Work and parenting mostly I suppose... Adeline is growing like a weed and picking up new things every day. She now knows how to high-five, fist bump, and raise the roof, so we obviously have the essentials down now and can start working on the tertiary stuff like colors and counting.
The Bishop clan is starting to get into summer mode and plan out our adventures for the year. Sarah and I kicked off the hiking season last weekend with a jaunt up to Vail for a hike up the Booth Lake Trail in the Eagles Nest Wilderness. This has been an epic snow season in the high country, so we knew we would have to pack our snowshoes. Sure enough, about a half of a mile up the trail, we threw them on and started crunching through the snow.
The trail starts out with a mile of hiking through and Aspen grove, then quickly climbs up through some pines before leveling out some into a wide open valley with more Aspen. We want to come back during the summer when everything is green and do this hike again.
While we were snowshoeing up, we were following in the footsteps of someone else who had blazed the trail for us. After a while, I looked down and noticed some funky looking boot prints. After staring at it for a minute, I realized that what was so funky about then was the huge claws on the front. Apparently this valley is the home to a large black bear who is now awake and probably very hungry.
Sarah was a little nervous about following the footprints any farther, since obviously the bear is following the human footprints up the mountain because it's easier walking, he'll probably do the same on the way back down. I convince her to follow me a little farther, and we'd see if the bear peels off at some point. I walk ahead about 200 yards and saw that the bear turned and continued on his merry way straight up the hill and left the human tracks, so we continued (although now with a much more watchful eye.)
Eventually we got to the Booth Falls, which is about half way to Booth Lake, but unfortunately we had to cross a large avalanche path. There we some small pine trees on the first half so we started across it carefully. After about 75 yards, the path turns into an avalanche chute, and I decided that I wasn't comfortable crossing the chute. A lot of the trail we had hiked on was already avalanched, and this still looked nice and fresh, so we decided to turn back and called it a day.
We eventually head back to Frisco and walked through town, grabbed some lunch at our favorite place, the Butterhorn Bakery.
Sarah's mother and sister Haley came out to visit and watched Adeline for a week as well, and gave Sarah and I some much needed time off. Well, Sarah got time off anyway. I was forced to re-finish the cabinets in the kitchen, which is still slowly coming along, but looking great.
My satellite, GEO-1 finally launch on May 7th at noon, so I've been very busy at work getting everything online. Sarah is staying busy at her job as well, designing a wind-farm in Lompoc, CA.
Adeline recently celebrated her first birthday with a party at our house. Sadly, she was not really into the whole cake thing, so maybe next year we'll get some good cake-smash pictures.
Until next time! (which will hopefully be soon)
