Winter Sports, Summer Sun

Last week, Sean headed out to Sun Valley, Idaho for a conference with work.  In addition to being home of the Power Engineers headquarters, it's also one of America's premier ski resorts, so I flew out later in the week to meet Sean for the recreational part of the trip.  I can honestly say that, randomly, this was one of the most fun vacations that I've ever been on (and I consider myself a beach person...with an appreciation of the mountains).  In Idaho.

Sun Valley Club, where we had dinner with Sean's company on Thursday night

 Dollar Mountain.  This is the beginner mountain, a build up to Bald Mountain.  This one is 1000 vertical feet and proved difficult enough for both of us.  Neither of us even managed to be able to safely ski all of the green slopes.  There's like, 30 slopes on this mountain and over 2 days we couldn't even attempt all of them.

 Bald Mountain in the background of the top of Dollar.  That one is 3000 vertical feet, but other than eating on it, we stayed on this safer choice :)

 River Run Lodge, at the base of Baldy where we had an amazing breakfast Saturday morning

 We rode a gondola midway up Baldy for lunch at the roundhouse

The Roundhouse.  One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

 The level of talent that skis here is unlike any I've ever seen.  This mountain is covered in almost straight vertical moguls.  But even little kids were zipping down these and into the trees, no problem.  Unbelievable.

 Natural hot springs in the west are pretty cool.  We drove almost 7 miles down a tiny snow covered dirt road to get here, to this isolated little hot spring in the river.  It's a little weird to strip down to a bathing suit in the middle of the snow and maneuver down a hill into hot water, but it's one of the cooler experiences I've ever been privy to.

 Brunch in the lodge dining room.  While we look pretty beat here, this was so relaxing.  We spent a couple of hours eating an unbelievable breakfast and drinking coffee in this cozy dining room while watching it snow outside.

Ski Boots

This weekend we celebrated Sean's 24th birthday with a trip to the mountains.  I booked this trip a little while back, and would have loved to have been someone who could keep it to myself until Friday when we left, but secret-keeping isn't much of my strong point, so I had to give it to him at Christmas.  So so much for that :)

We stayed here, which ended up being a decent place to stay, and the food was awesome, but when we got there I was surprised to find that instead of the bed and breakfast, lodge with a fireplace environment that I'd envisioned, that we were staying in a cabin room at the top of a dirt hill (advertised as "mountain view").  It had a bed with a quilt, a shower that was literally a glorified tile corner, a toilet that you couldn't use if you were much bigger than me, and a space heater.  We had to follow 'Jacob' up a sketchy dirt hill in the middle of nowhere to find it.  If you watched LOST, then you know why we were prompted to go ahead and text Lyndsey to let her know where we were staying in case we didn't ever come back.  That said, it'd be nice in the summer and if you were expecting these accommodations, really.  But I wasn't.  Since I'm married to an eternal optimist though, Sean didn't cry, and instead saw the bright side.  This was all he could come up with:  "Do you have the rest of your Nutter Butter?  You should leave it outside to see if we can lure a bear.  You think bears like Nutter Butters?".  Later, when I apologized for my lack of research concerning a place to stay, Sean looked on the bright side with the following:  "But Maria!  If we hadn't stayed HERE, we'd never be able to see a bear eating a Nutter Butter!!".  We didn't end up seeing a bear eating a Nutter Butter.  Or any bears for that matter.  But we did find a fireplace in the multipurpose room above us which lessened the blow.

Aside from this small detail though, we had a great time.  I highly recommend the place to eat or camp.  The food was SO good and the service was great.  And it was relatively close to a lot of things.  On Friday night, we hung out by the aforementioned fireplace with a glass of wine from the resort's vineyard (a nice touch on their part) playing games.  That sounds lame, but I love hanging out with Sean, and it's pretty freeing to be in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone reception...even if it did start out a little creepy.  We spent Saturday morning at Grandfather Mountain where I spent plenty of time in my childhood, Saturday afternoon and night trying to sharpen some of our skiing skills, and Sunday hiking and shopping in Blowing Rock.

