All good things must come to an end...

January 2nd was the last day of my Christmas vacation. We decided to squeeze a little more fun out of the holiday with a day trip to Moab, and we were delighted when our biking buddies Max, Maria, and Nico were able to come along. We went to an old favorite trail, Klondike Bluffs.

It's not a hard ride and it has some interesting features that make it a great ride. You start off on a dirt road, but before you get too far you get sucked in by a horrible sand trap. You're riding along and the bike gets slower and slower, the front wheel starts to swim around, and inevitably you're off the bike, trudging ankle deep in fine soft sand. Then there's another sand trap, but after that the surface is good.

The road winds along among squatty humps of red rock and then you get to the big rock slab. The entire slab is sloped, making for a gentle but constant climb; traction on the rock is outstanding. It's a big white rock, wrinkled with seams and pocked with craters, so that you might think for a moment that you're riding on the surface of the moon. In fact, Chris and I have ridden this trail at night under a full moon, with the white rock taking on a silvery glow while everything else disappeared in shadow.

Another cool feature about this rock - and the best part of the ride, if you ask Cailan - is the set of dinosaur footprints. There are many very distinct three-toed prints, maybe about 15 inches long to the end of the middle toe. Cailan had some ideas about which Jurassic carnivore might have made the prints, but I don't know what dinosaur was actually responsible.

After climbing maybe 2 miles on the rock slab, you're out on another dirt road, and spend another mile or so alternating rock and dirt. When the road ends, there's a bit of singletrack that climbs pretty steeply along the north-facing side of a hill. On this trip, much of it was covered with snow. We all did some pushing through the snow, but there were also parts we could ride.

Then the trail ends at a bike ride, which looks a little out of place this far out in the middle of the desert. The bike trail ends because this is the border of Arches National Park: no bikes allowed. But a quarter-mile hike over more of the white slabby rock brings you to an overlook with an amazing view. You sit on the white rock, which just in front of you drops away to form the walls of a sort of cul-de-sac canyon. On the far side of the drop of is more white rock and behind that the orangey red rock formations of Arches and behind that the snowy tops of the La Sal mountains. Ravens and swallows soar and swoop in the canyon as you eat a snack and soak up the sunshine and the brilliant sky.

The return trip is mostly downhill. On the way down the white rock becomes snow, and your bike can carve beautiful turns this way and that as you descend. And even though the temperature was just above 40 degrees, a certain member of our party couldn't resist the temptation of a pothole filled with melted snow:

After the ride we drove into Moab and gorged ourselves at Pasta Jay's, one of the only restaurants that stays open all day during the winter slow season. Then we had to hurry home so Chris and I could get to a dance rehearsal. The sun painted us a glorious goodbye in the rearview mirror as it settled below the red rocks.

Sledding

Here's a little post-holiday Rorschach test: what do you see in this image?

Those red squiggles represent 3 adults, 2 little boys, 4 sleds, a sunny winter day, and two-and-a-half hours of snowy fun! Chris, Cailan, and I went up to Grand Mesa with our friends Maria and Max to go sledding. Just for kicks, I wore my GPS watch to track our action. It's pretty funny to watch it in the player.

We got Cailan a blue sled for Christmas. He'd never been sledding before so he didn't really know what to expect. We weren't sure, either. Three winters ago, Cailan didn't want to even walk on snow, even with boots on. Last winter, we had to cut a snowshoeing trip short because just the act of putting on a stiff, puffy coat sent him into unstoppable tears. This year, we got new boots, snow bibs, and a nice coat that seems both warm and comfortable, plus some mittens with a really long cuff to minimize the gap between mitten and sleeve. He was all set, but would he like it?

The answer is: yes! He liked sledding, whether it was in a sled with Chris or me or Maria, or in a sled with both Maria and Max, or on a solo trip! He liked it when the sled stopped halfway down the hill, when it whizzed all the way to the trees, and even when it capsized!

He was less enthusiastic about trudging up the hill after each trip down. Sometimes he would have to stop and take a break, or eat some snow, or lie on his belly and wriggle like an eel.

All winter Cailan has been interested in building a snow cave or a snow tunnel. The snow yesterday wasn't quite deep enough for a good snow tunnel but Chris did manage to construct a pretty good cave, just the right size for a six-year-old boy, or a rare Blue-coated Snow Goby.

Merry Christmas!

It has been a fantastic Christmas day!

