer on Sunday.  We are keeping busy and not looking forward too much to school yet--but soon.

  

Clean at Last!

Laura and I jumped on the "opportunity" to have our carpets cleaned for free!  We were skeptical at first but they came out looking beauty.  Laura also developed a quick crush on our new vacuum--she has named it "little lover".

We are now almost completely settled in (I was fine after the hang board was up but Laura insists on moving the rest of her stuff in!) and starting to resume our normal Colorado activities.  We've hiked, I've biked, we even went and saw DARK KNIGHT--best picture of the year by the way.  One of our favorite activities that we've resumed is our cooking.  We made some sushi today and had some wonderful curry a couple of days ago (Thanks again Kate and Ben), and last night we had a brilliant modified Rachel Ray chicken parmesan.

  

Home Improvement

It turns out that curtains heighten rooms, shelving adds a lot more space, and a little money can go a long way--who knew?  Yes, Laura and I have been adjusting the space in the condo and in the process we've made some great improvements and TOTALLY TRASHED Zachis'/Nick's/Allison's room.

  

Last night we went for a hike with Burke and Tiffany in bear country.  Guapa was much better behaved than she has been in the past with Daisy and the new one Willow.  We toured the trails just above Boulder but eventually the sun set and we were still hiking.  We finally made it down without incident but Laura and Tiffany were a bit skittish due to recent bear sitings--of course Burke and I were manly men with nerves of steel.

Back in Colorado

So we're back in Colorado and loving it.  We had our first run in with the monster we call altitude this afternoon at only 12,900 ft.  We wanted to hike a bit and decided to go to Mt. Evans (with no ambitions of summitting) to walk around.  Soon we realized that our conversation had skidded to a halt--literally we were talking 3 times slower than normal and repeating ourselves every few minutes.  Laura mentioned that she felt "drunk" and I was little better.  Guapa on the other hand was bounding everywhere chasing anything that moved.  We turned around quite quickly and headed for safer elevations!  Hopefully we'll be at the top of a Fourteener soon!

Lewis and Clark

We arrived back in St. Louis and Laura took me to a few of the essential stops--we took a tour of the OTHER Brewery (don't worry I'll still tap the Rockies every time!), we looked around Sulard, and saw the first courthouse where Dred Scott began his lawsuit.  Finally we went to the spectacular ARCH.  I didn't realize that there was a whole museum underneath the thing!  With this realization Laura and I also realized that we were out of time in St. Louis--but wait--what did we need to so urgently get home for?  NOTHING!  We stayed an extra day and played at the museums in STL.  Check out our PICS.

Booyah.

Ozarks

Laura and I have now experienced the hills of Missouri and the Ozarks and got to see everything except for our very own inbred dueling banjo show.  It was a wonderful trip even if I felt like we were about to be shot through the back with an arrow.  The floats were wonderful and camping was fun.  Guapa seemed to enjoy it until about 5:00 a.m. when she decided she'd had enough and tore through (literally) our tent in hot pursuit of a squirrel.

  

  

  

Back in Saint LOUIE

Laura and I are re-visiting the Hinkson household after a fun time visiting Grandma and Grandpa Manker in C-ville and enjoyed our visit with Willie Bobo and Jen.  We did it right in Northwest Indiana going out in Bobo's boat and swimming with Guapa in the warmth of the steel plant hotness.

Arriving in Crawfordsville late, we toured Wabash and then crashed for the night.  We woke up in the morning and perfected our golf swings watching Grandpa's home videos from the 40's and 50's.  We ate lunch at Rancho Bravo (thanks G&G!) and then did some lawn work and left for Saint Louie.

Welcome Colorado Fans!

This is our happy Blog.  We are happy to begin it.  It has been conceived and created in Grand Rapids, Michigan to chronicle our travels across the country.  Today little Sis and B.B. are heading back to Utah and Zachis has just gone to Indiana (who knows why) to begin his road trip.  Laura and I are going to take off tomorrow to visit G&G Manker in Crawfordsville.  Look at our PICS!