The mother of all roadtrips

This guy makes mine and dragon's roadtrip look like a walk across the street! Me and dragon = 6 baseball games in 6 days. Cass Sapir's roadtrip = 189 ballgames in 175 days!! He's visiting EVERY major and minor league stadium in the country to raise money for the Jimmy Fund. Sounds totally awesome and fun...until I remember how tiring our baby trip was. On our trip, our "hard" day was doing the Twins night game in Minneapolis and then going to the Cubs day game the next day in Chicago. I think we drove 7 hrs and slept 7 hrs. Something like that. In any case, THIS crazy guy drove from Minneapolis all the way down to TEXAS for a night game the next day. Dragon and I have been completely shown up.

ESPN Page2 article by Jim Caple
Tour for the Cure website
Mine and dragon's formerly awesome (but now wimpy) roadtrip

How fast can you type???

Check out this online speed test! Post your scores in the comments...
http://labs.jphantom.com/wpm/

Tubing!!

JB and I went tubing down the South Platte River on Saturday, and just like last year...it was awesome!! Definitely the perfect day for floating down a river in a tube! The sun was shining bright, it was hot, and the water was runnin' strong and high. And let me tell you, this ain't no lazy river!! It's pretty tame at points (even though you can still crash into the sides like JB), but there are plenty of rocks to float around and many rapids to be concerned about. It's all safe fun...I only got completely backwards flipped out of my tube once, and JB got dumped once while losing her sandals a couple times, but it's all good! We even walked back to do this awesome drop again before leaving. We went about 2-3 miles in 1hr and 15min, so it's really a pretty good ways. So much fun!!

Rocky Mtn pt.3 - Lost Falls

Jumping into a freezing lake among the best scenery on the planet seemed enough for one day, so Seagal and I went back to camp, ate some scrumptious tomato chipotle pasta (highly recommend it), and tossed the football around for a bit. We were ready to call it a day even though there was 4 hrs of sunlight left and I was panicking about being bored off my ass, when I spotted a faint trail on the other side of the river from our campsite. Seagal and I had been looking for Lost Falls since we got there, but there were no clear trails leading to it...so we decided to follow this lead along the river until we got there.

We were totally hacking it the entire way. I mean, there was a faint path that was sorta worn down, but when you cross the river 3 times, you know you're not following a real trail. We went for about a mile of going over and under fallen trees, crossing the river, pushing away branches...and then we got our first glimpse of it. I was beginning to think the trek wasn't going to be justified by the falls, but man they were worth it. Seagal and I both took pictures from there and then we went closer...and closer...and then started climbing up the side. These falls were powerful. Absolutely awesome to look at. And you just get a rush being so close to something that incredible. We had a ton of fun climbing around the rocky edges of the falls. While Seagal was playing cliffhanger climbing down, I ventured over the top ledge of the falls...

Just like all of our pics, that pic doesn't do it justice, so check out this picture just so you can get a sense of how high it was. And then Seagal took a picture of me hanging on the branch at the top too. (No worries, I was perfectly safe the entire time!)

Seriously...best outdoor adventure yet. This one's going to be hard to top, but given Seagal and I's brief history together, we're going to find a way how. peace out for now!

Rocky Mtn pt.2 - Swimming!

Yeah that's right! You see that lake right there? The one that's fed by that glacier in the background?? Well Seagal and I made the plunge into the sub-50 degree water on day 2 of our camping adventure.

Seagal was totally set on jumping in and his resolve never wavered a bit. I, on the other hand, was not super excited about the idea after being rained on the entire first day and not having the best summer Colorado day on day 2 either. But I was at least going to make the hike up there...

RMNP is absolutely amazing, just like I imagine all national parks to be. Everytime I head up there, I totally wish that I could have everybody I know with me because the sights are SO vast and breathtaking. Words definitely can't describe how beautiful it is...pictures can't even do it. Seagal and I talked about this a bunch, but yet we still try and take pictures like this to capture it all.

Along the way, we found this wheelbarrow, a huge rock, and some snow (?!) A little more than 3 miles from our campsite, we came across Lost Lake, which is the official end of the trail. This is originally where we wanted to go swimming, but too many people hang out and fish there (too many = 3-5 when you're in the middle of nowhere) so we hiked up over that hill on the far side of the lake. Of course, as we were walking up over that big hill, a huge hail storm came rolling in...so we took cover under this awesome tree. Here's the view from the top of the hill looking at Lost Lake.

Lake Husted! Seagal was the first to go in. And after seeing how much fun he had, I did a complete 180 and said I went in myself! Seriously, it looks pretty nice, but it was frigid!! The lake was super shallow, which made swimming in it very very difficult. But it was WAY fun and I'm so glad we went in! Definitely memorable.

Upon leaving Lake Husted, we didn't think it was going to be possible to make the day any better. But then on the way back to camp, we ran into this gigantic moose (!) along the trail that we even tracked for a little bit! When we got back to camp, we had some food, threw the football around, and then made an unexpected journey to cap off an already amazing day outdoors...

Rocky Mtn pt.1 - Camping

Hope everyone had a great 4th weekend! Seagal and I did a 2-night backcountry camping trip in Rocky Mountain National Park and it was incredible fun! So much fun that I'm going to split up the blogging into 3 parts. yeah, you love it!

As you can see, my pack was rather large. I've only car camped befpre this trip, so I've never had to carry all of my gear like this, and let me tell you...it was not the most comfortable thing! To make matters less pleasant, we got rained on pretty much the entire way, but we did manage a nice (and dry) stop by the river at one point. From the Dunraven trailhead on the very northeast side of Rocky Mtn Natl Park, we hiked a total 6.7 miles to get to our campsite.

Our campsite was sweeeeeet! Way better than any hotel room! We had a bridge as the entrance to our site, a sweet dining room (that's our table and the log on the right was our chair), and once we got set up, we also had great sleeping accommodations. When you're in the backcountry, you have to hang up all of your food and anything that smells that might attract the bears...we had a genius counterbalance system that nobody was going to reach (even us sometimes!)

Once we figured out where we were, we took a little stroll as a preview for the next day's adventure. As with any hike with me and Seagal, it involved walking along fallen trees. This is something we manage to do every opportunity we get...one of these days, one of us will have a good wipe out, but not today! Oh yeah, and here's a pretty butterfly.

Tune in in a couple days for our plunge into Lake Husted...

Movie Review: Superman Returns

Looks totally cheesy, right?? I completely agree...but Superman was SUPER-AWESOME!! No joke, I totally loved it. There's something about a dude flying around in bright blue tights with red underpants that just makes you not want to take it seriously, but this movie really pulled it off well. I didn't have many expectations going into it and I ended up enjoying all 2hr 40min of it and would see it all again at some point. It was real entertaining, funny at points, the actors were perfect for their characters (esp. Brandon Routh as Superman, and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor), and Superman's action scenes were definitely sweet. I tell ya, that guy comes through in the clutch. And that music?? Just awesome and it gets you pumped up. No wonder how he can score a girl like Lois Lane. So yeah, I'd definitely recommend it for a super-great time.