Great Sand Dunes

We were already here 3 years ago in September, but... Chris' mom sent us some pictures of when the three siblings were little and they went over there on a family trip and played... with the river.
So. We had to try it too and decided to get there now in June... since the Vail weather has been lately pretty crappy... we're gonna start growing gilts and becoming amphibians, if it's gonna continue like this. And the Summer Monsoons haven't yet started!!! Ouch!!!

Pretty windy out there this time...
was throwing me off the sign!

A local Beduin...

The Beduin playing in the water

And the Beduin trying to copy beavers

Sand over sand over sand over...

Local meat

The Beduin Couple hiked onto the High Dune
(they cut our feet - again!)

There IS vegetation on the dunes... in June!

Clouds playing on the dunes

What???
Where did all these people come from???!!!???
We just went on a hike and now...!!!

Is this Lignano Beach???

Aaah!
Zapata Falls!!!
But... where's the fall???

AAAUUUCCCHHH!!!
We had to wade through the water to the falls...
(you can imagine how "warm" the water was from everybody being up on rocks!)

Zapata Falls
...worth freezing our feet off!!!
But: been there - done that-seen that
we don't need to go back without some booties!!!

And after sooo much sand,
we went to visit a tipical... well...
Redneck Place!
(look at the cool helmet this little girls has!)

They had little and BIG turtles

Snakes
from all around the world and
of any colors you can imagine

And... yep!
That's right!
GATORS!!!
[ look at my brave hubby's face ;o) ]

Country-girl in the Down-Under-Ozzie-land?

Yankee thinking how if their meat is any good to bbq...

They told us they do not sell them,
they just have them to clean up the dead tilapias.
They started a tilapia fish farm years ago and were wondering what to do with the dead fish. Somebody came up with the idea of the alligators.
At the beginning they were laughed at.
You know. Alligators in Colorado!
But they were lucky in their silliness and got an alligator farm
thanks also to a year-round warm spring that keeps them around 80F also in the snow.

Well. I know two things for sure:
#1 I won't eat tilapia fish anymore, after seeing this farm;
#2 they're not very business prone... you can make sooo many cool things!

Belts and purses and shoes and luggages and...
ok-ok, I'm just joking
don't call PETA on me
it was already enough that my out-law up in MN
had to deal with them.
He-he! ;o)

Then, they had ostriches

And emus

And more turtles and more gators
Dado! Remember the little turtles we had home as kids?
Here they were big as tricycle wheel! Not kidding!

A yak

Ducks straddling around

And...
MORRISSS - the gator!!!
Morris! Nisem znala da si tku znan tude lete!!!

After this sight-seeing,
we actually wanted to go see also the "U.F.O." place, but we agreed that
one Redneck place at the time is more than enough.
Next time we'll go over there too and let you know about it.

Stay tuned for some more movies of this trip.
Right now... gotta go!
Ciaooo!!!

Vail snow report June 16

End of the road for today.

Whoah, there is still a little snow high up! Friend Dirk Johnson and I tried to get to the good single track trails today up on Red and White after work today. We didn't even get close. We need another 10 days or so and even then we'll have to plow through some snow. We could see that it just got deeper the further we got in. We were at about 10,400 feet at this point. Al Gore would have been proud. We were on clean burning four strokes, just like Al Gore's Jet ski. We saw 6+ Elk in the woods on our way down. We couldn't see how big of a herd as they were pretty deep in the woods.

Further in the woods there was over a meter of snow. Probably 4 feet in a few places.

Oops, Chris went over the handle bars when he hit this snow pile.

We had to dig out the front tire here. Bring your shovels!

Summer Maintenance

The Ski-doo is nice and shiny, even used some armour all

We did a tiny bit of summer time maintenance on the snowmobiles. Just two of them for now. Fixed the tilt trailer, filled the tires up with air, put in stabilizer in the gas, changed chain case oil and washed everything up. Bigger project on the other sleds coming up.

Beautiful Colorado day, biking

I put on 39 miles today, almost all single track down by Eagle, CO. Trails were in great condition and the bike ran great. Still difficult to start the bike, so a friend will take a look at it next weekend.

Dirt Bike in pieces

Time for Dirt bike maintenance. The Bike is running fine but difficult to start, cleaning up the carb to see if that helps (it didn't). Time to take to mechanic perhaps.

Taking pictures so I know what hose goes where

Oh oh, sort of like a human heart, lots of ins and outs

Pics from May Ride (before Hawaii)

Dirk Johnson (friend from work) redneck with guns. I'll tell ya, nothing beats the desert. Guns, beer, tunes, dog, fire, moto-sports and donuts.