Fall is Here!!

Wow you guys, it is soooooo Fall!!  It has been downright chilly here!  I've had to wear sweaters!  I had to put an extra blanket on our bed! I'm so excited that my favorite season is finally here.

With all of the Colorado trip posts, I didn't get a chance to tell you some of the stuff we've been up to (aside from having our tree removed, of course). One thing that we recently did was go to our friend Big Mike's opera!  He does a yearly opera as part of Philadelphia's Fringe Festival, and it's always SO GOOD. This year's was especially good, and it was such a unique experience! This year's opera was titled Shadow House, and it took place at Philadelphia's historic Powel House (built in 1765). It was a very immersive experience, as there were no seats for this performance... The audience was asked to wander around the house and it was kind of a "choose your own adventure" experience. There were many different storylines going on at once all over the house, and almost all of the characters were people that had actually lived in the Powel House during its history. So the performances explained the lives of these people that had lived there... and most of the characters were supposed to be ghosts of the actual people that had lived there and they're re-enacting events that happened there. The stories and time periods all overlap and mingle, and it was completely fascinating and awesome. Oh, and the actors occasionally interact with the audience! Michael (in character, of course) asked McGee to have a drink of whiskey with him (and McGee of course agreed... for the sake of the performance, of course! ;-) ). And at one point one of the characters asked me who I was and also "when" it was. At first I didn't know if I was supposed to answer her, but she kept staring at me so I answered her! It was such a unique and amazing show... We wished we could see it a few more times so that we could experience different parts of the storylines!

Here's a picture I took during our walk to the Powel House for the show. It was such a beautiful night in Philly! Oh and we had cheesesteaks from Campo's for dinner, so you know I was happy about that!

I did not take this picture... but here's the outside of The Powel House! 

Here's Michael!  And yes, he ACTUALLY plays the accordion (in addition to being an amazing opera singer). He's quite skilled.

I think he's been barefoot in every show I've ever seen him in... Haha :) 

The couple that's dancing was part of the show, of course. And then those people standing by the window were part of the audience. 

Such a pretty house! 

Another thing going on is that deer are going NUTS in our neighborhood right now!!  They are everywhere, and they really seem to love our yard. I have seen them in our yard every single day for the past week or two (and usually multiple times per day). Earlier today when I took Guinness out to go to the bathroom, there was a deer standing about 8 feet from us, just munching away on some of the plants in our yard. It didn't mind us being there at all!  I think they've determined that we aren't a threat, so they're pretty chill. I took a few pictures earlier this week, so I thought I'd post a few! 

And other than that, I've just been working a LOT. Everyone from my work seems to be either on maternity leave, on vacation, or at a conference... so me and one other person are trying to keep things afloat. It's madness, and I'm having to do a lot of managerial-type duties that I am not enjoying at all. 

McGee is currently on a trip to Oktoberfest with Big Mike and Timmy, so it's just me and Guinness! Here are some adorable pictures of Guinness from this week: 

This is him staring at me when he wants to go outside and play (or go for a walk). 

This is how he slept for quite awhile today, and he was SNORING so loudly! He never snores... but he did today. Oh and he's laying on some notes that I needed, but I didn't want to wake him up.. haha. 

I hope everything is going great for all of you!  And Happy Fall!! 

Colorado Part 4 (the last one!): Estes Park

Day 7 (Friday 9/9): We started our day off by enjoying our campsite at Rocky Mountain National Park! We didn't have to "check-out" until 11am, and we really wanted to have a nice relaxing morning to continue to enjoy it. So we made a campfire, we made breakfast, and we MAY have made a few s'mores too... It was a nice peaceful morning, and we took our time breaking camp too and packing up our car. It was a lovely way to start the day! After we were all packed up, we drove around the park looking for wildlife! We did see an elk, but we didn't have a ton of luck finding wildlife, so we decided that the next morning we'd wake up nice and early and come back to look for more.

I think this was from the prior day, but I just found this on our camera so I thought I'd post it!

