Breckenridge, Breckenridge, Breckenridge

This story isn't so very domesticated but I have no other place to showcase my "non-SOR" photography which makes this blog somewhat of a catch all. Hopefully you'll enjoy the pretty pictures and not hate me for recanting an undomesticated story. 

I always thought I wanted to move west. I love the mountains in North Carolina and I thought that the Rockies would be that much better. So for our honeymoon, when Steven suggested Colorado as a destination, I was on board. That was the first time I visited Breckenridge (October of 2010). If you're never been, let me tell you, it's adorable. A cute little main street surrounded by quaint shops and good eats. Dogs are allowed pretty much everywhere and most people are charming. Especially if you're buying something. But you know what didn't charm me? 

The mountains. 

I KNOW! String me up and beat me. How dare I say such nasty things about the Rockies. I must be crazy. I'm not, I swear I have legitimate reasons. For one, my least favorite tree (yes I have a least favorite tree) is pine. Which grows all over the mountains. Yay. Secondly, without snow on the peaks they're just kinda...gray. Bleh. Thirdly, we were there in fall, and it was supposed to be glorious. You know what it was? Yellow. Yellow, green and gray. How can that compare to the vast array of color you get in the Appalachians/Smokies/Adirondacks?! Granted, the mountains are beautiful in their own right and I did enjoy watching the sun slowly creep over their peaks every morning (that's glorious). But I did not swoon.  

Regardless when someone suggested a skiing trip in Colorado (that might have been me actually) and Breckenridge was brought up as an option, I was all for it. I wanted to see those mountains in winter. This time I was not disappointed. The mountains were breathtaking. This was the second time I visited Brekcnridge (February of 2013). The town was just as quaint and lovely. I may have seriously damaged my tailbone while learning to snowboard but it was a blast and I want to go back. 

The third and most recent time I've been to Breckenridge was a few weeks ago. Unfortunately Steven was not able to join me for this trip. It felt almost wrong to go to Breck without him. I was there to attend a class on stream restoration taught by Dave Rosgen. I'd been looking forward to this class for over a year. As usual, the class kept us very busy but they gave us one day to enjoy Breck and I managed to convince a few guys (the majority of the class was guys. I was one of three women) in my class to join me on the Mohawk Lakes hike so I could finally reach the upper lake.

It had snowed a few days before and it wasn't necessarily warm in the shade but we managed and we made it! I really enjoyed seeing the mountains a little differently. With the snow peaks and the ice. It was nice that everything wasn't exactly the same as before. Onto the pictures!

Here's 3 of the 4 guys that I was able to convince to join me. Don't get the wrong impression from the shorts and t-shirts. It was cold. They're just crazy. This was Adam, Graydon and Jace.  

 Old mining relics. This one actually had some stuff left in it. It was also at this point that our old friendly birds start to join us. At one point Adam from Tennessee was sitting eating almond butter from a spoon and had rested his hand on his knee while chatting with us. One of those birds actually inched up and took a bite of almond butter from his spoon! Crazy birds!

 I give you, Lower Mohawk Lake. Semi frozen. 

Like I said, my goal was to get to the Upper Mohawk Lake. Unfortunately, we'd lost the trail. So we thought, like any educated people would think, the water for the lower lake must be coming from the upper lake, so let's just follow the water to find the upper lake. There was no trail that way...we scaled the friggin mountain. We're idiots. But after some heart pounding accents and too close of calls, we managed to find this guy. This is the upper most Mohawk Lake. 

 This lake was completely frozen over. It was easily in the teens and the wind was howling, I was frozen. We didn't linger long. On our way back down we stumbled upon the actual trail. Yeah...there was a trail. I told you we were idiots. Oh something neat about the trail...it had snow on it so we could see the tracks of the people who'd also made it this far. There was one set of shoe tracks and one set of dog tracks. We all thought it was very cool to know we were among the very few that actually make the effort to get to the upper lakes. 

 This wasn't on the trail but it was worth the short detour. The view up here was amazing. The bigger lake below me is the Lower Mohawk Lake. 

A little farther on down the trail we rounded the corner and saw this. This is the Upper Mohawk lake. In our mountain scaling, we completely missed it! If we hadn't found the trail on the way down, we never would have seen it. Somehow this lake remained unfrozen. It was so clear and so blue. It was amazing. 

L:R Jason (MN), Jace (LA), me (NC), Adam (TN) and Graydon (NY)

It took us somewhere around 6 hours to do that hike (a bit long but we did lose the trail...). Oddly though, even though I was exhausted I still couldn't sleep that night. Stupid altitude. 