First, Cailan got to look in his stocking:

Then we had the traditional Christmas breakfast burritos (what? it takes more than one year to make a tradition?) and opened more presents. Cailan got some really cool stuff, like this dinosaur game from Jim and Emiko:

And these insect robots from Shaun, Cindy, Abbey, and Quinn:

And a huge bag of animals from all different time periods and places, from Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Nick:

And some books from Grandma Bobbie:

Utah got a bright new collar from IMBA, partly made from recycled bicycle innertubes. We took off his old collar and put the new one on him. Utah promptly picked up the collar and shook it at Chris - his way of requesting that we go out for a bike ride. He kept following Chris around shaking the collar, so he ended up wearing both the old one and the new one.

Then it was time to play with all the new toys. Here's some insect-bots buzzing around in their habitat. We turned them loose inside Cailan's new blue toboggan too; they had lots of room to roam there.

Cailan made many different scenes from his new set of animals: a safari scene, a farm scene, an ocean scene, an above the water scene, a Cretaceous scene, and this Jurassic scene:

Cailan likes to zoom in on his scenes.

Now he's dominating the landscape:

After playing ourselves into a frenzy, we had a minor meltdown when Cailan realized his new Christmas money would give him enough to buy the Triops kit he'd been saving for but he wouldn't be able to go to the toy store TODAY to buy it. "But we HAVE to go today!" "I'm sorry, Cailan, the toy store is closed so all the employees can spend Christmas with their families." "But you have to call them and tell them that I need to buy those Triops!" The only remedy was the application of hugs followed by an emergency dose of lunch.

And then it was time to bundle up and go out for a bike ride at Rustler's Loop. Cailan wore his pajamas, snow bibs, and winter coat, with my balaclava under his helmet. Chris and I would actually be generating some body heat so we didn't have to dress quite so warmly.

It was a perfect December day.  There was a tiny bit of snow on the trail, just enough to look pretty but not so much as to interfere with traction.

The four of us rode one lap of the 3.75 mile loop, then Cailan and I played at the trailhead while Chris and Utah did a second loop.  We brought three of Cailan's new tyrannosaurs and made dino tracks in the snow and sand and took turns hiding them for the other to find.  We saw some friends at the trailhead, and they invited us over for some snacks after the ride.  We were happy to go - especially Cailan, who was excited to see their chickens again.  He even got to gather some eggs from the coop and feed the chickens.

Now we're at home, full of dinner, in our pajamas, playing some Endless Ocean.  Soon we'll head to Cailan's room to read a chapter of Harry Potter.  Merry Christmas, everyone!

Project done

Finished the patio cover this weekend.  Just in time for a round of unseasonably cool weather.  Still, it was nice to finish my birthday by completing a project and having a glass of wine on our patio.

If you look closely you can see the actual wine on the table!

We put the shade fabric up on top. This intrigued Cailan who had wondered how a few sticks were going to make shade. He and Grandma had been walking around saying "there will be good shade as long as you stay under those little sticks." They thought that was pretty funny.

We planted a couple of new things to help the space out a bit. We put a honeysuckle by the post, which will hopefully grow up the structure and attract lots of humming birds. Since it was one of our projects, we had to ad a touch of unusual to it. We took an idea we used on our fence in Tacoma and elaborated on it to make two privacy panels with a flowering vine cutout.

We're very happy with the way they turned out. Heather and Cailan made the design and I got to do the jigsaw work.

Here's Cailan already at play in the new area! He has evidently decided that with the privacy screens in place, the patio is an acceptable "no pants" zone.

Shade seekers

Overall we love our house on the park, but there have always been a couple places that we've found a little lacking: there is no basement, which means there's minimal storage space, and there is no good spot for outdoor dining or even just hanging out in the back yard.  We have a sun porch off the dinding room, but the floor of it slopes badly, so putting our picnic table there didn't work.  Also, it gets pretty darn hot there in the middle of summer.  The sun porch opens onto a concrete patio but that too is blazing hot on a summer afternoon.  We've talked about demolishing the slanty sun porch and replacing it with a deck, but we actually get some use out of it as a play room. We've talked about replacing the flower bed on the west side of the sun porch with a patio, where we could take advantage of the shade from the big honey locust tree. And we've talked about building a cover over the existing patio.  The last option makes the best use of the existing structures and the yard, so that's what we decided to do.

During the early spring, we drew up plans and made lists of materials, but as soon as the weather got nice we were too eager to hit the trails to spend time on building projects.  The last weekend in April, however, is the Fruita Fat Tire Festival, an annual event that draws thousands of mountain bikers to the local trails.  The thought of fighting those crowds gave us an incentive to take a biking break and work on our patio instead.  This is how we spent the weekend: