Sand Dunes and Wild Horses

Last weekend, Ryan and I made the journey to Mosca, CO to the Great Sand Dune National Park. Several people had suggested that we go and see the giant sand dunes nested in the mountains there.

love this cloud. 

artsy pic

The Dunes were enormous and seemed so out of place in front of such picturesque mountains. As the legend goes/Wikipedia says:

"The dunes were formed from sand and soil deposits of the Rio Grande and its tributaries, flowing through the San Luis Valley. Over the ages, westerly winds picked up sand particles from the river flood plain. As the wind lost power before crossing the Sangre de Cristo Range, the sand was deposited on the east edge of the valley. This process continues, and the dunes are slowly growing. The wind changes the shape of the dunes daily."

Pretty interesting. God is so creative.

On Friday afternoon, we set out to climb to the highest part of the dunes. As soon as our feet hit the sand, we realized it was probably not going to be the easiest hike of our lives. There were spots in the sand where our feet would sink to our ankles with each step, while other portions were packed and easier to climb. It was a long haul up to the top. The highest dune is about 750 ft high and we are pretty sure the one we climbed was 650. 

Mountains behind the dunes.

The sun coming through the clouds onto the valley was beautiful.

please note the amount of sand that blew into Ry's hair at the top. 

He's pretty happy about it. 

Coming down off the dunes was easily the most fun part of the process. It was really fun to sprint down the side of the dunes barefoot. It was almost 6p.m. when we came down so the sand was almost cool, whereas they say it can get as hot as 140 degrees in the middle of the day.

I realize I look like a crazy person here, but please note how far down my left ankle is in the sand.

We camped out with a great view of the dunes from our campsite on Friday night. On Saturday, we decided we may never climb the dunes again unless we had sleds to ride back down on.

With this in mind and the rest of the weekend left, we decided to see what we thought about New Mexico.  Ryan researched Taos, NM on his phone and decided that might be our best bet distance-wise with some things we could do.

New Mexico was full of pueblo buildings and the attractions we saw were a bit anti-climatic, but we only have Taos to go by. We did eat some delicious authentic New Mexican food on saturday including  sopapillas and honey. That was easily our best meal all weekend. Our other NM highlight was seeing this:

This is the view from the Rio Grand Gorge Bridge. I was freaking out a little from how high it was and from how the bridge shook when cars drove over. I kept about 2 feet between me and the railing at all times. Eek. It was a long way down. About 650 feet to be exact. 

Even though we did not find the adventure in Taos that we were hoping for,we did see WILD HORSES running along the highway on our way back to Denver on Sunday! We had seen the sign on our way to Taos, but assumed there was no way we would actually see wild horses running around. It was amazing! A whole herd of them, precious babies included, ran across the highway and then ran through the field beside us. They were gorgeous and we were so shocked that we did not get any pictures. If you are wondering what this looked like, I googled wild horses in CO and this is pretty much exactly what we saw. I loved how they kicked up so much dust.

This weekend we are traveling to Breckenridge and Golden to watch the bike race that is coming through Colorado right now. If you know about Ryan's love for the Tour de France, this makes perfect sense.

In other news, I started subbing this week and I am scheduled to sub every day this week, with many days in the coming weeks already booked! I prayed to get a couple days in this week since school just started and God answered exceedingly, abundantly more than I asked! I am so very thankful. 

Thanks for reading! 

Timeline

I'm a failure at blogging...

I have accepted this fact. I think about blogging often and what I want to say, but I rarely seem to get here with that information.

Since I have about 4 months worth of info to get through, I figured I would do kind of a picture timeline catch-up from the spring/summer.

As most of you know, Ryan and I spent the summer in Nashville where Ryan did an internship at a law firm downtown. I spent my summer helping CCC (the preschool where I used to work) move from one building to a much nicer one down the road.  I had so much fun spending time with all of the ladies at CCC and it was a perfect way to work through the summer. Not to mention, I really enjoyed getting to spend time with this little chunker. Meet Paisley Lane Weakley. I miss her terribly.

We had a great summer and this blog post is really only skimming the surface of all the fun we had with friends and family.

We will begin in:

May  

 

On May 21st, Mom and Dad flew to Denver to spend a couple of days with us before we made the journey back to Nashville. We took them many places, but none were as memorable as our day at the National Park. This was taken at Bear Lake. The lake and the trails around it had about a 6 foot base of snow around them so that made for a slippery trek around.