The view from part of our Grandfather Mountain hike

The top of Grandfather.  At the risk of sounding dramatic, I'm not sure what the wind speeds were at the top of this mountain, but I felt like I needed to sit down to keep from blowing over.  According to the weather report from the mountain, they've charted wind speeds at 115 mph and temperatures as cold as -32 degrees F.  Obviously, it wasn't that cold or that windy, but it felt like it to me.

1 mile high suspension bridge at the top of Grandfather.  As a civil engineer, this suspension bridge was pretty much the highlight of Sean's entire trip.  At his request, I also have pictures of the turnbuckles and springs that operate this bridge in a way that Sean would have to be the one to explain.  But I'm just keeping them for us to enjoy :)  He crossed it, but like I said, I was scared.  Even as a non-civil engineer, this is pretty cool.  But I've been here on a sunny day as well, and it's still scary.

Sugar Mountain- the reason for our entire trip.  Hopefully in that afternoon/evening, we've sharpened our skills enough to ski Idaho in 6 weeks, although that's doubtful.

Casualty of the trip.  In addition to Sean's elbow.  Sean is insisting that this "isn't that bad", but he can't feel it, and as long as there's any visible evidence of this catastrophe, then it's "that bad".  Naturally, this wasn't my fault, but the resort's since it was the result of a huge patch of straight ice :)

Sunday short hike to a waterfall near the lodge on the Toe River.  It'd be a good place to swim sometime around July, I'm sure.

This is such a fun place to go, and there's so much to do, especially in the summer.  And it's always fun to spend some time in a place so different from home.  Happy Birthday Sean!  You're such a blessing to me and I hope this year's the BEST EVER!

A Very Late Post About New England

I'm just now getting around to writing about it, but at the beginning of October, Sean and I went up to New England to see the leaves for our 1 year anniversary since we'd never been and both of us love fall.  There's actually a verb specifically for what we were doing that we didn't know about before-hand.  "Leaf-Peeping" is what it's called, and the people who do it are "Leaf Peepas".  We went up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to North Conway where we stayed here, at the Farm by the River Bed and Breakfast.  The people who run this place are really nice and it's not far from anything.  We did most of our peeping around North Conway, up the Kangamangus Highway (The Kank, as the locals call it), and up north into the White Mountains.  We did several really pretty hikes through the rain and looked for a moose, which we never found.  As a side note, Sean and I have looked for a wild moose in 4 states and so far have only found one in the Maine injured wildlife park which I'm not sure counts since I had to photograph it through a fence.

After a few days around North Conway, we drove up to Portland, Maine, mainly for the food.  The Food Network cited Portland as the "foodiest town in America", and they were right, there is delicious food :).  While we were around Portland, we went up to Boothbay Harbor to look for a whale, which we found, although with a little less luster than I'd imagined (I was thinking a whale as big as the ship leaping out of the water Shamu style and finishing with a huge flap of his tail that I'd no doubt capture in all it's glory on camera with postcard-like quality).  It was more like a few fins.  But they were whales, so they count.  As a side note, turns out I'm married to quite the naturalist as Sean spotted half of the whales that we saw and pointed them out for the guide.  All while battling some pretty debilitating sea sickness.

The next day, we field-tripped to Freeport and checked out L.L. Bean and Harraseeket Lobster Shack, recommended by Rachel Ray herself.  It was also in Freeport that we tried Lobster Ice Cream.  In addition to finding a Moose, a goal of our trip was to have Lobster in every meal in Maine.  We pretty much succeeded and according to Sean, will be unable to eat Lobster in North Carolina as a result.  Afterwards, we headed up to Gray, Maine where we accepted defeat in our search for a Moose and settled for the captive one.

Some other things about New England that we really liked were: Demillos on the Water in Portland.  Literally a restaurant on a boat in the water.  The Portland Head Light and surrounding park.  Two Lights Lobster Shack and the two actual lights that gave it its name.  The Old Port in Portland.  Two Fat Cats Bakery where, again according to Rachel Ray, the best whoopie pies are made.  And of course, the experience of three New England bed and breakfasts where everyone was super nice.  Yep, that's right.  Nice in New England :)

Anyway, here's some of my favorite pictures of our trip:

Labor Day

This past weekend, Sean and I got to go down to Bluffton and visit Sean's family...and the beach.  We did some beach time, pool time, and shopping, and met Nick and Lyndsey's new puppy, my nephew-pup Grady.