Kevin took this while I was sitting at our table enjoying the view. We just couldn't get used to those amazing views! 

Here's the elk we saw! He was resting.

Here's a picture that's a little closer! They're SO huge, and SO amazing.

After we'd driven around a bit, we drove just outside the park to Estes Park! This is where The Stanley Hotel is, and this is where we would be staying for the next two nights. It's the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining (he stayed here), and it's supposedly quite haunted. For the movie The Shining, Stanley Kubrick chose NOT to film at this hotel, which upset Stephen King quite a bit... So years later Stephen King made a miniseries of The Shining and that was filmed at The Stanley. We had a tour that first day, and they went over the history of The Stanley which was SO interesting. I won't bore you with it, but I'll just say it was built in 1909 by F.O. Stanley (inventor of the Stanley Steamer, among many other things) when he moved to Estes Park, CO because of his tuberculosis. His doctor had told him the elevation and freshy, dry air of the Rocky Mountains would be good for his condition, so he moved there with his wife, and shortly after that had the hotel built so that their friends and family could come stay for long periods of time.  There's lots more history, but I don't want to bore you guys with it!  It was a really cool tour, and we got to see a lot of the hotel. We had a very relaxing day/evening! Here are some pictures of the hotel: 

Here's a Stanley Steamer! A steam-powered car... super cool.

Here's the staircase down from our room! That woman on the right side of the picture is Fiona Stanley, and I think she totally looks like Benedict Cumberbatch in that picture.

Here's the other side of the staircase... That is F.O. Stanley on the far right. 

Here's the front of the hotel! 

Another view of the front of the hotel. 

Day 8 (Saturday 9/10): We woke up suuuuuper early and drove the 20 minutes to get into Rocky Mountain National Park again so we could look for wildlife! And my goodness did we see a LOT of elk!!  They were everywhere! We didn't see any other wildlife, but I was so happy and excited to see (and hear) so many elk! It was super cool, and we took a bunch of pictures: 

These two were fighting! It was amazing to watch. 

This male elk on the right kept herding his ladies! Whenever one would separate he'd chase it back.

The ladies! (and some kiddos too) 

He's chasing the ladies back to their group! 

He was bugling to the ladies!! He kept getting mad at them when they'd try to run.

Here's all the ladies grouped together

And here's the grumpy dude that wouldn't let them go anywhere.

The rest of our day was spent driving around the area, and then also wandering around the city of Estes Park and also the grounds of the hotel. We had a late night ghost tour of the hotel (we HAD to do the cheesy tourist stuff since we were there!!) and it was actually really cool. It wasn't one of those awful ghost tours where they're like, "Did you hear that??" etc (I hate those!)... It was just telling some of the stories of what had happened there, and some of the stuff that people had experienced. It was good and creepy, and it was also just really cool to see so much more of the hotel. It was the perfect way to spend our last night there! We left early the next morning to catch a flight home. SUCH an awesome trip!  

Our Tree

I'd like to take a little pause from the Colorado trip posts to give you an update on our big ol' tree!  The landscaping company is right at this moment in the middle of their 2nd day working on the tree, and right now they're working on grinding the stump down. They arrived yesterday morning around 8am, and by yesterday evening the majority of the tree was down but most of it was laying in huge logs on our lawn. And WOW did our front lawn get messed up from the crane they had to bring in! Thanks to some rain we'd had on Monday the ground was nice and soft, and the crane just sunk into our lawn and we now have huge divots and sunken areas. It kind of sucks, and it definitely bummed us out last night. Oh, and they also broke the wire for our invisible dog fence that was buried around the perimeter of our lawn. We talked with them this morning (they arrived again at 8am, so they're 4 hours in right now), and they said they're going to fix both of those things when they're finished today. They hadn't repaired anything last night because they still need to drive on our lawn a lot more today... so... Yikes. I'm really hoping it looks miraculously better when they're finished!  The great news though is that our house is completely unharmed (whew!) so it's all just landscaping/yard issues. Here are some pictures:

Here it is!  And they took all smaller branches and chunks of the trunk with them, so these are just all of the massive pieces that they still need to deal with. Oh and you can see Guinness and McGee in this one for some scale. 