By the end of my week and a half course. I was ready to go back east. I never would have guessed it...but I actually missed humidity.

If you're like to read about my first climb to the Mohawk Lakes, check out my old blog here: http://stizoutwest.blogspot.com/2010/10/day-5-and-6-hiking-in-rockies.html 

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

-Liz

Three Falls Hike

FINALLY! We were able to relax in Asheville a bit. We spent the second weekend of July in our cozy little mountain house and between painting a second coat on the living room and kitchen, hanging a bunch of pictures and installing a fire pit, we went for a hike. 

I'd wanted to go see Rainbow falls but decided it was too far away for a quick afternoon trip. So I looked around on the interwebs and found a falls called Bridal Veil Falls in Dupont Forest. The description said you could WALK UNDER THE FALLS. Holy hell I've always wanted to do that. It was kind of far too but I insisted on this one. 

Instead of just hiking the Bridal Veil Falls, we (I) decided to do the 3 falls hike that starts from the Triple Falls trail head and parking lot. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

The parking lot was rather full and the trail was pretty busy so we couldn't let the dogs off leash. That was kind of a bummer but we had fun anyways. The first falls we got to was, you guessed it, Triple Falls. It was so beautiful and breathtaking.  

From this look out area you can then walk down the never ending staircase and reach the second falls. I believe, this was the falls used in The Hunger Games. Looks familiar, right?

Ok, there's a bit more water on the falls than there was during filming but I'm 99.9% sure these are the right falls.

The next falls we got to were High Falls and they were aptly named. Wowza. 

We stopped here and had a bit of lunch. This is when we we discovered that you could actually drive to all of these falls. They all had parking areas with pavilions with portajohns and everything...that's either lazy or ingenious, I'm not quite sure which. (just had an epic idea....the triple falls area would make an awesome bridal shoot/trash the dress location. ooooooooo)

We labored on across the covered bridge and over about 2 miles of the most boring gravel road I've ever walked on. I swear Umstead is more exhilarating. I kept telling myself that it was all worth it because I was going to be able to walk  under a waterfall! So we trudged on. 

Finally, after my feet were beaten up (I'd worn my Fivefingers), we made it to Bridal Veil Falls. The bottom of the falls was a large expanse of sloping rock with tons and tons of rushing water. 

It roared like it wanted to eat your babies. Very neat. However, we could not plainly see how we were supposed to get to the upper falls and thus walk underneath the falls. I asked a local who was leading a group of kids on a tour and she told us that because of the high waters, the falls weren't reachable. Normally, the lower falls didn't cover the entire rock and you could just walk up it. But at this time there was at least an inch of rushing water along the whole expanse of rock. We decided to try anyways. It was only an inch right? What's the worst that could happen? <-- Famous last words

The worst that could happen is that you slip on that inch of water that's hydrated the super slippery algae and fall into a waiting rock or pool. Either one, very bad for people carrying cameras...like myself. 

The dogs did fine, they got to the top, turned around, and came back down to get in our faces to "help" us along. Which inevitably made Steven slip, then I slipped because I was worried about Steven slipping. Steven slid about 5 feet till he was able to grab a sapling that was growing out of the rock and then he swung out his arm and grabbed me. My husband saved me. Yep. No harm to the camera, just a wet rump. We eventually scrambled our way to the top. We attempted to find a path around to walk under the falls but between slippery rocks and not wanting the dogs to accidentally slip and die in the falls, we decided it was best left to another day. 

There it is, the Bridal Veil Falls. Once the rains have died down in Asheville, we'll go again so I can get the epic picture I so desire. 

So many fun and amazing adventures in the mountains of North Carolina. So many things to see and always changing according to the seasons. I sure do love my fuzzy mountains. 

Taking your dogs on a walk is domesticated. Taking your dogs on walk up a waterfall, that's Awesomely Domesticated. 

Liz 

Little piece of Asheville

Completely independent of each other, both my husband and I ended up loving the woods, hills and mountains. That being said, I do have to give him credit for introducing me to mountain biking which became an activity we both really enjoy and eventually led us to consider Asheville for our wedding (because of the epic mountain biking and beer possibilities...I'm not sure who I can blame for my beer enthusiasm). 

