Book Club!

I'm not sure if I've posted anything yet about my book club, but I started one late last year with a few girlfriends in San Diego and we've had 4 meetings now - it's been great! Here are a couple of pictures of our group at our last book club meeting where we read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver.

Accion

As I mentioned in the Telluride post, we met these biker guys one night outside of the girls' house and they ended up hanging out with us all night and added so much to our evening! They were riding to raise money for an organization called Accion. This organization is in microfinance and works to improve international economic development. From what I understand, it's very similar to Kiva, which I think I've already posted about previously and have given money to. I think it's a GREAT way to support people in other countries who have very little because instead of giving them things, which can lead to dependence on help, they lend money so that people can start their own microbusinesses. This helps them get started, which they normally never could with no start-up money and teaches independence and a way to move away from poverty. Visit their website: www.accion.org to learn more and to donate - I definitely am going to! These guys have their own website as well: microbikeusa.com with a great video of them on the front page.

The mission from their website:

The mission of ACCION International is to give people the tools they need to work their way out of poverty. By providing microloans, business training and other financial services to poor men and women who start their own businesses, ACCION's partner lending organizations help people work their own way up the economic ladder, with dignity and pride. With just a little capital, people can grow their own businesses. They can earn enough to afford basics like running water, better food and schooling for their children.

In a world where three billion people live on less than $2 a day, it is not enough to help 1,000 or even 100,000 individuals. ACCION’s goal is to bring microfinance to tens of millions of people – enough to truly change the world. We know that there will never be enough donations to do this. That's why ACCION has created an anti-poverty strategy that is permanent and self-sustaining.

Anyway, these 6 guys were riding across the country to raise money for this organization and they almost all had recently graduated from college or were about to. We saw them out on the street passing by and were about to bring a keg into the house when the girls asked if they could help in exchange for free beer. They came in and hung out all night and Kristin made them tons of leftover food. But really, I think they gave so much to us just in their conversation. They were the nicest guys and had thought so much about life. They had already ridden from the East Coast to Telluride and still had until the West Coast to go. Very inspirational young men. I strongly urge you to take part in this organization! Just today, I received an e-mail from the loan I had donated to a Peruvian family through Kiva that they had paid it all back and I was able to take that same money and then donate to another family. It's so useful and will make you feel great!

Telluride and Kristin's Wedding

After Arches, we headed off to Telluride, which was only about 3 hours away. I had been back in December, and perhaps you'll recognize some of the shots again! The trip was for Kristin and Wil's wedding and we had a great time with everyone and the trip was full of activities. I don't think I've ever been to a wedding that had activities for so many days - it was great! The day after we got there, we took the gondola up from Telluride to the mountain village. The town of Telluride is so beautiful and very cute with a lot of older, colorful homes. I don't like the mountain village as much because it's very new and just like any other ski towns you go to. But Telluride has a lot of class! Up at the top, Scott and I found a boulder to climb (with a little help of foot and hand holds in the rock). It wasn't all that high, but I was still a bit scared without a rope.























I'm including a few pictures to show the difference between Telluride in the winter and summer. These first were at a very similar spot on the mountain across from the ski mountain. The red rocks came through in both the winter and summer! The next has a different group of people in the two pictures, but is the same spot atop a black diamond route. I didn't go down in winter or summer! The third is the same group of girls who went up in December for wedding planing (that ended up being more skiing) and then again a couple of days before the wedding.





















I had headed to the Telluride airport to pick up Carol and James and caught this picture. This airport is the highest in elevation in the US and James said it was quite a flight flying in with the plane bumping around. I'm not sure I could've handled it, but I'm sure it gave some night sights. There was a BBQ in the park on Thursday night and it was a perfect backdrop for a nice evening to get together with everyone who was in town. After the BBQ, we headed back to the girls' house that used to be a brothel back in the day. It still has the red lights and everything red insight - it was quite a house! We meet some very cool guys that night that I'll include in the next post after this.






















Kristin and I went on a beautiful hike on Friday, but unfortunately I didn't have my camera. You'll just have to take my word for it! On Friday night, there was the rehearsal dinner with lots of really yummy food and deserts - since Kristin is such an amazing cook, she knows how to pick other good cooks! There were lots of really nice speeches and I think the soon to be bride and groom loved all of the love in the room. Afterwards, a lot of us headed up to this fancy bar atop one of the mountains where they had mine and Scott's favorite new beer - called Delirium Tremens - on tap! If you get a chance to try it out, I definitely recommend it. Scott and Nancy's brother, Jeff and I enjoyed lots of this yummy beer while most others drank fancy wine.



















On Saturday, before the wedding, Nancy and I took a beautiful hike up to the falls that in the winter, we saw was frozen. I'm including both pictures again here. The hike was pretty tough and very uphill, but it felt good to get out there and it was so beautiful all around us. If you have the right kind of car, you can actually drive up almost to the falls and then hike more, but we just hiked up to the falls. The views looking out on Telluride and the waterfalls were breathtaking.




















The wedding itself was definitely one of the most beautiful I've ever been to. The mountains in the distance, the ponds on the property, the cloud formations constantly changing while we were there.... incredible (not to mention the bride!) There was a lot of celebrating and dancing and eating and drinking and I think everyone had a great time. The bride and groom even seemed to be loving it and seemed nice and relaxed! Scott one some money with the guy by winning the bet for the length of the wedding - 15 minutes!
























We didn't do much on the long drive back since it was about 14 hours, but we did stop at the 4 corners since it's the only place where 4 states meet. I had one limb in each of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

Arches National Park

On the drive the next day from Bryce, I felt like we were in the middle of another beautiful national park the whole day. This had to be one of the most beautiful drives I've ever taken. If you ever get a chance to drive along highway 12 in Utah - definitely do it - you'll be amazed! The rock formations and colors were awesome. We even stopped at one site that had petroglyphs right off the road - very cool!



















We got to Moab in the afternoon and after dinner, went to see Arches at sunset, which was quite beautiful. Scott made fun of me as a sunset mad-woman because I was driving like crazy to try to get all of the best spots for sunset viewings - we did, though!


















The next day, we spent a few hours in the park at Arches. I had kind of expected the park to have Arches everywhere you looked and it wasn't like that at all. It was cool and the arches were amazing, but the park was much more spread out than Bryce and had a lot of area that was more flat, with arches and other rocks interspersed throughout. Still amazing, but not as great as Bryce in my opinion. We first drove and did a short hike into see the Landscape Arch, which is probably the world's longest arch. It's even longer than a football field! A piece of it fell off a few years back and you can no longer hike under it, but just seeing it from a distance was wonderful. We then went to see the Delicate Arch, which is probably the most famous one. This is the one that is on the Utah license plate! We didn't hike all the way to walk under it, but could see it from a viewpoint (still sore from backpacking!) The last stop we made was to Windows and this was really cool because there were arches everywhere! This is more what I expected of the park. We could even sit under one of the big arches in the shade and just hang out for a while. It was cool to see spot where other arches were starting to be formed. Over time, the current arches will likely be destroyed by the same thing that creates them - water and nature breaking down the weaker rock. But there will likely be others that are formed over time, so this park is likely to look completely different in a few thousand years!