Breckenridge

 We wanted to go somewhere this summer since last years vacation was cancelled due to the pandemic. I really wanted to go to Hawaii since it's our 20th wedding anniversary but there were still too many unknowns to travel that far in my opinion. We decided to head to Colorado instead since it's within driving distance. I looked at several different cities and we decided on Breckenridge. We wanted to try a city we haven't ever been to and one with several fun things to do. I also was looking for a town full of good restaurants. Breckenridge did not disappoint! 

We met Sean's folks there, they stayed out at Dillon Lake in their camper while we reserved an Air B&B in town. We met the first day and hiked up to the Breckenridge Troll. It's an art installment that was so popular they decided to make it a permanent installment up on a trail. It was super cool!

The town was beautiful. I can't get over the flowers everywhere! It was a popular destination, I knew it would be but I'm not sure I was prepared for the sheer number of people. We talked to a few natives and they said this year was nothing like last year which surprised me. Apparently last summer was even busier because of the pandemic people decided to go live in condos and Zoom school their kids in the mountains. 

We had some great food and wonderful company. I researched all the restaurants and keep tabs of the ones offering plant based options (which were quite a few). It was well worth the few pounds put on! We got pretty good at using the public transportation. Parking options weren't plentiful so on most days we parked at the free ice skating rink lot and rode the bus all over the place.

Celebrated 20 years married!

Got to see some of the antique train snow removal systems that were used to keep the tracks open in the winter. Then we made our way to Dillon Lake to see Randi and Rich's new camper. Made it just in time for the daily afternoon rain shower. Greta, our little rock hound, had a ball finding rocks for her collection. 

We took a ride up the mountain on the free gondola. We were all able to fit into one but it was quite warm. The area at the top of the mountain is were all the winter snow activities happen. From there you can ride chair lifts up to the different mountains to ski down. Summer is their off season but it was still packed, I can only imagine it in the winter.

Randi and Rich had to head out so we used our last full day there to go hiking on trails around our condo. We found one that followed the stream and offered endless rock hounding. We took an empty backpack for the all the wonderful rocks that the kids found. It was a wonderful hike that opened up on the reservoir above town.

We said goodbye to Breckenridge and our cute little condo and headed south to Colorado Springs to meet my parents for the day. We drove through the Garden of the Gods to see the magnificent rock formations but it was also packed full (didn't even see open parking spots) so we just drove through. It was quite beautiful!

In Colorado Springs we met up with my folks to see Magic Town by Michael Garman. It's a place downtown where an artist has created a miniature town that you get to walk through. It was beautifully done and so many things to see. Greta said it was her favorite part of the whole vacation. If you ever find yourself in Colorado Springs with a couple of hours to spare make sure you stop by, it was well worth it. 

Sanding

We have cypress wood floors in a portion of the house that have looked pretty sad for several years. We've been putting off refinishing them because it's the area where the dogs live and the polyurethane has to sit for several days without traffic to cure properly. We were getting ready to go on vacation last month and I decided to rent a sander and try and get the floors done right before we left so it could cure while the dogs were in the kennel. 

I did ample research online and watched many videos on YouTube on floor refinishing and felt ready to try my hand at it. The rental store guy said the square footage we had to finish would take about 4 hours so we rented the sander for a day thinking that would give us plenty of time. 

I got it home and started sanding at about 10 am. By 1 pm it looked like I had barely touched the floor. I was going through sanding pads like crazy and the old polyurethane was gumming up each one in record time. The old coating had ambered over time and the orange color was very difficult to remove. By the first day I had gone through all of the coarse sanding pads the rental place had given us and I was about to throw in the towel. The floor was sanded in areas and barely touched in others. It was so frustrating!

 

 

Sean got off of work and begrudgingly came to help (he was more than happy to say this was my project but was a huge help). I went in the next morning and got more sanding pads from the rental place and rented the sander for another day. We spent the whole day trading off hand sanding the edges and using the floor sander. The air conditioning had to be turned off so the dust wouldn't spread throughout the whole house. It was hot! 

 

 

All in all it took about 20 hours of sanding, and we probably could have gone longer but had to return the sander so we could leave for our trip. Talk about a miserable job. We decided there are things in life that you pay a professional to do and this is one of them. When I returned the sander to the rental store I was telling the guy there about our long sanding process and he said every floor is different....some people can whip through their sanding job in just a few hours and 3-4 sanding pads while other need it for days and use 30 pads (I think we used 28 on less than 400 square feet). I'm not sure what polyurethane the last people used on the  floors but it was more like resin. 

 

We vacuumed like crazy, took the dogs to the kennel and then I put down three coats of a water based polyurethane finishing up around 1am. I've never been so happy to leave on vacation in my life. Very grateful that job is done! 

 

Birthday Boy

 Wesley celebrated his 14th birthday over the summer. The kid is growing up! I'm very proud of the young man he's becoming. 

My parents, Jessica and her kids and Matthew were there to help him celebrate. Happy birthday Wesley!

The hat has now survived for 14 years.