Thus we began visiting Asheville to plan the wedding. Slowly but surely we became completely enamored with the city, the mountains, the streams, the air, the food and the beer. After we got married, the trips didn't stop. We'd return every other month or so, stay for a couple days and miss the mountains when we left. This continued for about a year and a half until we got the harebrained idea to buy a house there. This idea inevitably made our trip frequency increase as we were looking for a house. I didn't complain too loudly. It took us nearly a year to finally find a winning house...well...I should say it took us nearly a year to finally find a winning house that we could get a contract on! We had a few failed attempts. 

Enter Wyatt Street - It was in shambles. It was nothing more than a rental for the last 5 years or so and none of the renters took care of it (or cleaned apparently). But we (mostly Steven) saw potential. After closing on it at the beginning of the month (it was actually way more complicated than that but I won't bore you...much) we, with the help of 4 friends, put in 5 long-long days of hard labor to fix her. The house is completely transformed. 

Before (these are from our realtor, she took these before the tenants had completely moved out). 

The yard was even worse by the time we closed 2 weeks later. 

The tenants smoked and were filthy...this rug was completely trashed.  

Custom rug discoloration.

Somehow this room smelled the worst.  

Nothing like a yellow-beige-brown room to welcome you in the morning.  

Nice idea, poor execution.  

I don't know how they bathed in this room. So dirty...

In the middle of us fixing it up:

 Carpet was ripped out first thing. The house already smelled better afterwards. 

 This room got a very good coat of Kilz Original primer on the walls and ceiling. 

 The problem with working on a house is stuff gets thrown everywhere. The table became a "catch all".

 Who knows why but the renters loved dark colors on the wall. While I don't hate this color, it made the room feel so small. 

 So much paint. Paint on paint on paint. 

 They removed the doors for the showers but left the tracks...Jeremy is removing the mounting tape in this picture. Also, this bathroom is no longer purple. 

Bye-bye built in shelving unit. Hello large room (and awesome blue paint).  

Our Realtor, Karen Vickers showed up just at the right time. We'd all been painting Kilz Original primer for the last few hours and we were all pretty loopy from the fumes. This was a much needed break.  

The dogs needed a break too. They were bored.  

And probably a little high too.  

Autumn was hittin the bottle hard. 

Speckled with Kilz. This is what happens when you paint ceilings will Kilz Original...it sprays everywhere and gets you covered (side note: in my high state I found it hilarious that the shortest person, me, was painting the ceiling while the tallest person, Nate, was painting walls). The fun part about Kilz Original is it's oil based...so it's not water soluble so you can't clean yourself of with water.  

So the only way to get Kilz off you (other than time and patience) is mineral spirits.  

I don't suggest this.  

This was probably a bad idea.  

But hey, it was getting it off.  

Good husband cleaning Kilz off my face.  

Jeremy and Nate did a great job laying the new floor in the living room and part of the master bedroom (everywhere there was a rug). 

This Sunday, we finished Wyatt's transformation. Well, mostly. We have plans to upgrade even more but all in due time. 

After:

 We had a yard guy come out and tackle the 3 foot tall grass. That was a sight. He must be the most stubborn man alive because he was at it for 5 hours! And still had a smile. We have him coming back every two weeks now. 

Master bedroom after. The floors and the walls make a huge difference. 

 

We cleaned every inch of this house. 

This was the room with the built in desk. It turns out they painted the trim and doors a beige color. We discovered this by getting sloppy with the primer on the walls and ceiling and hitting the crown molding. So now I'll be repainting the trim on our next trip. I at least got the door frames and the window repainted before running out of time. 

  

This was the bedroom that smelled the worst. Now there no trace of smoke smell at all. Kilz Original kicks some booty. 

 Dirty living room turned comfortable gathering room. 

 This room has the same pale green that the living room has. It's such a calming color. 

 Catch all table turned cute little Bistro. 

  

 Steven repaired all the steps in the front and braced the stairs with 4x4's at the base. 

 There's wild blackberries all over the property! 

You have no idea how happy that makes me. 

Now that it's mowed, the back yard is a great place to play fetch with the dogs. 

The "upper" yard has a secluded feel to it. Plus it gets the shade from all the tall trees around it. We'll be putting a firepit up here in a few months. 

There you have it. There's our little piece of Asheville. It's less than a mile from the French Broad Brewery and the Biltmore. It's between 3 and 4 miles from downtown (depending on which part you go to). It sits on over a half an acre. It's quaint, it's comfortable, it's ours and it's available for vacation rentals! http://www.vrbo.com/481411 - 3br 2ba pet friendly!

Hopefully our bank account can stop hemorrhaging money now. 

Liz DiNatale