Leadville, here we come!

We’ve been home for nearly three months now. It’s been a mix a relaxing and anxiety inducing. On one hand it’s nice to be stationary for a change. It’s nice to know how the shower works, know what we are going to eat for breakfast, watch American TV, go grocery shopping, sleep in the same bed from more than three nights, and it’s wonderful to see familiar faces.

On the other hand, upon our return, we were homeless, jobless, carless (not careless, although some would argue that to be true) 30-somethings with no clue what to do next. Three months later, we are still pretty clueless, but we have made some progress. Our to-do list has quickly grow to four pages and every time we check something off, we add two more. To our delight, we have successfully bought a car, got cell phones, and Lindsey got a job! The job is in Leadville, CO, the highest incorporated city in the US at 10,200 feet. We have found a great house to rent and are moving in mid-July.

We’ve been surprisingly busy since we got back and haven’t been able to keep up with the blog. We intended to write one post a month, and wrote a draft during that first month. But time got away from us and soon it had been two months, and then nearly three. We thought we would post even though we didn’t have all the photos we wanted.

And just because we can’t help it, we are sticking to our seven categories from the past year to sum up our two months back home.

1. Go

One of our daunting tasks upon returning was to find a car. We hadn’t done much research on what we wanted to buy and figured that we would wait for a week or two relaxing in Glenwood, then take a trip to Denver to do some car shopping. Serendipitously, when Lindsey’s parents picked us up from the train, they mentioned that a family friend was selling his dark grey 2007 X-Terra. We all joked that we couldn’t possibly buy it because 1) we hadn’t even decided what kind of car we wanted and 2) Lindsey’s sister Megan has a black 2008 X-Terra. But we knew right when we saw it that it would be ours. We bought in a matter of days. Having our own car to use whenever we want has helped our transition immensely.

After a test road trip to Denver, we really put it to the test on a weeklong camping trip in Utah. We put the 4-wheel drive to good use and even did a small river crossing. More recently we drove to California and back, making detours to the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde. And we’ve made numerous trips back and forth to Denver. We couldn’t be happier with our new car!

New Car!

2. See

We’ve had quite a busy few months since we’ve returned to the States. We’ve spent lots of time in the mountains and the desert on various camping trips and road trips. Some of the most stunning landscapes we saw were in Utah, both Canyon Lands and Capitol Reef.

Utah – Canyon Lands

Utah – Capitol Reef

Lindsey’s sister, Megan, had her bridal shower shortly after we returned. It was a great event with lots of friends and family.

Toilet Paper Wedding Dresses

Mom and Megan admiring the cake

Lindsey, Megan, Mom

Pat has gotten used to Lindsey taking tons of photos of everything, everywhere around the world. It’s good to see that she is just following in the Chadwick tradition… Here are so other Chadwick’s doing what they do:

Judy the photographer

Extreme photography with Ranger Dad

Classic Chadwick Hiking Mode

3. Eat

We loved trying all the food on our travels, but we were pretty excited to have some of our favorite American foods. Within the first week, we had pizza, ice cream (dairy-free), burgers, pot roast, fajitas, eggs with bacon, oatmeal, pancakes, waffles, etc. Most of all, it’s nice to have a food routine again. We get to eat our breakfasts without thinking too much about it.

4. Drink

One of the things we missed most on our travels was good American beer. It was pretty hard to find good beer and when we could it was pretty expensive. Now that we are back in the States we are glad to have lots of good beer again.

5. Sleep

We’ve spent most of our nights back in Lindsey’s old bedroom at her parents house. The view is to die for and we get to hang out with Pepper, the dog, all the time… oh, and Lindsey’s parents. We’ve spent a few nights in Megan and Bill’s Guest bed, as well as Pat’s parents guest bed in California. We’ve also spent at least 10 nights car camping. We had a classic tent incident on the Utah camping trip. We had put up the tent near a thousand foot cliff, staked and tied to huge rocks. While preparing dinner in Lindsey’s parent’s camper, the wind started to pick up. Pat was out on the bluff enjoying his beer while taking in the view. He turned and saw the tent lift off the ground, ripping out all the stakes and coming loose from the rocks. Miraculously, a briar patch caught the tent feet from the edge of the cliff. Once it stopped, we ran over, collapsed the polls and stuffed the mangled tent into the car. We drank a beer and planned how to sleep that night. We ended up moving some stuff out of the car and sleeping in the back. We slept alright, but were still pretty amped up from the tent attempting to jump the cliff. The tent turned out to be mostly ok. There were some small rips from the briar patch, but we were able to repair those easily. One of the poles is slightly bent, but it doesn’t negatively affect the set up.

Utah Sunrise at the campsite

6. Move

Traveling wasn’t exactly beneficial to our waistlines, so we’ve been trying to start up on workout routines. Unfortunately, we’ve been so busy and preoccupied with getting our lives in order that we haven’t been doing a great job. We start, but then have to take a break due to travel or whatever. Eventually, we will get into a routine again.

On the upside, we’ve been able to do some great hikes in the desert. First we were guided by Lindsey’s dad (dubbed “Ranger Dad”) through some breathtaking Canyon Lands hikes. On the Utah camping trip, we were joined by Lindsey’s uncle and aunt, John and Judy. They are very strong hikers, so we were able to complete two 10+ miles hikes in two days.