Mr. Grady

Bro and Sister-in-law Nick and Lyndsey

Lone picture of Seanie and Me

Yay Twins!  With a foot of space.

Grades again

Ok... no more pictures...

We spent some time with Gram

Sean's Parents

And them again, humoring my need to take a million pictures

Date Weekend :)

Sean and I spent last weekend on a weekend-long date.  After entering the working world, I hate to admit that summer hasn't been our favorite season.  It's just been annoyingly hot.  And I'm not one to describe "hot" as annoying.  In the past, it's been a time for the pool, vacations, and light work...but it hasn't been this summer.  We've been to the pool once, and instead of being the summer-loving people that we once were, have become people who are thinking of summer as a time when our clothes aren't comfortable and our electric bill triples.  Yep.  So we dedicated the weekend to rekindling our love of summer and each other with some outdoor dining and fun in the sun..

Yes, I'm going to be someone who posts pictures of their dinner.  Because this rivaled any restaurant and I got the recipe for the main part from my favorite cookbook, Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Women, which is a book that you need if you don't have.  

 A close up of my masterpiece, tuna steaks with kiwi and avocado salsa with wild rice.  I made She-Crab soup as our side.

 Dessert from the same cookbook, orange cream with mandarin oranges and granola.  What I love about that cookbook is that everything is amazing and it's all pretty healthy.  

On Saturday morning, we made mango smoothies (another Betty Crocker recipe) and headed out for the "fun in the sun" segment of our weekend to the US National Whitewater Center in Charlotte.  This place was SO much fun.  We literally spent the entire day, and could spend 10 more without getting bored.  We went on a big zipline, did a ropes obstacle course that was 60 feet above ground, and went whitewater rafting.  Our intent was to finish out the day with kayaking on the Catawba River, but we got tired and our arms hurt, so we'll have to go another day.  They also have several other ziplines and obstacle courses, a lot of hiking trails, a zipline tour through the canopy, stand-up paddleboarding, etc.  To quote someone else, it's like an amusement park for active adults.

The Big Zipline

 Sean and me, all suited up for ziplining and obstacle-coursing

 A kid on the first obstacle in the "Canyon Crossing"

 Whitewater Rafting

 And finishing out the night with fireworks

The Orange Blooded Newlywed Club

Disclaimer- some pictures are jacked off of facebook.  

Shortly following the college club comes the newlywed club, and it's a club that it seems that all of our friends are quickly joining.  We've all been bridesmaids and groomsmen, brides and grooms, hosts of parties and showers, and have loved every second of it.  Looking back over these pictures and remembering the beginnings of each of these relationships makes me feel so lucky to have been able to become friends, and in some cases family, with so many wonderful couples who love God, love each other, and love Clemson.  This past weekend, we had the privilege of watching Dallas Kunkel and Elizabeth Temple join the ranks of Mr.'s and Mrs.'s, making them the fourth in a group of close knit friends to tie the knot.  It seems that weddings are the latest and greatest in post-grad get togethers, and we had an awesome time hanging out in the SC low country for the weekend celebrating and getting caught up with our college pals.  

Nick and Sean, the handsome twin Groomsmen with the newest husband, Dallas

The Crandall representatives in the Kunkel bridal party

The new Mr. and Mrs. at our wedding in August right after getting engaged.  Dallas was one of our ushers.

Newlywed Jen Moody teaching me Cotton-Eyed Joe at my wedding

The groomsmen at my wedding; appropriately included are other newlyweds Nick and Dallas

Sean, Nick, Lyndsey, and Me at their wedding in June

Nick and Dallas at Lyndsey and Nick's wedding

Nick, Lyndsey, Sean, Me, Tyler, and Jen and Dallas and Liz's rehearsal dinner

As much as I so miss being able to see all of these people every day, it's exciting to see and hear about everyone's lives going from college kids, to people with new jobs, homes, puppies, husbands, and wives.  And fun to have a weekend to hang out and catch up before all heading back to our new not-in-kansas-not-so-orange-anymore worlds.  So in honor of the latest and greatest in newlywed life, I'll end on a Michael Buble' note..