Spring sprung

Spring has hit Granby, Colo. For you east coasters, it's not exactly the kind of spring you might imagine. No daffodils or azaleas blooming here. It's practically Wyoming, after all. Spring is sagebrush, wildflowers and mud.

In the mountain towns of Colorado, spring is more rightly known as mud season. Every place has its weather demons. In many places, it's the wind. The Santa Anna's in Southern California are known to drive folks mad, just as summer's eternal light in Northern Alaska acts like PCP.


In the mountains of Colorado, it's mud season that brings out the crazy in people. Those with money or seasonal jobs flee for places warmer. My washing machine repair man (long story) was beginning a two week vacation as he left my house the other day. His plan — drive south. That was it. No plan. No destination. Just. Flee.

When mud season hits, restaurants shut down, shops board up, the town gets quiet. Those who stay are bombarded with the seasonal tease of 65 degree weather followed by freezing temperatures and 12 inches of snow. In 4-hour stretch last Friday, we had every type of weather imaginable — wind, rain, sleet, hail, thunderstorm, snow, fog and sun. Talk about getting caught up in the Cuisinart of the weather gods. Sure, we got 12 inches of snow in 48 hours, but it's spring snow and by nature melts (almost) as fast as it falls. By this afternoon, it was gone.


These photos are from a hike I took this afternoon — just mud, melting snow and a sure sign of spring — wild crocus (aka Pasque flower).

First Run

We took Sawyer and Arden downhill skiing for the first time this weekend at SolVista, the little locals mountain located literally across the street from our house in Granby. We've been doing the Nordic lessons every Friday and the kids have really grown comfortable walking around with sticks on the ends of their legs. We had shied away from taking them downhill because it seemed like an overwhelming prospect with two young children. With the days warming as spring approaches, we bit the bullet this weekend and gave it a whirl. First of all, it's FREE for kids to ski under the age of 5 (didn't know that). The little learning hill has a magic carpet that Sawyer quickly learned to use himself and we could just stand at the bottom and watch him do laps (so much easier than I realized). It was easy enough for one person to watch two kids. (We rented skis for Sawyer but skipped renting them for Arden. Her little Nordic strap-on skis didn't have enough slide so she actually had to walk downhill. Being our adrenaline kid, she was not happy about that.) Sawyer's first run was PERFECT. He wasn't scared at all (clearly there's been a kid-swap here). By the third run he was insisting he was ready to go on the chairlift and after two runs on that he wanted to go on the BIG chairlift. All I can say is that apparently we have a Jonny Moseley on our hands.