Seedlings-Starting over

So, 2 days after my seeds were supposed to sprout, and I still see nothing. I have a feeling my seeds rotted in the potting soil... So I returned to Lowes for more supplies and started over. This time I used seed starting pucks made of peat moss, and a mini greenhouse! These ones had better grow!
I also bought a Growums stirfry veggie growing kit, which I believe is marketed towards kids, but whatever. It includes bok choy, carrots, and snow peas!

Still no seedlings...

My tomato and pepper seeds were supposed to sprout yesterday... Still nothing. I'm starting to think (because of some things I read yesterday) that I shouldn't have planted them in potting soil like I did. I should have used special seed starting soil... But I'm not giving up on them yet! I saw an idea on pinterest to make a mini green house with a pop bottle. So I'm gonna try that with a couple pots and see if it helps. If I have no seedlings in the next couple days, I will start over :(
Also as seen on pinterest, I'm trying to grow a new celery plant from a very shriveled stump that I pulled out of my crisper! We'll see how that goes...

Broccoli

I started my broccoli indoors today! According to sprout robot, my tomatoes and peppers should be sprouting today. But so far, I don't see anything but soil...

Gardening!

To quote one of my favourite Kristin Wiig SNL characters: "Lets see…Yard gloves…tomato seeds…fertilizer… Hey, Pat Sajack, I’ll solve the puzzle! Gardening!"
That's right, I've decided to start a veggie garden this summer! And to help me get started,  I found this great site called Sprout Robot which tells you what to plant and when, according to where you live! It told me to start my tomatoes and bell peppers indoors last week. Which is exactly what I did! Now I'm waiting for the little darlings to sprout! I'll be posting about my gardening experiences throughout the summer! I'm very excited to see how green my thumb is! 

Winter Wonderland

We've been pretty busy the last month or so, mostly with skiing and snowboarding! It's been exactly what I imagined living in Colorado would be like. Getting lots of great snow, and going to the hills as much as possible.
The two main hills that we've been hitting up are Copper Mountain and Winter Park. We've had some great days at both places (if you forget about the terrible traffic going through Denver).

Winter Park

A couple weeks ago we went up to Steamboat Springs for a few days, and had a blast! We were surprised by a dumping of fresh powder on our first day. It was so light and fluffy! Then the next morning we woke up to another 10 inches! We were hitting some untouched runs, knee-deep in snow! It was awesome. By the third day, we were pretty wiped and there was no fresh snow (we had gotten quite spoiled by this time) so we made a day of skiing our way from bar to bar on the hill. There happened to be a rugby match on at the last lodge, so we camped out there until closing time! All in all, a great time!

Fresh Powder at Steamboat Springs

Steamboat

I hadn't even gotten fully unpacked from that trip, when Ty's friend invited us on a  Summit Hut trip to do some back country skiing/riding! We, of course, jumped at the opportunity! I finally got to test out my new snowshoes! We drove out to the Breckenridge area where we parked and hiked to the cabin with all our gear on our backs. It was about a 40 minute hike uphill. We shared the cabin with a group of about 20 people. It was a great time. All three days there were spent trekking out to the surrounding hills to do some back country riding. This was my first back country experience. Being at 11,360 ft altitude in a foot of fresh snow, the 20 minutes of hard work it takes to get to the top sort of overpowers the fun you have in the 30 seconds it takes to ride down. But those 30 seconds are still a lot of fun! By the third trip down, I'm thinking "that was fun, I wanna do it again.... But there's no way I'm climbing up there again." Then at the end of the trip we got to ride back down the trail to our car!

Snowshoeing with the board on my back pack

Gorgeous views

All our tracks

The Incline

 On American Thanksgiving Day, we decided a fun morning activity would be to hit up the Incline in Manitou Springs. It's a mile long trail up 2000 vertical feet of stairs made from old railway ties (there used to be rails and a train that took tourists up... now you gotta climb it by foot). It's a pretty popular trail in the area. We were surprised to see how many people were there on Thanksgiving Morning. We met one man at the bottom who drives an hour each day to climb it twice! Once was enough for the day for me!
I knew it was going to be challenging, but whew! It was so tough! I was completely winded the whole way up. I had to stop countless times to catch my breath. It's strange when you're moving as slowly as possible and still hardly able to breath. Needless to say, when we finally reached the top (in 59 minutes) it was a great feeling of accomplishment!
After enjoying a small snack, and taking a few photos, we started our leisurely descent to the parking lot on the Barr Trail. If we were to have gone the other way on this trail it would have taken us to the top of Pike's Peak. But we didn't have 16 hours to spare for the round trip, so we'll save that adventure for another day (or weekend)!

At the bottom

we don't know what we're getting in to

Feeling good!

Struggle Street

Trying desperately to keep up with Ty

we did it!

finally at the top

view from the top

Ty enjoying the view from the edge

goofing around

taking our time to descend

The Barr Trail

taking in the views

King of the World

Hiking Mays Peak

 Last week our hike was to Mays Peak. It was a nice hike with some great views of the city, of course.

 Parking Lot

We walked up a closed section of High Drive to reach the trail

view

trail

The view of the Broadmoor Resort

more of the view

View of Garden of the Gods