Here's another view of the pile... And you can see some torn up grass just behind Guinness

Here you can see the sawdust all over the roof, and you can see the stump still there to the right of our house. 

Here's our messed up lawn... I don't know if you can tell how sunken in this whole area is. It dropped like 3 or 4 inches at least.. And if your eyesight is really great you can see the bright green wire that is our invisible dog fence... It snapped in a few different places. 

You can kinda see some more tracks all over the lawn... and that poor azalea bush to the right of our front window got pretty obliterated. 

And here's a "before" from last Fall (I'd posted a few in a previous post) just in case you want to be reminded of what the tree looked like: 

Turns out it was approximately 122 feet tall. Crazy. 

 We don't have to worry about that tree dropping limbs onto our house anymore though! Whew!

Colorado Part 3: Rocky Mountain National Park!!

Day 5 (Wednesday, 9/7): You guys, Rocky Mountain National Park is AMAZING!!!!  We absolutely loved it. There was so much to see and do, and our campsite was also amazing. When we arrived there on Wednesday morning, we were too early to go to our campsite so we decided to drive on Trail Ridge Road (awesome views the whole time!) to the Alpine Visitor Center to get situated. It also has the distinction of being the visitor center with the highest elevation in the nation! It is at 11,796 feet, and WOW do you feel it! We spent a bit of time at the visitor center and then we hiked a nearby trail to a tundra area!  I was so excited to see the alpine tundra, and it was even cooler than I had expected. These delicate little plants (you can't step on them or you'd kill them!) are the only thing that can grow at that high elevation. There are absolutely no trees, and when we hiked to a nice viewpoint we could look down at lower elevations and see right where the treeline was in the park, and that's the highest elevation that trees were capable of growing! The tundra area was really cool, and hiking was HARD due to the elevation!  You can also see in the pictures that there were bits of snow on some of the mountains!

That sign says elevation 12,005 feet!! There's the tundra!

There's some snow! 

I tried to get an up-close picture of the tundra so you could see the tiny plants!

Here's the Alpine Visitor Center!

 After hiking through the tundra, we continued driving on Trail Ridge Road until we got to the Continental Divide! This is the hydrological dividing line where water on one side drains into the Atlantic Ocean and water on the other side drains to the Pacific Ocean. Pretty cool! After this stop, we continued driving around and enjoying all of the crazy views! We stopped at a lot of viewpoints along the way to enjoy the scenery.

It was just a little bit windy!  Haha! 

My handsome husband!

After lots of driving around looking at amazing things and doing a few small hikes, we drove to our campsite! It was awesome, and the views were incredible. We also had total privacy from any neighbors! It was so relaxing and peaceful. Oh, another INCREDIBLE thing that I'd been really excited about was the elk!!  They are far cooler than I'd even imagined (pictures will be in the next post), and their calls sound amazing. We could hear them calling to each other while we were going to sleep that night! SO cool. 

This is the view from our campsite! Not too shabby, eh?

We both spent a LOT of time relaxing in this hammock just enjoying the view (and some beers). It's so darn comfortable, and it has these elastic bands that go around the trees that make sure there's absolutely no harm/damage to the trees. Plus, it packs up into a teeny tiny little bag so it's super handy for travel! 

There's our little tent and our amazing view of the Rocky Mountains! 

Day 6 (Thursday 9/8): We woke up bright and early and got an early start on hiking! We hiked to some lakes on this day. The main lakes were Emerald Lake and Bear Lake, but on the way to Emerald Lake we also saw Nymph Lake and Dream Lake. We had an amazing day, and I'll just post a bunch of pictures! We didn't hear any elk that night because turns out there were coyotes in our campground so the elk stayed far away.

Emerald Lake! 

This was Nymph Lake!  It had lots of lily pads. 

This was Bear Lake!