I adore these people.

This guy is alright too.



So Dad was stepping back to take a picture for us and found himself buried waist high in some loose snow. I'm surprised as hard as we were laughing that I was able to even take a picture. It was pretty hysterical.



These are the foot/leg prints dad left in the snow.

 

Another indicator of how high the snow actually was in May.



 Moving on...

On the evening of May 22, a couple of days before we headed back to Nashville, Dallas got back from a school trip to China. He texted Ryan and told him to get on ichat....little did we know it was to tell us that he had just PROPOSED TO LANDIS! What a wonderful surprise! Since Dallas teases me incessantly, I didn't really believe it at first. After we realized that they were telling the truth, I went into full surprise/joy/tears mode. This picture is only slightly embarrassing...



  

Here is the happy engaged couple!





Here they are showing the ring to Bill and Jill. Please note Bill's wild hair.

That brings us to July?....Somehow I can't find any pictures of anything from June. June was a very fun and busy month though! I'm sure someone has pictures, but I don't have any on my computer so I will note some fun things I remember:

Simmons Family trip to Atlanta over Memorial Day

Babysitting Andrew Parnell - what a cutie pie!

Oh! Here is something I do have a picture of:

Some of the Simmons crew got to go hang out with this guy one day!

Keith was doing a run-through of his upcoming tour for "friends and family" and we got to go! There were only about 200 or so people there so we stood in the very front. It was pretty fabulous.

July

Ryan and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a weekend trip to Denver.

Beautiful Breckenridge! Ryan and I spent one day walking around Breckenridge during our Anniversary weekend. It was such a gorgeous day and the scenery was pretty amazing as well.

My first concert at Red Rocks was a memorable experience. It is so beautiful there and if you look closely, you can see it is storming in the distance over downtown Denver.  The Avett Brothers were pretty awesome as well.



Another cool view from our seats at Red Rocks.

This is an ice cream place that Ryan and I stumbled upon in downtown Denver while we were walking around. I thought it was so charming and fun.

New York City Trip

Long story short, Landis and I were trying to get tickets to Regis and Kelly and sent many letters and postcards requesting them. We had kinda given up hope that we would get any tickets until Landis got a letter in the mail on July 12 saying we had two tickets to the August 1 show! We immediately planned a quick overnight trip to NYC! We made a list of all the things we wanted to do and see in our brief trip and made sure to make a stop for dessert at Serendipity. It did not disappoint.

This is us in line waiting to get into the show. We were able to walk over to the studio from our hotel early that morning, Starbucks in hand of course!

Here she is in all her glory....I believe this is when she was telling a hilarious story about being mistaken for Heidi Klum in a donut shop.

Josh Groban was her co-host since Regis was out. He was pretty dreamy and even sang to the crowd during a commercial. It was pretty incredible.

 We almost got yelled at for taking this picture because they were trying to clear everyone out and we were trying to stay to meet Kelly and Josh.

After 2 hours of waiting after the show and lurking Kelly's driver until he picked her up.....WE GOT TO MEET KELLY! She was headed to spin class, how perfect! She was so nice and friendly.  She must've known how much we love her!

We were running short on time after waiting so long to meet Kelly, so we took a bike tour of Central Park to make note of all the spots to visit in the future. Our guide was a jokester but he told us all about all of the stars who live in New York and showed us all of the famous movie spots.

The fountain behind us is famous for many reasons, but it seems fitting to mention that this is the fountain that Santa's sleigh hits on the way into Central Park in the movie Elf.

After our whilrlwingd trip to NYC, Landis and I headed to the airport to catch two flights to get us to the Simmons in Kiawah, SC. We ended up delayed there for about 5 hours longer than expected and more Laguardia chaos than we bargained for, but we made friends with a pilot and a couple of families along the way. It was quite an adventure.



I was pretty happy to see this guy.



The Simmons Ladies with our yummy root beer floats and milkshakes.

One of my favorite parts about the Kiawah trip was daily bike rides with these jokers. The Captin is as fast as the wind on a bike!

If you couldn't tell, it was REALLY hot.

We were so blessed to get such a busy and fun summer with so many people we love! We are settled back into our apartment in Denver and Ryan started classes this week. We are not wasting any time getting back to our Colorado Adventures. This weekend we are headed to camp at Great Sand Dunes National Park. Should be fun!